Sub-theme 49: De-sign! Changing Change
Call for Papers
As we problematize and rethink the various meanings of design, especially as a way
of promoting discussion on new ways to view and to understand organizations and organizing, we believe that a potential
starting point could be to explore the core of what de-sign implicates in terms of practices for organizations and organizing.
If we entertain the prefix 'de' as a mode of deconstruction and unpacking but not separating and dividing, we are
already provided clues about the richness of 'sign' as a word but more so as an act.To sign is to authorise,
to endorse, to signal, to indicate, to autograph (cf. Oxford Dictionary of English language).
To make a sign is to express one's self and to be in motion. For us the "!" is a sign of the excitement
in the possibilities that can be imagined especially when employing this lens to re-view but also to re-engage with the rhythm
of organizing in motion.
The key question that drives our design of the proposed track is to explore creatively
and imaginatively ways we understand organizations their processes and practices in motion? In other words: how can
we think and study a reality that is movement? In essence, we care to move and be moved by the flow, time and duration,
movement and motion that makes the possibility of organization and organizing possible. This for us means also seeking to
move beyond current dominant conceptualizations of becoming often equated with references to change. We do not dispute the
centrality of change processes in modes of organizing. Quite the contrary, we believe we have more scope to speak of 'change'
by changing the very ways we speak of change, design change initiatives in organizations and engage in change practices that
often lead to no change. In short, if we enter the sphere of changing change as a design principle we enter the sphere
of action, judgement and decision, and the imperatives of practice. In classical Aristotelean terms, this is not the sphere
of episteme, or even techne, but of phronesis – a wisdom in the doing (Eikeland, 2007; Antonacopoulou,
2010). In this sense, we are more concerned with ways in which we can engage with the ways changing is performed in action,
interaction and transaction as social agents negotiate a multitude of tensions in the midst of managing ways of organizing
for-to-with change.
We are mindful that references to managing change and organizational change are
abundant in the extant literature. We note a significant progress in the multiple ways we have come to understand and engage
with change as a phenomenon. What we are particularly inspired by, is that change maybe one of the first organizational phenomena
that have been seen and studied as an open-ended flow or a continuity and in terms of rhythm, temporality or 'tempo'. For
example, the literature review by Weick and Quinn (1999) asserts that "change never starts because it never stops", and they
raise up a paradox that lot of researchers seems to face "to understand organizational change one must first understand organizational
inertia …" So, they invite researchers to do a shift in vocabulary from "change" to "changing" and to focus on "changing".
There is the same kind of idea in the notion of “organizational becoming” developed by Tsoukas and Chia (2002), and in the
"improvisational model of organizational change" designed by Orlikowski (1996) from Escher's artwork on metamorphosis.
We want to follow on these footsteps and discover new possibilities for speaking and designing change practices
in the context of work and organization specifically. We propose as a point of departure considering how to draw from organizational
change study research and reflections on process ontology and processual methods (cf. processual theory, longitudinal and
narratives methods, doing processual research, etc.) to explore how concepts such as movement and motion can be engaged with
in our research practices. For example, the Bergsonian "Theory of Time" (1934; see also Chia, 2002) could fuel a better understanding
of change, movement and rhythm in organizing. Thus, following Bergson (1934), we can explore organization and its processes
in terms of flow, movement, duration, and becoming.
We also see exciting possibilities in changing change if
we draw from the various meanings and understandings of design, as from new trends in design thinking and practice, such as
motion design for example, to discuss concepts and perspectives engaging in studying fluidity.
In this spirit,
this sub-theme calls for a cross-disciplinary dialogue to explore ways of seeing, engaging and understanding organizations
and organizational processes in motion. We invite an engagement with questions such as:
- How can we represent – and "draw", "picture", "design" … – on-going processes, indivisible and open-ended continuity, "real lived time"?
- How can we see and understand organizations and organizing in motion, that is without reifying it and fixing it in a static form?
- How can we think and study a reality that is movement?
References
Antonacopoulou, E.P. (2010): "Making the Business School More 'Critical': Reflexive
Critique based on Phronesis as a Foundation for Impact." British Journal of Management, Special Issue "Making The
Business School More 'Critical'", 21, 6–25
Bergson, H. (1934): The Creative Mind (La Pensée et le Mouvant) (tr.1992)
Chia, R. & B. MacKay (2007): "Post-processual challenges for the emerging strategy-as-practice perspective: Discovering
strategy in the logic of practice." Human Relations, 60 (1), 217–242
Czarniawska-Joerges, B. & G. Sevon
(1996): Translating Organizational Change. Berlin: De Gruyter
Dawson, P. (1994): Organizational Change:
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Eikeland, O. (2007): The Ways of Aristotle – Aristotelian Phronesis,
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