Mapping the different kinds of action research practices onto Transorganizational Development Gameboard by David Boje

SUBMITTED TO: Sub Theme 11: Mapping Action Research Practices; Conveners: Marc Bonnet, Marilyn Harris, Chris Huxham, & Ray Loveridge

SUBMITTED BY:

• David M. Boje, Contact Person/Presenter

• Management Department 3DJ

• New Mexico State University

• Business Complex Room #220

• Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003-8001

• 505-646-1201 (o); 505-532-1693 (h);

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• Email: dboje@nmsu.edu

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TITLE: Mapping the different kinds of action research practices onto Transorganizational Development Gameboard

ABSTRACT

Action Research has been used with a multitude of different meanings and applications ranging from a variety of research methodologies to forms of large system change, or what I call Transorganizational Development (change involving multiple organizations and stakeholders). By contrast, forms of Action Research that are concerned with development are primarily trying to influence the particular situation in which the action takes place. This has led to schools of TD that graduate their own researchers, who generally do not compare their approaches to other. While these approaches have much in common, they also have significant differences that are the subject of this presentation.  There is often a lack of clarity about where a particular school of action research sits within the range of possibilities. Thus the impetus for what I term the Transorganizational Development Gameboard (game in that there are 16, at least large system change approaches, and the game is to understand them all).  I intend to give some overview to the evolution of action-research overtime in a variety of countries and in a variety of universities.

Storyline - I met with Henri Savall, the founder of ISEOR and SEAM (Socio Economic Analysis of Management). According to Savall "The importation of ideas and methods of management from abroad has caused deep disappointments in the companies and, to a lesser extent, in certain theorists and researchers in sciences of management:  brutal performativity, excessively specialized organization Fayolism-Taylorism, or their opposites: psycho-naive other-worldliness, autonomies [that are] not concerted... "  Savall decided to go his own way in the 1970s and build something unique in OD scholarship. As an economist and organization theorist, he believed "effectiveness and profitability were [being] obtained with the detriment quality.

Marc Bonnet the Deputy Manager of the ISEOR Research Center took a good deal of time to explain the SEAM approach. I also met Jacques Henri Coste, the postmodern professor of the team and Rickie Moore who came form the U.S. to work with ISEOR and is also a Professor and University of Lyon. I was so impressed by the SEAM approach to Large Scale Change and Development that I decided to stay the weekend and come back Monday to find out more. The more I found out, the more convinced I became that this is an undiscovered and revolutionary way to do OD and to train OD consultants.

I am not the only one who is impressed. The Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management International is holding its Conference in Lyon -FRANCE, March 30 and 31, 2001. I am also helping to communicate the SEAM approach. Grace Ann Rosile and I are conducting an interview with Henri for Journal of Management Inquiry and proposing a special issue for Journal of Organizational Change Management.  The focus is on this French Export (both to American, and then like the postmodern movement, re-imported into France in Americana journals).

The purpose of my presentation is map SEAM into the various Transorganizational approaches I call “Transorganizational Development Gameboard” (Boje, 2000c). http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDgameboard.html

 My purpose in this essay and Gameboard site is to give you an introduction to SEAM (Socio Economic Analysis of Management) and to position it in the TDgameboard. I am grateful to Professors Henri Savall, Marc Bonnett, Rickie Moore, and Jacques Henri Coste of the ISEOR for giving me the opportunity and permission to present a statement of SEAM and position it within the TDgameboard.  Keep in mind that this is my reading of SEAM. For the original go to France!

What is SEAM? The Socio Economic Analysis of Management.  This is the basic intervention model of Henri Savall and his team of associations (professors and doctoral students learning OD). SEAM was created by Henri Savall to link economics, accounting and a special Socio Technical Systems approach to large system change.  It is a long term commitment. No firm enters into a SEAM contract without an upfront three to five year commitment. SEAM bridges a qualitative interview and observation method with an accounting (hidden cost) and economic analysis of the firm's strategy.  SEAM is the major operation of ISEOR. SEAM has been "validated by thorough experimentation of long duration in 1000 companies since more than 26 years, in 30 countries on 4 continents. The data base grows with the passing of years by multiplying and diversifying

cases of experimentation in new companies and organizations in new countries" (Translated from French).  SEAM is both micro and macro, connection internal and external strategic planning to the enactment of local working conditions as well as policy

changes, including changing the rules of the game between workers, unions, management, suppliers, and communities.

How is SEAM related to Transorganizational Development?  First, Transorganizational development began with a piece done by Culbert et al in 1972 at UCLA. When I cam there in 1978, I went straight to work in this field:

"Transorganizational Development is a collective story is being shaped and co-constructed among the network of  [organizational] participants. Each stakeholder [organization] is negotiating the meaning of the collective story. Each story is a fragment, a perspective on the whole. Some are problem based, issue based, solution based or just fantasy based. Each is a candidate to become the dominant collective story" (Boje, 1979, Boje & Wolfe, 1989).

