Bakhtin Chronotope

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    1/29

    Second International Symposium on Process Organization Studies General Track

    The Bakhtinian theory of chronotope (spatial-temporal frame)

    applied to the organizing process

    Philippe Lorino

    Professor at ESSEC Business School [email protected]

    Abstract

    If we adopt a process view of organizations (Tsoukas & Chia 2002), what kind of process is the

    organizing process? As a social and human process, it involves a specific type of agency: not the"dyadic" action / reaction agency of physical processes, but the "triadic" agency which involves

    sensemaking and interpretive perspectives (Peirce 8/328). This type of process, which intertwinestransforming the world and making sense of the world, is an inquiryin the pragmatist sense (Dewey1938/1980). It involves multiple sensemaking agents, with a plurality of interpretive perspectives,

    which make sense of situations through dialogical interactions (Tsoukas 2009). The organizingprocess is mediatedby systems of signs, languages and tooling, which allow reflexivity and dialogue,and it is also mediating: it permanently re-creates those mediations (languages and tools) by engagingthem in action. This paper focuses on one key semiotic mediation of the organizing inquiry: its"chronotope", i.e. its spatial/temporal frame, a concept that Bakhtin (Bakhtin 1981, Todorov 1984)

    defined to study literary narratives.The first part of the paper presents the Bakhtinian theory of chronotope:

    the spatial and temporal frames of a narrative are closely integrated (space as a trace of timeand time as a marker of space)and make up one unique "spatial-temporal" frame (chronotope),

    the spatial/temporal frame of a narrative plays a key role in the production of meaning, as thematrix of situated meaning-making, roles, identities, values, boundaries and crossings, cultural classesof discourse and tools (Deleuze 2006),

    the chronotope of the narrative relates its interpretation by a reader, a spectator, or a researcherwith the broader historic, social and cultural setting in which it is interpreted.

    The second part of the paper shows how the chronotope concept can be applied to organizingprocesses, viewed as narrative inquiries: how temporal and spatial marks are deeply connected inorganizational life, how they mediate and frame sensemaking, link organizational sensemaking withhistorical, institutional and social environments, point to classes of professional culture, identity and

    tooling and contribute to shaping "genres" of discourse/action. In organizational situations, differentchronotopes shape a system by opposing or completing each other (e.g. the chronotopes of designing

    versus operating, manufacturing versus service, transport versus mobility).The third part of the paper illustrates the chronotope concept with two episodes of organizational

    change experienced by the author, showing the connections between spatial-temporal structures,meaning-making schemes, typical roles, identities, professional values and tooling: (i) the conversionof the computer industry in the 1990s from the space-time of manufacturing to the competing

    chronotopes of logistics and customized service; (ii) in the construction industry, the implications forwork safety of the traditional chronotope system which articulates the chronotope of "project design"with the chronotope of "on site building", and the challenge of building a new chronotope to improvesafety.

    In the conclusion the potential contribution of the chronotope concept is discussed: (i) From atheoretical point of view, to overcome the dualist approaches of organizing processes, (ii) from amethodologicalpoint of view, for a criticalreading of organizing processes, (iii) from a practical point

    of view, to manage organizational change by questioning the usual spatial/temporal frames.

    mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]
  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    2/29

    The Bakhtinian theory of chronotope (spatial-temporal frame)

    applied to the organizing process

    For many years the mainstream of organization studies has conceptualized organizations asstructures imposing constraints and order to individual and collective practices. But, in the footsteps ofKarl Weick's theory of "organizing" as a collective sensemaking process (Weick 1979, 1995, 2001), inview of the ceaseless learning and life experience of organizational actors, the dynamic nature of ever-

    moving organizations and their necessary adaptation to a mobile environment, a growing number ofscholars (Chia 1996, Cooper 2007, Nayak 2008, Shotter 2006 and 2008, Tsoukas 2005, Tsoukas &Chia 2002, Yoo et alii 2006 and 2001) have opted for a process view of organization. There is aphenomenological evidence of organizing as an ongoing process, under multiple forms - changes inmanagerial responsibilities, material transformation of components into finished products, financialflows, competence acquisition and loss, innovation, new product development, information systemsevolution, etc. Organized structures rather appear as intellectual constructions which try to imposesome kind of interpretive order to the continuous flow of learning, action, creation and destruction.

    But "process" is still a fairly fuzzy concept. The fall of an object following Newton's law ofgravitation, a chemical reaction, writing a poem, holding a conversation, voting a bill in Parliament areall processes in very different ways involving more or less predetermined laws and social interactions.A key question for organization research then is: what kind of process is the organizing process?

    As a human process which is distinctively social, it differs from biological and physical processesinsofar as it involves (i) a specific type of agency: not the "dyadic" action / reaction agency of physicallaws, but a "triadic" agency which involves sensemaking and interpretive perspectives (Peirce Vol. 8,paragraph 328, p. 220), (ii) not an isolated subject, but multiple sensemaking agents with a plurality ofinterpretive perspectives, who constantly interact, directly through cooperation and communication,and indirectly, through mediating artefacts such as texts, tools, rules and communication andinformation systems. This type of process, which intertwines acting and thinking, transforming theworld and at the same time making sense of the world transformation, is an inquiryin the pragmatist

    sense (Dewey 1938/1980). It has a narrative nature: the inquiry aims at building a story which makesaction meaningful and intelligible. Due to the plurality of perspectives in organizations, for examplebecause of the functional division of labor (Bechky 2003; Carlile 2002), inquiring agents mustcontinuously build the meaning of situations through dialogical interactions (Tsoukas 2009). Activity,inquiry and dialogue are not only inherently mediatedby systems of signs - languages and tooling -

    which provide the indispensable material of social communication and reflexivity; activity, inquiryand dialogue are also mediating, meaning that they transform signs and re-create them. Tools aremodified through their utilization, language evolves through discursive practices. To summarize, inthis article the organizing process will be defined as a dialogical mediating inquiry which builds thestory of the collective action in-progress.

