Gr Interakt Org DOI 10.1007/s11612-016-0302-1
HAUPTBEITRÄGE
From commands to conversations Identity in the coming organizational culture Kenneth J. Gergen
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
Abstract With the rapid and ever accelerating pace of global change, the traditional command and control organization becomes less effective. When we understand the organization not as a rationally constructed machine, but a sea of conversation, the door is opened to new and more effective forms of practice. No longer is individual identity based on one’s role in the machine, but on one’s participation in the conversation. Ideally this will enable the individual to give expression to the multiplicities he or she brings to the organization. Identity will not be circumscribed. Keywords Command and control · Organization as conversation · Multi-being · Collaborative practice
In Robert Musil’s landmark work, The man without qualities, we find Ulrich the major protagonist is a man with thousands of ideas. They spew forth like shooting stars for over a thousand pages. Most strikingly, however, there is almost no coherence among them; nothing ties them together. Late in the work, Ulrich muses, “Today we are facing too many possibilities of feeling, too many ways of living”. Musil penned those words in the 1930 s. Since then the world of possibilities has exploded. With the arrival of such technologies as television, jet transportation, the internet, and cell phones – we are deluged in prospects, potentials, and plausibilities. There are now well over a billion users of the Internet world wide. In the U.S. over 70 % of the population now relies on Internet services, and by the time it takes to read this paragraph over 5 million email PhD K. J. Gergen () Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA 19081, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
messages will have moved through cyberspace. It is estimated that today there are more than 500 million websites, with the amount of information accumulating each year equaling 30 feet of books per person for the entirety of the world’s population. The average Internet user in the U.S. now spends approximately 100 hours a month on-line. And in the case of social media, on Facebook alone there are almost 650 million visitors on any given month, twice the size of the U.S. population. Today we are immersed in a massive, global-wide movement of people, ideas, information, incitements, warnings, and expressions of value. And the pace of this movement ever increases.
1 Global Movement and the Demise of Command and Control The impact of such massive movement on organizational life cannot be underestimated. The 20th century conception of the organization was based on the image of the organization as a solid structure, a structure approximating a machine. As it was believed, one could logically design organizations to fulfill various functions (e. g. the production of goods, the creation of a fighting force, education of students). Like a machine, the organization would be composed of mechanisms (e. g. operations, marketing, human resources), with each mechanism composed of the parts that made it up. The parts were essentially individual workers. When all the mechanisms functioned as designed, the organization would succeed. And, like a machine, the organization required managers (or leaders) to direct the functioning from on high. These “command and control organizations,” (Kocourek et al. 2000) as we often called them, remain dominant (Builder et al. 1989; Hock 2000). But in the contemporary world of rapid change, they are
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dying. They are poorly designed for a context in which, for example: –
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Diversity in race, gender, religion, and ethnicity of the workforce increase the range of differences in motives and values of the workforce. An ever-increasing amount of information makes it impossible to converge on a rational decision. Plans must be changed or abandoned at any moment as world conditions change. The quicksilver development of products or services can threaten to replace whatever the organization produces. The increasing invitation for the global expansion continuously challenges the organizational structure. The new opportunities for creating useful or profitable alliances undermine existing practices.
The potential for rapid development of grass-roots movements may oppose the organization’s activities. With such challenges ever mounting in intensity, organizations are everywhere beginning to experiment with new and more adaptable, resilient, and innovative forms of action. Most importantly, one can also surmise within such developments the emergence of a successor to the machine metaphor of organizing.
