Pursuing methods for storifying organization space

Hakushi Hamaoka

School of Business and Economics

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Email: [email protected]

Stream 15: Open spaces for theorizing, Theorizing open spaces

1

APROS 16: ‘Theorizing Open Space, Lived Space and Learning’

(Old Stream 15: Open spaces for theorizing, Theorizing open spaces)

Paper title: ‘Pursuing methods for storifying organization space’

Author: Hakushi Hamaoka

PhD candidate in Management, School of Business and Economics

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal


Abstract

It has been acknowledged that organizations consist of a plurality of realities; thus, it is

important to account for less visible ones to understand processes of organizing, changes and

resistance to them better. Doing so has significant implications for power and norms in

organizations. However, accounting for plural realities, processes and practices appears to

trouble as much as urge many like-minded scholars. This paper proposes an alternative method

which diversifies possible alternative ways of (re)constructing reality from text data by

appreciating researchers’ imaginative capacities, including their sense of evaluative/moral

appropriateness, and the power of words as three distinct agencies. The paper also proposes to

test and examine effectiveness of the method among management and organization scholars,

typically by associating studies that revealed practices involving mutually contradictory

theories, reasons and/or duality with one another. The effectiveness of the method might be

evaluated by the degrees of ambiguity and uncertainty that researchers will have felt nurtured,

rather than eliminated. While everyone’s once-occurring present or sense of evaluative/moral

appropriateness is the key to appreciate as well as to attempt to resolve such irremediable

problems as power imbalances, it is ambiguities and uncertainties that increase chances to

establish meaningful associations between otherwise fragmentary realities. The proposed

method potentially contributes scientific descriptions of human ways of thinking/knowing and

being in the material world based on holistic knowledge about practices that operate in an

alternate and diegetic manner between actors who each attempt to make better sense of reality

in respect of each other’s evaluative/moral appropriateness.

Keywords: research methods, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, ethics

mailto:[email protected]


Hakushi Hamaoka





2

1 Introduction

In this paper, I would like to discuss how to materialize organizations as a space in which

conversations between actors with varying interests and concerns can be enhanced in an

engaged manner. To do so, I propose, or rather, ask for expert knowledge, to develop innovative

methodologies to investigate processes of organizing by operationalizing a conceptual

framework that I developed to denote the narrative processes embedded in everyday

sensemaking. Innovative, in that they should renew our understandings of the power of words

and effects of it, and eventually, re-orient management and organization studies towards

appreciating research subjects’ unique experiences, typically their mundane moral concerns, as

well as identifying and offering solutions to particular problems in organizations. I am pursuing

possible alternative research methodologies that can transfer and propagate skills and

knowledge which re-appreciate our imaginative capacities of going about everyday life by

establishing hypothetical inferences while confronted by the perceived finitude and infinite

possibilities towards it (Ricoeur 1990/1992) or difficult moral choices. The puzzle is: whether

or not is it possible for studies on organizing to establish a disciplinary identity by storifying

organizations, events and phenomena, including a variety of material properties and artifacts,

such as space, through research activities that enhance diversification of possible ways of

(re)constructing reality out of empirical data?

Building upon past studies on processes of organizing and sensemaking, particularly those

adopting narrative and discourse analysis and practice theory, I developed a framework with

which to analyze text data, particularly meant for data generated from mundane discursive

practices, by focusing on the significance of the act of reading for processes of organizing. In

the course of the development of the framework, I confirmed that the power/rule constitution

was operating in mundane language use through which actors each attempted to make better

sense of reality (Clegg 1989). In other words, even if implicit, each and every actor is practicing

ethics in her/his own ways (see Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes 2007 for ‘ethics as practice’).

In such almost innate nature of everyone orientated towards being good, what is obvious and

inevitable is innumerable stories which remain untold (Boje 2001), are dismissed as being

illogical, irrational and absurd, and are told in illogical, irrational and absurd ways even if


Hakushi Hamaoka





3

authors so noticed. It is for this reason that I understand the importance of the act of reading

which must hold a critical stake in the struggles for better organizing. I invoke the act of reading

for breaking up the vicious circle of the reproduction of rather cruel power imbalances while

acknowledging that it is an undeniably human, thus, ever irremediable project.

The framework I developed, as I assume, contributes points of reference when we encounter a

variety of denotations of reality, including mundane utterances. It enriches the act of reading in

such a way that prototypes possible story lines by suspending disbelief. By so doing, a vast

amount of information that is abandoned for a variety of reasons will possibly be picked up. In

effect, it is expected that chances to come up with certain innovative or improvisational plans

and solutions may increase. More importantly, benefits at the individual level, such as increased

commitment, a sense of fulfillment and, more generally, improved wellbeing, can also be

expected. As such and as will be elaborated below, the framework is of practical relevance for

organizations and management of members of organizations. The problem is, however, how to

prove that plots as possible alternative ways of denoting reality will have been enriched; that

performances of organizations and individuals will have been improved; or that these can be

correlated.

