Frank J. Barrett

The Central Role of Discourse in Large-Scale Change: A Social Construction Perspective

This article reconceptualizes the change process from a rational planning perspective to an interpretive perspective emphasizing the social construction of meaning. Discourse is viewed as the core of the change process through which our basic assumptions about organizing are created, sustained, and transformed. To illustrate the dynamics of meaning systems, examples are provided of organizations shifting from mechanistic assumptions to become more adaptive, responsive, quality-oriented organizations. Implications for researchers and managers are included.

Generative Metaphor Intervention: A New Approach for Working with Systems Divided by Conflict and Caught in Defensive Perception

This article proposes that one way to help a group liberate itself from dysfunctional conflict and defensive routine is through the introduction of generative metaphor. By intervening at a tacit, indirect level of awareness, group members are able to generate fresh perceptions of one another, thereby allowing for the revitalization of the social bond and a heightened collective will to act. After exploring insights into the recent literature on social cognition and selective perception, a case is presented in which generative metaphor was successfully used to help a dysfunctional group build (1) liberated aspirations and the development of hope, (2) decreased interpersonal conflict, (3) strategic consensus around a positive vision for the future, (4) renewed collective will to act, and (5) egalitarian language reflecting a new sense of unity and mutuality in the joint creation of the groups future. Stages of the generative metaphor intervention are discussed, and propositions are developed concerning those factors that will likely enhance the generative potential of metaphor as an agent for group development and organizational change.

Creating appreciative learning cultures

T he current groundswell of interest in creating learning organizations is no surprise, given the depth and rate of change in the post-industrial revolution. The old mechanistic ways of thinking, appropriate for the industrial age, no longer suffice. Those who write about learning organizations contend that modern organizations must create contexts in which members can continually learn and experiment, think systemically, question their assumptions and mental models, engage in meaningful dialogue, and create visions that energize action. Indeed, many of these ideas are already in practice: innovations in organizational design, attempts to create novel strategies, and cultures of continuous improvement. Organizations are dismantling traditional boundaries of hierarchy and functional divisions separating specialists. Managers coordinate diverse skills and multiple knowledge specialties, integrating streams of technologies in an effort to create innovative products and services. Executives are beginning to see that perhaps their most important task is the creation of learning cultures--contexts in which members can explore, experiment in the margins, extend capabilities, and anticipate customers’

Appreciative Inquiry As Dialogue: Generative And Transformative

In this chapter we are exploring Appreciative Inquiry within organizations through the dialogic process in its relational aspect. The present discussion is composed of four parts: An exploration of the myriad meanings of dialogue and a description of a useful orienting platform, dialogue as “discursive coordination.” We then turn to the pivotal function of dialogue in the organizing process and the development of a vocabulary of discursive action with practical consequences for effective organizing. We next turn to the problematic potentials of dialogue. A contrast between generative and degenerative dialogue enables us to explore how certain forms of coordination ultimately lead to organizational growth or demise. Among our conclusions we propose that dialogue originates in public, is a form of joint-action, is embodied and contextually embedded, as well as historically and culturally situated. Dialogue may serve both positive and negative ends. Described are four aspects of dialogue – an emphasis on affirmation, productive difference, coherence, and temporal integration. Appreciative inquiry adds an enormously important element to the transformative potentials of dialogue. Other transformative practices and potentials are also described.

Managing and improvising: lessons from jazz

Offers a model of leadership development based on the metaphor of jazz improvisation. Examines the meaning of improvisation as applied to jazz and shows how managers’ lives are similar to that faced by jazz improvisers in that they often face problems which are unstructured and ambiguous. Shows how the metaphor can be applied to other areas of organizational innovation.

STRATEGIC CHANGE AND THE JAZZ MINDSET: EXPLORING PRACTICES THAT ENHANCE DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FOR ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVISATION

How can leaders adopt a mindset that maximizes learning, remains responsive to short-term emergent opportunities, and simultaneously strengthens longer-term dynamic capabilities of the organization? This chapter explores the organizational decisions and practices leaders can initiate to extend, strengthen, or transform “ordinary capabilities” (Winter, 2003) into enhanced improvisational competence and dynamic capabilities. We call this leadership logic the “jazz mindset.” We draw upon seven characteristics of jazz bands as outlined by Barrett (1998) to show that strategic leaders of business organizations can enhance dynamic capabilities by strengthening practices observed in improvising jazz bands.

4. Realizing transformative dialogue

Drawing from a social constructionist theory and its related practices, we propose the realization of transformative dialogue, a form of dialogue that may bring conflicting communities into more viable forms of coordination. We outline a range of conversational resources stressing relational responsibility, self-expression, affirmation, coordination, reflexivity, and the co-creation of new realities. The analysis is further extended through a case study of improvisation and organizational change. There is no attempt in the present article to suggest a set of relational rules. The attempt is to generate a potentially useful vocabulary of action, rather than a set of rules for negotiating among incommensurate realities.

An Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

What is the role of spiritual experience in human science research? What is the relationship between experiencing a sense of the sacred, and our capacity to inquire, to ask questions, to wonder, to be surprised, to be open and to learn? What do we mean by “spirit of inquiry”; and, in these words, do we really mean to take the word spirit seriously? If so, in what ways? What happens, for example in an interview, when the interviewer approaches his or her work with a sense of sacred vocation, or better yet a genuine feeling of gratitude to be meeting with another human being as precious soul, not just some faceless or bureaucratic role? Will the relationship and dialogue be affected? How about the data? And later, what about the writing itself? Why is the language of spiritual experience something we generally restrict to religious people or mystics—but then again in so many autobiographical footnotes of scientists, like Einstein, we find quotes that rival the articulations of the Sufi poet Rumi and words that resonate, in concert, with the compassionate heart of His Holiness the Dalai Lama?

Emotions as Narrative Emplotments

Over the past few years, I have asked more than 30 adults, most of them psychologists, to define the term “emotion.” After each respondent formulated a definition, I asked him or her to give me an instance, an illustration, of emotion drawn from observation of self or others. Little uniformity characterized the off-the-cuff definitions save for one feature. Almost all the respondents included in their definitions a locus for emotion: inside the body. The psychologists in my sample phrased their definitions with the language of psychophysiology, sometimes elegantly. The agreement on bodily locus is not surprising—all of us have been exposed to the writings of several generations of textbook authors who composed chapters on emotion with the vocabulary of psychophysiology. These authors were indebted to the work of earlier exponents of this paradigm. William James and Walter B. Cannon, each in his own way, focused research and theory on emotion as internal happenings. An examination of current textbooks shows no break with this tradition.

The Narrative as the Root Metaphor for Contextualism

My goal in this essay is, first, to clarify the notion of root metaphor, and, second, to propose the narrative as the root metaphor for contextualism. The root metaphor method is indispensable to an understanding of worldviews, metaphysical systems, or scientific paradigms. For Pepper (1942), the root metaphor for contextualism is the historical act. It is my intention to unpack the historical act and to show that the subtext of the historical act is narrative. In the latter part of my paper I discuss some features of narrative that support my claim that it is an appropriate root metaphor for contextualism.