Organizational Transformation for Sustainability

An Integral Metatheory

Mark Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135271688
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

During the 21 st century organizations will undergo a level of radical and global change that has rarely been seen before. This transformation will come as a result of the environmental, social and economic challenges that now confront organisations in all their activities. But are our understandings and theories of change up to the task of meeting these challenges? Will we be able to develop sustaining visions of how organizations might contribute to the long-term viability of our interdependent global communities? Organizational Transformation for Sustainability: An Integral Metatheory offers some innovative answers to the big questions involved in organizational sustainability and the radical changes that organizations will need to undergo as we move into the third millennium. This new approach comes from the emerging field of integral metatheory.

Edwards shows how a "Big Picture" view of organisational transformation can contribute to our understanding of, and search for, organisational sustainability. There are four key themes to the book: i) the need for integrative metatheories for organisational change; ii) the development of a general research method for building metatheory; iii) the description of an integral metatheory for organisational sustainability; and iv) the discussion of the implications of this metatheory for organisational change and social policy regarding sustainability. This book brings a unique and important orienting perspective to these issues.

1
The Need for Metatheory in the Study of Organisational Transformation

I do admit that at any moment we are prisoners caught in the framework of our theories; our expectations; our past experiences; our language. But we are prisoners in a Pickwickian sense: if we try we can break out of our frameworks at any time. Admittedly, we shall find ourselves again in a framework, but it will be a better and roomier one; and we can at any moment break out of it again. (Popper, 1970, p. 56)

“WE ARE PRISONERS”

Karl Popper understood the power of theory. Theory not only helps us to make sense of our experiences, it also actively shapes the world around us in profound and long-lasting ways. The same is true for metatheory, the big-picture approach to knowledge that attempts to integrate other theory. Big ideas and big theories have the power to transform social systems that is rarely acknowledged, much less understood. The way we describe, explain and examine the worlds we inhabit in turn creates and shapes those worlds. Theories and metatheories of organisation and management not only interpret what goes on in the world of commerce and work, they also influence the design and implementation of those systems. Anthony Giddens calls this iterative process the “double hermeneutic” (1984, p. xxxii)—the mutual co-creation of big ideas and the bricks and mortar of social realities. Theories are developed to explain and understand the practical complexities that surround us. Many theories work their way into the perspectives and actions of designers, architects, community leaders, corporate planners, engineers and builders and are taken up by policy and law makers and the general public in how we reproduce, manage and make sense of those complexities. Systems of governing, organising, educating, trading and working are created and recreated in the process. Those systems, in turn, act as sources for further theorising. Hence, the iterative cycle of the double hermeneutic.

A problematic feature of this self-reproducing cycle is that once theory and metatheory are incorporated into the social fabric of work, education, economics or politics it is extremely difficult to introduce an alternative vision or a new world of possibility. When meta/theory¹ becomes part of the institutionalised mainstream it establishes its own momentum for reproduction. It becomes an unseen lens which both frees us to create what we know and constrains us from exploring what we don’t. The impact of social theory on our lives is rarely acknowledged. While we marvel at, or are dismayed by, the power of technology to influence our public and private lives, the influence of all manner of social meta/theories is hardly noticed. At its best, the widespread assumption of certain worldviews creates a stability that enables society to function in an efficient way. At its worst the unconsciousness appropriation of meta/theory institutionalises maladaptive systems of economics, education and organisation. Ideologies are reductive forms of meta/theories that are so imbedded in the exchanges of political and social life that we no longer see them, and we are unconscious of their power to resist change even when social change is desperately needed.

So it is with our conceptualisations of organisations and how they change. Change theorist Gervase Bushe (2001, p. 118) says that “theory, especially theory that is encoded in popular words or images, is a powerful force in shaping social organization because we ‘see what we believe’”. Theories shape possibilities and in so doing also act as constraints on what is possible. At this moment at the beginning of the twenty-first century we are, as Popper puts it, caught in the prison of our conceptual inadequacies—inadequate economic theories, inadequate organisational theories, inadequate theories of change and inadequate theories of sustainability. The economic growth models that inform so much of contemporary life have gained a powerful position in the minds and behaviours of societies, organisations and their members. Theories of economic production and consumption are driving our values and actions to the point where even the concept of “sustainability” is often framed within dominant functionalist assumptions about economic growth. In order to achieve sustainable development we are urged to work ever more furiously towards increased economic targets. As we degrade our atmospheric, biological and social environments on a global scale we are simultaneously ramping up the drive for growth as if that might leads us out of the impasse. In one moment we are calling for reductions in our reliance on carbon-based energy systems and in the next spending countless billions to fire up economic activity. We are caught in an economic vicious circle on a vast scale. One that cannot be revised without reassessing the big picture of what organisational change and organisational sustainability might mean.