One of the problems confronting the framework, I suppose, concerns the intricate relationships

between human beings, the material real world and words as media with which to give particular

intelligible forms/styles to innumerable, often ineffable, sensations, stimuli and feelings as well

as thoughts and ideas. By any means, human beings need to be related to, or entrust something

of sufficient substantiveness, to speak for their being. Space is, in this respect, considered as

one of such substantive predicates. It is actually not a mere physical edifice but deposits of a

multitude of institutions and meanings. Hence, space is rather one of constitutive elements of

human stories or organization dramas. Seeing organization spaces as loci of struggles for power

along the meaning-interpretation nexus, the paper seeks for ways to associate otherwise

fragmentary realities into particular meaningful wholes, which I refer to as storifying

organization space. Such meaningful wholes serve as a kind of self-organizing systems of

semantic (re)production in that as actors read them, they might feel their implicit assumptions

and principles to be revealed (Weick 1987, also see Boje’s [2001] definition of plot).


Hakushi Hamaoka





4

The next section explains the framework I developed for diversifying possible alternative plots

(as I refer to ‘protoplotting’ after Czarniawska [1999]), how to operationalize it, and its

expected contributions and limitations. The subsequent section addresses the limitations that

arise from the impossibility to account for one’s evaluative/moral concerns at a particular point

in time and space that drive one’s imagination or abductive inferences. It does so by focusing

on the ability of the framework to increase chances of actors’ mundane evaluative/moral

concerns to be revealed, if not accounted for, so that they possibly obtain renewed

understandings of what might be happening. It elaborates how texts can be read and re-read by

associating otherwise discrete elements of text data with one another. By so doing, we will be

able to understand how we are mundanely dealing with three distinct but intricately

interconnected meanings: a sense of permanence/generality, a sense of temporal contingency,

and a sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness at a particular point in time and space. More

importantly, we will be able to learn how we manage reality better by relating those distinct

meanings to the seemingly mundane temporal experiences with past, present and future. It is

typically emphasized that social orderliness is emerging out from interactions between two or

more actors who each are struggling with ambiguity and uncertainty that are necessarily left

behind in their sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness at the once-occurring present.

Understanding that mundane interactions operate through alternate and diegetic successions

between acting/authoring and observing/reading, in which each actor makes judgements on

each other’s evaluative/moral appropriateness, a focus shifts to possible alternative ways of

enhancing conversations between researchers to address inevitable uncertainty and ambiguity

left behind in their research activities. It is to remind researchers of their difficult moral choices

that are relatively less accounted for in conventional research reports. A possible way of

storifying organization space is suggested to create an alternative space in which researchers

mutually attempt to induce each other to confront difficult moral choices. Specifically, studies

on practices, typically those which discovered paradoxes, unintended outcomes, or more

generally contradictions, are supposed to be associated with one another with the framework

for protoplotting and the triadic processes of emplotment. It hypothesizes that our mundane

skills and knowledge that are enacted in everyday practices are revolving around relatively

simple but entwining triadic logic, such that by imagining different actors’ different realities

along the triadic logic, one can obtain enriched understandings of practices in organizations.


Hakushi Hamaoka





5

2 The conceptual framework for protoplotting

2.1 The triad of mimetic processes

The framework was developed by drawing upon Ricoeur’s (1984/1990) theory of emplotment,

which consists of three-fold mimesis. Focusing on the seemingly tautological but actually

nesting and nested structure constituted by the three fold-mimesis, I denote processes of

sensemaking by dividing areas of knowledge into three distinct but inter-related areas to

formulate a triadic model as is depicted in Figure 1 below. The triad consists of three distinct

areas of knowledge and processes by which to produce and reproduce knowledge: (1) the world

of substances of non-contradictory identities which are obtained along timeless causal logic by

means of substitutive/metaphorical reasoning; (2) the world of practices in which each actor is

concerned with rules about how to present her/his ideas, actions, feelings or self as appropriately

as possible in front of others; and (3) the world of imagination in which each actor mediates, at

a particular point in time and space, the substantive and the contextual understandings

established in (1) and (2).

Figure 1. Nesting and nested structure of the triad of mimetic processes


Hakushi Hamaoka





6

By analyzing messages posted to an Internet discussion forum, also known as a message board,

I confirmed that the triadic model was capable of accounting for processes of emplotment by

which each actor organizes heterogeneous properties into particular meaningful wholes to make

sense of reality. Typically, it exemplified the fact that communication was enabled by each

actor’s imaginatively creating meaningful wholes by reference to others’ messages. Also, it was

found that actors did so without any absolutely foundational evidence, rule or principle, thus,

on a hypothetical and inferential basis, also known as abductive inferences. Thereafter, I related

the triadic model to the five constitutive elements of plot.

