From Managers’ Practical Problems to Complex Understandings: Three Approaches for Understanding the Development of Management Problems

This paper analyses how managers’ pragmatic understandings of practical problems can be developed into more complex understandings. On basis of experiences from an action-learning program on leadership development, this paper analyses the development of practical understandings on basis of three theoretical frames; paradox theory, critical realism and deconstructionism. Each approach provide its understanding of how a particular understanding of a management problem is developed, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the development of complex management understandings.