Rethinking Organizational Change

The Role of Dialogue, Dialectic & Polyphony in the Organization

Muayyad Jabri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317561972
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Comportement organisationnel

Rethinking Organizational Change: The Role of Dialogue, Dialectic & Polyphony in the Organization makes an important scholarly contribution to our understanding of dialogue applied to the management of change. Muayyad Jabri offers an involved assessment of the differences between 'dialogue' and 'dialectic' and an intriguing invitation to rely on both for managing creative interventions into the change process. The book provides a surplus of new insights that will help to promote scholarly work in the area of managing change and to develop a more creative practice associated with the processes of managing change.

The call for polyphony facilitates a crossover from sameness to diversity and from univocal to multivocal representations. In reading patterns of managing change, whether from within or across organizational borders, it is found that a vital part of the reading is, at present, 'unreadable' because we lack involved knowledge of how diversity and polyphony are interrelated. This book seeks to change this; based on a rendition of Mikhail Bakhtin's anthropological concept of polyphony applied to organizational change. The reader is treated to a cutting-edge discussion of a variety of contemporary ontological and epistemological themes centered on process, dialectic, dialogue and social construction.

1 Managing Change and the Role of Polyphony

I realize myself initially through others: from them I receive words, forms and tonalities for the formation of my initial idea of myself.

Mikhail Bakhtin (1986, 138).

This book applies Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1895–1975) anthropological concept of ‘polyphony’ to organizational change. Bakhtin’s notion of ‘utterances’ and his distinction between ‘monologue’ and ‘dialogue’ help us to change the way that we think about organizations. The idea of dialogue is particularly important in combatting the focus on the monologues of managerialism and the rigidity of dialectics. It gives us new ways of thinking about how we can manage organizational change.

We begin by highlighting the importance of utterances in organizational change. Whether interpreting workplace changes in general or one’s immediate workplace in particular, we share our utterances with others as they share theirs. Utterances carry an enormous weight and have a profound effect. Through utterances, we obtain new meanings as we interpret change. Having highlighted the importance of utterances, this chapter then introduces the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and his notion of dialogue.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher who lived in anonymity for most of his life. According to Clark and Holquist (1984), it was only in his late years that he drew world attention as a prominent philosopher and theorist of art and philosophy of language. Bakhtin’s major work was written almost one year after the October Revolution of 1917 (Clark and Holquist 1984). Bakhtin was an active member of the so-called Bakhtin Circle, a twentieth century school of Russian thought and philosophy addressing the role of language and other matters concerned with aesthetics and literature. According to Clark and Holquist (1984), the Bakhtin Circle began in Petrograd. Members of the circle included Valentin Voloshinov (1895–1936) and Pavel Medvedev (1891–1938). Bakhtin suffered from ill health and was sentenced to labor camps, because his thinking was at variance with the official Communist Party lines. He was sent in 1930 to Kazakhstan (Clark and Holquist 1984). Bakhtin’s exile lasted four years and resulted in his left leg being amputated because of frostbite (Clark and Holquist 1984).

Bakhtin’s work on dialogue presents us with a wide spectrum of themes that have found their way into several fields of knowledge including philosophy, literary theory, education, religious thought, aesthetics, anthropology, and human sciences. The recent interest in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin among management and organization studies scholars has developed since the materiality of ‘language’ became the centerpiece for constructing, rather than representing, reality. Because of its openness and resourcefulness as well as its variety of aspects and concepts, Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogue, polyphony, and other concepts, including surplus of meaning, are increasingly emerging as a very rich source for various approaches within organization studies. The core of Bakhtin’s theory is a number of concepts that are shaped and reshaped by each other, as we shall see shortly.

Such concepts continue to borrow from each other. To fully appreciate Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue, we must also understand his idea of polyphony. In general terms, the word ‘polyphony’ means the simultaneous interweaving of several melodic lines, usually soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. It encompasses intricate combinations of several melodies or a variety of voices (fugue), sometimes merging them and sometimes keeping them separate. Even though Bakhtin’s ideas of polyphony emerged from music and literature, they prove very useful for reflecting on change.

Bakhtin (1984, 6) defined polyphony as “a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses.” The main characteristic of polyphony is, therefore, that of consciousnesses having their own social property which come together. Utterances continue to resonate with voice ideas, giving way to new surpluses of meaning. As utterances come together, spontaneity of events occur. Spontaneity is about glimpses achieved during an exchange of utterances, which provide the ‘aha’ or ‘eureka’ moment, calling for embodiment of some new immediate improvement. This can be understood as a glance in a rear view mirror, but one that brings the future to the present.