2.2 How to operationalize protoplotting


Hakushi Hamaoka





7

Drawing upon narrative frameworks, specifically Kenneth Burke’s five constitutive elements

of plot: acts, actors, scenes, purposes and agencies, three points of reference are suggested:

purposes, scenes as choice opportunities and agencies following Czarniawska (1999). More

specifically, as she explains, while actors and what they do are almost self-evident, choice

opportunities (scenes), goals and motivations (purposes) and competencies to achieve particular

goals (agencies) can be relatively flexibly configured and refigured in investigating particular

reality or imagining possible changes in the future. Such imaginative configuration/re-

figuration of elements of plot can be likened to prototyping in design thinking, which

emphasizes importance of exploring alternatives for enabling creative and innovative designs

(Norum 2001). In the case of ‘protoplotting’ (after Czarniawska [1999]), such exploration can

be enhanced by reference to what is obvious, then, by imagining what is not obvious (Weick

1987, 1974).

The key to operationalize the framework of protoplotting is to acknowledge the unavoidable

chance events that tend to be left out in conventional formal theorizing. As we act on the

hypothetical and inferential basis, it will not be reasonable to expect that our mundane sense of

ambiguity and uncertainty can be eliminated by any rational, political/ethical, aesthetic or

theological method. Besides, it is virtually impossible to predict when and how we act out

hypothetical inferences. The acknowledgement and acceptance of the chance events should,

however, be directed toward certain sustainable and practicable methods, rather than uncritical

allusion to reflective diligence or mindfulness.

Table 1 Framework for Protoplotting

Elements of

plot

Points of reference

in practice Effects of diversification of plot

Scenes Irrational and

illogical choices

Duality of institutional/structural forces

(norms), Transcendence across physical

and/or conceptual boundaries by

imagination (power)

Purposes Disbeliefs (e.g., goals

that appear unfeasible

Encouraging imagination about possible

plural realities by suspending disbelief to


Hakushi Hamaoka





8

to particular groups

of people)

imagine not only particular unrealized

consequences but also social reality

concealed behind particular ways of

denoting reality

Agencies Repetitions, habits,

routines

Exploiting inventive and serendipitous

creativity

As summarized in Table 1 above, for scenes as choice opportunities of actors, it is relatively

straightforward to identify rational choices. However, from certain seemingly irrational choices,

we will be able to obtain enriched understandings about detailed institutional/structural

constraints, including other relevant actors even if not denoted in utterances. For instance, I

found in my analyses of an online message board that the participants deliberately stayed away

from discussing possible solutions to problems that were of significant relevance for them.

From such a seemingly irrational choice, it is possible to understand the contexts in which they

were situated. Specifically, the participants’ decision not to talk about possible solutions

explains how it was difficult for them to take actions that might radically oppose to the extant

institutional orders/structural hierarchies. Besides, while they might succeed in collaboratively

establishing ‘a discursive refuge’ in the forum, the supporting community established in this

way inevitably excluded other members, especially those who were more vulnerable, such as

part-time workers and lower ranks in the extant hierarchy. As such, we can learn about duality

of institutional/structural forces and significance of discursive practices for management of

reality, typically meanings and interpretation. Combined with the three distinct meanings

produced and reproduced along the triad of mimetic processes, the framework tells us that the

duality of power operates in a triadic manner: the pursuit of a sense of permanence/generality

is voluntarily constrained by a sense of temporal contingency or context-dependency, and these

are mediated into meaningful wholes by a sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness. The

framework of protoplotting, thus, offers us specific points of reference for our imagination

about what cannot be observed directly from events and phenomena that contradict rational

choices by reference to observable aspects of them.

The same applies to purposes. Goals that appear to be believed by certain groups of people to

be unfeasible, as was observed in the example above, may reflect more intricate reality than


Hakushi Hamaoka





9

those which can be observed in the form of particular discourses, such as establishment and

maintenance of ‘a discursive refuge’. By imagining on what ground a particular discourse failed

to come into being, such as addressing problems more proactively through their conversations

in the forum, it will become possible to expand our imagination to processes by which extant

power relations are sustained, rather than changed, or even to those who were more vulnerable

than the majority of the participants in the forum. Protoplotting allows us to deal with purposes

that can relatively easily be identified in denotations of reality (utterances) by putting them in

the flow of time. Imagination is arbitrary but it necessarily entails mediation of each other’s

sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness between those who imagine and those who are

imagined. This is so because utterances come into being through utterers’ going through the

triad of mimetic processes and readers/hearers both apprehend particular properties in denoted

reality and associate relevant properties with one another along the same triadic processes.

Teleology of mundane discursive practices is weak in that utterers’ particular purposes are read

by others who assume that utterances presented to them should have been made with certain

purposes. In the world where two or more actors interact in a temporally contingent manner,

purposes are being constructed collaboratively by actors (utterers) and observers (readers) by

taking into account diegetic connections as well as synchronic (causally contingent) patterns

and rules derived from such patterns. More critically, imaginary diegetic connections or simply

stories connote a sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness because of the inherently rule-

oriented triad of mimetic processes.

