I am a working management consultant with an Ph.D. in English literature and articles on legal history, Shakespeare, Heidegger, and business leadership and innovation. I had academic appointments at Miami university and U. C. Berkeley. With Fernando Flores and Hubert L. Dreyfus, I wrote Disclosing New Worlds and have since published on listening, planning, ethical change, innovation, leading, time, and thinking in business.
ABSTRACT This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the cou... more ABSTRACT This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of what is considered to be his early, middle, and late periods. Over the course of the years, Heidegger’s concerns moved from somewhat conventional concerns over the consumerism technology entails, and the damage it causes to the environment, to the more complex position that technicity distorts human nature with an accompanying loss of meaning. The real danger, he said, is not the destruction of nature or culture, nor selfindulgent consumerism, but a new totalizing style of practices that would restrict our openness to people and things by driving out all other styles of practice that enable us to be receptive to realty.
Iniciativas cruciales se estancan por varias razones: poco compromiso de los empleados, falta de ... more Iniciativas cruciales se estancan por varias razones: poco compromiso de los empleados, falta de coordinacion entre las funciones, estructuras organizacionales complejas que dificultan la responsabilizacion, y asi. Para superar esos obstaculos, los ejecutivos deben repensar como se hacen las cosas. La mayoria de los desafios provienen de compromisos rotos o mal elaborados. Eso ocurre porque todas las empresas son una red dinamica de promesas hechas entre empleados y colegas, clientes, socios de tercerizacion u otros stakeholders. Los ejecutivos podrian superar muchos problemas de corto plazo y tener fuerzas de trabajo productivas y confiables en el largo, practicando lo que los autores llaman "gestion basada en promesas", la que implica cultivar y coordinar compromisos sistematicamente. Las buenas promesas comparten cinco cualidades: son publicas, activas, voluntarias, explicitas y se basan en la mision. Para desarrollar y ejecutar una promesa eficaz, el "proveedor" y el "cliente" en el acuerdo deberian pasar por tres fases de la conversacion. La primera, lograr un consentimiento de las partes, consiste en explorar los temas fundamentales de un esfuerzo coordinado. ?Que quiere decir? ?Entiende lo que digo? ?Que deberia hacer yo? ?Que hara usted? ?Con quien mas deberiamos hablar? En la fase siguiente, hacer que ocurra, el proveedor ejecuta su promesa. En la fase final, cerrar el circulo, el cliente declara publicamente que el proveedor ha hecho (o no) entrega de lo acordado. Los lideres deben tejer y gestionar sus redes de promesas con sumo cuidado, fomentando conversaciones iterativas para asegurar que los compromisos se cumplan de manera fiable. De hacerlo asi, mejoraran la coordinacion y la cooperacion entre colegas, desarrollaran la agilidad que se requiere para aprovechar las nuevas oportunidades de negocios y aprovecharan las energias emprendedoras de los empleados.
A company?s installed business processes are typically designed to execute routine activities. As... more A company?s installed business processes are typically designed to execute routine activities. As such, they can have great difficulty handling novel initiatives, particularly when important work needs to be coordinated across different business units. Such cases are often better handled by a new framework that views the organization as a nexus of personal promises that employees make to each other. As defined by the authors, a "commitment" is a promise made by a performer to satisfy the concerns of a customer within the organization. "Customer" and "performer" refer simply to roles: An individual acts as a customer when making a request, and a performer when fulfilling a request. In committing to a customer, a performer promises to fulfill the customer?s "conditions of satisfaction," that is, the specific terms (such as cost, timing and quality) required to meet the customer?s needs. In general, the most powerful commitments are public, active, voluntary, explicit and motivated. Moreover, effective commitments tend to arise out of ongoing discussions between the customer and performer that proceed through four basic steps ? preparation, negotiation, execution and acknowledgment.
