Transcript Staceys four questions

1. Forelæsning – d. 26. august 2013
Strategisk ledelse
Lectures, autumn 2013
Week
35
Date
Subject
26. aug Introduction to the course
Literature
N/A
36
2. Sep A roadmap through Staceys universe
Stacey #1 + 2
37
9. Sep Thinking in terms of strategic choice
Stacey #3
38
16. Sep Introducing mini projects and forming groups
N/A
39
23. Sep Cybernetic systems, Cognitivist and humanistic psychology
Stacey #4 - 4.3
40
30. Sep Cybernetic systems, Cognitivist and humanistic psychology
Stacey #4.4 - 4.8
41
42
7. Oct Complexity sciences + The interplay of intentions
Stacey #12
Autumn vacation
43
21. Oct Complex responsive processes of conversation
Stacey #13
44
28. Oct Interaction of strategising and patterns of strategy
Stacey #14
45
4. Nov Complex responsive processes of ideology and power relating
Stacey #15
46
11. Nov Modes of articulating patterns of interaction
Stacey #16
47
18. Nov Complex Responsive Processes of strategising
Stacey #17
48
25. Nov Complex Responsive Processes
Stacey #18
49
51
2. Dec Wrap up – Mini projects
16. Dec Hand in of mini projects no later than 14:00
N/A
N/A
Taken for granted assumptions
• Expectation to find tools and techniques that operates in:
– The ’big picture’, The ’Long Term’, ’Whole organization’
– Direction to which the organization is intended to move
• Strategic Management taken as the ’Leader’
• Blame goes to
– Failure of Leadership
– Communication etc.
• The textbook critiques existing body of knowledge of Strategic
Management
– It does NOT provide tools or techniques, rather it invites to reflect on
why we insist on having these provided
• The book is about reflecting and thinking about why we are
thinking about Strategic Management the way we do!
The origin of modern concepts
Management as
Logistics discipline
Management as
Optimization
discipline
Management as
Social discipline
Introduction of share
based organizations
WW2
?
Present
Stable global structures and fluid local interactions
•
Strategy and organizational change
• Our focus is is ways of thinking about how
organizations change over time
• How organizations have become what they are
and how they will become whatever they will be
• Two basic questions for summarizing theories:
– What are the phenomena that are being talked when
the terms ’Strategy’ and ’Organizational Change’ are
used?
– How do human beings make sense of the phenomena,
including those that this bookis concerned with, and
in what traditions og thought is such sense-making
located?
The phenomena of interest:
Dynamic Human organizations
Populations of organizations
• Over time, organizations are set up and dissolved,
primarily small ones but also larger
• Average lifespan in Western countries: 40 years
• Changes are seen through mergers and divests
• Organizations supply each other with goods and
services and some exert power over others.
• Geographical changes
• Changes in government of organizations
The phenomena of interest:
Dynamic Human organizations
Dynamic Phenomena
• Stability and change simultaneously
• The phenomena of interest is highly dynamic
• Dynamic phenomena displays patterns as they
evolve over time
• A study of these are concerned with what
generates these patterns and properties of:
– Stability / instability
– Regularity / inregularity
– Predictability / unpredictability
Key questions
The phenomena of interest:
Dynamic Human organizations
Degrees of detail
• Macro level of analysis; whole organizations
• Micro level of analysis; individual human beings
• Distinct levels (ontological) of reality?
• Or could be different degrees of examination .
• In these theories, individuals, groups and
organizations are simply aspects of the same
processes of human interaction
• Account of political and emotion involved
The phenomena of interest:
Dynamic Human organizations
Interaction
• Strategy and organizational change is about interaction
• In systems theory, interactions are carried out on same
systems layer
• Stacey points out an alternative; as responsive
processes of direct communicating and power relating
between human bodies
• Systemic vs. responsive process theories.
• Key question; interaction and interconnection
distinguishes theories from each other
Introduction to Ontology and Epistemology
Ontology is concerned about reality. It deals with
questions concerning what entities exist or can be
said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped,
related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according
to similarities and differences
Epistemology is concerned with knowing how you
can know. It is focused on analyzing the nature of
knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such
as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with
the means of production of knowledge, as well as
skepticism about different knowledge claims.
Parmenides was among the
first to propose an ontological
characterization of the
fundamental nature of reality.
The three perspectives (Classic).....
Modernism
Symbolic Interpretivism
Postmodernism
Ontology
Objectivism – belief is an objective, external
reality whose existence is independant of
our knowledge of it.
