Title: ON ORGANIZATIONAL BECOMING: RETHINKING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Presenter: Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Strathclyde (UK) and ALBA
(Greece)
Venue: Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde, 40
George Street, Glasgow.
Date: Tuesday 6th December
Time: 5.30pm for 6.00pm
Abstract:Traditional approaches to organizational change have been
dominated by assumptions privileging stability, routine, and order. As a
result, organizational change has been reified and treated as exceptional
rather than natural. In this paper, we set out to offer an account of
organizational change on its own terms – to treat change as the normal
condition of organizational life. The central question we address is as
follows: what must organization(s) be like if change is constitutive of
reality? Wishing to highlight the pervasiveness of change in organizations
we talk about organizational becoming. Change, we argue, is the re-weaving
of actors’ webs of beliefs and habits of action in order to accommodate new
experiences obtained through interactions. Insofar as this is an ongoing
process, that is to the extent actors try to make sense of and act
coherently in the world, change is inherent in human action, and
organizations are sites of continuously evolving human action. On this
view, organization is a secondary accomplishment, in a double sense.
Firstly, organization is the attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human
action, to channel it towards certain ends, through generalizing and
institutionalizing particular cognitive representations. Secondly,
organization is a pattern that is constituted, shaped, emerging from
change. Organization aims at stemming change but, in the process of doing
so, it is generated by it. These claims are illustrated by drawing on the
work of several organizational ethnographers. The implications of this view
for theory and practice are outlined.
REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED!
Next seminar: Tuesday 13th November by Prof Andy Neely "Performance
Measurement, the State of the Art and the Research Agendas"
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