As for agencies, by focusing on certain repetitively observed actions/denotations of reality, it

is possible to expand our imagination to processes by which such observed actions/denotations

came into being. Specifically, subscribing to the hypothetical and inferential ways of knowing,

repetitive actions/denotations, including routines and habits, can be seen as felicitous successes

that should build on innumerable failed (or failing) hypotheses and inferences. By so

understanding, from routines and habits, it is possible to reveal actors’ implicit and context

specific assumptions and principles not by simply attributing them to purposes and/or scenes,

which are relatively easily observable, but in ways that take into account actors’ capacities of

reading reality along the triadic logic. Doing so is a genuinely processual approach to routines

and habits in the sense that it is capable of unraveling intricate relationships between material

reality, the power/rule constitution along the meaning-interpretation nexus and actors’ senses


Hakushi Hamaoka





10

of evaluative/moral appropriateness. The framework of protoplotting is capable of accounting

for the processes in which ostensive and performative aspects constitute particular routines and

habits (Dionysiou and Tsoukas 2013, Pentland and Feldman 2005) in a triadic manner that each

one’s pursuit of sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness mediates one’s understandings of

substantive and contextual aspects of reality into particular meaningful wholes.

2.3 Effectiveness and limitations

Overall, the framework encourages analysts’ engagements in reading social reality denoted in

particular ways by particular people. Theories, models and metaphors so produced become

good in the sense that conversations between different actors with different concerns and

interests can be enhanced by the common constitutive elements of plot, which operates along

the common tripartite logic of reading or emplotment. The framework first and foremost

contributes methods with which to establish as many alternative plots as possible. By so doing,

it will help theorists and actors alike suspend disbelief and imagine different possible realities

in a positive manner. As the design thinking emphasizes the importance of prototyping, to have

as many possible plots as possible empowers actors’ creative and inventive capacities. Even if

such empowered creativity and inventiveness is naturally constrained by a variety of conditions,

it is important to have methods with which to give particular styles or forms to one’s rather

ambiguous thoughts and feelings.

First, one’s ambiguous thoughts and feelings constitute reality. Hence, it is important to make

them visible and easier to be managed (following Cohen, March and Olsen 1972). While it is

apparent that the visibility would not solve all the problems concerning the management of

complex reality or rather would make it more complicated, it is expected that since writing and

reading are co-related (Czarniawska 1998), the anticipated increased complexity due to the

increasing variety of denoted reality can be overcome by the strengthened capacities of reading

that sift through a flux of information. Subtly but more importantly, expressing one’s seemingly

ineffable feelings and sensations in words should have a significant implication for one’s

wellbeing considering the intricate relationships between the human ways of being in the world,

time and words. Actors experience narrative time as they bestow the three distinct agencies:

identifying/classifying external others, commanding responses from others and self-referencing


Hakushi Hamaoka





11

by means of words that bestow the almost identical agencies. Protoplotting may thus bring

about a more engaged manner of treating words and the power of them by imagining the

virtually identical agencies bestowed on human beings and words.

Second, if we understand that desires are motivated by a variety of others and defined socially,

it is possible that particular goals first be proposed and later be negotiated with relevant others

by reference to other elements of plot. Apart from the diversification of possible plots, such a

way of proposing and negotiating a multitude of goals must have a positive moral implication.

Rather than attributing one’s or others’ moral appropriateness as well as precision in empirical

and logical terms to what they each denote, it should be much healthier and more constructive

to entrust each other’s words to mediate each other’s moral concerns that are only assumptive

and inferential.

Third, protoplotting encourages innovative and even adventurous inferences. Repetitions and

habits are important in this respect. Even if each actor is capable of creating rather arbitrarily

particular meaningful wholes, the processes of emplotment are mimetic since s/he acts on a

hypothetical and inferential basis without any absolutely foundational evidence, rule or

principle. Put differently, hypothetical inferences are enabled by mimetic processes that take

advantage of massive data in which particular sets of events and phenomena naturally occur

more or less often than others. Such processes of pattern-generation occurring without any

human volitional intervention are mimetic as well as probabilistic to the extent that particular

events and phenomena repetitively occur; thus, from the point of view of an interpreter, some

of them appear as if they were mimicking themselves to formulate particular patterns.

Quantity matters: this is in the sense of the same event happening many times, although, when

it does so, it is rather frequently threatened by varying qualities (and vice versa). Moreover,

because of our inability to identify/classify innumerable substances only by observation, we

compensate by constructing narrative identities, which allow us to go about everyday

encounters in hypothetical and inferential ways while creating a sense of permanence in

narrative time (Ricoeur 1990/1992). Our remarkable ability to recognize a variety of patterns

in terms of both process and variance, or mimesis and diegesis is enabled by the ability to

associate relevant information with one another out of innumerable sense data. Such networked


Hakushi Hamaoka





12

information may be called schema or cognitive type. However, I prefer to call it story fragments

(after Boje [2001]) in that narrative time we are experiencing, thus, changes and transitions in

time can be connoted.

