ABSTRACT
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said words to the effect that we cannot solve problems at the same level of consciousness that created them. This statement could be taken to be an observation about an important aspect of wisdom. Wisdom is partly explained as a process that is subtle, fl exible, and powerful enough to solve diffi cult problems by shifting across levels of consciousness. It is also important that wisdom can do this problem solving in the context of a messy world that is full of tensions, dissonances, and incommensurabilities. In this chapter, we defi ne what we mean when we talk about wisdom, or more precisely, social practice wisdom. In doing this, we present wisdom in terms of its constituent processes. The importance of this chapter is that it works towards a set of principles and from which approaches to research and managing for social practice wisdom can be developed for specifi c organizational contexts.
