Rescuing the Princess: How phronetic wisdom was learned and deployed on Britain’s railways

Previous management learning research on phronesis or practical wisdom has focussed on its local, contextual application rather than its connection to wider ethical and political relationships. Drawing on a new materialities perspective that is helpful in theorising the interconnectedness of contextual practical knowledge and the greater good, this article suggests phronesis is learned by understanding relationships between materialities in different spaces over time. The article is based on a qualitative, longitudinal study of Operation Princess, an actual project that took place on mainland Britain’s railway. Through a composite fiction, we show how under nationalised organisation managers learned phronesis by becoming steeped in wider material relationships over time. Privatisation introduced a financialised perspective that was detached from wider material connections and produced unworkable plans. Operation Princess was rescued by managers who had developed a phronetic appreciation of the interrelationships between employees, trains, services and communities. They learned phronesis through an institutional lengthy formative process of becoming entangled in vital materialities, repeatedly experimenting and doing, supported by intermittent classroom learning. This is a very different approach to the commodified style of management development today which abstracts and condenses, undermining the development of practical wisdom.