ABSTRACT
Karl Popper understood the power of theory. Theory not only helps us to make sense of our experiences, it also actively shapes the world around us in profound and long-lasting ways. The same is true for metatheory, the big-picture approach to knowledge that attempts to integrate other theory. Big ideas and big theories have the power to transform social systems that is rarely acknowledged, much less understood. The way we describe, explain and examine the worlds we inhabit in turn creates and shapes those worlds. Theories and metatheories of organisation and management not only interpret what goes on in the world of commerce and work, they also infl uence the design and implementation of those systems. Anthony Giddens calls this iterative process the “double hermeneutic” (1984, p. xxxii)—the mutual co-creation of big ideas and the bricks and mortar of social realities. Theories are developed to explain and understand the practical complexities that surround us. Many theories work their way into the perspectives and actions of designers, architects, community leaders, corporate planners, engineers and builders and are taken up by policy and law makers and the general public in how we reproduce, manage and make sense of those complexities. Systems of governing, organising, educating, trading and working are created and recreated in the process. Those systems, in turn, act as sources for further theorising. Hence, the iterative cycle of the double hermeneutic.