In order to induce innovation or to capture subtler improvisation, we need to know processes

by which stories or story fragments are rather quickly formulated to create a sense of

permanence without which we could not even obtain sense that we apprehend certain

conspicuous attributes of certain simple material objects. This is of relevance for studies on

affordance (Gibson 1978), materiality of a variety of material artifacts and technologies (Barad

2003, Iedema 2007, Leonardi 2011, Orlikowski 2007) as well. As is indicated by our inability

to apprehend attributes of things only by observation, things tell stories in accordance with

varying contexts in which such things and human beings are situated. Without appropriating

such stories or story fragments by imagination, theorists would not be able to account for their

research subjects’ innovative and inventive ways of pattern recognition and the often

unpredictable effects of them.

Fourth, protoplotting possibly exemplifies the intricate relationship between the natural purely

probabilistic processes of pattern-generation and the human imaginative appropriation of

patterns, something that is also felicitous. By understanding this relationship better, it is

expected that our imaginative capacities based on hypothetical inference can be more intently

exploited at the level of everyday language use. Even if, with our normal cognitive capacities,

it seems difficult to discern the processes by which innumerable sense data are related to one

another to constitute certain networks, it is considered to be possible to attempt, in virtually

infinite ways, to give what we are continuously receiving from nature and generating inside us,

i.e., perceptions and feelings, particular forms/styles by means of words. As has been pointed

out, both the natural pattern-generation and the human hypothetical inferences are mimetic.

Hence, it is possible by enhancing protoplotting to read and eventually account for the virtually

unpredictable emergence of patterns and rules, which should culminate in particular orderliness

in terms of both nature and human society, without overlooking the creative aspect of mimetic

processes.


Hakushi Hamaoka





13

The four effectiveness of the protoplotting above is expected to guide theoretically how to

operationalize the proposed framework, which builds upon an ontology that both human beings

and words are self-interpreting and an epistemology that human beings know on a hypothetical

and inferential basis. What holds the critical key is, however, to acknowledge the peculiar

relationships between human beings, time and words. In particular, the three distinct agencies

bestowed on words, which are identical to those of human beings, deserve special attention. As

was explained earlier, the words’ capacity of self-referencing, which is generally understood to

be troubling from the point of view of logically coherent denotations of reality, i.e.,

conventional sciences, should be understood to play a significant role in mediating different

actors’ hypothetical assumptions in both ethical and substantive terms.

For human beings who are incapable of identifying things only by observation, checks on each

other’s interpretation of reality are critical. As has been explained earlier, in practical interaction

settings, actors’ purposes, reasons or motivations are read by others. The same applies to the

sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness that is necessarily pursued by each actor who is

unable to know any absolute truth. However, since each one’s moral sentiments are rarely

present in denoted reality, reading them requires increased engagements on the side of readers.

Despite this difficulty, when attempting to read others’ moral sentiments, one is necessarily

confronted by one’s own moral sentiments because of the mediating agency bestowed on words.

In the alternate and diegetic manner of interaction, boundaries between actors are actually

blurred than drawn definitively. So understanding is important to appreciate the significance of

the intersubjective checks on each other’s denotations/ interpretation of reality. The challenge

is, however, the fact that we cannot denote the sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness at a

particular point in time and space, or simply, at the present. The next section will elaborate this

problem and lay out possible ways to address it.

3 Towards parrhesiastic chains of the acts of reading and uttering

3.1 Assuming the existence of each one’s once occurring being (the present of present)

The framework for protoplotting and the triad of mimetic processes elucidate that mundane

utterances are full of actors’ moral/ethical concerns. Thus, by analyzing mundane utterances,

we will be able to explain sources of social orderliness in ways that take into account people’s


Hakushi Hamaoka





14

mundane moral concerns. More importantly, such mundane moral concerns are expressed not

in a completely unruly manner but in accordance with relatively simple skills and knowledge

shared among actors, which concern their ways of associating relevant properties into particular

sequential orders. Narrative frameworks explain that such skills and knowledge to establish

particular sequential orders concern actors’ ability to understand a variety of actions chiefly by

mimicking others’ actions.

Despite the effectiveness of the framework of protoplotting in terms of identifying alternative

realities or different actors’ different truths by focusing on mundane moral concerns, an obvious

weakness is that protoplotting or whether or not utterers’ truths are accounted for is subject to

readers’ arbitrary imagination. Hence, neither validity in conventional scientific terms nor

legitimacy can be granted to such imaginative creation. In other words, actors’ moral concerns

are not what is to be accounted for but what is supposed to be translating into one’s utterances

that induce others (target audiences) to issue their utterances, which can be understood as

parrhesia in Foucault’s (1999) terms.

