Performative Silences: Potentiality of Organizational Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 681-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katia Dupret
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Organizational Change ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Change Process ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Decision Making Processes

The article highlights the importance of silence in the change process of organizations, making the claim that silence distributes authority and decision-making processes. It thus adds to existing organization literature that applies a performative approach to silence as neither static nor neutral. It creates new realities. Silence as an act, rather than a noun, is conceptualized as central to organizational change. Through an ethnographic study in a mental healthcare organization, it is shown how different performances of silence make new decision-making processes available and influence new work practices that are central to understanding the particular characteristics of psychiatric organizations. Although the performance of silence can have somewhat immaterial and mundane connotations, when one uses an actor-network theory approach to organization studies, the performance of silence becomes helpful in conceptualizing how new and old practices are often imbedded into each other.

scholarly journals (Trans)Formative Trajectories of Decisions: An Analysis from The Translation Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-391
Author(s):  
Eduardo Guedes Villar ◽  
Karina De Deá Róglio ◽  
Natália Rese
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Organizational Decision Making ◽  
The Status ◽  
Process Perspective

Motivated by an agenda for empirical research on decisions, we seek to understand how an issue or idea is labelled as a "decision". Based on the relational ontology, we used the Actor-Network Theory as a theoretical frame, and particularly the translation perspective. In order to understand the "process of formation and stabilization of decisions" focused on what makes actors act, we conducted an ethnographic study in a social enterprise for 30 months. Through narrative analysis, we propose the (trans)formative trajectories of decisions in which we describe the trajectory of these hybrid entities achieving the status of relative fixity labelled as "the decision". We understand the trajectory as an ongoing translation journey; thus, we tracked decisions in their trajectories of translation, packaging and legitimation. The elements of the organizational decision-making are re-signified as performative texts, which enter the network of relations. Therefore, decisions are (trans)formed on a journey of mediation among multiple actants. When objectified as crystallized texts, the decisions become performative, because they start to organize and participate in the constitution of the ongoing reality. This theoretical framework allowed us to extend the processual understanding of decision-making aligned with the relational ontology and the time-process perspective.

scholarly journals What makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’? The de-scription of anthrozootechnical agencements

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 761-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Doré ◽  
Jérôme Michalon
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Dairy Farm ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Human Animal

Questions concerning animals’ role in society have received little attention from Organization Studies. This article develops and tests some theoretical and methodological propositions aimed at contributing to the elaboration of an analytical framework for interpreting our organized relations with animals and furthering our understanding of what makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’. First, examining the role of animals in the ‘non-human turn’ that has been emerging, especially with the Actor–Network Theory and the Symmetrical Anthropology project, it adresses the limits of the ‘non-human’ category to analyze situations of coordination of collective action involving animals. It then develops the concept of anthrozootechnical agencement to envisage the role of animals in the course of action through the lens of their relational properties and applies the notion of script to propose an operational formulation of the specifically organizational trials to which these particular agencements are subjected. Based on three case studies (the role of the leash in the organization of human–dog relations, the management of wolves’ return to France, and the production of milk on a dairy farm), this article shows that two main types of operation make human–animal relations ‘organizational’: first, the organization of anthrozootechnical relations is constituted by and constitutive of the combination of three types of specifically organizational test to which these particular agencements are subjected (the performance test, the coherence test, and the dimensioning test); second, the work of organizing anthrozootechnical relations then consists in elaborating, executing, and transforming heterogeneous scripts that are never strictly indexed on the nature (human, animal, technique) of the entities they concern.

Investigating the Role of Data-Driven Decision-Making Within School Improvement Processes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1707-1725
Author(s):  
Venesser Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Organizational Change ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Data Driven Decision Making ◽  
Continuous School Improvement ◽  
Decision Making Processes

This chapter provides a detailed literature review exploring the importance of data-driven decision-making processes in current Australian school improvement processes within a context of evidence-based organizational change and development. An investigation into the concept of decision-making and its effect on organizational culture is conducted as change and development are considered to be the new constants in the current discourse around continuous school improvement in schools. In a close examination of literature, this chapter investigates how key factors such as collaboration, communication, and organizational trust are achieved through data-driven decision-making within continuous school improvement processes. The critical role of leadership in sustaining data cultures is also examined for its direct impact on continuous school improvement processes based on evidence-based organizational change and development practices. Future implications of data-driven decision-making to sustain continuous school improvement and accountability processes in Australian schools are discussed.

Networks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Panzironi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Hierarchical Control ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Procedural Rationality ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Governance Networks ◽  
Decision Making Processes

A network may refer to “a group of interdependent actors and the relationships among them,” or to a set of nodes linked by a web of interdependencies. The concept of networks has its origins in earlier philosophical and sociological ideas such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “general will” and Émile Durkheim’s “social facts”, which adressed social and political communities and how decisions are mediated and ideas are structured within them. Networks encompass a wide range of theoretical interpretations and critical applications across different disciplines, including governance networks, policy networks, public administration networks, social movement networks, intergovernmental networks, social networks, trade networks, computer networks, information networks, and neural networks. Governance networks have been proposed as alternative pluricentric governance models representing a new form of negotiated governance based on interdependence, negotiation and trust. Such networks differ from the competitive market regulation and state hierarchical control in three aspects: the relationship between the actors, decision-making processes, and compliance. The decision-making processes within governance networks are founded on a reflexive rationality rather than the “procedural rationality” which characterizes the competitive market regulation and the “substantial rationality” which underpins authoritative state regulation. Network theory has proved especially useful for scholars in positing the existence of loosely defined and informal webs of experts or advocates that can have a real and substantial influence on international relations discourse and policy. Two examples of the use of network theory in action are transnational advocacy networks and epistemic communities.

Leaders as ventriloquists. Leader identity and influencing the communicative construction of the organisation

Leadership ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Clifton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Leadership Studies ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Leader Identity ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Hybrid Production ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Physical Presence

Traditionally leadership studies have focussed on psychological and quantitative approaches that have offered limited insights into the achievement of leader identity as an interactional accomplishment. Taking a discursive approach to leadership in which leaders emerge as those who have most influence in communicatively constructing the organisation, and using transcripts of naturally occurring decision-making talk, the purpose of this paper is to make visible the seen but unnoticed discursive resources by which leader identity emerges in talk. More specifically, using actor network theory as a methodology, this paper focusses on how the director of an organisation ventriloquises (i.e. makes another actor speak through the production of a given utterance) other entities to do leadership. Findings indicate that leadership is achieved by making relevant to the interaction hybrid presences of actants that allow certain organisational players to influence the communicative construction of the organisation and so manage the meaning of organisational reality. In this way, social actors talk into being a ‘leader identity’, which is not necessarily a purely human physical presence, but can also be a hybrid presence of human and nonhuman actants, which are dislocated across time and space. The hybrid production of presence(s) also allows leaders to enact authority as a way of influencing others to accept their version of organisational reality.

scholarly journals Digital Media and the Order of Ethnography: On Modes of Digitization in the Museum of World Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Andreas Henriksson
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Computer Programs ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Museum Objects

The article applies and elaborates an Actor-Network Theory approach to digitization. Defining digitization as the determining of relations between new digital media and old materials within local networks, the article attempts to investigate locally engendered ambiguities of such processes. The model is applied in a case study of the Swedish Museum of World Culture and its attempt at renewing old ethnographic objects through the use of digital media. The study is comprised of several interviews, observations and extensive document analysis. The article concludes by underlining the contingency and ambiguity involved in introducing digital media into the networks of old objects. It also addresses the cohesive and stabilizing roles played by computer programs and museum objects respectively.

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