Tojo Thatchenkery

Organization Science As Social Construction: Postmodern Potentials

We critically examine three major assumptions of modernist organization science: rational agency, empirical knowledge, and language as representation. With these assumptions problematized, we are positioned for a postmodern turn in the discipline. From a postmodern standpoint, we are moved to replace rational agency with communal rationality, empirical knowledge with social construction, and language as representation with language as action. Outcomes for an organization science place special emphasis on reconstructing and enriching the aims and methods of research and on critical reflection, generative theorizing, and scholarly action within organizations.

Filmic representations for organizational analysis: the characterization of a transplant organization in the film Rising Sun

Science is a form of narrative that is regarded as the prime generator of knowledge. What about other forms of narratives such as novels and dramatic films? Claims this question is particularly important in organizational science because its narrative nature is easier to detect than is the case with the physical sciences. Using the metaphor of organizations as texts, contends that narrative fictions, especially films, are valuable sources in the study of organizations. What organizational researchers and film writers do are strikingly similar. For example, they enact rather than discover, test ideas against evidence, generalize, raise testable questions about the social world, and stay focused on the complexity of experience. An analysis of the film Rising Sun illustrates the use of narrative fiction as texts for organizational analysis. Discusses the implications of this approach.

Leadership decision-making strategies using appreciative inquiry: a case study

This study involved a Colorado public charter high school using appreciative inquiry (AI) to provide leadership of the organisation with strategic decision-making that aids in the creation of a new teaching curriculum. Leadership discovered an effective means of change to its academic curriculum for the school year 2009?2010 and assisted with the schools charter renewal. A series of focus meetings and individual interviews were held to identify four core competencies for the school and its leadership. Discovering how to implement this change while keeping this vibrant organisation alive allowed it to function as a cohesive whole. AI is a positive design-based approach in organisation development and focuses on the generative aspects within an organisation to celebrate, recognise and foster the actions that the organisation is accomplishing well. The schools principal envisioned a picture of what the schools future should look like using AI to identify strategic ideas to apply to decision-making that would embrace a new and improved vision for the school.

Information Communication Technology and Economic Development

Information Communication Technology and Economic Development reveals new insights regarding the complex process of globalization. It shows how the generation and circulation of intellectual capital in the US and India in ICT have led to greater productivity in the US while facilitating the economic development of India. Most industrialized nations now see the vast intellectual capital-based services that India provides at extremely competitive rates as key to their own national competitiveness in the global arena. The contributors’ findings suggest that India’s ICT-led growth will accelerate in the next ten years, launching India as a major global economic power next to the US and China.

Appreciative Intelligence® in leadership culture transformation: a case study

An internationally operating tyre manufacturer faced a challenge of a critically negative atmosphere caused by an abrupt insecurity in the market and recent layoffs. The Human Resources and Development Department called in a local university research team, and an organisation development (OD) intervention based on Appreciative Intelligence® and appreciative inquiry was set up to foster leadership culture that would support the international growth of the company. In the process, middle management was interviewed and the top management was engaged in discussing the current and future leadership culture. Middle management defined core values upon which various steps were to be taken to put the goals of future leadership culture in practice. The study shows how a difficult situation can be transferred into an appreciative positive future oriented action.

Introduction to positive design and appreciative construction: From sustainable development to sustainable value

In this volume of Advances in Appreciative Inquiry, leading scholars from the fields of management, organization development, information technology, and education come together to chart new directions in Appreciative Inquiry theory and research as well as new intervention practices and opportunities for design in organizations. While diverse in topic and discipline, each of the following original chapters treats the reader to a view of Appreciative Inquirys revolutionary way of approaching familiar questions of management, organization design, and sustainability.

Empathic Knowledge Management: reverse simulation experiments in a learning laboratory

The effective management of knowledge has emerged as a critical competency for organisations. This paper presents a methodology for managing knowledge in information- and knowledge-intensive services. The Empathic Knowledge Management methodology was developed on the foundation of an appreciative inquiry framework that surfaces and utilises tacit knowledge of participants in the context of process design efforts in a learning laboratory environment. Behavioural and analytic interventions were used to elicit and formalise the knowledge of the participants. The behavioural interventions created and maintained a learning climate for reverse simulation using appreciative inquiry, while the analytic interventions included systemic problem formulation, service blueprint development and system specification using appropriate software tools. The methodology was tested successfully in the design of two distinct product delivery processes in a large financial services company in the USA.

APPRECIATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND GENERATIVITY: A CASE STUDY OF ROCKY FLATS NUCLEAR WEAPONS FACILITY CLEANUP

Abstract This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the cleanup and closing of the nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats (RF), Colorado, United States, which was completed 60 years ahead of schedule and

PARADOX AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF HERMENEUTIC APPRECIATION

30 billion under budget. We demonstrate how the events leading to the successful completion of the project was an instance of generativity made possible by the Appreciative Intelligence of the project leaders and participants. At the end of the Cold War, production at RF was terminated and experts considered cleaning up of the dangerous facility technically impossible, risky, and impractical. Yet, working in collaboration with contractors, local officials, and community leaders, the RF team achieved extraordinary results. After the unprecedented cleanup, 4,000 acres were transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and became a national wildlife refuge. Generativity is an approach to life that directs our actions toward positive outcomes. For generativity to happen, stakeholders in the RF project had to care about the environment around them for innovative solutions to emerge. Instead of stagnation or blind acceptance of circumstances, they chose to reframe and find new ways to perceive situations facing them. This case study shows that individuals with high Appreciative Intelligent acknowledge present circumstances, choose to reframe, see possibilities for the future, and take the necessary actions to achieve them. They also expand their Appreciative Intelligence beyond their personal lives. At RF, despite the imminent closing of the plant, stakeholders generated socially responsible solutions and transformed a public liability into a community asset.

Exploring the Determinants of Becoming a Mentor in Turkish Organizations

Though paradoxes constitute a basic ontological condition of organizational processes, the modernist approach has always been to find ways to resolve them. In this chapter, an alternative approach called hermeneutic appreciation is proposed. By accepting and affirming paradoxes through the process of hermeneutic appreciation, the generative potential inherent in them can be recognized and unfolded. This chapter presents a case study of an organization that demonstrated such a sophisticated understanding of hermeneutic appreciation. By not dismissing the paradoxes but by affirming and reframing them, members of this organization were able to reverse a visible organizational decline and instead infuse it with new energy and vitality leading to an eventual organizational renewal. Lessons learned from this appreciative inquiry project suggest that a hermeneutic appreciation of paradoxes may act as a change intervention and is likely to enable innovation and organizational transformation.