Organisation Workshop. Beyond the Workplace: Large Groups, Activity and the Shared Object
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Mind, Culture, and Activity ISSN: 1074-9039 (Print) 1532-7884 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmca20 Organisation Workshop. Beyond the Workplace: Large Groups, Activity and the Shared Object Gavin Andersson, Raff Carmen, Iván Labra & Howard Richards To cite this article: Gavin Andersson, Raff Carmen, Iván Labra & Howard Richards (2017): Organisation Workshop. Beyond the Workplace: Large Groups, Activity and the Shared Object, Mind, Culture, and Activity To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2017.1386218 Published online: 28 Nov 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hmca20 Download by: [The University of Manchester Library] Date: 28 November 2017, At: 08:50 MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2017.1386218 Organisation Workshop. Beyond the Workplace: Large Groups, Activity and the Shared Object Gavin Anderssona, Raff Carmen b, Iván Labraa, and Howard Richardsc aSeriti Institute; bUniversity of Manchester (UoM); cUniversidad de Santiago de Chile (FAE-USACH) ABSTRACT Organisation Workshop stands for a body of practice derived from the pioneering work that Clodomir de Morais did with the Brasilian Peasant Leagues starting in the early 1960s and shown to be relevant today in situations of high unemployment. Two essential ingredients are a large group and a common resource pool. The Organisation Workshop method is illuminated by Leontiev’s “objectivised activity” concept, as well as impor- tant insights from 3 generations of activity theory (CHAT). Moraisean thought and practice are shown to open up new avenues to community development and to break new ground in the social psychology of the large group. Introduction Organisational learning (OL), as introduced in management theory literature by Argyris and Schön (1978) and popularised by Senge (1990), is broadly understood to be the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organisation. Integral to this understanding is the fact that the learning starts from within an already existing organisation. OL is also known as “knowledge creation in organisations” (e.g., Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). These and similar OL models started to be challenged, from the late 1990s onward, from an activity theory (AT, or CHAT) perspective, in particular by Engeström’s (Finland) model of “expansive learning in work teams” (Engeström in Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki, 1999, p. 377) and Yves Clot’s (France) Activity Clinic (AC) “cross self-confrontation” OL methods (Clot, Faïta, Fernandez, & Scheller, 2000). The Organisation Workshop (OW), which we are introducing here, deviates from both standard and aforementioned AT-based world of work learning methods in that its aim is to address locally identified problems in the wider community, which can be solved only by large, collaborating groups. A large group, in the very activity of setting up an enterprise, “achieves” organisation (Andersson, 2013)and assists its members in developing organisational consciousness1 (Labra, 2012). The “object” from which the OW participants take their organisation and enterprise-creating cues is known as a common resource pool and includes the very enterprise the participants are in the process of creating during the workshop. Downloaded by [The University of Manchester Library] at 08:50 28 November 2017 Both classical theory and AT/CHAT-based OL methods have, over the years, had a considerable exposure, including in this journal. By contrast, the OW, in spite of its long field practice record spanning several decades, is relatively little known in academic circles. The contribution the OW is making, in terms of both field practice and theoretical underpinning is, we believe, worthy of note because of its potential for wider social transformation and cultural change beyond the workplace, and because it represents a theoretical critique of the influential— since the days of Kurt Lewin—small-group social psychology theory and practice (Andersson, 2004, pp. 249–268; Labra, 2014). The OW is unabashedly about large groups and, as is explained further on, about the wider, unbounded context. CONTACT Raff Carmen [email protected] 79, Old Hall Lane, Manchester, M13 0UJ, UK. © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2 G. ANDERSSON ET AL. Over the years, OWs implemented on three continents2 have demonstrated that working with large groups can and does achieve dramatic results, always remembering that these should be measured not only in terms of numbers of emerging and sustainable production and social service enterprises but also socially, in terms of a culture shift, enabling—as happened, for example, in Bokfontein (Langa & von Holdt, 2011) and more recently in Westonaria (Westonaria Organization Workshop [WOW], 2015)—a move from a culture of conflict to one of mutual cooperation in the wider community. Less apparent than physical enterprises is the emergence, specifically