Critical initiatives stall for a variety of reasons--employee disengagement, a lack of coordinati... more Critical initiatives stall for a variety of reasons--employee disengagement, a lack of coordination between functions, complex organizational structures that obscure accountability, and so on. To overcome such obstacles, managers must fundamentally rethink how work gets done. Most of the challenges stem from broken or poorly crafted commitments. That's because every company is, at its heart, a dynamic network of promises made between employees and colleagues, customers, outsourcing partners, or other stakeholders. Executives can overcome many problems in the short-term and foster productive, reliable workforces for the long-term by practicing what the authors call "promise-based management," which involves cultivating and coordinating commitments in a systematic way. Good promises share five qualities: They are public, active, voluntary, explicit, and mission based. To develop and execute an effective promise, the "provider" and the "customer" in the deal should go through three phases of conversation. The first, achieving a meeting of minds, entails exploring the fundamental questions of coordinated effort: What do you mean? Do you understand what I mean? What should I do? What will you do? Who else should we talk to? In the next phase, making it happen, the provider executes on the promise. In the final phase, closing the loop, the customer publicly declares that the provider has either delivered the goods or failed to do so. Leaders must weave and manage their webs of promises with great care-encouraging iterative conversation and making sure commitments are fulfilled reliably. If they do, they can enhance coordination and cooperation among colleagues, build the organizational agility required to seize new business opportunities, and tap employees' entrepreneurial energies.
(1993). Shylock and Debt and Contract in “The Merchant of Venice”. Law & Literature: Vol. 5, ... more (1993). Shylock and Debt and Contract in “The Merchant of Venice”. Law & Literature: Vol. 5, A Symposium Issue on The Merchant of Venice, pp. 65-85.
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Jun 1, 1995
We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. We will respo... more We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. We will respond to the concerns raised by grouping them under three general themes. First, a number of questions arise from lack of clarity about how the matters we undertook to discuss ‐ especially solidarity ‐ appear when one starts by thinking about the primacy of skills and practices. Under this heading we consider (a) whether we need more case studies to make our points, and (b) whether national and other solidarities require willingness to die for the values that produce that solidarity. Second, we take up questions concerning the historical character of the skills of entrepreneurs, virtuous citizens, and culture figures. Here we shall (a) emphasize how we distinguish ourselves from earlier writers on these subjects, (b) consider essentialism, relational identities, and exclusion, (c) answer a number of Habermasian concerns raised by Hoy, (d) speak to Taylor's concern regarding the contingency of solidarity and forge...
... We would like to note our appreciation to Martha Bohrer, David Cerbone, Barbara Claire Freema... more ... We would like to note our appreciation to Martha Bohrer, David Cerbone, Barbara Claire Freeman, David Hoy, Eric Kaplan, Gabriella Mras, Richard Rorty, Hans Sluga, David Stern, Edward Tomarken, and Mark Wrathall, who have commented on various versions of the ...
Borgmann and Heidegger both understand technology as a way of coping with people and things that ... more Borgmann and Heidegger both understand technology as a way of coping with people and things that reveals them. Both thinkers also claim that technological coping could devastate not only our environment and communal ties but more importantly the historical, world-opening being that has defined Westerners since the Greeks. Both think that this devastation can be prevented by attending to the practices for coping with simple things such as family meals and footbridges. But, contrary to Borgmann, Heidegger claims further that, alongside simple things, we can affirm technological things. For Borgmann, technological devices inhibit skillful interaction with them and therefore prevent our being sensitive to ourselves as world disclosers. For Heidegger, so long as we can still relate to non-technological things, we can affirm relations with technological things because we can maintain both our technological and the non-technological ways of world disclosing.
Etude de la critique wittgensteinienne et derridienne de l'essentialisme, fondee sur le dange... more Etude de la critique wittgensteinienne et derridienne de l'essentialisme, fondee sur le danger que represente le logocentrisme pour la reconnaissance de la difference, tant du point de vue de la strategie politique que de la sante de l'etat, de la culture et de l'individu. L'A. montre que la definitions de differenciations stables ne pose pas de probleme ethique ou politique au regard d'un hypothetique anti-essentialisme des mondes pluralistes
Conceptions of time and practices for managing time play an important role in both popular manage... more Conceptions of time and practices for managing time play an important role in both popular management literature and process organization studies. In popular literature, managers have too little time. In organization studies, managers have multiple time-reckoning practices and experiences of time. In response, we explicate and defend Heidegger’s account of primordial time to show the inauthenticity of living with either too little time or many alternative temporal structurings. People are true to primordial (kairotic) time when they face their existential death—the emerging practices that will make their lives meaningless—accept the past emotions that well up on that account, and adjust themselves to accept the past and avoid existential death. They then do what is essential. Alternatively, taking over other temporal structurings amounts to living as another kind of self-interpreting being—an organization or tribe—and is inauthentic. An episode from Steve Jobs’ career illustrates authentic Heideggerian time management.
