Researching the Lecture a Mystery in Organizational Practice

8/8/2019 Researching the Lecture a Mystery in Organizational Practice

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EXAM PAPER I8200 Kristianne Ervik Page 1

Reseaching the Lecture: a Mystery inOrganizational Practice

Author: Kristianne V. L. Ervik, PhD Candidate, Department of Industrial Economics and

Technology Management, NTNU

Category: Exam Paper for I8200

Key words: Organization Lecture, Phronesis, Community of Practice, Sensemaking

Abstract

This paper constructs the lecture used in organizations as a mystery worthy of investigation.Taking intended effects of the lecture either as informing work practices or being completelyseparate from them, presents a start in participants matter of interest. These positions will becritiqued for enforcing a hegemonic model of knowledge and science; instead a view of knowledgeas situated and working according to diverse rationalities is presented. I want to make a novelreading of the lecture as providing legitimate peripheral participation in different communities of practice, leading to questions of sensemaking, identity and power being as important as questioningthe views presented in the lecture. This will lead to a better understanding of the exchange betweendifferent communities of practices in organizations, and a vantage point from which to investigatebetter use of resources.

Introduction

The charismatic Humorous Farmer has reinterpreted his vocation from nurturing pastures,

which his forefathers did, to nurturing people. His work is part highly paid, part unpaid. He does

unpaid, voluntary work to develop his own and other's local communities through harnessing the

power of fiery souls. His farm is both a riding facility for children and a visiting farm offering team

building activities. His most highly paid work is, however, motivational lectures and change

facilitation for organizations. Collections of employees get to hear about his successes, ideas and

inventions in community development, extracted to teachings and delivered with humour.

Afterwards the audience often get to have a shot at being creative and courageous in an enacted

process.


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In community development the Humorous Farmer and his alliance of similarly inclined

individuals, the Lifeworks, has spawned many new endeavours. They turn pride in provinciality

into a surprising advantage and have aided rural communities to be socially abundant. While local

communities might take the Humorous farmer as example and ideal, formal organisations are

geared towards different common goals than communities. It is difficult to see how the lectures are

contributing to those organisations. How has it become natural that members of an organization

occasionally get paid to sit down and listen to somebody who gives them some insights and a few

laughs (not necessarily in that order)? Why do people who are skilled in making the presentation a

remarkable experience not only get paid, but can charge a fee equivalent to an average monthly

wage to do so?

Professors can become academic rock stars if they look the part and have a model to talk

about (Take Richard Florida whose innovation model for large American cities has become

commonly referred to in rural Norway). Others are simply famous people (Alex Rosen - How to

reach your goal with the worst possible team), others are former athletes (Erik Thorstvedt on

teambuilding sells Do we have anything to learn from men in short pants?), and some are not

widely known in public, like the Humorous Farmer, but are hired just because they can talk the talk.

The preliminary research question is: do any of these people who talk the talk make the

listeners walk the walk? A little folk wisdom in the form of an acronym says Bohica bend over,

here it comes again suggesting that corporate change programs dont change much. The folk

wisdom for inspirational lectures is that they elevate moods for a day and a half, and then

everything is back to normal. Big money is spent on consultants to run corporate change programs.

Workers do not believe that they have any effect, and research shows that it rarely does (e.g.

Ghoshal, 2006).

The inspirational lecture, either alone or part of a change program should then be expected

to have little effect. Also organizational research points in the same direction: technology transfers

that do not take local actors, culture and conditions into consideration has little effect (Levin, 1995).


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Instruction manuals written without considering the actual application of it, will not be used (Orr,

1990). Most strategies planned will not be successful if they do not match the context (Mintzberg,

1998). Learning when sitting down, listening to somebody talking, apparently will only make you

good at sitting down and listening whilst someone is talking (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Practice

situations are different, and therefore it is surprising both that lectures are so widely used, and that it

seems that anyone with success, from a completely different background from listeners have the

authority to bring forth their models of success.

The above presented theory cannot explain why talks are perceived to be needed within

organizations. The premise of this paper is that the lecture as an organizational tool has a

flourishing market, but the interest from the research community has been scant. I assume that this

is because it has not been seen worthy of investigation, not because it is not known. A better

understanding of these questions allows us both to examine the relations between the expected

outcome of a lecture and the actual outcome which is the first step in acknowledging the value of

the lecture, and in turn making the organizational frames better suited to exchanges between

different communities of practices.

