Organizational Development and Change Theory

Managing Fractal Organizing Processes

Tonya Henderson, David M. Boje

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317626077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

This book offers a fresh perspective on organizational development and change theory and practice. Building on their recent work in quantum storytelling theory and complexity theory, Henderson and Boje consider the implications of fractal patterns in human behavior with a view toward ethics in organization development for the modern world.

Building on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's (1987) ontology of multiple moving and intersecting fractal processes, the authors offer readers an understanding of how managing and organizing can be adapted to cope with the turbulence and complexity of different organizational situations and environments. They advocate a sustainable, co-creative brand of agency and introduce appropriate, simple tools to support organizational development practitioners. This book offers theory and research methods to management and organization scholars, along with praxis advice to practicing managers.

Part I
Fractal Change Management Theory

A Bold New Tool for a Brave New World

It has been shown that adaptation is pivotal to sustainability in individuals, organizations, and environments. It has been identified as a core competency in organizational strategy (Worley, Hitchin, and Ross 1996). To foster adaptation, it is useful to understand not only the patterns we see within a given context, but also to understand the core principles that foster the repetition of these patterns. One way to get at this is to ask successful people where they see scalable, self-similar repetition and go from there. In a study of 11 nonprofit executives, we found that using a content-agnostic interview protocol that simply asked where the subjects saw fractal patterns in their work lives yielded insights into the operating principles behind their success (Wakefield, 2012). The same approach has been used in other contexts to further demonstrate the methodology (Henderson and Deporres, 2014; Wakefield, Boje, and Lane, 2013).

Fractal Change Management theory has begun absorbing lessons from biology, mathematics, traditional physics, and quantum physics (Baskin 1995, Boje and Baskin 2010, Boje 2015 in press, Boje and Henderson 2014, Prigogine and Stengers 1984, Wakefield 2012). Competitive environments are no longer assumed to be static (Bevan and Gitsham 2009, Comunian 2011, Fainstein 2005, Worley et al. 1996). We are now moving to fractal ways of understanding (Hoverstadt 2011). Open boundaries, fractal self-organizing, and scalable self-similarity are gaining broader acceptance (Ashby 1958, Eoyang 2009, Houston 1999, Ison 2008, Johnson 2007, Kauffman 1995, Lewin 1999, Mitchell 2009, Rapoport, Horvath, and Goldstein 2009, Quade and Holladay 2010). Uncertainty is becoming less ominous and is even gaining recognition as fertile ground for innovation and adaptation (Boje and Arkoubi 2005). These changes require new ways of Fractal Change Management (FCM), fractal organizing and a way of viewing the work world that invites change as a grand adventure rather than clinging to old ways or jockeying for control. As such, the pendulum has swung—at least in some circles—from a Taylorist view of the firm as a well-oiled machine whose nature is to be seen in the assembly of its distinct functional elements, toward a multifractal view of the firm as a vitalistic assemblage best explored through its unfolding sociomaterial multifractal processes—or more progressively, simply viewed as a process itself.

This approach to the management of fractal and multifractal organizing processes is grounded in both object and process ontology, viewing organizations as unfolding sociomaterial processes best explored through the scalable, self-similar patterns of their emergence and dissipation, which occur in co-creative, often symbiotic, interaction with their environments. The contemporary multifractal world looks quite different from that of the enlightenment era. Globalism, the communications revolution, scientific advances, and air travel have fundamentally changed the way the current and future generations view the world and have virtually eliminated the ability of any one group of people to operate in isolation. The multifractal world intertwines all organizations with each other and their ecosystems.

