مکالمات wisdom: پدیده شناسی هرمنوتیک انسانی (EHP) برای مدیران پروژه  The wisdom of conversations: Existential Hermeneutic Phenomenology (EHP) for project managers

1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to argue for existential hermeneutic phenomenology (EHP) as an effective approach for any practitioner confronted with significant existential disruptions to their practice and explore how it could provide a way of project managers’ practical coping with otherwise potentially inhibiting existential disruptions. Todres and Wheeler (2001) identified the complementary nature of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics in the area of qualitative research into nursing practice, arguing that “the articulation and description of ‘human experiences’ is foundational to practice (p.2) They observed that “hermeneutics without phenomenology can become excessively relativistic. Phenomenology without hermeneutics can become shallow. Yet both without existentialism can become too captivated by thought and language, and thus forget our ontological presence that is more complex than any thought or language” (p.6). Like Todres and Wheeler, we understand EHP as a holistic philosophical practice, a method constituted by a ‘family’ of philosophical techniques, which: 1. Allows making the ‘lived experience’ of project management practice, that is – our being in PM practice – explicit for reflection, and 2. Is available and useful to practitioners in the field. While applying it to the discipline of PM, we argue that EHP offers a model for dealing with a crisis of practice to which the normal language of that practice offers no comfort for the practitioner as it is the language and being of the practice itself that has been called into question (for full discussion, see Rolfe et al., 2016). The turn towards hermeneutic, existential and phenomenological approaches towards management and organisational studies is gaining momentum. It begins with a 2005 paper by Karl Weick, passess through the work of Chia and Holt (2006), Zundel (2013), Dall’Alba and Sandberg (2014), Tomkins and Simpson (2015), Meyers (2016), is reflected in the work of Sandberg and Tsoukas (2016) and is the subject matter of an edited book by Segal and Jankelson (2016). This paper builds on the EHP themes emerging in these and other writers within management scholarship by bringing both the philosophy of Heidegger and the way in which he has been understood in organisation studies into the context of project management.