Positioning a Socially Relevant Research

With this paper I want to place myself in a research position that allows me to produce

meaningful knowledge on the lecture, both within a research community, and towards the

practitioners that find the lecture to be an appropriate tool. Doing so, I follow Skjervheim (1976)

advice that the researcher must recognize herself also an acting subject within the same society that

the research concerns. He sketches out two ways in which a researcher may relate to his research.

One is as a participant in a shared interest in a subject matter the other version is to make the other

and his topic a fact to consider. Skjervheims concern is this: The person that makes the other an

object, situating the others arguments in a context while keeping oneself above context, is the


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working allocating their resources toward a common goal (e. g. March and Simon, 1958) we start

by assuming that it influences the ability of the organization to reach said goals.

The folk wisdom that says otherwise is a start to find a phenomenon that is worthy of

studying: a puzzle in Elsters terms. A puzzle is defined as a well-established explanandum for

which there is no well-established explanation (p 16). To explain it, one should find the theory that

best supports it, and rule out other possibilities. If nothing was expected to result from the lecture, it

would soon be obsolete. Also, if the reason is purely altruistic or for entertainment purposes only, it

cant explain why these lectures are about work, even though they might be highly entertaining. We

can reformulate our puzzle into two apparently competing versions: If the lecture informs people

and enable them to do their work: How is somebody expected to work differently in the wake of a

lecture? And if it is not about work at all: How come the work organization pays people to do things

not related to work?

The talk formulated as a puzzle will give answers that are explainable. However, the main

problem with Elster's recipe is that he cannot explain aggregate states without starting with the first

actor who thought about an action. To go back to the very first incidences of something is

interesting, but it sharply limits the type of explanations one can write. For the matter of the talk I

will abandon the urge to go back to psychological states or first moves, and instead create a

plausible back drop for the lecture given within work organizations in terms of two salient

perspectives that have shaped the beliefs around work and the relations between employees and

organizations: scientific management and human resources development. These two correspond

roughly to two types of expertise hired to influence the organization (Braverman, 1974), and can

serve as a starting point for understanding possible theories as espoused combined with the practice

of the lecture.

Rather than take Elsters advice to play around with the steps in a hypothetical deductive

method, I'd like to step in the direction of not being ashamed that sense of intuition is a resource in

research. Alvesson and Krreman (2007) call the puzzle a mystery that has to be resolved through


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abduction. Abduction is a mode of handling and interpreting complex data. Abduction is neither

induction nor deduction, but a middle way in which one grasps reality through existing theories to

forms the basis of a consolidated theoretical framework. In this paper that means that I explain what

the lecture could be intended to do, and then combine it with the literature where it apparently has

no place. The result in this case will be a theoretical framework that allows us to investigate the

lecture in practice.

A last point for responsible research is that the researcher does not only offer herself to

critique for the position one takes and for the relevance of the questions but also for the results of

that research to be used in a conscious manner. Action research makes as its field the learning

processes that the researchers may contribute to, through an active involvement with problem

owners who want something changed (Greenwood and Levin, 2007). More specifically, the goal of

an action research process is to stimulate cogeneration of knowledge in a way that supports

democratization. Action research is based on believing that certain values should be guiding for

what one is doing, and that also implies that the researcher has to risk that the contribution might

fail to comply with the set values. One might risk creating a pseudo-legitimization for controlling

employees under a guise of participation. This is a valid caution that needs to be examined in every

case, but one should take the risk, since Action Research can make contributions to human

betterment in all contexts (Greenwood and Levin, 2007, 263). A theoretical paper on lectures may

not be something that may be used directly in a context where talks are performed. It is, however, a

starting point for a discussion with practitioners on whether the current practice of the lecture

should be changed to better fit the stated goals of the organizations, or whether it should be

explained differently to fit the actual effect of it.