The 2008 financial crisis shattered the notion of “too big to fail” as the once-revered pillars of Wall Street like Lehman Brothers marked the downward spiral of large financiers. We now live in a multifractal world of interconnected sociomaterial processes/assemblages (Boje, DuRant, Coppedge, Chambers, & Marcillo-Gomez 2012, Boje and Henderson 2014, Latour 2005), where the inseparability of the social and material have been made real by a bevy of subprime mortgages and foreclosures (Boje, DuRant, Coppedge, Chambers, & Marcillo-Gomez 2012, Coppedge 2014). The bridge between ontological process (e.g., deep ethnography and historical studies) and treating organizations as objects has been built, brick-by-brick by many scholars in recent years such that we are now able to stand in the center of it, leaning out over the rail to examine a flow of sociomaterial processes unfolding multifractally, denying the separation of the social and material. Therefore, we intentionally eliminate the dash between socio and material, in defiance of our spellchecker’s posthumanist agency, to ease the separation between the social and material in our own understanding of unfolding fractal organizing processes. We do so in an effort to honor the role of posthumanist assemblage and co-creative forces in the emergence and dissipation of these patterns in the sociomaterial living story web.¹

Our earlier works in the area of fractal organizing processes have been primarily ontologically focused, considering the values, beliefs, and social norms that often serve as the social equivalents of fractal generators, thereby characterizing the behavior of informal organizations and social networks with a view toward helping managers to use such insights strategically. In third-order cybernetic systems, the most effective modes of work are less tactically focused and more grounded in interconnectedness and shared values. By looking for fractal patterns, we focus on recurring situations with the possibility of generating large effects. If a pattern recurs on smaller scales, we can assume that the potential exists for the same pattern to recur on a large scale, at an unexpected time (Wakefield 2012). This realization prompts a quest for understanding the systemic, ontological factors that may serve as fractal generators in the human frame. Yet in recent years, there has also been a strong consideration of materiality in our own works and those of our contemporaries (Boje 2011c, Boje et al. 2012, Boje and Henderson 2014, Strand 2012), as we add our own work to the insights of Bennett (2010), Latour (2005, 1999), Barad (2007), and others.

To explore emergent phenomena from a sociomaterial perspective is to consider systemicity to an even greater degree than in past works. Boje (2008, p. 264) defines systemicity as “the dynamic, unfinished, unfinalized, and unmerged, and the interactivity of complexity properties with storytelling and narrative processes.” Accepting systemicity structurally points one toward accepting that the boundaries of organizations are arbitrary and fuzzy, artificial lines drawn in response to an emotional craving for certainty in the guise of containment. It causes us to consider that the holistic view of the organizational change from moment to moment, as the system breathes and changes its shape, boundaries, size, and other tangible aspects at will. We come to understand that definitively characterizing a particular organization is akin to nailing Jell-O to a wall. So, we seek other ways of understanding, abandoning reductionism in favor of network-based approaches like Latour’s (2005) actor network theory and looking for patterns of organizational behavior (Eoyang 2009, Quade 2011, Quade and Holladay 2010).

In this section, we suggest an approach called Fractal Change Management (FCM). We explain its origins and rationale, drawing from multiple disciplines. Next we consider the operational definition of a fractal organizing process, reasoning that to interact with one in any sort of constructive way necessitates the ability to clearly define and identify it in the first place. In doing so, we set the stage for a deeper exploration of today’s operating environment as the context for sociomaterial emergence and dissipation in Part II, as a precursor to the practical examples and exercises in Part III that are designed to help the reader to put theory into practice.

1 What Is Fractal Change Management?

In this chapter, we offer six models of sociomateriality, merging material-based views with process ontology for a more comprehensive understanding of fractal organizing processes. Then we explore complexity theory and examine the movement of management theory away from mechanistic models toward a more fractal understanding of organizations. Next we explore the meaning of the term fractal in the context of management science. Finally, we provide an overview of fractal change management theory as an emergent, sociomaterial approach to organizational development. FCM theory uses self-similar, scalable patterns observed in the sociomaterial emergence and dissipation of organizations. FCM is a way of storytelling and it is a methodology for observing and changing scalability attunement in organizations, considering the organization in relation to its environments. In FCM, we take a process-oriented, ontologically based approach to organizational development.

