Monica C' Worline

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Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS

• Monica C. Worline
• Goizueta Business School
• Emory University

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Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS
What is the Positive Organizational Scholarship
endeavor?
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What is the POS endeavor?

• POS requires careful definitions of terms, a
  rationale for prescriptions and recommendations,
  consistency with scientific procedures in drawing
  conclusions, and grounding in previously related
  work.
• Cameron, Dutton Quinn, 2003

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Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS
What is the material from which we create
Positive Organizational Scholarship?
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What is the material of POS?

• The terror of facts is the purity of their
  arbitrariness. I am a man approaching middle
  age in the American century, which means Ive had
  it easy, and I have three children, somewhere
  near the average, and Ive just come home from
  summer vacation in an unreliable car. This is the
  selva obscura. Not that it isnt true, but that
  it is not the particular truth.
• Haas, 1984

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Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS
Positive Organizational Scholarship The Art of
the Science
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POS The art of the science

• It seems to me that we live our lives in the
  light of primary acts of imagination, images or
  sets of images that get us up in the morning and
  move us about our days. I do not think anybody
  can live without one, for very long, without
  suffering intensely from deadness and futility.
• Haas, 1984

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POS The art of the science

• And I think that, for most of us, those images
  are not only essential but dangerous because no
  one of them feels like the whole truth
• Haas, 1984

Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS
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• I think he taught a lot of the administration
  how precious life is, because I think sometimes
  you know, were human, we get carried away with
  the day to day grind And I think that the
  administration here I think they really learned
  a lesson that none of us could teach Alexander,
  though he didnt speak many words, he could
  really show them how precious life is, that we
  cant take things for granted Yeah, we need the
  classroom time, but our life is outside it This
  place being academic couldve never taught me in
  a classroom what he did and the care that people
  really do need in times of tragedy, because we
  are human, we have emotions, and we really need
  love in times of tragedy.

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Living Analysis Impact of emergent community
Felt organization as structure
Structures
Practices
Practices
Structures
Felt organization as human practice
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Living Methods Fulfilling the vision of POS

• Living methods (e.g. videography) draw from
  established methods that maintain the value of
  the scientific endeavor
• Living methods preserve life in expression
• Living methods convey emotion body
• Living methods allow for multiplicity and
  juxtaposition of images that move toward greater
  illumination Haas whole truth