Unknowability and enabled wayfinding

Scholars are in the business of ‘knowing’; they conduct research to expand knowledge and meet various stakeholders’ (e.g., society’s, executives’, policymakers’) expectations through teaching and learning tools. Stakeholders expect scholars to contribute to the knowledge repository in management in the same way they would expect, for example, a chemist or civil engineer. However, can we meaningfully do so? Does the management field have the same knowability potential as that afforded by chemistry or engineering? I contend that it does not or at least not in the way that Aristotelian empiricism or Newtonian rationality imply. Instead, I argue for a lens of unknowability and call for a concomitant recalibration of management pedagogies through enabled wayfinding. With a more honest reflection on our knowability potential, enabled wayfinding introduces a bolder approach to teaching and learning that should trigger renewed optimism for the future state of our scholarly craft.

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