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7. Forelæsning – d. 21. oktober 2013 Strategisk ledelse

Lectures, autumn 2013

ComplexResponsive Processes Introduction + Chapter 12

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction When discussing organizations, fundamental questions immediately arises, which have to do with what an organization is and how it is becoming what is becoming In part one of the book (SCT), which is sees humans as independent, autonomous individuals acting rationally, is concerned with how an organization is becoming; Strategy as a process (desired outcomes) SCT is based on the ideology of control which means that leaders and dominant coalitions choose the process and content of strategy for an organization in order to ensure acceptable performance

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction Part two explored more recent developments in understanding dynamics of systems Complex systems displays the capacity to change and produce new forms only when they operate in a paradoxical dynamic of stability and instability at the same time Emergent forms is a result of self organization Important because these theories challenges the most fundamental assumptions of SCT because harmony and consensus cannot be equated with success and unpredictability is fundamentally unavoidable Micro diversity is essential for the emergence of new forms

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction The following part of the book (part 3) will explore how we might interpret the radical insights of complexity sciences in terms of human action Humans differ from the objects studied in part 2, because they are unique and, therefore, diverse persons who are conscious, self-conscious, emotional, rational, irrational, often spontaneous beings capable of some choice The SCT standpoint, claiming that humans are independent, autonomous individuals is considered as fiction in part 3, because people are always fundamentally and inescapably interdependent

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction As a departure from previous sections, the term Complex Responsive Processesof relating, refers the attention directly upon the responsive manner in which human persons interact with each other A radical different view of dealing with the how, what the organization is becoming. In the CRP perspective, process refers to the fundamental processes of human interaction – namely communicative interaction between interdependent persons taking the form of the conversation of gestures – and at the same time power relating What happens to an organization emerges in the interplay of intentions between people

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction The essence of the Kantian thinking was presenting a particular notion of process, systemic process, involving a particular notion of time (linear) This view point is in its essence dualistic (both..and) which was a way to eliminate paradox The how of strategy, the process, is then designing, shaping and influencing the system as a whole and its process. The Content of strategy is thought of as the pattern of intended movement of the system and intended changes in the process over time by a regulator or controller standing outside them. Strategy here is about moving systems and designing process

Complex Responsive ProcessesIntroduction From a responsive process perspective, the how of strategy is thought of as social processes of interaction between conscious and self-conscious persons in which their very identities emerge The content of strategy is thought of as patterns of interaction : that is, as iterated identity Strategy, here, is all about sustaining and changing identity: that is who we are and what we are doing together Going forward it will be displayed how complexity sciences can be interpreted in human terms using social, responsive processes thinking; Hegel/Elias

Responsive Processes Thinking The thinking by the Romantic idealists were concerned with self-consciousness where the subject is an object to itself It is the self that is real and all experience is carried back to this immediate experience of the self so that the reflexive position becomes central Individual selves and social relations is understood to be intimately interconnected and experience is understood as historical, social processes of consciousness and self-consciousness

Responsive Processes ThinkingHegel Subject • Private Silent Conservations • Conscious to others • Acting roleplays as other subjects would act to self • Building self-consciousness Mind Intra-subjective behaviour Subject Subject Mind Mind Subject Hegel: Subjects sees each other as objects; reconfirming Sees an object Mind Mirror

Responsive Processes ThinkingHegel In Hegels philosophy, the development of thought takes place through conflict between persons and the world of our experience is the world we are creating in our thought Subjects (and agents around) are interacting responsively and there are no separate realm outside experience. The notions of person and subject are historically specific and are given content only by the social institutions in which each individual achieves social identity through interdependence and mutual recognition

Responsive Processes ThinkingHegel Individuals are fundamentally social practioneers and what they do, think or says takes form in the context of social practices, while these practices provide the required resources, objects of desire, skills and procedures Paradoxical perspective in which individual minds are simultaneously forming and being formed by social relations -> Transformative causality

Responsive Processes ThinkingHegel

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias Elias did not think about the relationship between the individual and society in terms of any spatial distinction between inside and outside. Instead, he pointed to the essential interdependence of people and he understood both individual and social purely in Responsive Processes terms Societies are always more or less incomplete, remaining open in time as a continuous flow

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias Western civilisation is not the result of any calculated long-term planning. Individual people did not form an intention to change civilisation and then gradually realiserealise this intention through rational purposive measures Social changes produced rational planning kinds of individuals, not the other way around The development of a society was not caused by ‘mysterious’ social forces but is the consequence interweaving, the interplay of the intentions and actions of many, many people Change of society occurs in an unplanned manner but nevertheless displayed a specific type of order

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias Probably unaware of complexity sciences, Elias is describing here what complexity scientists call self-organisation and emergence Individuals and groups are interacting with each other, in their local situations, in intentional, planned ways – however, these cannot be foreseen by any of them. Long-term, population-wide patterns will emerge without an overall plan or blueprint A trend or direction in the evolution of the consequences of the interweaving of individual plans and intentions – which is self-organisation and emergence

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias • No polarisation in intention an emergence • In SCT, emergence means either; • Everything happens by chance, or • Is such, that it can be designed, conditioned or at least influenced by powerful effective individuals with intention • Elias suggests that people interacts with intentions but their intentions will differ – indeed, each of these intentions is a response to the intentions of others – and so what happens emerges in the interplay of all their intentions

