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Sustaining Engagement in Social Purpose Organizations: An Institutional Perspective on Positive Organizational Practices Warren O. Nilsson Faculty of Management McGill University, Montreal August 2009 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Warren O. Nilsson, 2009 Abstract This exploratory study seeks to develop theoretical insight into positive institutional work via a qualitative inquiry into the practices that constitute and sustain organizational engagement in social purpose organizations. Synthesizing the emerging field of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) (Cameron, Dutton et al., 2003), I define „positive‟ as a quality that reflects a state of intrinsic subjective fulfillment situated in a broader extrinsic framework of social, moral, and/or spiritual meaningfulness. The study focuses on organizational engagement as a particularly rich exemplar of the kinds of positive phenomena taken up by POS scholars. Based on existing empirical work (Kahn, 1990; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2003; May, Gilson et al., 2004; Schaufeli, Bakker et al., 2006), I define organizational engagement as a resilient, intersubjective experience of attunement, growth, mutuality, and meaning. Responding to the call of POS researchers to explore positive institution-building (Bernstein, 2003), and working from a neoinstitutional perspective (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Greenwood and Hinings, 1996; Scott, 2001), I develop comparative case studies of three social purpose organizations that have proven to be unusually engaging. The case studies show that organizational engagement is constituted and sustained via three sets of practices: 1. Transboundary Work: Practices that challenge role, task, group, and purpose boundaries, making those boundaries more pliable and permeable. 2. Inscaping: Practices that surface the inner, subjective experiences of organization members. 3. Expression: Practices that simultaneously express the needs, perspectives, and experiences of individual organization members and the identity of the organization as a whole. These practices suggest a mode of positive institutional work that differs from the institutional work portrayed in the literature (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). I theorize that positive institutional work has the following qualities: it is aspirationally motivated rather than protectively motivated; it is rooted in experiential legitimacy rather than symbolic legitimacy; its primary mode of agency is dialogical inquiry rather than dialectical contest. By integrating neoinstitutional theory with Positive Organizational Scholarship, this study fills significant gaps in our understanding of institutional work while simultaneously developing a robust typology of approaches to organizational engagement that should prove useful to social change practitioners. ii Résumé Cette étude exploratoire développe une compréhension théorique du travail institutionnel positif par le biais d’une enquête qualitative des pratiques qui constituent et maintiennent l’engagement organisationnel dans les organismes à vocations sociales. Afin d’effectuer une synthèse du champ d’études émergeant qu’est le Positive Organizational Scholarship (Recherche concernant les phénomènes organisationnels positifs) (Cameron, Dutton et al., 2003), je définis le terme «positif» comme une qualité reflétant un sentiment intrinsèque et subjectif d’accomplissement au sein d’un plus vaste cadre extrinsèque de sens moral, social et/ou spirituel. Cette étude se concentre sur l’engagement organisationnel, qui est un exemple particulièrement riche du type de phénomènes positifs dont traitent les spécialistes en P.O.S. En me basant sur un travail empirique existant (Kahn, 1990; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2003; May, Gilson et al., 2004; Schaufeli, Bakker et al., 2006), je définis l’engagement organisationnel comme une expérience d’harmonisation, de croissance, mutuelle et signifiante qui est à la fois résiliente et intersubjective. Afin de répondre à l’appel des chercheurs en Positive Organizational Scholarship (P.O.S) qui invitent à l’exploration de la construction d’institutions positives (Bernstein, 2003) et en travaillant à partir d’une perspective néo-institutionnelle (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Greenwood and Hinings, 1996; Scott, 2001), j’ai rédigé des études de cas comparant trois organisations à vocations sociales qui se sont avérées particulièrement engageantes. Ces études de cas démontrent que l’engagement organisationnel se constitue et se maintient par le biais de trois groupes de pratiques : 1- Le travail transfrontières: Constitué de pratiques qui remettent en question la délimitation des rôles, des tâches, des groupes et des objectifs, rendant ainsi ces frontières plus flexibles et perméables. 2-Le Inscaping : Constitué de pratiques qui ramènent à la surface les expériences intimes et subjectives des membres de l’organisation. 