  TABLE ONE: apping the different kinds of action research practices onto Transorganizational Development Gameboard

http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDgameboard.html

RATIONALE FOR TRANSORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (td) GAMEBOARD - TD Gameboard has a double meaning. First, the name refers to the game of large system change OD, and second the learning of multi-organization (TD) change can be done playfully. The title is meant to be ironic, by pointing out the way in which the training of the 16 TD approaches, each has its devotees, who do research and practice to validate its results. Comparative research is unheard of in this field.  Consultants learn their craft from one of the universities that seems to specialize in a niche market of TD. For example, the (#10) learning organization (now knowledge organization) work is being dong at MIT with Peter Senge and Edgar Schein.  Appreciate Inquiry (#6) can be learned at Case Western Reserve University or Benedictine OD programs.  In the U.S. Merrelyn Emery comes to New Mexico State University, where I am based, several times each year to train consultants.  The kind of critical theory perspective in #16 comes out of the UK universities (also Canada and Australia).  We have here a symphony of perspectives, but also a sort of war machine (in the Deleuze and Guattari sense of that term).  The War Machine trains its disciples to despise its competitors.

I have used the TD Gameboard to try to reach students who are so enamored by Appreciative Inquiry (#6), PDPD (#2), or some other approach, that they are unable to see the forest, only their own tree. I want to promote comparative scholarship and practice. I also am sensitive to history. I grew up at UCLA where Lo Davis was doing socio tech differently than the Emerys and we are all aware of that thirty year feud. When I get together with the critical theorists and postmodernists they are unable to understand why anyone would undertake an inquiry that did not squarely address hegemony and the fad and fashion of work by gurus such as Tom Peters or Mike Hammer.

In terms of pedagogy , when I teach MBA students, I assign each student a square to become an expert in that discipline, and then turn the class loose on a project. For example, where to locate the Space Ports (New Mexico would like one but does not have the clout of Florida or California). The students come back to class to report their analysis and strategy from their particular perspective. The polyphony is glorious, since we begin to see the shortcomings and blind spots of each approach.  Appreciative inquiry does not look at power (#6), but the critical theorists (#16) can only see power, and when you combine some power with inquiry, you get to restorying (#11). 

Finally, I think upon closer study, one will find that the 16 approaches have some intertextual historical roots.  They are not exactly independent.  Many build on the stakeholder approach (#10), have some kind of action research (#5) and in my mind have roots back into the community organizing work of Saul Alinsky (#1).  But to those who study with Emerys, Senge or the Cooperider, the sun rises and sets only with their mentor.  

Before we move back to our discussion of SEAM, I need to make some statement about, the field itself. TD means single organization development is pretty much dead.  This is an intertextual, transorganizational, Tamara-ish world.  Networking is between not within organizations (Boje, 1999a). TD is a holon-affair (1999b). But here is the bottom line -- when you look at the major players, the big consulting houses, attached to accounting firms, you see that most of the 16 approaches are untapped. Some are moving between #10, learning organizations, having lost market share with the collapse of #7 (reengineering), and many are doing the darker side of #15, cyber war games. That is, the major billion dollar consulting houses are not doing action research, appreciative inquiry, and certainly not doing SEAM, PDPD, critical theory, postmodernism, or restorying. They are hiring MBAs trained in MIS, engineering, and accounting, not in what you and I se as TD or OD. They are doing a different kind of work, and one that is affecting most of the organizations on the planet. And that is why I call it the Matrix (reference to the movie) and am concerned about the spectacle theatrics of it all (#13, & 14).

SEAM is one of 16 approaches reviewed in the TD Gameboard (above). The purpose being to explore the game of OD, the ways in which particular approaches to large system change become insular, with their own academic places, teams of apprentices, and other disciples. TD Gameboard is therefore a tongue in cheek attempt to call for interdisciplinary research and practice.  I would like to situate the evolution of SEAM among various other TD approaches, such as sociotechnical systems, appreciative inquiry, reengineering, various stakeholder models, as well as the more postmodern approaches to large system change.  Since this postmodern change and its relation to SEAM, is a new topic, for many, I will give more detail.

What are the Postmodern Aspects of SEAM?   It is inter-disciplinary, more a rhizomatic understanding of the interplay of disciplines that have been kept separate.  For example, looking at hidden costs, the discipline of accounting is used to show that screwing up Social Performance messes up the bottom line.  See Green Accounting Gameboard for concepts and examples of relating accounting hidden cost analysis to environmental life cycle audits.  Specific types of Hidden Costs can be found at

http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDgreenconcepts.html . 

