The Management of Meaning in Organizations

Historical translations ( for instance of Greek philosophy into Arabic into Latin into vernacular, better known as Renaissance). Underground transfers of knowledge and values between cultural domains (of a bureaucracy from religion to politics, of innovative avant-garde from science to art, of moral sentiments and bourgeois virtues from philosophy and politics to economics). They merit more attention. Do we understand how management of meaning in organizations fuels sociocultural evolution in complex societies changing semantic fields of possible meanings ahead?

SLAWEK MAGALA is a Professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Introduction: Can Values and Meanings be Outsourced and if so to whom? * The Past of Meaning (Lost and Gained in Historical Translations) * The Present Tense of Meaning (Underground Passages, The Cunning of Reason and the Return of Virtues) * The Future of Meaning (Cultural Revolutions, Social Transformations and the Struggle Between Truths and Democracies * Instead of Conclusions: Managerial Philosophies and Mirrors of Organizational Cultures