As the framework for protoplotting takes chance events seriously (see 2.2), we need to re-

confirm that no one can be sure, in advance, of when, why and how one actually undertakes a

certain action (cf., Weick 1979). We can only make predictions, or rather assumptions, about

these. Besides, it is important to acknowledge that no one can see directly one’s own actions

but only know of aspects of them from others’ responses. Ethics as practice is literally being

practiced by everyone when interacting with others. Mundane interactions are made possible

by the fact that each actor is practicing ethics by allowing others to read/interpret her/his actions

in their own ways. Moreover, insofar as one cannot directly see one’s own actions, one’s best

strategy should be to encourage others to speak as frankly as possible so that chances for the

one to obtain as precise information about one’s actions as possible may increase. The

framework for protoplotting, together with the triad of mimetic processes, can be utilized for

inducing parrhesiastic chains of conversations, rather than for substantiating what the real

imagination is and whose imagination is truer than others’.

3.2 Parrhesia: Reading utterers’ truths underlying utterances


Hakushi Hamaoka





15

In order to materialize the parrhesiastic chains of conversations, what is to be read from

utterances are possible constraints that hinder one from denoting reality at particular points in

time and space, rather than apprehending literal meanings or evaluating contextual relevancy

of them. Nonetheless, as has been suggested, such reading of possible constraints is readers’

imaginative creation; thus, practical guidance that can be shared between different actors is

necessary. The key is different temporalities that are created by words and accordingly

experienced by actors.

As indicated in preceding sections, words bestow three distinct agencies:

denoting/identifying/classifying, commanding reading and mediating. Accordingly, actors

manage to create and obtain three distinct meanings: non-contradictory identities/categories

from which certain general rules/principles can be derived along the logic of substitution,

contexts by associating relevant properties into particular irreversible sequential orders and

particular meaningfulness that can be obtained by mediating the other two meanings. These

three distinct meanings carry also three distinct temporalities: sense of permanence (future, in

that particular general rules/principles enable predictions or anticipation of the future), temporal

contingency (past, in that one can read backward along the established sequential orders) and

evaluative/moral appropriateness at a particular point in time and space (present).

Enhancing the parrhesiastic chain of conversations is possible by appreciating all those

tripartite agencies, meanings and temporalities. Technically, such is possible by putting

denotations of reality, i.e., utterances, back into the flow of time. While utterances as a whole

or certain properties of them can be apprehended in accordance with literal meanings, such

discrete (properties of) utterances can be associated with one another by imaginatively setting

appropriate protagonist(s). In so doing, what happens is mediation with regard to sense of

evaluative/moral appropriateness between readers and such imaginative protagonist(s),

including actual utterers. The reason why the mediation occurs over different actors’

(readers’/utterers’/imaginary actors’) evaluative/moral concerns is simply because we are

predisposed to pursue as appropriate rules as possible in associating relevant properties in terms

of substantive and contextual aspects of reality (see the triad of mimetic processes in section 2).


Hakushi Hamaoka





16

The point is that anyone’s being at a particular point in time and space can only be denoted as

negatives of either immediate or remote pasts and futures; thus, appreciating one’s sense of

evaluative/moral appropriateness is possible only by means of continuous flow of

intersubjective checks on each other’s denotations of reality, which occur when actors read

others’ denotations of reality because of the mediation mentioned above. By so understanding,

it becomes manifest that social reality is constructed collaboratively by a diversity of actors and

the thickness of it is almost inexhaustible. More importantly, we should not forget that social

orderliness is emerging out from the inexhaustible and literally ineffable each actor’s once-

occurring present. What the impossibility to denote once-occurring present or mundane sense

of evaluative/moral appropriateness indicates is that the virtue of parrhesia or ethics as practice

resides in illuminating, rather than abstracting out, ambiguities and uncertainties that are

inevitably left behind in mundane evaluative/moral concerns.

4 Storifying organization space

Storifying organization space can be defined as materializing parrhesiastic chains of

conversations, which consist of actors’ assumption that others may tell their respective truths

even if no one can be sure as to whether or not one’s denotations can at all exhaust one’s truth.

When management and organization scholars apply storifying organization space to their

research fields, innumerably paradoxical practices can not only be identified but also given

thick meanings involving different temporalities as research subjects might be experiencing.

Strands of such studies (e.g., Barley 1986, Beane & Orlikowski 2014, Bjørkeng, Clegg & Pitsis

2009, Hatch 1997, Kaplan & Orlikowski 2013, Taylor & van Every 2000), in my view, are

weaving a genealogy of theories of organizing. The problem is, however, relatively insufficient

appreciation of such a precious deposit of knowledge about organizing and/or practices in

organizations. Put differently, theories about organizing and/or practices in organizations

appears to remain fragmented, rather than being associated with one another.