2 Organizations as Conversations The most inviting metaphor is that of the organization as conversation. Drawing from scholarship in organizational culture and social construction, we recognize the critical place of social negotiation in determining the meaning we give to the world (Grant et al. 2004; Gergen 2015). It is out of the relational process that, for example, our interests are drawn in this or that direction, that we derive joy and sorrow from events, that our actions become reasonable or not, and that we see ourselves as strong or fragile. From this perspective, all meaning is co-created – largely through dialogue. Thus, as organizational participants speak together, they generate understandings of the organization, their jobs, the value of work, the definition of just compensation, and their trust of each other. This means that “commands from on high” are not commands and managers are not managers unless employees grant them this significance. Essentially, then, relational process is essential to organizing, sustaining, creating, and developing the activities of people working together. The traditional view of the organization as a rationally based system or machine gives way to understanding the organization as a vital sea of relational activity. As many see it, this new understanding of organizational culture is maximally suited to a world in flux. When we place relational process in the foreground, we open new vistas for our practices of decision-making, dialogue, in-
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novation, conflict reduction, personnel evaluation, collaboration, and relating the organization to its environments. Emerging, for example, is the image of relational leading (Drath 2001; Barrett 2012; Hersted and Gergen 2013). Replacing the traditional view of the leader as an individual who effectively manages the system through command and control, the image of relational leading emphasizes the leader’s role and participation in the process of meaning sense making. This also contrasts with the long-standing tradition of viewing leadership as inhering in the traits or activities of single individuals. In the relational view, traits or skills are only effective within a process of coordinated action. The current movement in creativity by design follows the same logic (Gaynor 2002). The act of creation requires a transformation in the way we see or understand the world. Such transformation can more effectively take place within relationships among people with different backgrounds. Thus, organizations increasingly rely on small groups of disparately trained colleagues to generate ideas that can sustain the organization in a world of continuous innovation. Organizational change depends not on orders from above, but increasingly on mobilizing the views and values of those who make up the organization (Cooperrider and Whitney 2005; Kegan and Lahey 2001). As also ventured, when a premium is placed on effective practices of dialogue, we also increase our potential to integrate the many minority groups that make up the workplace, we open decision making to multiple rationalities, we are less reliant on organizational structure and more prepared for change, and the organization can more flexibly incorporate ideas and values from outside into its own workings (Michel and Wortham 2009).
3 The Question of Individual Identity What are the implications for the identities of the participants? What does the shift from the organization as machine to organizing as conversation mean for those inhabiting today’s organizational world? In terms of the organization as machine, the news is both good and bad. On the down side, individuals are hired and fired depending on how well they function within the machine. This means one has no value other than filling the function. One’s opinions, values, creative insights, and motives are irrelevant in themselves. They are only valuable as they contribute to one’s assigned job. As a machine part one is expendable and replaceable – especially if there are others who can be hired for less cost. This also means periodic performance evaluation, designed as it is to determine if one is properly fulfilling the function. In this sense, one’s status within the organization is always in question. At the same time, for those who succeed in such a system, self-identity begins to
From commands to conversations
flourish. One sheds the null-identity of “an employee” to become a recognizable somebody. One is no longer a faceless minion, but one who manages or controls. Upward mobility beckons, and one can imagine dwelling within the pleasure house of power. Yet, as organizational culture begins to shift from command and control to conversation, the identity of the employee is also transformed. If it is through conversation and not commands that the meaning of the organization – its goals, its value, and one’s place in it – are all defined, then the individual ceases to be a machine part. He or she becomes an active participant in the conversations that are vital to the organization’s well-being (Akerlof and Kranton 2005). The hierarchies central to the command and control organization give way to collaborative decision-making (Coleman and Levine 2008; Rosen 2009). And, because there are always multiple logics at play, a range of varied opinions is essential for moving ahead. When organizational culture thrives on conversation, one’s membership in the organization is seldom in question; the organization is not separate from the relationships in which one participates (Preskill and Catsambas 2012). And, because one is less defensive about protecting one’s identity, there is more open sharing, more flexibility, and greater willingness to innovate and adapt. As I have proposed elsewhere (Gergen 2009), in the coming culture of the organization, a concrete, individual identity is of shrinking importance. Rather, it is the process of relating that becomes central. The organization is not the sum of its parts, but the outcome of the relationship among the parts. We live then, not as bounded and singular entities, but as relational beings. Does this mean that in the emerging organization one simply vanishes into relationships, not only a person without qualities but invisible as an individual? As Is see it, the outcome is far more optimistic. Rather, the very concept of identity begins to shift, and in a way that offers a far richer life to organizational denizens. The traditional concept of identity was built around the view of a person with stable core features. These core features were essentially realized in the achievement of character. Deviations from character were frowned upon. One might be judged as untrustworthy, spineless, or wishy-washy. To be sure, the traditional view remains pervasive, but its dominance is receding. In the rapidly moving and rapidly transforming organizations of today, the coherent, and stable identity is a deterrent to effective functioning. As conditions continue to change – as rapidly as the move from a private conversation to an international meeting in cyber-space – it is essential that one’s personality also shifts. New resources may be needed from moment to moment. Responding sensitively to the conditions of conversation, may variously require a command voice, curiosity, sympathy, laughter, sadness, critique, forgiveness, silence, self-revelation, an inspirational pep-talk,
and more. Identity is no longer conceptualized in terms of a coherent core, but in terms of relational potential. What is the range of your potential?