In music, polyphony is a series of musical notes that have a distinct rhythm in which several musical notes are combined to form a distinct unit. Polyphonic music is that in which two or more musical notes are produced concurrently: the term derives from the Greek words for ‘many sounds.’ As in a choir, every participant brings their own melody, voice, and style in a way that contributes to the harmony of the multi-voiced whole. Polyphony has also been used to describe the intertwining or interweaving of voices.

Applied to a texture or surface level, the word ‘polyphony’ describes the way in which the object is created from different constituents. For example, in the art of carpet design, different colors and/or textures of thread can be interwoven to create the design. The intertwining of threads produces a polytexture, with its own colors and themes.

Applied to organizational life, we will use the term polyphony to mean the way in which several voices, parties, and structures interact and where each representation is intertwined with the others relative to its own role or function. An effort is exerted in a combined way to produce an output. The effort itself is continuous and has its own direction. It is ongoing and creative, leading to a state of becoming.

Polyphony can help us reflect on how we manage and lead organizations, as well as in contesting ideologies held by those charged with managing and leading the change effort. We will explore what polyphony means for managing change, with specific reference to Bakhtin’s idea of the ‘excess of meaning’ achievable through the more involved sharing of utterances from the perspective of the ‘other.’

The Nature of Change

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have said: “You cannot step into the same river twice,” to which his student is reported to have responded: “Not even once, since there is no same river.” The philosopher was emphasizing that experiencing change is an ongoing process, and his student’s response underlined this by emphasizing ‘changing,’ rather than just ‘change.’

The metaphor of the river directs attention to the process (flow) aspect of ongoing change. Some say that change is the only constant in organizational life (Elving 2005), while others point out that even change changes. Both assertions are right, of course, because change is a steadfast phenomenon we all live and move through. Our experience is expressed as ongoing thoughts or utterances, whether word, phrase, or sentence, and whether directed to ourselves or others.

Using the metaphor of the river again, it might be said that every river has its own context, which is constituted by its banks, topography, and terrain. As the external and internal forces associated with the river change, so too does its context. The same is true of change: every change has its own peculiar context, and every context is in a continuing state of flux.

At the heart of change is the notion that all things flow in a continuous process of becoming (Whitehead 1956), demonstrating the continuity of our utterances as a “ceaseless becoming process” (Rescher 1996). Our awareness, sensations, and feelings are all crucial even though we do not see them. Henri Bergson (1859–1941), awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, noted:

The point is that usually we look at change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we do not think about it. We say that change exists, that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: Yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason and philosophize as though change did not exist.

(Bergson 1946, 131)

Every process, e.g., downsizing, represents change, and takes place in time. It involves the generation of recurring thoughts or consciousness and utterances. These thoughts, in turn, affect our lives and the lives of other members of the organization, as they also think with the intention of creating change.

Consider the words used to describe the insecurity people feel when they discover that their organization is about to be downsized and that they face the prospect of being made redundant. Consider the challenges faced as one organization merges with another. Consider the words used by those who are suddenly required to use a new gadget or follow a new procedure in their work. All these utterances are discourses with the self, with neighbors, and with others. They shape and co-shape the fabric of the changes we inhabit. Each individual plays a part in constructing this fabric. Since the process affects the lives of organization members, we cannot go on assuming that we are on our own and that each of us is the only person constructing change. Others are also involved but in their own way.

How does one come to appreciate the recurring aspects of such constructions? As we will see in this chapter, this can be approached in more than one way, or from more than one perspective. For example, Bakhtin (1981) considered the role of polyphony in ensuring that people are represented in determining the direction change should take. Gergen (2008, 145–46) considered “coordinated action” achieved through its social supplement. Taylor and Van Every’s (2000, xi) approach was through thinking of the “organization as an emergent reality.” It is through such varying perspectives that we can learn to manage and lead continuous change.

Utterances

An utterance can be a word or a sentence, spoken or written, including to oneself. It is a real unit of speech because it reflects a real speech situation (Bakhtin 1986). Each utterance is infused with intentions. A word uttered is necessarily a word infused with the speaker’s awareness of his or her listener, and of the influence of other speakers they have heard. This notion of the speaker becoming aware of the addressee and vice versa allows utterances to inter-animate each other, even in silence. Bakhtin used the concept of utterance to include the notion of talking to oneself internally or externally, as well as conversation with others.

In each speech act, an utterance is an expression of subjective experience. It is firmly situated within a context and so it gets framed within the space or the situation. Voloshinov (1986, 97) described an utterance as “a fact of the social milieu.” At any given point in time, there is a particular change situation, and this ensures that the meaning attached to a word uttered at a particular time is different from the meaning attached to that same word under other conditions. Whether communicated externally or internally in silence, utterances are active expressions of meaning. An utterance eventually generates another. Utterances, therefore, can produce what might be called a ‘stretch of interaction’ in given social contexts.