Ontology
Subjectivism – the belief that we cannot know an
external or objective existance apart from our
subjective awareness of it; that which exists is that
which we agree exists-
Ontology
Postmodernism – the belief that the world
appears through language and is situated in
discourse; what is spoken of exists, therefore
everything that exists is a text to be read or
performed
Epistemology
Positivism – we discover truth through valid
conceptualization and reliable measurement
that allows us to test knowledge against an
objective world; knowledge accumulates
allowing humans to progress and evolve
Epistemology
Interprevism – all knowledge is relative to the knower
and can only be understood from the point of view of
the individuals who are directly involved; truth is
socially constructed via multiple interpretations of the
objects of knowledge thereby constructed and
therefore shifts and changes through time
Epistemology
Postmodernism – knowledge cannot be an
accurate account of truth because meanings
cannot be fixed; there is no independent reality;
there are no facts, only interpretations;
knowledge is a power play
Organizations are
Objectively real entities operating in a real
world. When well designed and managed
they are systems of decision and action
driven by norms of rationality, efficiency
and effectiveness for stated purposes
Organizations are
Continually constructed and reconstructed by their
members through symbolically meditated interaction.
Organizations are socially constructed where meanings
promote and are promoted by understanding of the
self and others that occurs within the organizational
context
Organizations are
Sites for enacting power relations, opression,
irrationality, communicative distortion – or
areans of fun and playful irony. Organizations
are texts produced by and in language; we can
rewrite them so as to emancipate ourselves
from human folly and degradation
Focus on organization theory
Finding universal laws, methods and techniques of organisation and control; favors
rational structures, rules, standardized
procedures and routine practices.
Focus on organization theory
Describing how people give meaning and order to their
experience within specific contexts through interpretive
and symbolic acts, forms and processes
Focus on organization theory
Deconstructing organizational texts;
destabilizing managerial ideologies and
modernist modes of organizing and theorizing;
revealing marginalized and oppressed
viewpoints; encouraging reflexive and inclusive
forms of theorizing and organizing
Making sense of the phenomena:
Realism, relativism and idealism
Different views on reality, sense and human beings
Realism
Postmodernism
(Relativism)
Idealism
Constructivism
Social
Constructionism
Reflexivity
• Reality is pregiven
•No inherent limits
to human
comprehension of
reality
• Research
progressively
uncovers more and
more of reality
• Categories in
which people
classify their
experiences are
held to exist only in
their minds, not
out there in
reality!
• All explanations
are a projection of
your own mind
• No pre-given
reality outside
humans, only
stories we tell each
other.
• It is in the ways
we think that the
patterning of our
experience arises.
• However,
idealists do not
believe that our
sense-making is
purely relative
• Humans inherit
mental categories
and understand
their world in
terms of them.
• Because of
biological
evolution, humans
are capable of
perceiving the
world in one way
but not others.
• A form of idealism
• There is no reality
out there!
• Reality is socially
constructed in
language
• Basis is social
interaction,
particular in
conversation
• Reflexive entities
that bend back
upon themselves
•Humans are
reflexive in the
sense that any
explanations they
produce are the
products of who
they are, as
determined by
their histories. My
approach is the
product of who I
am and how I
think.
Making sense of the phenomena:
Realism, relativism and idealism
The individual and the group
• Romantic idealist, reflexive, social constructionist,
very significant on assumptions individual/group
• Realist, idealist and constructivists presents
capacities / limits of the autonomous human being
• Romantic idealist view on individual and group are
paradoxical in nature and central to the book.
• Any view on the nature of strategy and change,
implies a view on the nature of human knowing
Making sense of the phenomena:
Realism, relativism and idealism
The nature of causality
• Western culture implies linear cause / effect
• Increasingly departure from this approach,
due to its simplistic nature -> mutual / circular
• Bidirectional and nonlinear causes and effects,
one variable can have more proportional
effect
• Thinking about causality is important when
thinking about strategy and change
STACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
• 1: How does the theory understands interactions and
relations
• Level
– System
– Proces
• Dynamics
– How does the phenomena evovle over time? (in)stability &
(un)predictability
• Causality
– Cause and effect relations
STACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
• 2: Which psycological standpoint is taken?
•
•
•
•
Cognitive
Human
Psycho analytical
Relational psycological
– Relation between individual and group
– Emotion and power
STACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
• 3: Which methodology does the theory
Support?
– Is the CEO an:
• Objective observer
• Participating reflective inquirer
STACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
• 4: How does the theory deal with paradoxical
nature?
• Dichotomy – Contradictions that excludes each other. It is ‘Either
… Or’
• Dilemma – two equally unattractive alternatives, It is ”Either …
Or”
• Dualism – two independent and contradictorily features that can
be eliminated / solved by ”Both … And”
• Paradox – para ´Besides´ + dóksa ´meaning, learning´ - ” Both
… And”
Next time
• Please read chapter three