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias All that everyone can do, no matter how powerful, can do is to continue participating with intention and continually negotiate and respond to others who are also intentionally doing the same. It is in this ongoing intentional, local interaction of strategising that the population-wide patterns of strategy emerges Change occurs in paradoxical transformative processes – change is self-organising, emergent processes of perpetually constructing the future as continuity and potential transformation at the same time

Responsive Processes ThinkingElias We cannot identify self-organising social order with the order of nature, or with some kind of supra-individual The order arises in specific dynamics of social interplay in particular places at particular times If it makes sense to think of societies and their ‘strategies’ in this way, then there is no reason why we could not think of about organisations in this way too and this is what rest of the chapters will do What emerges does so precisely because of what all involved do and do not do

ComplexResponsive Processes Chapter 13

Introduction It is in communicative interaction, in conversation with each other, that humans accomplish whatever it is that they accomplish. Organisation is conversation and organisation and strategy emerge as the patterning of conversation Mead argues that human consciousness and self- consciousness emerge in the conversation of gestures

CyberneticCommunication Thoughtarises in mind If gaps, further transmission Thoughtrecieved in mind • Encoding • Decoding • Transmission • Autonomous individuals Meaning lies in the words (vocal gesture) Message replayed until same meaning is reached Important to get communication ‘right’

Conversation of Gestures (Mead) • Temporal social processes • * Beginning / Ending purely arbitrary * Body 1 Body 2 Gestures starts • Ongoing Responsive Processes Response (Gesture) • Ongoing Responsive Processes Response (Gesture) • Ongoing Responsive Processes • Meaning does not lie in gestures only, but in the social act as a whole

Consciousness Mirror Neurons cansimulateresponses of ourgesturesonourselves Theories of gestures based upon our mammal ancestors and is based on CNS enabled gestures Mirror Neurons enable us to evoke same response as the response our gesture evoked at the receiver (Significant symbols) The whole social act – that is meaning – can be experienced in advance which enables to reflect and select our gestures in advance

Language Difference between facial and voice based gestures is that we can hear our voice but not see our own faces The development of sophisticated voice and language (of significant symbols) is of major importance in the development of consciousness Silent conversations with oneself

Language In the traditional communication paradigm (sender-receiver model) the Critical success factor is to ‘get the communication right’ In Meads paradigm, I can only know the meaning of what I say in your responses to them There is no point in blaming each other because we are having to carrying on exploring just what it is we mean Activities of strategising becomes ongoing conversational processes essentially involving emotion and fantasy, as well as reason and all the other aspects of conversation

The generalised other • Private role-play / silent conversations evolves in increasing complex ways • As more interactions are experienced, more roles and a wider range of responses evolves for higher accuracy • The formation of the generalized other Developingcapacity • Individuals develops the capacity to take the attitude of the whole group • Game or Social attitude, which can be a powerful form of social control through self-control

Processes of self Attitude as ’I’ Subject Attitude as ’me’ Object • Take attitude, the tendency to act; • Me; The generalized other – becoming an object to one self • I; Subject, a particular person, time and place • No predetermined way that ‘I’ may respond to the ‘me’ • In CRP; the I/me cannot be separated and equal social • Self is understood as an ongoing process, where ‘I’ responding to ‘me’ – No true self!

Turn-taking / turn-making • The process of turn-taking is fundamental organisational principle of conversation and establishes a temporal and social location for social interaction • The way in which turns to speak; • Are valued • Distributed across speakers • Competed for • Abandoned • Held on to • Hence power differentials are established and sustained in conversations

Turn-taking / turn-making No pure form (extremes) are encountered Involved; - Highly emotional - Unaware Detached; - Less emotional - Aware / more reflecsive The process of turn-taking is reflexive and response of one calls forth a further response from another, in turn calling forth a response from the first, always simultaneously selected on the basis of the life histories of all involved Conversations are Complex Responsive Processes Speakers takes turns and are acting in his or hers own local organising themes (silent conversations) Turns organised in pairs; question-answer, invitation-acceptance, request-response etc..

Thematic patterning People will organise their own subjective experience of being in that place, with those people, at that time. Each is evoking and provoking responses from others so that the particular personal organising themes emerging will depend as much on the others as on the individual concerned Relationships between people in a group can be defined as continuously iterated patterns of;intersubjective themes that organise the experience of being together Themes can be revealed by Word Games! The pattern of movement over time has paradoxical characteristics and are not predictable

Rhetoric • New knowledge can emerge in ordinary everyday conversation as people seek to persuade and negotiate • Rhetoric is the art of persuasion - Rhetorical ploys: • Those that influence the direction of conversation, such as stating ‘these are the objectives • Those that provide frames of reference • Those that makes claims to be the truth • Those that destabilise • Those that influence beliefs about what is real and possible • Those who construct urgency • If dismissing opinions of others and close down development of a conversation is widespread, the organisation will keep reproducing same talk patterns

Other points... Planned and prepared meetings kills spontaneity Fluid conversations refers to thematic pattering, which is paradoxically repetitive and spontaneously transforming at the same time Anxiety (a generalised form of fear) can crystallise in defence barriers covered as rational tasks A healthy functioning organisation is one in which its members continually respond to each other and to other members of other organisations They provoke and evoke responses from others and react to the provocations and evocations of others What conversational practices block fluid, explanatory conversations?

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