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Oct 1, 2003
This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of wh... more This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of what is considered to be his early, middle, and late periods. Over the course of the years, Heidegger’s concerns moved from somewhat conventional concerns over the consumerism technology entails, and the damage it causes to the environment, to the more complex position that technicity distorts human nature with an accompanying loss of meaning. The real danger, he said, is not the destruction of nature or culture, nor selfindulgent consumerism, but a new totalizing style of practices that would restrict our openness to people and things by driving out all other styles of practice that enable us to be receptive to realty.
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Mar 1, 1999
Against Davidsonian (or deflationary) realism, it is argued that it is coherent to believe that s... more Against Davidsonian (or deflationary) realism, it is argued that it is coherent to believe that science can in principle give us access to the functional components of the universe as they are in themselves in distinction from how they appear to us on the basis of our quotidian concerns or sensory capacities. The first section presents the deflationary realist's argument against independence. The second section then shows that, although Heidegger pioneered the deflationary realist account of the everyday, he sought to establish a robust realist account of science. Next, the third section develops two different sides of Heidegger's thinking. Resources developed by Thomas Kuhn are drawn on to work out Heidegger's account of plural worlds. This argument shows that it makes sense to talk about things-in-themselves independent of our practices, but falls short of the robust realist claim that we can have access to things as they are in themselves independent of our practices. So, secondly, Saul Kripke's accoun...
For Heidegger, thinking focuses on what is most taken for granted in any domain and in its focus ... more For Heidegger, thinking focuses on what is most taken for granted in any domain and in its focus transforms the domain. In business, such thinking develops cultural innovations that change the factors of competition. This chapter introduces Heideggerian thinking for business transformation. We look at the concerns managers face in adopting such thinking, explain Heidegger's two breakthroughs: the turn to practice and the uncovering of radically different understandings of being. We show how to cultivate the thinker's mood of wonder and set out the five movements in Heideggerian thinking including bridging radically different ways of handling what is most taken for granted. We then propose that transforming mine into yours in exchange is the most taken for granted aspect of business and show how thinking about that transformation in cement (CEMEX) and commercial insurance (RSA) leads to cultural innovations that improve exchange for both buyers and sellers. We conclude by noting that such thinking tends to blend older practices like friendship with newer ones like networking.
ABSTRACT This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the cou... more ABSTRACT This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of what is considered to be his early, middle, and late periods. Over the course of the years, Heidegger’s concerns moved from somewhat conventional concerns over the consumerism technology entails, and the damage it causes to the environment, to the more complex position that technicity distorts human nature with an accompanying loss of meaning. The real danger, he said, is not the destruction of nature or culture, nor selfindulgent consumerism, but a new totalizing style of practices that would restrict our openness to people and things by driving out all other styles of practice that enable us to be receptive to realty.
Iniciativas cruciales se estancan por varias razones: poco compromiso de los empleados, falta de ... more Iniciativas cruciales se estancan por varias razones: poco compromiso de los empleados, falta de coordinacion entre las funciones, estructuras organizacionales complejas que dificultan la responsabilizacion, y asi. Para superar esos obstaculos, los ejecutivos deben repensar como se hacen las cosas. La mayoria de los desafios provienen de compromisos rotos o mal elaborados. Eso ocurre porque todas las empresas son una red dinamica de promesas hechas entre empleados y colegas, clientes, socios de tercerizacion u otros stakeholders. Los ejecutivos podrian superar muchos problemas de corto plazo y tener fuerzas de trabajo productivas y confiables en el largo, practicando lo que los autores llaman "gestion basada en promesas", la que implica cultivar y coordinar compromisos sistematicamente. Las buenas promesas comparten cinco cualidades: son publicas, activas, voluntarias, explicitas y se basan en la mision. Para desarrollar y ejecutar una promesa eficaz, el "proveedor" y el "cliente" en el acuerdo deberian pasar por tres fases de la conversacion. La primera, lograr un consentimiento de las partes, consiste en explorar los temas fundamentales de un esfuerzo coordinado. ?Que quiere decir? ?Entiende lo que digo? ?Que deberia hacer yo? ?Que hara usted? ?Con quien mas deberiamos hablar? En la fase siguiente, hacer que ocurra, el proveedor ejecuta su promesa. En la fase final, cerrar el circulo, el cliente declara publicamente que el proveedor ha hecho (o no) entrega de lo acordado. Los lideres deben tejer y gestionar sus redes de promesas con sumo cuidado, fomentando conversaciones iterativas para asegurar que los compromisos se cumplan de manera fiable. De hacerlo asi, mejoraran la coordinacion y la cooperacion entre colegas, desarrollaran la agilidad que se requiere para aprovechar las nuevas oportunidades de negocios y aprovecharan las energias emprendedoras de los empleados.
