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“Non-determinist vocabularies of coping with complex conditions for managing projects, development and change in organizations” Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Tilburg, op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. F.A. van der Duyn Schouten, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties aangewezen commissie in de Ruth First zaal van de Universiteit op vrijdag 23 september 2005 om 9.30 uur door ARNE VESTERGAARD geboren op 7 januari 1958 te Oddense, Denemarken. i Promotor: Prof.dr. J.B. Rijsman Copyright © 2005 Arne Vestergaard Printed in Denmark 2005 Production Underskoven - www.underskoven.dk ISBN 87-91496-77-2 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, without permission from the author. ii Table of contents Chapter 1: Introduction to the question 1 1.1 This Chapter 1 1.2. Author’s Background 1 1.3. Determinism and non-determinism in literature: vocabularies of coping 4 1.4. Non-determinism in organizations – observations from practice 13 1.5. Reflections from practice 17 1.6. What is the issue? 19 1.7. The aim 21 1.8. Why this issue? 21 1.9. How will I deal with the issue? 23 1.10. Summary: introduction to the question 24 Chapter 2: Research methodology 26 2.1. This Chapter: linking the question and methodology 26 2.2. Social constructionist perspective on methodology 27 2.3. The reflective practitioner and practical knowledge 30 2.4. Action research: from a scribe to a poet 32 2.5. Critical reflection on discourses of organizational theory on project management 34 2.6. Summary and conclusions 41 Chapter 3: Organizational psychological theory with case examples 43 3.1. This Chapter 43 3.2. Collective action as non-determinist approach 45 3.3. Non-determinism by collective meaning making 58 3.4 Appreciative organizing as a non-determinist strategy for coping 77 3.5. Self-organizing complex adaptive systems as a metaphor for non-determinism 87 3.6. Improvisation as a mindset for non-determinist approaches 105 3.7. Overview and conclusions 115 Chapter 4: Implementing non-determinism in an organization 117 4.1. This Chapter 117 4.2. Why this case, what is the focus? 117 4.3. The case with reflections 119 4.4. Summary and conclusions 138 iii Chapter 5: Radical non-determinism: Biotech case 143 5.1. This Chapter 143 5.2. Why this case? 143 5.3. The Case Story of Biotech B. 143 5.3. Summary and conclusions 146 Chapter 6: Trust and partnering 147 6.1. This Chapter 147 6.2. Why this case, and what is the focus? 147 6.3. Case story: Organizing for complexity in the building sector 148 6.4. Summary and conclusions 158 Chapter 7: Reframing the vocabulary of Project Management 160 7.1. This Chapter 160 7.2. Reflections on vocabularies of coping 161 7.3. Goal setting 162 7.4. Stakeholder management 163 7.5. Planning 163 7.6. Implementation 164 7.7. Team building 165 7.8. Control 166 7.9. Decision making 167 7.10. Conflict resolution 168 7.11. Review and evaluation 169 7.12. Summary and conclusions 170 Chapter 8: Conclusions for practitioners like myself 172 8.1. This Chapter 172 8.2. Mindsets prepared for non-determinist logic of coping 172 8.3. Continual research and inquiry 176 8.4. Re-pairing prediction and expectation 179 8.5. Concluding remarks on bridging determinist and non-determinist logics of coping 181 Final remarks and summary 183 Samenvatting 187 Literature 189 iv Preface comments About the book This book is a dissertation about my work as an organisational psychologist consultant, which has been my occupation for more than 15 years. It is also a book about organisational development and change in general, and project management in particular, which has been my speciality for more than 15 years. The target group of the book is the professors in the Committee and for members of my community of practice organisational psychologists and consultants with social constructionist tendencies. About reading the book Case stories from my practice, which form the data for this dissertation, are printed in italics with full margin. Reflections follow case stories under a bullet header: Reflections Quotations are “printed in italics with reduced margins” (Arne Vestergaard, 2004) v Chapter 1: Introduction to the question Chapter 1: Introduction to the question 1.1 This chapter 1.2. Author’s Background 1.3. Determinism and non-determinism in literature: vocabularies of coping 1.4. Non-determinism in organizations – observations from practice 1.5. Reflections from practice 1.6. What is the issue? 1.7. The aim 1.8. Why this issue? 1.9. How will I deal with the issue? 