12Ps worth on the wiggly world of organization

Earlier, I posted a simple, "What does this make possible?" story about the wiggliness of organization and the muddling-through nature of real-world management practice.  Building on this, the 12 ‘P-words’ listed opposite describe key aspects of organization that are at play in all human contexts.

Each of these is summarized below, and the ideas discussed in depth in my new book, The Wiggly World of Organization  Taken together, these present a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking about the dynamics of organization, and they have important practical implications for managers and other practitioners - from CEO to the front line.

From a wiggly world perspective then, organization is…

• Processual:
  • a temporal phenomenon, which is boundaryless and in constant flux;
  • a social process, in which people are interacting together, moment to moment...
  • a complex process, which is non-linear, self-organizing and emergent - irrespective of the official ideology, structures and procedures, etc. that have been formally designed, adopted and disseminated... 
  • ... and irreducibly complex as regards these self-organizing, processual dynamics (however ordered and knowable the formal, as-designed aspects might appear to be);
  • essentially conversational, i.e. enacted through the complex social process of everyday human interaction...
  • ... which is not within the control of any individual or group of individuals;
  • no-thing exists 'outside' this ongoing conversational process, other than more conversations.

• Perpetual:
• a continuously emerging, 'work-in-progress' process...
• ... enacted in the "living present"¹, in which the past is re-membered (i.e. put together afresh), and the future brought into being, in the detail of the interactions that are taking place now;
• arising naturally from people’s everyday interactions, as they act forwards into a continuously emerging and unknowable future…
• … a future which they are perpetually creating together through these same interactional dynamics;
• people's past contributions (in the form of artefacts, perspectives, practices and so on) are carried forward into the present as 'imprints' of the myriad conversations in which these were originally conceived and introduced, taken up (or not) and subsequently adopted and adapted by others. 

• Participatory:
• everyone is ‘on the pitch, playing’ - nobody is ‘sitting in the stands’, as an external and objective observer, commentator or controller of other people’s actions;
• people participate in this process, knowingly and unknowingly, in multiple and diverse ways (e.g. physically and virtually, directly and indirectly, actively and passively, formally and informally, and so on)...
• ... doing so, both individually and collectively, as interdependent people...
• ...in which the dynamic is always one of You and I/me interacting together (rather than ‘I's and ‘You's acting autonomously, and/or a ‘whole-system’ ‘It’, which supposedly has the capacity to act independently of people's in-the-moment interactions).

• Path-dependent:
• current interactions, and what come to be viewed as ‘outcomes’, are historically situated;
• perceptions and interpretations of the ongoing process and (transient) ‘outcomes’ are affected by the unique interactional dynamics involved in the ‘path to now’ - and by the ‘imprints’ of people’s past conversations that this reflects...
• ... as well as by each participant's particular ‘entry point’ into this ongoing patterning of interaction.

• Patterning:
• a fundamental dynamic is the self-organizing patterning of people's ongoing interactions, out of which a generalized sense of order (i.e. organization, culture, identity, etc.) is continuously re-emerging;
• this patterning process both forms, and is at the same time formed by, these ongoing exchanges;
• the natural movement is towards ‘pattern-maximization’; that is, reinforcing currently dominant ways of seeing, thinking, feeling and acting etc...
• ... which creates expectancy – i.e. a generalized tendency for people to behave in ways which become embodied and taken for granted over time, and which provide a sense of ‘everyday predictability’;
• it is this dynamic that enables people to go on together (the essence of organization) whilst, at the same time, making the emergence of new patterns of interaction increasingly less likely;
• this process, together with the local practices that emerge from it, are governed primarily by precedent (what has gone before and become taken for granted) rather than principle (what is supposed to happen according to the official ideology);
• crucially, the emergent patterning of real-time interaction, and people's post-event rationalization of the experience, are asymmetrical: the latter does not offer a ‘do this and you’ll get that’ prescription for future action.

• Particularized:
• the generalized patterning of interaction is always particularized in the moment of people’s ‘local’ (i.e. small-group and one-to-one) exchanges, which occur between specific people, at specific times and in specific circumstances;
• this process involves ongoing acts of interpretation, improvisation and adaptation, as conversational themes move from one particular interactional context to another;
• the in-the-moment particularities involved in people’s coming together mean, therefore, that the generalized patterning of thought, feeling and action is subject to continual iteration...
• ... making people's in-the-moment experience simultaneously both general and particular...
• ... and so, the possibility (if not the likelihood) always exists for novelty to emerge spontaneously from this same, self-organizing process.

• Power-related:
• all interactions are power-related...
• ... with everyone both enabled and constrained in what they say and do by the actions, inactions and interactions of other people;
• power relations shift dynamically, according to time, place and situation, etc…
• ... as affected by changes in people’s individual and collective understanding, needs and wants, and the relative abilities of those involved to address them;
• those ‘in charge’, from CEO to the front line, are relatively powerful participants in this process, and they often have ‘first mover’ advantage, within their particular area of authority...
• ... they can also use disciplinary power to direct the ways in which people behave in formal organizational settings - such as their observed compliance with imposed behavioural norms, etc...
• ... but, despite this, neither they nor anyone else can control what emerges overall. 