3- L’expression : Constitué de pratiques qui expriment simultanément les besoins, les perspectives et les expériences des membres individuels de l’organisation ainsi que l’identité de l’organisation dans son ensemble. Ces pratiques suggèrent qu’il existe un mode de travail institutionnel positif qui diffère de celui décrit dans la littérature (Lawrence et Suddaby, 2006). Je théorise que le travail institutionnel positif possède les qualités suivantes : c’est un travail auquel on aspire plutôt qu’un travail qu’on tente d’éviter, il est basé sur une légitimité vécue plutôt que symbolique et son mode premier d’action est le questionnement dialogique plutôt que la compétition dialectique. En intégrant la théorie néo-institutionnelle et le Positive Organizational Scholarship, cette étude comble des manques importants dans notre compréhension du travail institutionnel tout en développant une robuste typologie des approches à l’engagement organisationnel qui devrait être utile pour les praticiens du changement social. iii Acknowledgements It is overwhelming to reflect on the many souls who have supported and inspired me along the way to completing this thesis. I came to Montreal not only to pursue a doctorate, but to explore the possibilities of community and social change. As hopeful as I was when I arrived in 2001, I couldn‟t have imagined how fruitful this time would be for me, or how filled with generous and lovely friends. I will be able to thank only a small number of those friends in these acknowledgments, but I am thinking of all of them as I write. The first friend I want to thank is Montreal itself. It was love at first sight for me. If there is a warmer, more open, more joyful city on this planet then I congratulate it. A student can live like a king here, freely walking the streets at all hours, never in want of companions, food, entertainment, or enlightenment. It is a city that knows how to live, without making a show of it, and it has taught me a great deal. I am grateful to the doctoral program in the Management Faculty at McGill University. I suspect there are few management schools in North America where I would have been so amply encouraged to study the strange and poetic social purpose organizations that I study. The faculty has its share of devoted and alternative thinkers. Particular thanks to Robert David, whose organizational theory class was a keystone for me; Meg Graham, who knows that the words „innovation‟ and „social‟ can never be separated from each other; Mary Dean Lee, who taught me qualitative methods and who first gave me permission to think and write in ways that would respond faithfully to the beautiful things I was seeing in the world; and Frances Westley (now at Waterloo), who is a frighteningly dexterous thinker and scholar of social change. I was lucky enough to work as a research assistant for Frances‟s social innovation think tank. The dialogues she facilitated remain among the most satisfying conversations of my life. Thank you, as well, to the Ph.D. program directors during my stay – Jan Jorgensen and Kris Jacobs – who have been tireless and ecumenical in their support of the wild band of iv doctoral students wandering the halls at all hours. Special thanks to program administrator Stella Scalia, a wrangler and advocate who juggles the troubles and deadlines of dozens of us at a time. How she has managed not to throw even one doctoral student out of a fifth floor window during her time here I don‟t know. Thanks also to Hector Cantor who keeps the entire place running and has been a good friend to me and to many, many others. If you need a wise word, a friendly beer, or a sharp game of pool, you can never do better than Hector. And special thanks to Santa Balanca-Rodrigues who always had something kind to say and who could always find Henry when I needed him, no matter where he was in the world. Many thanks to my doctoral student colleagues over the years. Rick Bercuvitz was the first person to take me under wing, and I have continued to marvel at him as he pursues his creative and eclectic way through life. Pamela Lirio, Cheng-Hua Tzeng, Bettina Wittneben, Amelia Clarke, Hankyu Chu, and Fahri Karakas have all devoted themselves to organization studies with a progressive, humanitarian edge, and have inspired me by doing so. Yuanyuan Wu has been the perfect officemate and friend, always patient with my irregular and tumbled ways, and always ready to discuss anything under the sun from her unique, Yuanyuan-ish perspective. My friends Kimin Kim and Abhijit Ghosh have been with me from day one. The three of us have puzzled over the strangeness of doctoral work together. Kimin, in addition to being yet another perfect officemate, has been a wise and joyful companion. I have depended on him a great deal. Abhijit is a true original – his sweet spirit, quick mind, and self-deprecating sense of humor have never failed to lift me up. And special thanks to the brilliant Farzad Rafi Khan, whose courage, intellect, and ability to watch up to seven movies in a row kept me on the righteous path. Every time I spoke to Farzad, I learned something new and important. This may be because Farzad suffers from a rare anatomical condition: his mouth is directly connected to his brain and to his heart.