Strazdina and Kirikova (2011, p. 735) state that “change management is an important process enabling the definition of a successful enterprise strategy and operations—especially in a turbulent environment).”²

Moving forward building upon the perspective of sociomaterial ontology, the first steps toward such an approach are the consideration of non-normal distributions and the rejection of reductionist analysis in favor of a “multi zoomed” consideration of aggregate sociomaterial fractal behaviors. Mandelbrot’s pioneering work in the 1970s and 1980s drew our attention to the importance of the outliers, nonlinear distributions, and the possibilities of scalable repetition in infinite space. See for example Taleb 2007, Mandelbrot 1983, Mandelbrot and Hudson 2004, Mitchell 2009, and Waldrop 1992. The same kinds of fractal behavioral patterns play out repeatedly throughout human history, arguably correlated to the rise and fall of great men, great companies, societies, and nations (Pugesek 2014). Finally, one must explore the meaning of these patterns of catastrophes and their antenarrative potential for alignment with organizational intent, understanding that any such analysis must be both iterative and reflexive. Just as in strategic planning, organizations check proposed actions for alignment with their strategic guidance, so we suggest consideration of alignment to support value judgments and risk mitigation regarding unfolding fractal patterns in organizations and their environments. Whereas this approach does not offer the certainty frequently promised by linear models, wherein oversimplification often causes problems, it constitutes a more realistic approach to understanding in our complex, dynamic world.

Sociomateriality in the Modern Organization

Fractal patterns are the signatures of complex adaptive systems. Complex adaptive systems are described by Quade and Holladay (2010) as groups of interdependent, semi-autonomous agents whose interaction creates systemic patterns, which then influence the agents’ behavior at an individual level. Each system creates its own kind of scalable, self-similar repeating patterns as it unfolds. To know a system’s nature, we need not bound it and catalogue its parts. Indeed, such an approach may not even be possible in many cases. Systemicity defies artificial boundaries placed without regard for myriad unseen connections to stakeholders near and far, whose connections may exist only through thin, lengthy, tangled threads that we simply can’t follow given budgetary constraints and the limits of human cognition. Instead, we know it by its fractals. To understand a person, we observe behavior patterns over time and consider the values and beliefs that drive these patterns. To know a plant, we observe its scalable, self-similar growth patterns and compare them to others we have seen. Avalanche-prone snowfields are studied by observing the patterns of previous slides. In each case, we consider the nature of an open system by observing its behavior and form. Systems unfold in tangible ways, emerging and dissipating as companies’ profits soar, stagnate, then peter out; social movements emerge from nowhere and dissipate into memory as adherents lose interest in the cause du jour.

This awareness brings us to a sociomateriality-based perspective of what it is to be part of an organization, to experience its unfolding and try to gain perspectives about the kinds of scalable self-similar patterns that constitute its nature. People can sense fractal patterns of organizational storytelling. This is most often below embodied-cognition (Lakoff 1990) awareness. Rather, our fractal storytelling awareness exists on an ontological plane of Being-in-the-world. This ontological awareness involves a process of attunements of moods, alignments of actions, and antenarrative processes. All four processes (awareness, attunements, alignments, and antenarratives) intertwine in spacetimemattering. In other words, instead of embodied-cognition in a social constructivism paradigm, we are a part of the paradigm shift to the growing field of sociomateriality.

Models of Social (S) and Materiality (M) in Sociomateriality Debates

We explore sociomateriality by means of six models, gaining inspiration from the work of Dourish (2014). The first, separation, is the product of artificial boundaries, what Barad (2007) famously termed the “agential cut.”³ The second, the social domination model, follows the Western habit of placing man at the top of the hierarchy, giving him biblically inspired dominion to shape the posthuman assemblages of which he or she is a part at will, assigning socially constructed meaning that is accepted in the greater context without challenge. Third, is the opposite model wherein man is an unwitting pawn of material elements. Next we consider the harmony or symmetry model, grounded in the rather dubious assumption that sociomaterial systems are equilibrium seeking, following the model of closed systems in the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Fractal Change Management Theory: A Bold New Tool for a Brave New World
• PART II Exploring Fractal Organizing Processes in Situ
• PART III The Fractal Manager's Toolkit
• Commencement
• Glossary
• References
• About the Authors
• Index