ABSTRACT
This essai develops a philosophical perspective on managerial cognition. More precisely, it offers an epistemological critique of orthodox models of strategic management. The critique is based on the confrontation of these models with a diverse set of philosophical texts on knowledge and action. The orthodoxy is composed of the three prescriptive schools identified by Mintzberg (1990) and considered as explicit collective knowledge. To say nothing of the omission of socio-political forces at work in strategy formation, three main biases are elicited and discussed: a bias towards thinking to the detriment of other forms of reasoning, a bias towards binary logic, and the failure to recognize feeling as a source of reason. We suggest that philosophical questioning — epistemological and ethical — can help practitioners and scholars renew their management models, recipes and theories.