due to the engagement in large groups with the common object, of organisational consciousness and outstanding leadership qualities in individual participants, a phenomenon observed by the young de Morais in the very earliest days following a clandestine proto-workshop in Recife (Carmen & Sobrado, 2000, p. 15; Large-group Capacitation, n.d.). Origins and scope The OW began in the 1960s in northeast Brazil. It spread from there throughout Latin America (Carmen & Sobrado, 2000). In the 1980s, it was introduced in an anglophone environment, first in Belize and then in southern Africa. Over the years, a number of variations of the method have developed. Here we focus on the OW in southern Africa. The OW is a practical exercise in fostering organisation in a large group. The minimum, in southern African practice, is 80 participants, although 300, or more, is not unusual. The OW is practical because participants do practical work. Typical kinds of work OW participants engage in include constructing buildings, remodelling, fencing pasture land, tree planting, canal digging, poultry farming, and laying out of gardens. Social work may be child minding, repairing crèches, mitigation of alcohol abuse, HIV/AIDS prevention, teaching music, and sports coaching. OWs typically last 4 to 6 weeks. They may take place at a training centre, in a community building, in a space owned by a cooperative, or at a marquee erected especially for this purpose.3 Spatial arrangements anticipate the early formation of a Participants’ Enterprise (also known as “the Team”; WOW, 2015), which will take on the managerial control of the physical space where the OW is held, as well as most of its running. Scaffolding (footnote 7) to facilitate the generation of organisational consciousness begins early. The spatial arrangements anticipate that, as soon as the participants organise themselves as a Participants’ Enterprise (PE; also known as the Team), they will take on managerial control of the place where the OW is held. Participants learn organising by organising; they organise themselves to do the work and are remunerated for completed tasks paid at market rates, according to the terms of contracts negotiated before the work is done. The parties to the contracts are the PE and the Facilitators Enterprise (FE; also known as the Crew). Part of the money that the PE collectively earns it spends on food, fuel, and other needed inputs during the OW itself. Part of it the PE pays to its own members for their work. Sharing a commonly pooled resource base (also known as the pool or inventory), the participants create an enterprise that produces real goods and services. Organisation workshops demonstrate in action an AT principle articulated by de Morais’s partner and widow, Jacinta Correia, as follows: “For people to learn, a real object has to be present that suggests or stimulates activity” (as cited in Downloaded by [The University of Manchester Library] at 08:50 28 November 2017 Carmen & Sobrado, 2000, p. 46; see also Andersson, 2013, p. 5ss). Each successful OW shows that the participants are able to create new—and in many cases long- lasting—economic and social enterprises and to initiate new ways of organising in the wider community (Andersson & Richards, 2015; WOW, 2015). Individuals who were unfamiliar with how complex organisations operate experience psychological changes that enable them to work in institutions that follow formal procedures. Such individuals are commonly found among the long-term unemployed and, as much of de Morais’s original work in Brazil shows, among artisans working alone (Andersson, 2010; Carmen & Sobrado, 2000,pp.54–58, 62–67; Correia, 2004; Holdt et al., 2011;Langa,2015; Wilson, 1994). Indeed, most OW participants tend to lack the skills needed to participate in complex organisa- tions. They are mainly the poor, the unemployed and underemployed, marginals, the excluded, and the dispossessed. OWs are usually located where opportunities for work, and workplaces, are few MIND,CULTURE,ANDACTIVITY 3 and far between. No one in the host community is excluded on principle. If more people want to participate than can be accommodated with the resources available, the host community will agree on a selection procedure. What happens in an Organisation Workshop After a short opening ceremony, the director calls on the participants to organise themselves into a PE. The FE, from then on, will not take questions from individuals, nor will there be any further intervention in the Team’s attempts to self-organise, a process that may take several days of trial and error. Ultimately, a successful OW will see the election, by the participants, of a management team to lead their PE, followed by the negotiation of the first work contracts with the Crew. As soon as the participants have elected a management team, the PE take stewardship of a common resource pool. This will include tools, equipment, and raw materials. All these items will have to be accounted for and returned at the end of the exercise. A modest capital fund is handed over to the PE management team.