The article proceeds according to the following structure. First , I discuss the dominant

apparatus of understanding management as scientific and the lecture as a hegemonic way of

delivering knowledge. The claim for scientific validity has serious shortcomings. This leads the way

into introducing different types of rationality in the organisation with the help of Flyvbjergs (1991)


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concept of phronesis as an ethic rationality guiding an understanding of who we are and what we

do. Second , the organisational point of view that the lecture is a reward introduces the relationship

between external and internal motivation, opening for an understanding that the type of talk

interesting to study is one that might have an impact on the work environment understood as the

socio-technical system. Third , Lave and Wengers concept of situated learning is used to describe

knowing and change as a relation between different communities of practice. This allows us to

further analyze the lecture as legitimate peripheral participation. In particular, sensemaking and

reflections on values and identity become prominent possible effects of the lecture. I conclude with

some final reflections on my approach.

The lecture informs people of how to do their work

The lecture has few champions, probably because it is either the natural medium to transfer

knowledge from those with the knowledge to those without, or dismissed as ineffective. It is a

cheap way of delivering knowledge, and has been accused of being good for teaching, but bad for

learning (Jones, 2007). It probably has its origin in a Greek oral tradition, and is opposed to the

Aristotelian view of discussions and asking questions as the best way of teaching (Jones, 2007). The

persistence of the lecture in university settings may however, be seen as a tell-tale sign of a

Tayloristic nature of modern universities, forced to regurgitate the number of processed study

points as a token of productivity, when the goal is merely that the students reproduce the knowledge

presented by the lecturer.Drucker (1999) claims that Taylor's main invention is that he separated knowledge from

manual labour reducing them to repetitive motions. Taylor (1911) formulated the principles of

scientific management as an aid to the manager who wants to see his work force as a totality, and

paved the way for the expert influencing the organisation from the outside. His main idea was that

scientific methods could be used to analyze work, rearrange its constituent parts and divide it

amongst workers so that the total of several mens work constituted a systematic whole. This whole


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is more efficient than if each man should learn and perform a whole range of tasks. In line with

methods from natural science, science requires an object to study, and an independent scientist who

can analyze the tasks objectively and rationally. Even if the worker was able to handle the complex

task of analysis, performing the task at the same time as doing research would preclude his research,

and probably fuddle his tasks as well.

Taylor is an advocate for management involving themselves in the tasks on the shop floor

which is an important acknowledgement of knowledge at work. However, the consequences of

believing in the one best way means that it need not be management or workers who involve

themselves it might as well be some hired expertise. Taylor might recommend a lecture to teach

management the scientific process, and indeed he spent the latter part of his life as a consultant

engineer to aid scientific management processes.

Whilst hugely effective, it does however, not fit most jobs today, and another guru has

entered the stage. Drucker's (1999) vastly successful scheme, predicts that as long as workers

understand their task as being of service to a greater good outside the company, it is possible for

management to set up goals for employees and revisit them to become more efficient. In addition to

aid setting goals, the role of management is to nurture and feed workers with interesting tasks that

might help them grow. The workers need to learn continuously, and be creative to produce output

that is continuously innovative.

Contrary to Taylor's scientific management, where someone outside the tasks should analyse

them and make them better, Drucker (ibid.) locates the know-how with the workers themselves. A

need for Continuous innovation and learning requires engaged people who are able to balance

compliance and efficiency with creativity and efficacy. It is a lot to ask of people, and in Drucker's

visionary book, Management challenges for the 21st century (1999) the final chapter is aptly

named Managing oneself (1999:161). Production of knowledge is synonymous with knowledge

workers having responsibility for their own contribution. In fact, people cant be managed, he says,

they have to be lead, according to the tasks they are to perform.


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Placing scientific rationality in context

The separation between management and leadership should mark a significant change in the

type of rationality used to legitimize the impact management has over workers. Already at

acknowledging the importance of the companys mission statement, one should see the signs of

crossing over from the field of science to the field of religion. But Drucker (1999) still strives for

the scientific way of management, the one best way. However, the objectives have changed from

manual analysis to methodology to make sure people commit to common goals. Hence, knowledge

about work is re-located in the worker, but a residue factor on how to understand work as part of

life-long learning or greater society is an expertise best left to leadership scientists.

However, as Srhaug (2004) has shown, setting goals is dependent on getting followers to

share the values of the leader. The scommunity of practicee is changing the game rather than

explaining the rules, and workers have to be transformed into followers, because the leader is a

charismatic figure worth following.

