Reflexive Inquiry

A Framework for Consultancy Practice

Christine Oliver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367323134
• eBook ISBN: 9780429918476
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book sets out to explain how the reflexive inquiry model can be adapted to research so that consultants can continue to evaluate their work and learn from the process. It draws out some implications of the principles, arguments, models, and tools presented for undertaking research.

Part I
Frames and Tools

Chapter One
Reflexive inquiry principles for consultancy practice

In this chapter the five RI principles that can be employed in specific, local, situated moments and episodes of organizational practice are defined and illustrated. I hope to show the liberating power of an RI orientation in enabling the development of purpose, choice, and agency in the organizational patterns that, with others, we create. In this, the development of consciousness, appreciation, and critique of relational dynamics and their effects will be encouraged, not as an end in itself but as an essential component of what could be called organizational intelligence.

RI rests on the assumption that consciousness about the patterns of feeling, meaning and action that we, and others, are experiencing in a relational system is central to effective organizational development. This critical consciousness is predicated on an appreciation that identities, relationships, and cultural practices are interconnected to our and others’ actions. When we practise reflexivity we make choices about how we will think and act. We become responsible and accountable for our choices, our actions, and our contributions to a relational system.

RI is positioned here as valuable to both process and product in organizational development (OD) initiatives. Peck, in an introductory book on OD in the NHS (2005), presents OD as developing coherence between the organization, its members, and its environment. He points out that the history of OD has differently emphasized at different points, processes, structures, people, and culture in its attempts to improve organizational performance. He proposes the value of an integrated approach but, in particular, argues that OD initiatives should be judged on whether they enhance the potential of the changing organization as opposed to the changed organization. He suggests that the changing organization builds into its structures, processes, and culture, ways of examining itself. Thus, he advocates a continual reflexivity.

A focus on reflexivity has been a thread in my previous writings, particularly in the paper “Systemic eloquence” (Oliver, 1996), which built on Pearce’s distinction between social and rhetorical eloquence (Pearce, 1989). Social eloquence was defined as a set of communication abilities privileging the second person, facilitating openness to the other. Rhetorical eloquence, on the other hand, privileged the first person and included abilities such as persuasion. “Systemic eloquence”, foregrounding the moral actor, attempted to highlight how systemic work requires both for an integrated reflexive practice. This book develops the account of “Systemic eloquence” by drawing on more abstracted theoretical principles for its inspiration for reflexive practice. Within that account, it opens up and details the reflexive space in acts and patterns of communication.

The five principles that constitute RI position us reflexively in relationship to ourselves, others, and the patterns and stories that we make (Oliver, Herasymowych, & Senko, 2003, Pearce, 1994). The notion of principle is being used here as a higher order context that frames meaning and guides action. These principles are systemic, constructionist, critical, appreciative, and complex. While it could be argued that each principle runs through all five, they are highlighted individually to distinguish the value of each one as a lens.

Systemic principle

• Patterns of connection.
• Patterns lived and stories told.
• Patterns make sense when we widen the context.
• We are not outside the pattern.

Patterns of connection

At the heart of a systemic orientation to practice is an interest in patterns of connection (Bateson, 1972). We look for patterns in how people feel, how they make meaning and how they act, and in the interplay between them. The word pattern can be hard to grasp. The word is used here to mean forms of feeling, thinking, and action that repeat over time, that become embedded as stories in organizational culture, relationships, and identities (see Table 1).

For instance, a manager, in the context of staff complaint, might react in an authoritarian way, which has the effect of stifling voices of staff that in turn encourages complaint, and so on. The identity and relational positions available to participants in this pattern become limiting and other forms of communication are discouraged, making a cultural pattern of poor accountability, underdeveloped

Table 1. Pattern of connection embedded in organizational stories

Type of communication	Description
Organisational culture stories	Explicit and implicit stories about the ways things can and should be done, e.g., authoritarian decision-making
Relational stories	Stories of who we are, can be, and should be in relationship, e.g., I can veto your decisions
Identity stories	Stories of who an individual is, can and should be, e.g., I am a decision-maker
Episode of communication	Boundaried sequence of communications, e.g., a meeting
Pattern of connection	Made up of feeling, meaning, and action, e.g., feel irritated, interpret it as being about not having power, take action by complaining

responsibility, and stifled agency and initiative, which in turn shapes ongoing communication patterns.