A PLURALISTIC BIG PICTURE

This book takes a big-picture look at the metatheories, theories and models used for understanding and explaining organisational transformation and organisational sustainability. It endeavours to develop a more comprehensive and, as Popper puts it, “roomier” framework for metatheorising about how organisations can contribute to the intergenerational welfare of their local and global communities. This framework is grounded in a pluralistic and multiparadigm appreciation for the many contributions that organisational theorists have made to these areas. The field of organisational sustainability is characterised by a multitude of perspectives that contend for attention from researchers, teachers, students, consultants and practitioners. This diversity stems from the variety of research paradigms and schools of thought that provide general orientations for exploring organisational phenomena. Each of these research paradigms, theories and models adds their own unique insights into explaining and understanding what sustainability is and how it might be achieved. But each view is also partial and can only provide a small slice of the whole. When these partial views become imbedded within the mainstream they can also become barriers to the development of new and more comprehensive understandings.

In the quote that opens this chapter, Karl Popper describes a metaphor where he likens researchers and theorists to “prisoners caught in the framework of our theories” who need to find ways to “break out” of their conceptual prisons. The purpose of this book is to move beyond those unnecessarily restrictive forms of explaining and understanding transformational events that come from working within particular research paradigms and theoretical orientations. But in moving forward it is also important that we retain the valid contributions of our intellectual heritage. The intention here is not to replace one view with another—to substitute the “old paradigm” with a “new paradigm”. In developing more inclusive frameworks it is important to recognise the contributions of extant theory and to integrate the store of knowledge that currently exists into whatever overarching framework we might end up building. I call the method used to do this integrative metatheorising. Integrative metatheory is conceptual research that responds positively to the challenges of theoretical pluralism—the diversity of theoretical perspectives (Preston, 2005). It proposes a way of connecting what might be seen as dominant mainstream views with the multitude of diverse alternatives. Thereby preserving what is of value in current ideas with the innovations of emergent perspectives. Integrative metatheorising constructs new and “roomier” conceptual frameworks that push the boundaries of our current conceptualisations. It does this while also accommodating the plurality of theoretical perspectives which characterises many fields of social research.

Integrative metatheorising is part of a tradition of scholarship and research that has a long and rather disjointed history (Molz & Hampson, in press; Sorokin, 1958). To this point very little metatheoretical work of this kind has been consciously performed within this research stream and almost none has used systematic methods that could contribute to a more rigorous scientific enterprise. In the following chapters I hope to redress some of these limitations.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE PARABLE

Although it is receiving increasing attention in the scientific study of social phenomena (see, for example, Carr & Zanetti, 1999; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2003a), metatheorising is largely neglected as a form of conceptual research in organisational and management studies. There are several reasons for this neglect. Applied research has focused on gathering empirical data in quest of testing middle-range theory. Postmodern research has focused on deconstructing theory to identify the underlying assumptions that characterise objectivist and functionalist research. When they have contributed to theory building, postmodern researchers have taken a grounded approach and constructed theory out of localised perspectives and personal narratives. For differing reasons, both have passed over the opportunities afforded by metatheoretical research.

The task ahead then is to explore the possibility of developing a flexible and integrative framework for organisational transformation through the conceptual research method of metatheorising. To do this will require identifying and describing the core conceptual elements of theories and developing a metatheory that can accommodate and connect these factors. This is more than a process of review or comparison or critique. Bringing together multiple perspectives opens up the possibility of a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability and organisational change. There is a well-known story from the Indian subcontinent that serves to illustrate this integrative goal.