4 The Individual as Multi-Being In my book, Relational Being, I described our condition as multi-beings, by which I meant that each of us moves through the world with multiple potentials for action. As we relate to various people in our lives, so we acquire evernew potentials. We acquire the potentials to model their actions, and we learn to relate in new ways. Thus, we can – and we do – simulate our father, mother, siblings, friends, lovers, and so on in our actions. And as well, we have as resources all the ways we have learned to respond to each of them. Further, we carry with us the potential to act in ways we have read about or seen on the screen. In effect, we carry with us enormously rich potentials for being. In these terms, the traditional organization and its demands for coherent identity, are suffocating. They demand a vast suppression of personal potential. In the coming organizational context, by contrast, we may give expression to a far greater range to our many voices. Our relational history is no longer ground into silence by the regimentation of organizational life. Our histories are ready at hand, potentially welcome and needed for the next turn in the conversation. One might say, that in our expressions as multi-beings, we are knitting the organization into the broader social world and its history. References Akerlof, G. A., & Kranton, R. E. (2005). Identity and the economics of organizations. The Journal of Economic Perspectives: a Journal of the American Economic Association, 19, 9–32. Barrett, F. (2012). Yes to the mess: Surprising leadership lessons from jazz. Cambridge: Harvard Business Review Press. Builder, C. H., Bankes, A. C., & Nordin, R. (1989). Command concepts: a theory derived from the practice of command and control. Washington, DC: Rand. Coleman, D., & Levine, S. (2008). Collaboration 2.0: Technology and best practices for successful collaboration in a web 2.0 world. Cupertino, CA: Happy About Books. Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Drath, W. (2001). The deep blue sea, rethinking the source of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Gaynor, H. (2002). Innovation by design. New York: AMACOM. Gergen, K. J. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. New York: Oxford University Press. Gergen, K. J. (2015). An invitation to social construction (3rd. edn.). London: Sage. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., & Putnam, L. (2004). The Sage handbook of organizational discourse. London: Sage. Hersted, L., & Gergen, K. J. (2013). Relational leading: Practices for dialogically based collaboration. Chagrin Falls. OH: Taos Institute Publications.
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K. J. Gergen Hock, D. W. (2000). Birth of the chaordic age. San Francisco: BerrettKoehler. Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Koucourek, P., Hyde, P., Bollinger, M., Spiegel, E., & Treat, J. (2000). Beyond command and control: Managing the diverse corporation in today’s turbulent times. New York: Booz-Allen & Hamilton. Michel, A., & Wortham, S. (2009). Bullish on uncertainty: How organizational cultures transform participants. New York: Cambridge University Press. Preskill, H., & Catsambas, T. (2006). Reframing evaluation through appreciative inquiry. London: Sage. Rosen, E. (2009). The culture of collaboration: Maximizing time, talent, and tools to create value in the global economy. San Francisco: Red Ape Publishing. PhD Kenneth J. Gergen is a Senior Research Professor at Swarthmore College, and the President of the Taos Institute. He is internationally recognized for his influential writings on social construction relational theory, and cultural transformation. Among his major works are Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, and Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community.
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