Charismatic leadership (Srhaug, ibid.) enables workers to align their goals with those of the

organisation, without necessarily giving up control over the tasks. People invest faith in the leader,

whilst still believing that it is perfectly rational. The lecture may in this sense have a function of

legitimizing common goals. Srhaug (2004) writes about the current state of leadership as

managementality where leadership is treated as an independent property that may be studied in

lab-like environments. The resulting hypotheses are more like dogma than science, and almost any

new theory has to dismiss the previous ones for choosing the wrong factors. Either they have to

over-simplify leadership into great man-theories, losing relevance, or overcomplicate into

everything is connected-theories, losing validity. This problem with trying to be like a natural

science has contributed to organisational researchers choosing to stay away from the field.

One could believe that this is reason to dismiss the lecture. On the contrary, releasing it from

the emotionless grip of scientific management might enable us to investigate other aspects of the

lecture than the content. Instead of thinking about the lecture as informing someone of the state of


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the world, it is easier to think of it as art or religion, as belonging to an aesthetic or ethic rationality.

The widespread use of the lecture in educational institutions could point to some similar

advantages. The lecture is an effective way of making sure that many people get to share an

experience, and that the presence of an enthusiastic lecturer may show the highlights of a topic,

inspiring further inquiry (Young and Diekelman,2003, Patrick et al, 2000)

This indicates that the lecture can be understood not by what is taught, but by what is learnt

or understood from them, and what type of knowing is inspired. Whilst Srhaug leaves us at

advising the leader to carry a well-stocked toolbox, Flyvbjerg (1991) urges the organizational

scientist to include different types of rationality in his research. Social science rationality has to be

expanded to include phronesis. Phronesis is an intellectual virtue that goes beyond both art and

science, but has been left out for not seeming relevant to analytic rationality. In phronesis one

balances instrumental and value rationality, asking questions of values and interests. In this view,

we cannot understand the lecture without looking at it as a totality of what values it supports, and

whether the shared experience itself has any benefits for the listeners.

Describing the scommunity of practicee of organisations to include ethics and aesthetics in

addition to the commonplace rational decision making that is made an ideal (March and Simon,

1958) turn identity and reflection into important parts of the lecture practice. We will take the last

part first. What if the content of the talk is completely irrelevant, that the lecture is an art form with

no relevance to work what so ever, but still deemed necessary?

The lectures has nothing to do with work, the target is the work

environment

The entertaining nature of the lecture might lead us to go to the other extreme, that the

organization is spending money on the lecturer, but not expecting the topic to have any influence on

work. One solution is that common experiences are expected, that getting a trip and a few laughs in

addition to a summer and Christmas party is a sign that the organisation cares for the employees, it


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is a sign of the work place being attractive, and that the employees are attractive. The work

environment is better than before. But why could they not go to the theatre or just spend all the

resources on sauna and booze? If any experience would do, it is difficult to account for how so

many lectures pose as having a theme that is related to work and often the legitimating for being

able to talk is to have had success in one area that is transferred to the work setting, examples that

may show that it is possible to succeed in adverse conditions and the tools the lecturers used to

overcome those obstacles.

Braverman (1974) criticizes Taylor for not only creating room for one expert, but for two.

One type of expert was hired to design the work process. Since designing the tasks are the most

important it left in its wake the need for another type of expert: the expert on worker adjustment.

The separation of tasks into individual, repetitive motions renders work unwholesome for the

workers who have to perform the work. They are left with viewing only parts of the systemic whole

that the organization is their tasks become meaningless motions. The latter experts, exemplified

by Mayo and his attention studies, preached that the human side of the worker had to be managed as

well but not as part of work, as part of HR, HME and other parts of the organization dealing with

matters not intrinsic to work itself. This might also happen with knowledge workers, already aptly

described by Weber (1974), the rules of bureaucracy might feel like a cage where tasks loose

inherent meaning. Models of thinking that may aid overlooking the meaninglessness and focusing

on what we can do is a solution to master adverse conditions.