The story goes that there was a king who had never come into contact with an elephant but wanted to understand what this amazing beast was and how it might be described. The king summoned six learned, blind men who set off to investigate and report back to the king of their findings. Having found an example of the curious creature, the first blind wise man approached the elephant, felt its sturdy side and concluded the elephant to be “very like a wall”, the second felt a tusk and said, “an elephant is like a spear”, the third happened to touch the trunk and decided that elephants were “like snakes”, the fourth wrapped his arms around one leg and concluded, “the elephant is very like a tree”, the fifth chanced upon the ear and said, “this marvel of an elephant is very like a fan”, and finally, the sixth seized upon the swinging tail and said, “the elephant is very like a rope”. And the story goes that these six learned men compared their findings and each argued that he had the most astute understanding of this elephant creature (Saxe, 1873, p. 78):

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

The moral of this story, applied to the topic of organisational transformation, is that each research paradigm and each well-researched theory contains a partial truth about the nature of organisational change, and that together, these partialities have a chance of creating a more integrative and comprehensive picture of that reality. Left to their own devices, however, partial understandings, while accurate within their own narrow fields, will always be incomplete and sometimes even misleading. The elephant in this parable is the complex, multidimensional and often baffling reality of organisational transformation; the conclusions of our “men of Indostan” are the many paradigms and theories of transformation that have been proposed over the last four decades; the quality of blindness in this parable represents our collective inability to see the assumptions that our individual theories are often based on; and the attempt to bring together the partial truths that each wise man offers is the proposed integral metatheory for organisational transformation that this book contributes.

THE NEED FOR INTEGRATIVE PLURALISM

A considerable amount of theoretical and empirical research has been devoted to the topic of organisational transformation since it first became an identifiable field of research and theory development in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then there has been an ever-increasing number of theories and models of transformation. Yet, apart from some notable exceptions (see, for example, Levy & Merry, 1986), little attention has been paid to the need for a general overview of these diverse theories and constructs. As Farazmand points out (2003, p. 366):

The lack of systematic study and analysis of chaos and transformation theories in organisation theory and public management is striking.

Other transformation theorists have noted the diversity in definitions, constructs and theoretical frameworks and the lack of a coherent overview that might enable some fruitful dialogue among theorists working in this field. A systems-based study of organisational transformation points out that (Lemak, Henderson & Wenger, 2004, p. 407):

… for all the attention, the field is not coherent; disagreements about basic definitions, fundamental frameworks and general values abound … agreement occurs primarily around very general and often vague prescriptions.

Although they point to the fragmentation and diversity of theoretical views on transformation, the authors of this study contend that “the concept of organisational transformation still has utility for those studying both organisation theory and strategy” (2004, p. 407). However, they propose that the idea of organisational transformation only has utility “if it is viewed through an appropriate theoretical lens, which we contend is systems theory” (2004, p. 407). This assumption, that there is only one appropriate “theoretical lens” for viewing transformation, is not uncommon among social theorists. Working within particular theoretical schools or research paradigms requires that there be a focus on the conceptual frameworks that define those schools. On the negative side, this dedicated focus can also become the kind of academic narrow-mindedness that gives rise to such things as the “paradigm wars” (Mingers, 2004) or even the exclusion of certain theoretical approaches (Pfeffer, 2005). Such views are not capable of dealing with the theoretical pluralism which is characteristic of all social sciences. Change theorist Marshall Poole suggests that the lack of definitional agreement and the inconsistency in conceptualising transformation derives from this theoretical pluralism (1998, p. 47):

Perhaps the lack of definitive or widely accepted theoretical constructs dealing with the process of organisational transformation is a direct result of the variety of perspectives applied to the process.

A more generalist orientation is needed not only to respond to the multitude of vying theoretical perspectives but also to find ways of valuing the differences between mainstream and more marginal scientific discourses.

To this point the range of theoretical responses has not shown sufficient capacity for dealing positively with the issue of pluralism. The mainstream response has been simply to reassert the need for more objective, functional, economics-based theories of change. Alternative research paradigms are regarded as methodologically or conceptually inadequate. Pluralism is seen as a sign of failure of the social sciences or, at least, as a problem that will be solved through some form of “theoretical monism” (McLennan, 2002). The inter/multi/cross-disciplinary response has had some success at the practical level of project management but has provided no ongoing metatheoretical platform to stimulate metatheoretical research. Disciplinary diversity does not ensure that integrative conceptual frameworks or research methods are developed. In contrast to the modernist search for monistic unity, the postmodern response to theoretical pluralism has been one of support for further diversity. Neither the problems associated with pluralism nor the contributions of meta-perspectives are recognised. The establishment of many small research silos and the proliferation of research centres within organisation and management schools are indicative of the postmodern r...