28-29). Wisdom management: Tensions between theory and practice in practice. Paper presented at

Wisdom is a little discussed and poorly understood human faculty in the dominant discourse that pervades today’s management practices (Brague 2003; McKenna et al. 2000). Modern managerial discourse is very much a product of a dominant discourse characterised by the ideologies of neo-liberalism, including rational managerialism, and of positivist science incorporating methodological reductionism. We call this technocratic discourse (McKenna et al. 2000), and argue that it privileges rational scientific method and technical knowledge in managerial problem-solving. It is not surprising that managing and utilizing knowledge has been theorised largely within this hegemonic technocratic discourse. Nonetheless, it is true that subjective and imaginative or transcendent mental processes, which we argue are critical to managerial wisdom and success, do occur in management theory and practice. It is also true that there is a considerable body of research in the sociology of science that demonstrates the importance and unavoidability of these ‘other ’ forms of intellection in the practice of innovative science (Kuhn 1970). Why is it, then, that wisdom, the highest form of knowing, i