1.10. Summary: introduction to the question 1.1 This Chapter In this Chapter, the subject of the thesis is related to my prior work and to my present interests and values as an independent consultant and organizational psychologist. My relation to the thesis and the Taos-Tilburg programme can be and will be explored on several levels: Why am I a consultant in organizational psychology? Why am I interested in the subject of non- determinism? Why join a PhD programme and write a thesis? Why project organizations? These questions, and the reflections and answers to them, are relevant to the extent that it is considered impossible to work scientifically in the world of organizing, relating and collective sensemaking and function as an objective, rational and detached observer and collector of data. These are relevant questions to the extent that in the role as researcher I am caught, and not able to escape, the role of being someone in the world, and am left to experience the world in and through my participation in it, as well as in my conversations with others or with my internalised others. The position taken in this work is also introduced in this Chapter. 1.2. Author’s Background In 1988, I wrote my Master’s thesis on cognition: Formal and informal aspects of cognition in the light of different metaphors for cognition. I discussed to what degree cognition can be viewed as a formal, rule-governed process – as computation of symbols - in contrast to an understanding of cognition as an informal, more emergent property also related to phenomena outside the individual brain, for example culture, body and life history. The leading motive for me personally was to explore the question of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the 80s, the dominant metaphor within Cognitive Science was the personal computer as the “artificial brain”. Cognition was, in the light of this metaphor, seen as an information processing device, physically sited in the brain. Cognitive science explored human cognition by testing hypotheses about the rules of the “device” on computers. Through these tests, researchers were able to experience what cognition was not. When the models did not show the characteristics of the human cognition, 1 further refinement of the rules of the model was developed. This kind of research in cognition was characterised by what was called “the computational paradox” (Gardner, 1985). The paradox was, or is, that this approach of computer modelling and testing was capable of finding out what cognition was not – but not able to describe and create useful understandings of what it “really is”. This view of cognition has not proved successful in creating useful descriptions of the rules behind cognition in human beings. Outside bounded domains in laboratories and the like, computers did not prove very intelligent in comparison with humans. Rule-governed, formal devices had serious trouble in complex contexts such as everyday situations, and in situations with unpredictability and change. (Vestergaard, 1987). Gradually, the idea of cognition as property at a rule-governed device was questioned, and other metaphors and understandings were explored. When I wrote my Master’s thesis in 1987, alternative models or metaphors were those of seeing cognition as a process not governed by fixed rules but by other principles. Metaphors for cognition Five metaphors may illustrate these alternative principles for cognitive processes: 1) as an emergent property based on a) so-called “sub cognitive” processes in the brain (Hofstadter, 1987). Pattern recognition is seen as the primary characteristic of human cognition and intelligence. Pattern recognition makes it possible for humans to deal with unpredicted or atypical situations that we have no knowledge about in advance. He demonstrates by the help of “Gödel, Escher and Bach” that this ability cannot be a property of a formal device. b) the network of adaptive, formal devices. (This was in 1987, and before the Internet!). Parallel, distributed processing (PDP) was a new approach based on several computers connected and programmed to show the ability to adapt and “behave” according to informa- tion from the connected computers. It was demonstrated that these devices were able to “act intelligently” based on rather simple rules in the single computers. 2) the hologram as a metaphor, which was an attempt to understand the processes of cognition in a holistic perspective, in contrast to models of cognitions, that tries to model the basic level rules (Pribram, 1986). This metaphor is especially interesting because it is based on a device that suggests an alternative logic of representation. In a hologram, the information that can be unfolded to a three-dimensional picture is not located in a certain place – it is embedded in the pattern of the whole.

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