1. Forelæsning – d. 26. august 2013

Lectures, autumn 2013
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41
42
43
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Week Date Subject Literature
26. aug Introduction to the course
2. Sep A roadmap through Staceys universe
9. Sep Thinking in terms of strategic choice
16. Sep Introducing mini projects and forming groups
23. Sep Cybernetic systems, Cognitivist and humanistic psychology
30. Sep Cybernetic systems, Cognitivist and humanistic psychology
7. Oct Complexity sciences + The interplay of intentions
Autumn vacation
21. Oct Complex responsive processes of conversation
28. Oct Interaction of strategising and patterns of strategy
N/A
Stacey #1 + 2
Stacey #3
N/A
Stacey #4 - 4.3
Stacey #4.4 - 4.8
Stacey #12
Stacey #13
Stacey #14
4. Nov Complex responsive processes of ideology and power relating Stacey #15
11. Nov Modes of articulating patterns of interaction Stacey #16
18. Nov Complex Responsive Processes of strategising
25. Nov Complex Responsive Processes
Stacey #17
Stacey #18
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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
Social discipline
Introduction of share based organizations
WW2
Management as
Optimization discipline
?
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
Key questions
– Predictability / unpredictability

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
Ontology
Objectivism – belief is an objective, external reality whose existence is independant of our knowledge of it.
Symbolic Interpretivism
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-
Postmodernism
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
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
Focus on organization theory
Finding universal laws, methods and techniques of organisation and control; favors rational structures, rules, standardized procedures and routine practices.
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
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
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
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
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
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
• Reality is pregiven
• No inherent limits to human comprehension of reality
• Research progressively uncovers more and more of reality
Postmodernism
(Relativism)
• 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.
Idealism
• 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.
Constructivism
• Because of biological evolution, humans are capable of perceiving the world in one way but not others.
Social
Constructionism
• A form of idealism
• There is no reality out there!
• Reality is socially constructed in language
• Basis is social interaction, particular in conversation
Reflexivity
• 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
•
•
•
•

S TACEYS 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

S TACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
•
• Cognitive
• Human
• Psycho analytical
• Relational psycological
– Relation between individual and group
– Emotion and power

S TACEYS FOUR QUESTIONS
•
– Is the CEO an:
• Objective observer
• Participating reflective inquirer

S TACEYS 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