Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change

by Shaw; PATRICIA

• ISBN13: 9780415249140
• ISBN10: 0415249147
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Drawing on the theoretical foundations laid out in earlier volumes of this series, this book describes an approach to organizational change and development that is informed by a complexity perspective. It clarifies the experience of being in the midst of change. Unlike many books that presume clarity of foresight or hindsight, the author focuses on the essential uncertainty of participating in evolving events as they happen and considers the creative possibilities of such participation. Most methodologies for organizational change are firmly rooted in systems thinking, as are many approaches to process consultation and facilitation. This book questions the suggestion that we can choose and design new futures for our organizations in the way we often hope. Avoiding the widely favoured use of two by two matrices, idealized schemas and simplified typologies that characterize much of the management literature on change, this book encourages the reader to live in the immediate paradoxes and complexities of organizational life, where we must act with intention into the unknowable. The author uses detailed reflective narrative to evoke and elaborate on the experience of participating in the conversational processes of human organizing. It asserts that possibilities are perpetually sustained and changed by the conversational life of organizations. This book will be valuable to consultants, managers and leaders, indeed all those who are dissatisfied with idealized models of change and are searching for ways to develop an effective change practice.

Author Biography

Patricia Shaw is a visiting professor at the University of Hertfordshire where she co-founded the Complexity and Management Centre.

Table of Contents

Series preface	ix
Changing conversations	1	(22)
What has `facilitation' come to mean?	1	(7)
The legacy of process consultation and organization development	8	(3)
Conversing as organizing, organizing as conversing	11	(1)
The value of `just talking'	12	(6)
Glimpsing another way of working	18	(2)
A complexity approach to change	20	(3)
Making sense of gathering and gathering to make sense	23	(22)
`Changing the culture' at Broadstone	23	(3)
Making sense of this story: interviewing myself	26	(8)
`Changing the culture' at Ferrovia	34	(4)
Making sense of this story: continuing the interview	38	(7)
The transformative activity of conversing	45	(27)
Making sense from within the conduct of our conversations	45	(1)
Back to Ferrovia	46	(20)
Emergence at the edge of chaos	66	(4)
Key themes	70	(2)
The politics of change	72	(24)
Self-organizing power figurations	72	(2)
The dynamics of inclusion--exclusion	74	(1)
Back in Ferrovia -- the lead up to and aftermath of the Site Committee meeting	75	(9)
The start of another cultural change assignment	84	(12)
Organizational change as ensemble improvisation	96	(22)
The enabling trap of professional practice	96	(2)
Collective storytelling	98	(8)
Enacting our sense-making	106	(3)
Forum Theatre: showing us how we do what we do	109	(2)
Ensemble improvisation -- constructing the future together	111	(5)
Agency in human affairs	116	(2)
The legacy of organization development	118	(22)
Narrative sense-making	121	(1)
Metaphorical sense-making	122	(1)
Logical sense-making	123	(2)
Organizational Development and process consultation	125	(1)
Process, participation and the reflective practitioner	126	(1)
Process consultation	127	(3)
Learning to learn	130	(2)
The learning organization	132	(2)
Group relations	134	(3)
From `hard' to `soft' systems	137	(3)
What's the difference? Other approaches to conversation, participation and organizational change	140	(31)
`Getting the whole system in the room'	142	(10)
Organizations as `living systems'	152	(9)
The art of dialogue	161	(4)
Communities of practice	165	(6)
Coda: how do organizations change?	171	(3)
Appendix: a cast list for Ferrovia	174	(1)
References	175	(4)
Index	179