If we look to the socio-technical direction taken by amongst others the researchers at

Tavistock institute, this would be external dimensions of job satisfaction on par with pay and social

standing in the community as a result of doing a job. An early example is that of Trist and Bamforth

(1951). They reject that monetary compensation and external motivation is enough on the grounds

of empirical material from British mines. The companies provided workers with a pay they

considered decent, and funded meaningful leisure activities like brass bands. The miners enjoyed a

high standing in the community, and yet their productivity increase was less than expected when


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they changed from small autonomous work groups to the shift-based long wall technique. One shift,

that of the fillers, consisted of 20 men all doing the same tasks in parallel under highly varying

conditions. The work scheme calculated expected productivity as if the conditions were ideal. One

problem in such an environment is that any deviance can only be negative. The workers started with

strategies to defend themselves against these adverse work conditions. The strategies could make

the failure to meet the standards plausible, but the strategies are inefficient, not adaptive and able to

make up for the loss of expected productivity.

In this case, no amount of external motivation was enough reordering work according to

scientific management is lacking in correspondence between the social and technical side of work

(Trist, 1981). The socio-technical system consists of technology and people, and technology has to

be adjusted to local conditions. From this viewpoint there is no use in talking and teaching people

how to be happy with what they have if they have no reason to because the fit between technology

and organizing is bad. Problems at the work place can't be solved merely by introducing new

strategies to handle adversities. The conditions for meaningful work environment have to be

satisfied by intrinsic dimensions of job satisfaction. These are that the work provides variety and

challenge, continuous learning, autonomy, recognition and support, that they feel that they

contribute meaningfully to a social network and that the future is desirable. If the lecture should be

researched in this way it would be natural to investigate whether a lecture could contribute to any of

these factors.

The focus will have to shift from the content of the lecture to the context. We have to rather

look at what the result of the lecture is. Trist (1981) writes that if people dont expect the intrinsic

motivational factors, they will not require it consciously. If the lecture can convince people that

they already have the intrinsic factors, or that they have a need for these factors then it could be the

first step of a serious change. The research of Amabile (1999) points out that the organizational

creativity is more connected to these intrinsic factors of motivation than creative-thinking skills. If

the lecture is to inspire new thinking, it might have more to do if they have an organization that is


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already suited to handle new ideas than the ideas themselves. To understand the lecture we really

need to move away from what is offered, to what is received by the listeners to the talk.

Situating the Lecture in Communities of PracticeMoving away from the content to the context of the lecture, we navigate towards a view of

knowledge as diverse in form, and located in relations between people. When holding a view that

knowledge is created one place and put into practice another place, it points to a hegemonic view of

knowledge, not only of the lecture as medium. The hegemony is that there is a hierarchy of

knowledge, in which science, created by scientists at a university, is the highest form of knowledge

possible (Nowotny et al, 2001). This knowledge can be dispersed to polytechnic colleges where the

scientific knowledge is taught to future practitioners. The educated practitioners are fit for positions

within organizations. By this logic it is natural that a lecture by a professor is a part of the

management tool-box to keep up with developments within organizational science or general

changes in the world. A group of researchers and science administrators headed by Gibbons have

analyzed the European research community and knowledge production termed this view of

knowledge production mode 1 (Gibbons et al, 1994). This idea has probably never existed in a pure

form, but it has nevertheless been an ideal and model for thinking that have shaped how institutions

of learning are formed, and how most people view science. The alternative is what the group calls

mode 2 namely that knowledge is formed in interplay between different traditions and sectors. In

the ensuing book, Rethinking Science, this time headed by the prominent science bureaucrat HelgaNowotny (2001), the group presents their vision for science in a world of intermingling

communities. They advocate the agora a public discussing space where science has taken a

multitude of voices into account. This vision breaks down the hegemonical authority of disciplines

over the right knowledge, in favour of creating socially robust knowledge that can be tested in

public, the agora. A multitude of researchers and practitioners ensure that the ensuing knowledge is

trustworthy. This vision locates knowledge creation out of the scientists office, but it is unclear


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with regards practical advice on both creation of knowledge and the function of talks and lectures in

organizations.

The idea that someone can disperse authoritative knowledge from a production central has

also been critiqued from a view of learning. This is more down to earth and may provide a context

for the lecture that includes it in local knowledge production. Lave and Wenger (1991) situate

learning within practices, and highlight that as soon as one starts to learn something, one actually

does a form of what more knowledgeable participants do. They criticize learning that is

disconnected from the reality in which the knowledge is practiced for being irrelevant to practice.

