Knowing what not to do ; Analyzing Managers’ Life Stories to Develop New Know-How in Local Management

This article observes and interprets managers’ multiple rationalities on the basis of their life stories. Using Popper’s falsification theory, we establish a method to validate or refute local decision processes, thus creating operational know-how in local management. The research described here can be distilled into a “Risk Chart” of actions, enabling managers in training to acquire new managerial know-how – to know what not to do, to know what is justifiable from what is not, to know what solves a problem from what creates additional ones.