• Political:
• everything that happens - ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ - does so as a result of political action…
• ... comprising the continual playing out of the similarities and differences that exist within and between people, in the specific circumstances and relationships within which they are interacting;
• it involves the coming together of people's differing interests, intentions, interpretations, ideologies, identities, idiosyncrasies, and so on...
• ... as well as being affected by their in-the-moment emotions, multi-directed energies, levels of engagement, etc;
• differences are continually played out through a range of collaborative-competitive dynamics, reflected in a constantly shifting mix of co-operative, calculative, coercive and collusive, etc. behaviours;
• as a result of the natural pattern-maximizing dynamic (above), the potential for polarization of competing themes and related groupthink to emerge is ever present…
• ... as reflected in, and reinforced by, the emergence of in-groups and out-groups…
• ... in each of which, the tendency is to over-emphasise difference whilst ignoring similarities and overlaps between alternative perspectives;
• informal coalitional activity is at the core of the political dynamic, both organizing shadow-side conversations and, at the same time, being organized by them...
• ... with certain organizing themes emerging from the shadows, and becoming formally adopted as policy, when a sufficiently powerful coalition has been mobilized in support of them...
• ... and other themes remaining in the shadows, as hidden yet powerful influences on what emerges in practice.

• Partial:
• interactions are always ‘incomplete’, in the sense that these can never encompass the full extent of information, ideas, insights, interpretations, etc. that are potentially available within a given population;
• these are also inherently ‘biased’: the patterning dynamic means that what happens is always prejudiced, in the literal sense of being pre-judged, with the tendency being for participants to follow, without conscious awareness or intent, the characteristic patterning of thought, feeling and action that has gone before;
• as set out above, this self-organizing patterning process is essential to the functioning of organization (in all of its manifestations)...
• ... and, at the same time, it carries with it the risk that patterns of behaviour might emerge, and become taken for granted, which result in unjustifiable discrimination against particular individuals and/or groups;
• the taken-for-grantedness of particular ways of being, thinking and acting, within a particular social context, has the potential to become institutionalized over time.

• Paradoxical:
• the processual dynamics of organization are inherently paradoxical, involving the simultaneous presence of seemingly contradictory characteristics, which cannot be eliminated or separated in time or space;
• this normalizes difference, contention and contradiction as natural dynamics of organization: both formal and, at the same time, informal; open and, at the same time, hidden; momentary and, at the same time, perpetual; stable and, at the same time, unstable; predictable and, at the same time, unpredictable; general, and at the same time particular, and so on;
• everyone is inextricably immersed in these irresolvable tensions and contradictions...
• ... arising from their own and everybody else's participation in the ongoing interactional process.

• ‘Paragrammatic’²
• the processual (and essentially conversational) dynamics of organization are played out in 'coarse-grained' and idiomatic ways;
• official and shadow conversational themes, which are continuously (re-)emerging in - and, at the same time, organizing - the give-and-take of everyday interaction, are taken up in ‘good enough’ ways by those involved...
• ... reflecting the wiggly reality of each situation, people’s unique ‘paths to now’, the diverse agendas of those involved, personal 'rules of thumb', choices made and not made, situational contingencies, inevitable mistakes and misunderstandings, and in-the-moment improvisation...
• ... as well as the ongoing state of not knowing.

• Performative
• conversation does not simply occur about organization - as an abstract commentary on a separate phenomenon - together, people talk organization (and the social world more generally) into existence;
• organization is continuously created, sustained and changed through the widespread interplay of people’s ‘local’ conversations...
• ... the vast majority of which take place in-between formally established meetings and without the presence of those officially in charge in any particular setting;
• co-creation is an ever-present dynamic of these interactions – i.e. every conversation is a co-creation forum;
• as the in-the-moment conduct, content and connections of people's conversations reflect the dynamics of continuity and change, so does organization...
• ... with individual and collective identities similarly being (re-)formed continuously, in the same conversational exchanges in which organization is generated.

I began The Wiggly World of Organization with a quotation from Pablo Picasso about the need to “wake people up” to the reality of the world. To take inspiration from another influential artist of the 20th Century, John Lennon, perhaps we would be better placed to take our own experience seriously, and to make sense of the complex social dynamics of organization, if we were to ‘Give Ps a Chance’!

NOTES:

1. See Ralph Stacey, Patricia Shaw and Doug Griffin (2000) Complexity and Management. Routledge

2. Adapted from Yiannis Gabriel, in Organization Studies (JAN 2002)  On Paragrammatic Uses of Organizational Theory - A Provocation