When beginning to learn a practice, one mimics more experienced practitioners, from a peripheral

position without full responsibility for actions. Lave and Wenger have situated learning in

communities of practice. Learning in organizations are done through the forming of communities

in which practitioners gain an identity (Brown and Duguid, 1991), defined in negotiation between

themselves and others.

The practice of listening to a lecture, is one most know very well, and associate with

learning. Diekelmann and colleagues (2003) suggest that to reform the lecture, one may avoid

lecturing what students already know by starting the lecture with an interactive case where the

lecturer portions out their knowledge according to the questions posed by students in reference to a

particular case. The lecturer can then make sure that she has covered the intended curriculum. The

only problem with this approach: students do not feel that they have learnt much. The solution

suggested in this paper is that the lecturer carefully notes down the order in which they have gone

through the topics, to assert the students of what they have learnt. A similar problem may arise in

the organization. The presence of the lecturer helps the feeling that there is something to be learnt,

something new to be contemplated, rather than just having a discussion locally. By this logic we

can explain the presence of the expression bohica in the light of the hegemony of knowledge. Even

if the lecturer wants to inspire the listeners to think for themselves, the listeners expect teachings

that may be reproduced and placed into action.


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That something is learnt does not mean that action will be changed. Experience is framed so

that it is difficult to transfer knowledge even between different situations within a single community

(Goffman, 1974). Differences in the organisational frames where they were made and where they

will be carried out will influence whether they are carried out. Brunsson (2006) introduces

hypocrisy as a useful organisational practice one where ideas and action are parallel but not

necessarily linked activities. He separates the political from the action organisation, but there is no

contradiction in one organisation being both. Any constellation between those two are legitimate

too, so that whether action leads to new ideas or vice versa is not that important. Whilst the action

organisation makes products, the political organisation makes sense. Talking is necessary to handle

inconsistent demands and a need to place oneself in a greater connection, and might be just as

productive as action, even though most organizations present themselves as action oriented.

Many lectures precede an intended learning or development process in the organisation,

where the output supposedly is actions or change. In an instrumental understanding of management

and leadership, change is seen as coming from the outside to influence the organization (Tsoukas

and Chia, 2002, Beer, 2004).This enforces a view that change is something that is done to

organizations intermittently. Lave and Wengers model of learning enables a view where change

does not happen on impulses from the outside. On moving from being a novice practitioner to a full

participant in a community of practice, people do not mindlessly absorb the right knowledge. It is

negotiated. Change is rather seen as something that happens in the interplay between experienced

and newcomer participants. Organizations are perpetually becoming what they intend to or want to

be (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002) Change is everywhere and natural in the interplay between people and

communities, whilst keeping something the same requires continuous effort. Viewed in this way,

one might concede that the lecture should be abandoned from organizations as the participants

themselves should be allowed to develop the communities of practices. Brown and Duguid (1991)

even state that trying to change things by downskilling might drive working communities of


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practice underground, so that the learning, working and innovation done in practice is hidden from

the formal organization.

If it is nave to believe that the lecture might have a place as an organizational tool, we are

left at a puzzle are people simply misinformed and buy a cheap and ineffective lecture instead of

spending time and money on giving workers the space they need to develop the organization

themselves? Even if new models result in new theory as espoused the theory in practice might

remain the same (Argyris and Schn, 1984). The lecture might have a place in the interplay between

different communities of practice. All participants in communities are somehow legitimate

peripheral participants because they participate in several communities of practice and each

community of practice comprises concepts and ideas that are more or less shared between its

participants (Lave and Wenger, 1991). The lecture may be viewed as a contribution to local

knowledge creation. The talker is not seen to have a formula that is to be implemented in the

organization, but his reflections and techniques might inspire a local adaptation.

Having made a distinction between action and talk practices, we might view the research of

the lecture as one mainly examining the talk practice it becomes a part of. We might want to track

the trajectories of talk that is reproduced and changed in the organisation as a basis of the models

presented in the lecture, but those models are no longer interesting in themselves. Now that I have

introduced Community of practice as a context for the lecture, I want to proceed by examining

some topics that will be interesting to pursue. First, the values underlying the lecture will inform

questions of compatibility of examples. Second, the relation between the lecture and sensemaking

resurfaces the images presented in the lecture as sensemaking, connecting ideas in new ways with

each other and possibly with action. Finally, we can now view the lecture as legitimate peripheral

participation in the respective Community of practices of lecturer and listeners, and matters of

identity and power will emerge.