According to Bakhtin, there is a constant dialogue between change recipients: a situation in which every utterance predicts and relationally changes the one that follows it. Through speech, people experience an endlessly internalized exchange of utterances. Recognition of the undecidable, unfinalizable nature of utterances permits an understanding of change being shaped and reshaped through shifting identities, and of the interlocking relationship between change and individuals’ accounts of change. These accounts are never complete and final. This is what Bakhtin (1981) described as “carnival:” identity is fluid, playful, intermingling, and ambiguous. For Bakhtin (1981), no single interpretation, meaning, or definition of an identity achieved through narrative can stand as more than a momentary manifestation.

Bakhtin and Dostoevsky

Bakhtin brought his notion of polyphony into focus after considering the work of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. In his preface to the book, Bakhtin (1984, 3) noted that he considered Dostoevsky to have created “a completely new type of artistic thinking … called polyphonic.” For Bakhtin, polyphony was exemplified through Dostoevsky’s artistic style of novelistic writing, in which he accorded his characters the opportunity to showcase their perceptions and ways of coping with the world around them. Clark and Holquist (1984) explained that the most important attribute that Bakhtin saw in Dostoevsky’s work was that “the nature of human beings is dialogic,” that no one is left out in the process of creating polyphony, and that polyphony achieves its meaningfulness through the view that human beings are dialogic.

Dostoevsky allowed each character to draw a self-portrait. He used a representational structure in which every character presents themselves as a foreground figure. Based on this style of writing, Bakhtin described polyphony as a place or field where individuals’ subjectivities are shared in time and where the actors come to engage in their own joint authorship of the reality they inhabit.

In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, where Dostoevsky is often described by critics as truly excelling in showcasing the authorial voice of his characters, we have a murder mystery that unfolds in a series of love affairs involving the father, Karamazov, and his three sons, Alyosha, Ivan, and Dimitri. Each character has his own distinct way of speaking and presents his own views of the world. Every character brings their own perspective on events.

Dostoevsky allows Alyosha to show his own reason and to express himself freely in ways that are truly different from the views held by his brother, Ivan. Neither view necessarily chimes with the views held by the author:

“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts–you said it beautifully, and I am terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.”

“Love life more than its meaning?”

“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it.”

(Dostoevsky 1990, 231)

Dostoevsky enabled his characters to speak in their own voices. In his introduction to the translation from the Russian of The Brothers Karamazov, Pevear noted:

Dostoevsky composed in voices. We know from his notebooks and letters how he gathered the phrases, mannerisms, verbal tics from which [his characters] would emerge, and how he would try out these voices, writing many pages of dialogue that would never be used in the novel.

(Pevear 1990, XV)

Bakhtin commented on this feature of Dostoevsky’s work by noting that “self-consciousness” is the main distinguishing feature that is brought forward and given weight. Boundaries are permeable and so as utterances are exchanged, they become owned not only by the speaker but also by and for the hearer, or ‘other.’ That is when consciousness moves away from being solely a property of the individual to something more social as well.

Bakhtin described Dostoevsky as doing everything possible to allow his heroes to fully express their viewpoints, in ways in which every utterance depends on its response and, most importantly, where excess of meaning results from the exchange. Bakhtin (1984, 6) noted: “[Dostoevsky] creates not voiceless slaves, […] but free people, capable of standing alongside their creator, capable of not agreeing with him and even of rebelling against him” (italic in original).

Summary

What is so peculiar about all this and why does Dostoevsky want to let his characters do all the talking? He really wants to give authority back to them whilst also accepting that not all of them will agree. He wants to treat people not as objects in a conversation but as subjects, with a view of some artistic visualization that is translated into conversations. What they say might contradict the author’s values and viewpoint. He wants to pull away and let them explore their own perspectives and share their ideas. He does not want to keep them voiceless, or take over, and so each comes with a viewpoint, even though it contradicts the author’s beliefs.

The Call for Polyphony

Polyphony is generally viewed as rebellion in the history of music. Polyphony is based on the interweaving of many voices, some of which might contradict each other, and bring different melodies. It is about differentiated voices brought together and yet treated as separate and distinct. Even though polyphony is a musical and literary concept, the scope for forging it in organizational life is high. Individuals within organizations each have their own voices, independent and yet with a relationship to others, and expressed with different rhythm or style. Polyphony describes a way of managing change as collections of voices, some in harmony and others in conflict o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Managing Change and the Role of Polyphony
• 2 The Role of Utterances in Communicating Change
• 3 The Role of Dialogue in Managing Change
• 4 The Role of Dialectic in Managing Change
• 5 Styles of Engagement: Dialogue with Dialectic
• 6 Polyphony and Organizational Learning
• 7 The Verdict: Embodying Change through Polyphony
• About the Author
• Index