As I have thus far suggested, denotations of reality carry actors’ senses of evaluative/moral

appropriateness and the same applies to management and organization scholars’ denotations of

reality, that is, theories, models and concepts they develop. What is to be noted is that scholars

are supposed to be confronted by even more difficult choices than ordinary people between


Hakushi Hamaoka





17

those tripartite areas of experiences (the realms of Substance, Practice and Self in Figure 1),

meanings and temporalities simply because of nature of their research subjects, that is,

organizations and members of organizations both of which consist of intricately interrelated

institutions and meanings. When drawing upon the triadic model, researchers usually focus on

the realm of Substance in which variables are carefully defined in a non-contradictory manner

in order to derive as generally applicable rules and principles as possible from empirical data.

Nonetheless, they also confront accuracy of theories in respect of context-specific events,

phenomena and practices. Besides, they almost inadvertently make choices chiefly for the sake

of simplicity of presentation by reference to generality and accuracy (Weick 1979).

I assume that relatively fragmentary theories about paradoxical or contradictory practices could

be associated with one another by more intently utilizing the power of words that is exerted

through the three distinct agencies. Specifically, by acknowledging the triadic manner of

knowledge creation, researchers become able to deal with their research subject’ experiences

more effectively as both discrete and associable data. Doing so necessarily requires researchers’

imaginative creation of particular irreversible thus temporally contingent sequential orders as

well as identification of temporally non-contingent causal relations by abstracting data into

particular variables/categories, and eventually certain rules/principles. Accordingly, chances of

mediation over senses of evaluative/moral appropriateness between researchers and their

subjects both of whom are innately orientated toward better rules than worse may increase. In

effect, researchers’ attention is necessarily drawn at least to the fact that they themselves make

as difficult moral choices as their subjects do.

Although it is ideal that such increased awareness of each other’s evaluative/moral sentiments

lead to parrhesiasitc chains of conversations between researchers and their subjects, such is

unlikely because they have different interests and concerns (Zundel and Kokkalis 2010).

Practically, it is difficult for researchers to confirm whether or not their subjects may agree that

denotations of reality, i.e., theories, address their evaluative/moral concerns. First, researchers’

denotations do not necessarily aim to provide as precise descriptions of their subjects’ realities

as possible (Weick 1987, Zundel and Kokkalis 2010). Second, the feeling that research subjects’

implicit and context-specific assumptions and principles become revealed cannot be attributed

to part or whole of researchers’ theories but to the former’s imaginative mediation between


Hakushi Hamaoka





18

realities which are denoted and those which they experience. Third, there exist power

imbalances between researchers and their subject; thus, the latter’s affirmative responses about

effectiveness of the former’s theories do not necessarily assure that the latter’s truth is

accounted for. Fourth, therefore, effects of researchers’ theories on materialization of the

parrhesiastic chain of conversations can be confirmed only by continual observations of their

subjects’ actions, which are too costly.

As an alternative, I propose to establish parrhesiastic chain of conversations between

researchers, or rather, to see communications between different researchers and/or different

research reports as parrhesia. With assistance of the framework for protoplotting and the triad

of mimetic processes, I assume that from different study reports on contradictions, paradoxes,

stupidity, absurdity and humor, stories revolving around the three points of reference (scenes,

purposes and agencies) or the triadic model can be derived. If such is the case, research reports

can be read on an assumption that the researchers must have been morally charged. This is so

because dyadic stories that do not assume contradictions or paradoxes (are expected to) speak

for themselves, rather than being spoken by the authors. By assuming communications between

researchers to be parrhesiasitic, and based on the significance of triadic stories, our reading

will be oriented towards appreciating both researchers’ and their subjects’ once-occurring

presents from which social orderliness is supposed to be emerging. Remember that anybody’s

once-occurring present can only be denoted negatively by the varying pasts and futures; thus,

it can only be protoplotted by creatively juggling with data as both discrete properties and

associable fragments of stories in ways that were explained in 3.2. Therefore, appreciating

anybody’s once-occurring present is possible only by reading others’ denotations of reality in

ways that assume the existence of researchers who must have been morally charged. Reading

in this way translates into subsequent production of triadic stories because such readers must

be morally charged. Practices to be established as such can continuously be monitored by

researchers through their production of research reports and peer reviewing.

Certain secondary effects are also expected from storifying organization space between

researchers and/or research reports. Since research reports are, as a rule, strict about validity of

empirical facts, the seemingly arbitrary imaginary stories/scenarios will not overly distort

factual quality. Combined with carefulness of researchers who study organizational


Hakushi Hamaoka





19

contradictions to temporal contingencies and/or context-dependency, their efforts at

communicating with one another by means of the sense of evaluative/moral appropriateness

possibly offer data which explain our mundane skills and knowledge to go about everyday

encounters, or simply ways of thinking.