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Lectures, value rationality and phronesis

Further drawing on Srhaug (2004), any organisation constitutes a community of senses

where tradition and belief produce a certain kind of value rationality. The metaphors that describe

what a company is up to, also shapes what it produces. It is important here to make clear that just as

there often is values espoused that dont necessarily reflect ways of doing things, on par with

theories espoused. Phronesis, described as an ethic rationality (Flyvbjerg, 1991), is about making

judgement and deliberations about what one should do, and whether the direction in which one is

heading is desirable. Where analytic rationality is abstract, phronesis works not by applying rules

but by comparing examples. Understood in this way, the mere fact that the lecturer brings in

outsider examples will inspire phronetic comparison and translating of concrete examples.

This can be exemplified by Drucker (1999) who believes that businesses can learn from

voluntary work, as people working for no money must have greater satisfaction than people who

work because of a pay check. He finds that the difference is that in voluntary work the mission of

the organisation has to be stated so that people are willing to commit themselves towards a common

goal. However, several goals might be reached by the same actions.

Another example is provided by Srhaug (2004). In the search for ideals, Srhaug

says:Sports have simply become a major supplier of value rationality to modern work and society

(2004:89, my translation). Sports nurture performance over care, and is measured through taking

part in a competition. To reach to the very top of the competition is to search for the bottom line of

the organization, which is often a too narrow goal for many organizations that rely on talk practices

as much as bottom line. Echoing the Swedish bureaucracy Brunsson (2006) uses to explain the

political organization, Srhaug (2004) uses bureaucracy as an example of a value rationality that is

able to produce purpose for a variety of employees and customers. In such settings, the sports

metaphor might be too simple. It reduces these other goals and values to a logic where a persons

contribution becomes merely the hours they put in. In examining the fit between the value

rationality of the Community of practices that the lecture operates within, I want to aim for


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understanding whether the examples that the lecturers use in fact can be translated into work

organizations.

Lecture to inspire sensemaking

It might be preposterous to believe that listening to examples from different types of

practices can make people think more new thoughts than if they were using interactive tools for

generating ideas. However, these examples can be framed in such a way that they might break down

the barriers to new thinking that people impose on themselves. Tools to generate ideas are ready at

hand, however, it is easier to make ideas than to develop them into practice, whether talk or action.

Berger and Luckman (1971) explain in their view of sociology of knowledge that an objective

reality is taken for granted because it is internalised in the community members. Small changes are

weaved unnoticeably into the fabric of living, whilst larger changes either are ignored because there

are no acceptable descriptions available within society, or it causes a rupture that call for new

explanations and get them. The objective reality, since it is not so objective, actually make it

difficult to do something radically new because it might be dismissed as irrelevant, deviant or dirty

(Douglas, 1966). However, when a surprising cue is captured it might result in new thinking. How

this happens is conceptualized by Weick (1995) as sensemaking.

Weick (ibid) defines sensemaking as a process where surprising cues are discussed and

placed into reality. The cues must be enlarged and recognized explicitly to make them fit together

and into previous frames. These frames are in turn changed in the process. Sensemaking can only

said to have happened if several people agree. A collection of people who discuss among

themselves can develop intersubjectivity. They make sense together and in interaction with the rest

of the world, in order to carve out a place for themselves, as a community of practitioners.

Sensemaking is more salient in organizations than any other place because organizations are so

explicitly dealing with their right to existence, and they do so socially, as a collective. Community

of practices inside organizations have to develop what Weick calls a generic identity: a collective

"we", in which people may fill in for each other and speak from the same positions. So sensemaking


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may be understood as the practice of understanding the world as well as ones own identity in that

world.

Sensemaking can is this way be understood as a practice both of talk and of identity. A

lecturer might bring in new perspectives from which sensemaking may evolve by presenting his

models in surprising ways. Whilst what people agree with, they can easily forget, whilst ideas that

trigger friction require explanations if they are to be accepted. I want to explain this by taking

humour as an example.

Humour has a dual character, as things operating by aesthetic rationalities often do.