Patterns lived and stories told

The use of the word story has a particular place of significance within a systemic orientation in the sense that we create accounts about our organizational behaviour patterns that take the form of a story, containing character, relationship, plot, emotion, and meaning (Pearce, 1994).¹ Our stories can never articulate the richness of the patterns that we live. In systemic practice we are mindful of the stories we hear and are interested in how they have been constructed and what possibilities for action they construct in organizational life. For instance, the manager might tell the story that his staff don’t take sufficient initiative, and may not see how his own patterns lived and stories told might contribute to cultural stories that set a context for such a staff response. Two particular areas of interest for a consultant might be whether patterns and stories are either connected through sameness or through difference. If they are too similar, there is a tendency for organizational members to impose their own experience on others as if it represents a totalizing truth. If they are too different, organizational members may experience incoherence and lack of trust in organizational relationships, processes, and structures.

It is important to be mindful of the stories we tell as consultants, and take seriously how they might shape the organizational realities we are responsible for influencing. For instance, our stories about power and how the diversity of voices in organizational life should be encouraged or limited will affect our interventions.

In examining and creating stories, a special interest is taken in the possibilities and constraints embedded in language. The use of a word can be seen as a moral and political act in that the ways we use language shape possibilities for agency and contribution, enabling or disabling meaningful and purposeful participation in organizational life. If a member of staff repeatedly states, my voice is not heard he may, perhaps, encourage a pattern of interaction, which reinforces that story. This may be because the repetitiveness of the claim, almost irrespective of its validity, constrains progress, in that the manager, as audience to the story, is positioned as ineffective. This lack of agency may lead to a sense of stuckness, frustration, and low morale. In these circumstances the meaning of the message will possibly be interpreted as complaint, and energy to respond to the claim is diminished. In turn this may lead to the manager resorting to structural power and an authoritarian response. By contrast, if the member of staff had expressed a concern about a pattern in which he found it difficult to take initiative, he might be taking some responsibility for the pattern, reframing meaning (Boscolo, Cecchin, Hoffman, & Penn, 1987) and arguably opening up possibilities for change. Similarly, if the manager was able to find a more creative interpretation of the communication, such as requesting support rather than complaint, he may find himself more able to transcend the pattern.

Patterns make sense when we widen the context

When we examine an individual action and seek explanation for why it has occurred, our resources are limited unless we can explore how that action is embedded in a larger pattern of experiences and stories (Shotter, 1993). We can resort to explanations such as, he is a difficult person, or they are a lazy team, but such explanations offer limited possibilities for action if they fix the part while leaving the whole unattended (Oliver & Lang, 1994). While a difficult person or a lazy team can be challenged or encouraged, if the behaviour of the part is understood in the context of the whole, the possibilities for action are increased. For instance, one might ask, how has the lazy team been constructed? What part does management initiative play in encouraging or discouraging a lazy team? We can be helped to make sense of the wider context through an appreciation of the significance of language and how it shapes possibilities.

We are not outside the pattern

The systemic tradition supports the view that our observations of the system affect the system (Boscolo, Cecchin, Hoffman, & Penn, 1987). By extension, a moral position is implied here of cultivating awareness of the contribution one might be making to the patterns and processes of which one is a part. Thus, the manager, faced with unwanted behaviour from a staff member, might ask himself: what am I doing to invite certain behaviours from the staff member and constrain others?

Constructionist principle

• Communication is action.
• Context constructs communication and communication constructs context.
• Person position is an element of a story.
• Stories express a moral force.

Communication is action

For the social constructionist, like the systemic practitioner, there is a concern and interest in the detail of language (verbal and nonverbal) and in the opportunities and constraints created by communication for the organizational system (Burr, 1995; Campbell, 2000; Gergen, 1989; Pearce, 1989). The position is taken that our communication makes our social realities—our powers to act, participate, take up positions, and make particular contributions. The social constructionist is concerned to employ a reflexive responsibility for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• SERIES EDITORS' FOREWORD
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I FRAMES AND TOOLS
• PART II WORKING WITH REFLEXIVE INQUIRY
• PART III REFLEXIVE INQUIRY AS A QUALITATIVE RESEARCH TOOL
• PART IV CONCLUSIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS
• REFERENCES
• INDEX