A company?s installed business processes are typically designed to execute routine activities. As... more A company?s installed business processes are typically designed to execute routine activities. As such, they can have great difficulty handling novel initiatives, particularly when important work needs to be coordinated across different business units. Such cases are often better handled by a new framework that views the organization as a nexus of personal promises that employees make to each other. As defined by the authors, a "commitment" is a promise made by a performer to satisfy the concerns of a customer within the organization. "Customer" and "performer" refer simply to roles: An individual acts as a customer when making a request, and a performer when fulfilling a request. In committing to a customer, a performer promises to fulfill the customer?s "conditions of satisfaction," that is, the specific terms (such as cost, timing and quality) required to meet the customer?s needs. In general, the most powerful commitments are public, active, voluntary, explicit and motivated. Moreover, effective commitments tend to arise out of ongoing discussions between the customer and performer that proceed through four basic steps ? preparation, negotiation, execution and acknowledgment.
Critical initiatives stall for a variety of reasons--employee disengagement, a lack of coordinati... more Critical initiatives stall for a variety of reasons--employee disengagement, a lack of coordination between functions, complex organizational structures that obscure accountability, and so on. To overcome such obstacles, managers must fundamentally rethink how work gets done. Most of the challenges stem from broken or poorly crafted commitments. That's because every company is, at its heart, a dynamic network of promises made between employees and colleagues, customers, outsourcing partners, or other stakeholders. Executives can overcome many problems in the short-term and foster productive, reliable workforces for the long-term by practicing what the authors call "promise-based management," which involves cultivating and coordinating commitments in a systematic way. Good promises share five qualities: They are public, active, voluntary, explicit, and mission based. To develop and execute an effective promise, the "provider" and the "customer" in the deal should go through three phases of conversation. The first, achieving a meeting of minds, entails exploring the fundamental questions of coordinated effort: What do you mean? Do you understand what I mean? What should I do? What will you do? Who else should we talk to? In the next phase, making it happen, the provider executes on the promise. In the final phase, closing the loop, the customer publicly declares that the provider has either delivered the goods or failed to do so. Leaders must weave and manage their webs of promises with great care-encouraging iterative conversation and making sure commitments are fulfilled reliably. If they do, they can enhance coordination and cooperation among colleagues, build the organizational agility required to seize new business opportunities, and tap employees' entrepreneurial energies.
(1993). Shylock and Debt and Contract in “The Merchant of Venice”. Law & Literature: Vol. 5, ... more (1993). Shylock and Debt and Contract in “The Merchant of Venice”. Law & Literature: Vol. 5, A Symposium Issue on The Merchant of Venice, pp. 65-85.
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Jun 1, 1995
We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. We will respo... more We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. We will respond to the concerns raised by grouping them under three general themes. First, a number of questions arise from lack of clarity about how the matters we undertook to discuss ‐ especially solidarity ‐ appear when one starts by thinking about the primacy of skills and practices. Under this heading we consider (a) whether we need more case studies to make our points, and (b) whether national and other solidarities require willingness to die for the values that produce that solidarity. Second, we take up questions concerning the historical character of the skills of entrepreneurs, virtuous citizens, and culture figures. Here we shall (a) emphasize how we distinguish ourselves from earlier writers on these subjects, (b) consider essentialism, relational identities, and exclusion, (c) answer a number of Habermasian concerns raised by Hoy, (d) speak to Taylor's concern regarding the contingency of solidarity and forge...
... We would like to note our appreciation to Martha Bohrer, David Cerbone, Barbara Claire Freema... more ... We would like to note our appreciation to Martha Bohrer, David Cerbone, Barbara Claire Freeman, David Hoy, Eric Kaplan, Gabriella Mras, Richard Rorty, Hans Sluga, David Stern, Edward Tomarken, and Mark Wrathall, who have commented on various versions of the ...