(Srhaug, 2004). It alludes to possibilities of doing things differently than today highlighting that

which is taken for granted and giving a window for exploring parallel realities. The joke is

subversive in that it plays with a parallel reality where things are different (Westwood,2005). For a

split second, until one takes the joke, the construction of the world is threatened. However, in the

punch line the joke gives a sort of catharsis that points in two directions concurrently: a release that

luckily the world is as it is, but also that there is an opening where the world could be changed into

something different. The matter of the joke, or wit or other type of humour, is in a way brought out

of their taken-for-grantedness as a surprising and acknowledging that something could be

different is the first step in making sense of it differently.

Weick (1995,182 ) offers several advice to be successful at sensemaking both as a

researcher and a practitioner. One is to keep an abundance of possible explanations at bay, so that

any action can foster sensemaking, rather than working by an analytic rationality of planning first

and then doing. Another is to focus on shared experience rather than on shared meanings. As long

as people have a common basis on which to make sense, it does not matter whether they fully agree.

In examining the lecture, this perspective will allow us to ask questions of whether sharing

an experience of a lecture will give rise to local sensemaking, and to what degree surprises like wit

and humour will aid that process.


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Power, Identity and Legitimate Peripheral Participation

The lecturer can be an aid to bring in new images of what is important in the organization,

not by the models presented, but by the authority he represents. A new regime of leadership has to

set a new beginning that must be experienced both as new and relevant to the organization

(Srhaug, 2004). The act of leadership shows itself to be successful in the results that the followers

create, but they arent available yet, so to make the new model work one has to lend authority from

the future, or from someone who has already used that model with success. Not only scientists can

bring authoritative knowledge athletes and celebrities are people who have had success can use

their biography as a war story. Whether workers may have something to learn from their examples

is less interesting than the identity they may take on for associating themselves with the successful.

When the lecturer talks he might legitimize nice and nifty models, convincing the audience

that it is the one best way to understand the world. The model is left behind as a fetish of all the

knowledge of the talker it is a representation of the authoritative source (Srhaug, 2004) in the

same way that in voodoo a doll may represent the person. If listeners fail to repeat the background

for the learnings/teachings afterwards, the supposed follower is always at fault, since he cannot

compete with the authority vested in the lecturer.

Since the authority of the speaker is really charismatic (and most people know that), it might

explain why the market for lectures also includes people who are neither scientists or successful

business people. Success might be fetishized, and just by association with someone famous, one

may feel that some of the secret of their (assumed) power is left behind when they speak.

The listeners are part/time participants in the community of practice that the lecturer

represents, which by the logic presented above is presented as attractive. The other way round is

also worth examining, that the lecture itself gives some concepts that are really in the periphery of

the community of practice, but are put into play.

If one constructs identity in relation to other practitioners (Lave and Wenger,1991) the

members from the organization might identify themselves with being those kind of people that


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discuss their matters with lecturer X. The lecture often provides room for discussions or asking

questions to the lecturer and merely the interaction will be identity-forming. Flyvbjerg (1991), in

stating ideals for research, advices to ask value rational questions: who are we, where are we going,

and is it desirable. In addition, it is important to bring power into the question: who wins and who

loses if something is changed. By looking into who has had ability to associate and confer with the

lecturer, both before and after the actual lecture, one might begin to understand who will be

supported by the lecturers community of practice and whether the sensemaking will be brought

into trajectories of learning outside that practice.

Final reflections

I want to end by asserting that this kind of research should be understood as part of an

Action Research process, and recapture the angles of approach that this entails. Action research as

described by Greenwood and Levin (2007) is the type of research to position itself clearly with

values, and democracy is one of the most important. Any social science methodology can be

accepted, but the credo is to do good. Even though the researcher is in the periphery of the

community of practice of both lecturers and listeners, by joining the conversation one will have to

offer oneself as a fellow practitioner, as someone interested in the well-being of the people one

interacts with. To produce relevant knowledge one has to stay close to the context where the lecture

is intended to have effect. I have asserted the importance of understanding the interplay between the

community of practices of listeners and lecturers, and the diverse rationalities that the lectureworks from. In this way, the research on the lecture will be able to have an impact on the practice,

either by influencing the understanding of it, or even better, to influence how organizations bring in

influences from different communities of practice.


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