History of the Institute
In 1982, the Institute held its inaugural conference on Spruce Head Island, Maine. The attendees were from various phenomenologically inclined approaches including: John Forester in planning and critical theory, Howell Baum in planning and psychoanalytic organization theory, Howard Schwartz in psychoanalytic organization theory, Frank Fischer in policy and critical theory, James Killingsworth in health policy and experiential organization theory, and the conference organizer and sponsor, Ralph Hummel. Michael Diamond, leader in psychoanalytic organization theory, and Jay D. White, organization theorist and methodologist, attended post-conference sessions later that year. Subsequent gatherings focused on the delivery of papers, reports from consulting engagements, and scholarly disputation at annual conferences in public administration, policy, political science, planning, organization psychology, and a slew of burgeoning alternate organizations representing or contesting these and related fields. The Bureaucratic Experience, especially in the 1982 and 1987 editions, became a vehicle for publications of Institute’s members, including H. Mark Roelofs in political science, Michael Harmon in public administration, Founding Fellow Conrad P. Rutkowski in political science and constitutional law, and Sandra Fish in organizational communications.

Since 2007 the focus of the Institute for Applied Phenomenology in Science and Technology is to provide access to the meaning, implications, and latent possibilities of science and technology. Nature gives a direct answer to a direct question. The most direct way of asking questions is that of science. But the light of science also obscures what lies in its shadows: the unexpected implications and opportunities. The Institute provides a transparent pathway for thought, research, and application to be shared and explored.