Besides the appreciation of the power of words that chiefly concerns associative capacities to

establish particular irreversible sequential orders and interpretation of them, since the

framework for protoplotting and the triad of mimetic processes entail the processes by which

people make sense of reality without waiting for proper language to be constructed, these serve

as a kind of schema or cognitive type, based on which actors are supposed to make sense of

reality without so knowing. In other words, even if we still do not know actual processing of

sensory data concerning perception and cognition, storifying organization space may contribute

as precise information as possible about mundane ways of interpreting reality at the level of

everyday language use. For instance, researchers’ more altruistic orientation than self-interested

pursuit of observable/measurable outcomes may be attributed to the parrhesiastic conversations

that encourage others to denote their realities by presenting and allowing them to interpret each

other’s actions/denotations of reality. Such an alternate and diegetic manner of understanding

of everyday interactions should enrich methods to investigate human cognitive systems.

Even though it is not possible for the mechanisms of storifying mutually independent studies

on contradictions to predict actions and their impacts on organizational events and phenomena,

the triadic logic serves to make visible inexhaustibly thick reality comprised of everyone’s

once-occurring present that can be accounted for only negatively by innumerable pasts and

futures. Organization space consists of everyone’s once-occurring presents such that at least

part of scientific investigations of management and organization studies needs to be directed

towards appreciating them in order to address such insoluble problems as power imbalances.

Storifying organization space by means of the framework for protoplotting and the triad of

mimetic processes enables us to examine everyday organization space in ways that reveal our

implicitly holding assumptions that build upon human ways of knowing and being in the

material world.


Hakushi Hamaoka





20

References

Barad, K. (2003). ‘Posthumanist performativity: Towards an understanding of how matter

comes to matter’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(3): 801-831.

Barley, S. R. (1986). ‘Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations

of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments’. Administrative Science

Quarterly 31(1): 78-108.

Beane, M. and W. J. Orlikowski (2014). ‘What difference does a robot make?: Managing

ambiguity in distributed knowledge work’. Paper presented at the 2014 Academy of

Management Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PN.

Bjørkeng, K., S. R. Clegg and T. Pitsis (2009). ‘Becoming (a) practice’. Management Learning

40(2): 145-159.

Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research.

London: Sage.

Clegg, S. R. (1989). ‘Radical revisions: Power, discipline and organizations’. Organization

Studies 10(1): 97-115.

Clegg, S., M. Kornberger and C. Rhodes (2007). ‘Business ethics as practice’. British Journal

of Management 18: 107-122.

Cohen, M. D., J. G. March and J. Olsen (1972). ‘A Garbage Can Model of organization choice’.

Administrative Science Quarterly 17(1): 1-25.

Czarniawska, B. (1999). Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Czarniawska, B. (1998). A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies. Qualitative Research

Methods Series 43. London: Sage.


Hakushi Hamaoka





21

Foucault, M. (1999). Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia, edited by

Joseph Pearson. Digital Archive: Foucault.info.

Gibson, J. J. (1978). ’The ecological approach to the visual perception of pictures’. Leonardo

11: 227-235.

Hatch, M. J. (1997). ‘Irony and the social construction of contradiction in the humor of a

management team’. Organization Science 8(3): 275-288.

Iedema, R. (2007). ‘On the multi-modality, materiality and contingency of organizational

discourse’. Organization Studies 28(6): 931-946.

Kaplan, S. and W. J. Orlikowski. (2013). ‘Temporal work in strategy making’. Organization

Science 24(4): 965-995.

Leonardi, P. M. (2011). ‘When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: Affordance,

constraint, and the imbrication of human and material agencies’. MISQ 35(1): 147-

167.

Norum, K. E. (2001). ‘Appreciative design’. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 18(4):

323-333.

Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). ‘Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work’.

Organization Studies 28(9): 1435-1448.

Ricoeur, P. (1992/1994). Oneself as Another. K. Blamey trans. Chicago, IL: The Chicago

University Press.

Ricoeur, P. (1984/1990). Time and Narrative. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer trans. Chicago,

IL: The Chicago University Press.

Taylor, J. R. and E. J. van Every. (2000). The Emergent Organization: Communication as Its

Site and Surface. London: Psychology Press.


Hakushi Hamaoka





22

Weick, K. E. (1987). ‘Theorizing about organizational communication’. ch. 4, pp. 97-122, in F.

M. Jablin, L. L. Putnam, K. H. Roberts and L. W. Porter, eds., Handbook of

Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. London: Sage.

Weick, K. E. (1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd edn. New York, NY:

McGraw-Hill.

Weick, K. E. (1974). ‘Amendments to organizational theorizing’. Academy of Management

Journal 17(3):487-502.

Zundel, M. and P. Kokkalis (2010). ‘Theorizing as engaged practice’. Organization Studies

31(9/10): 1209-1227.


Documents

Pursuing methods for storifying organization space