%0 Journal Article
%T Seeing and sensing the railways: A phenomenological view on practice
%A Thijs Willems
%J Management Learning
%@ 1461-7307
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1350507617725188
%X This article explores the role of embodied, sensible knowledge in practice-based learning. Despite recent efforts to conceptualize how practitioners become skillful through corporeal and sensible learning, it still seems under-theorized and hard to understand what this exactly entails. The aim of this article is to account for the inherently embodied and sensible nature of knowledge by drawing on a 2-year ethnographic study of train dispatchers in a railway control room. Embodied and sensible knowledge is developed through the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, as phenomenology is a way to theorize the body beyond being an object to, instead, account for embodiment as lived and experienced. The data show that such knowledge can be understood as a matter of ¡®attunement¡¯: dispatchers become progressively skillful in bringing their bodies and senses in tune with practical situations and perturbations in the environment. The article contributes to a richer understanding of embodiment, especially in the relation between knowledge and practices, in organization studies and management learning
%K Embodiment
%K phenomenology
%K practice-based learning
%K practices
%K sensible knowledge
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1350507617725188