Borgmann and Heidegger both understand technology as a way of coping with people and things that ... more Borgmann and Heidegger both understand technology as a way of coping with people and things that reveals them. Both thinkers also claim that technological coping could devastate not only our environment and communal ties but more importantly the historical, world-opening being that has defined Westerners since the Greeks. Both think that this devastation can be prevented by attending to the practices for coping with simple things such as family meals and footbridges. But, contrary to Borgmann, Heidegger claims further that, alongside simple things, we can affirm technological things. For Borgmann, technological devices inhibit skillful interaction with them and therefore prevent our being sensitive to ourselves as world disclosers. For Heidegger, so long as we can still relate to non-technological things, we can affirm relations with technological things because we can maintain both our technological and the non-technological ways of world disclosing.
Etude de la critique wittgensteinienne et derridienne de l'essentialisme, fondee sur le dange... more Etude de la critique wittgensteinienne et derridienne de l'essentialisme, fondee sur le danger que represente le logocentrisme pour la reconnaissance de la difference, tant du point de vue de la strategie politique que de la sante de l'etat, de la culture et de l'individu. L'A. montre que la definitions de differenciations stables ne pose pas de probleme ethique ou politique au regard d'un hypothetique anti-essentialisme des mondes pluralistes
Conceptions of time and practices for managing time play an important role in both popular manage... more Conceptions of time and practices for managing time play an important role in both popular management literature and process organization studies. In popular literature, managers have too little time. In organization studies, managers have multiple time-reckoning practices and experiences of time. In response, we explicate and defend Heidegger’s account of primordial time to show the inauthenticity of living with either too little time or many alternative temporal structurings. People are true to primordial (kairotic) time when they face their existential death—the emerging practices that will make their lives meaningless—accept the past emotions that well up on that account, and adjust themselves to accept the past and avoid existential death. They then do what is essential. Alternatively, taking over other temporal structurings amounts to living as another kind of self-interpreting being—an organization or tribe—and is inauthentic. An episode from Steve Jobs’ career illustrates authentic Heideggerian time management.
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Oct 1, 2003
This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of wh... more This article traces the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking about technology over the course of what is considered to be his early, middle, and late periods. Over the course of the years, Heidegger’s concerns moved from somewhat conventional concerns over the consumerism technology entails, and the damage it causes to the environment, to the more complex position that technicity distorts human nature with an accompanying loss of meaning. The real danger, he said, is not the destruction of nature or culture, nor selfindulgent consumerism, but a new totalizing style of practices that would restrict our openness to people and things by driving out all other styles of practice that enable us to be receptive to realty.
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Mar 1, 1999
Against Davidsonian (or deflationary) realism, it is argued that it is coherent to believe that s... more Against Davidsonian (or deflationary) realism, it is argued that it is coherent to believe that science can in principle give us access to the functional components of the universe as they are in themselves in distinction from how they appear to us on the basis of our quotidian concerns or sensory capacities. The first section presents the deflationary realist's argument against independence. The second section then shows that, although Heidegger pioneered the deflationary realist account of the everyday, he sought to establish a robust realist account of science. Next, the third section develops two different sides of Heidegger's thinking. Resources developed by Thomas Kuhn are drawn on to work out Heidegger's account of plural worlds. This argument shows that it makes sense to talk about things-in-themselves independent of our practices, but falls short of the robust realist claim that we can have access to things as they are in themselves independent of our practices. So, secondly, Saul Kripke's accoun...
For Heidegger, thinking focuses on what is most taken for granted in any domain and in its focus ... more For Heidegger, thinking focuses on what is most taken for granted in any domain and in its focus transforms the domain. In business, such thinking develops cultural innovations that change the factors of competition. This chapter introduces Heideggerian thinking for business transformation. We look at the concerns managers face in adopting such thinking, explain Heidegger's two breakthroughs: the turn to practice and the uncovering of radically different understandings of being. We show how to cultivate the thinker's mood of wonder and set out the five movements in Heideggerian thinking including bridging radically different ways of handling what is most taken for granted. We then propose that transforming mine into yours in exchange is the most taken for granted aspect of business and show how thinking about that transformation in cement (CEMEX) and commercial insurance (RSA) leads to cultural innovations that improve exchange for both buyers and sellers. We conclude by noting that such thinking tends to blend older practices like friendship with newer ones like networking.
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Papers by Charles Spinosa