Abstract

The review of multiple attempts to develop an understanding of wisdom suggests that its interpretations are numerous, divergent and typically structuralist. Many popular essentialist accounts imply interpreting wisdom in terms of other notions, such as knowledge or intelligence, however this path of reasoning leads to the incommensurability between discourses in which wisdom is discussed and invites suspicions regarding the promulgated relevance of wisdom for organization studies. Author’s empirical qualitative research on Organizational Spirituality aids application of March’s ‘technology of foolishness’ to the critical examination of rationalistically oriented theories of wisdom and helps to demonstrate the unworkability of pervading essentialist concepts. The tensions inherent in conceptual frameworks from which allegedly opposite notions of ‘wisdom’ and ‘foolishness’ originate, are investigated via social constructionist approach for the potential benefit of organization studies. As a result, a more inclusive, poststructuralist framework for organizational research on wisdom is proposed.