SEAM therefore moves from a functionalist operating corporation (or NGO) to a more socio-economic and I think ecocentric (as opposed to anthropocentric) understanding of the firm and its environment. And SEAM moves us to a more critical postmodern position. Accounting numbers in accounting charts and tables and in financial reports and audits create instead of reflect or mirror reality. Behind the illusion of the mirrored-representation is the politics of accounting and the social construction of the hyperreal. Lehman and Tinker (1996) argue that in order to democratize accounting and develop a more emancipatory and progressive accounting agenda it is necessary to reformulate "environmental accounting as part of its instrumental modus vivendi perpetuating the terrible slide into subjectivism and anthropocentricism where humanity is seen as capable of controlling and measuring nature" (p. 2) [http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDgreenlinks.html .].

A second postmodern area is the restorying of the relationship between Social and Economic conditions.  Instead of a trade off, the assumption inter-penetrating.  It is telling, for example that Savall and Bonnett were vehemently opposed to the reengineering craze of the 1990s. They pointed out in their careful measurement of Socio-Economic relationships under SEAM, that there were significant hidden costs to reengineering that were note being accounting for.  They did not get sucked into the reengineering fad; they remained skeptical of an intervention that was premised on destroying to Social capacity of the firm in order to reap what they saw as temporary and short-term gains. 

Third, in looking at -What is postmodern organization; there are several points to be made.

The postmodern organization may be defined as that comprising a networked set of diverse, self-managed, self-controlled teams with poly-centers [many centers] of coordination that fold and unfold according to the requirements of the tasks. Likewise, these teams are organized in flat design, employees are highly empowered and involved in the job, information is fluid and continuous improvement is emphasized throughout (after Boje and  Dennehy, 2000).

This is the type of flexible and de-centered working organization that can be implemented over team with SEAM.  "If, as many now argue, the structural defenses against task anxieties and the insulated cultures provided by the dependency hierarchies of more traditional organizations no longer serve in the current environment, the question must then be posed-what new defenses do we have available?" (Long, 1999). In SEAM, there is a relationship between to social anxieties of a problematic work organization and working condition that gets plaid out on hidden cost areas and ultimately strategic implementation.

There are limits to the postmodern implementation in SEAM. For example, SEAM is not about fragmentation. A more postmodern organization would be a combination or collage of many types and forms (modern as well as postmodern), partly bureaucratic, partly chaotic, partly a quest to reform it all, and partly postmodern unknowability. The postmodern organization acts out fragmented and contrary scripts (script here is the story acted out in action). Yet, the value, I see in SEAM, is that with the historical, comparative and deep investment in qualitative data collection, it should be possible to track just such fragmented patterns of organizing.

Finally, there is a postmodern linguistic aspect to SEAM that Professor Jacques Henri Coste, the postmodernist of the team speaks to.  That is, there are changes in the language games, in the signs and symbols that socially construct the relationship between social and economic.  SEAM is built on collecting and reshaping utterances.  Utterances are coded by the clients and consultants, and entered into a computerized text-retrieval program with some 2,000 codes. The first level of codes are as portrayed in Figures 1 to 4. But what you have to understand is that there are sub-categories for each of these down to five levels. The work of 30 years has gone into refining and evolving the coding schema to track the classes of information collected for qualitative analysis.

References to EGOS Proposal

Seval, Henri (2000) ISEOR Institut de Socio-Economie  des Entreprises et des Organisations. Web site eplainding SEAM approach in French and Englash.

Boje, D. M. (1979) "The Change Agent as Revolutionary: Activist Interventions into Inter organizational Networks," Transorganizational Development Session of the Academy of Management Meetings, Atlanta, Georgia, August 1979. This became the piece with Wolfe and the basis for See Tom Cummings' (1984)-review piece.

Boje, D. M. (2000a) SEAM and Transorganizational Development. Web Site  http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDseam.html

Boje, D. M. (2000b) SEAM and Small Business Action Research. Interactive web site. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/sbc/pages/seampage.html

Boje, D. M. (2000c) Transorganizational Development Gameboard. Web site comparing multiple perspectives on action research and large system change, including SEAM analysis. http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDgameboard.html

Boje, D. M. and Wolfe, T. (1989) "Transorganizational Development: Contributions to Theory and Practice," 733-753 In Leavitt, H., Pondy, L. R., and   Boje, D. M., Readings in Managerial Psychology, Chicago Press, Third Edition.

Culbert, Samuel A., James Max Elden, Will McWhinney, Warren Schmidt & bob Tannenbaum (1972) "Trans-organizational praxis: A search beyond organizational development," International Associations, XXIV (10, October). 1972. Still an excellent piece. This was the first piece I read that got me started in TD.

Cummings, Thomas G. (1984) "Transorganizational development," In B. M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (Eds.),  Research in Organizational Behavior,   Vol. 6: 367-422. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press. 1984. Puts TD into an STS input, throughput, output model.