    Time-space in organization studies

    Time and space in the organizing process

    This article will focus on one of the key semiotic mediations of the organizing process: itsspatial/temporal frame. The organizing inquiry takes place in space and time. The very notion of"process" involves time since, by definition, a process is the development of some phenomenon in the

    course of time. Organizational time has some specific characteristics: it is, to some degree, irreversible(producing, designing, selling, investing are partly irreversible); non-linear (Butler 1995, Hassard

    2002, Hatch 2002, Lee and Liebenau 1999), with speeding up and slowing down phases; sociallyconstructed (Butler 1995, Elchardus 1988, Sahay 1997); three-dimensional: "initial social conditionsof action (structure), process of interaction (agency), and projected outcomes", or "past as real, present

    as negotiated, future as constructed" (Toyoki and al. 2006: 110); it is the locus of individual andcollective emotions linked with memory, events and expectations.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    3/29

    The organizing process involves space too. It involves movement (Hatch 2002), i.e. the

    modification of some "spatial" data, in a broader sense of "spatial" (positions, shapes, quantities,qualities). This movement and spatial transformation aspect characterizes the time of the process as the

    time of non-linear and irreversible transformation of human and social material. Like organizationaltime, organizational space has some specific characteristics too: it is not smooth and plane but "hilly":there are slopes, obstacles, trajectories which are better known and experimented than others, the

    "cognitive trails" of the organization (Cussins 1992). Organizational space can be physical or virtual;for example the nodes of a network may be physically distant but in informational vicinity. It is

    socially constructed (Kornberger and Clegg 2004). It is the locus of individual and collective emotionslinked with cultural habits, symbols and rituals. The board meeting room, the quality control lab aswell as the cloister of a monastery are places of specific temporal events and cultural meanings.

    The Taylorian time-space

    Time and space have been, explicitly or tacitly, important issues in organization studies for more

    than a century. They have most often been analyzed with dualist frameworks, which separate timefrom space, and often link time and space with the opposite poles of philosophical and epistemological

    dichotomies, e.g. space with body or information, and time with mind or learning. What camehistorically first and remains very influent in organization studies is the rational or Cartesian view oftime-space, developed by management pioneers like Frederick Taylor (1972/1911). In that framework,

    time and space are both considered as homogeneous variables: a meter is equivalent to another meter,an hour to another hour. Mathematical operations such as addition and mathematical relationshipssuch as equality can be defined, which make time and space measurable magnitudes. The cornerstoneof taylorism is the establishment of an equivalence between time and space, in form of an equivalencebetween real and standard time. Actually standard "time" is a form ofspacerather than time. It is just ascale to measure, add and compare production volumes for several different products (to add andcompare apples and oranges). When a manufacturing process states that machine X standard time toproduce product A is 2 hours and to produce product B is 3 hours, it means that, for example, if weproduce 100 units of A, we produce 200 standard hours (whatever the actual time to achieve that

    production) and if we produce 100 units of B, we produce 300 standard hours. Reciprocally, aproduction of 600 standard hours is equivalent to 300 units of A, or 200 units of B, or 150 units of Aand 100 units of B. Standard "hours", similar to "produced tons" or "produced square meters", areproduction volumes. On the contrary, real work time is time: it is the time spent by the worker on themachine, linked with the worker's effort, tiredness, boredom or satisfaction, bonus and standard ofliving. It is not only the clock time, it is also a corporal experience. Space (standard hours) and time(real hours) are both measured in hours, through the standardization of operations: a "normal" workerproduces a certain volume (space = standard time) in a certain period (time = real time). Then the basisof the Taylorian time-space is the equation:

    one standard hour = one real hour,which appears as the objective of the whole manufacturing organization (this equation reflects a

    100% productivity). This basic equation of the Taylorian model ("real time = standard time")

    expresses an essential isomorphism between space and time.The concept of "standard operation" on which the time/space equivalence is based materializes (i)

    in time through a clocking system, (ii) in space through the functional spatial layout of machines in thefactory (similar machines are grouped according to type; e.g. all milling machines are grouped in one

    workshop, all lathes are grouped in another workshop, etc.) corresponds to the "standard operatinghour" (e.g. the standard milling hour) - the average of all operating hours of similar machines gathered

    in the same location.Even authors who stress the social construction of time like Butler (1995: 926) still view time as a

    a homogeneous magnitude and a measurable variable: both "a dependent variable, as an outcome of

    the organizational and institutional context" and "an independent variable in the sense of enabling usto understand organizational processes".

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    4/29

    Bergson and intuitionist critiques of the rationalist time-space

    The reduction of time to geometric space by rationalism has been criticized by the French

    philosopher Bergson at the turn of the 20th century (Bergson 1896/1997). Bergson opposed theduration of inner life, with its irregularities, accelerations and decelerations, to the clock time, whichactually does not express duration (an ever-flowing experience of life) but a spatial simultaneity, for

    example the geometric movement of the clock. Bergson's analysis inspired the organization scholars(Chia 1996, Cooper 2007, Nayak 2008) who advocate the re-discovery of life experience in the heart

    of organizational processes. They oppose authentic time experience to its spatial reduction; continuousflow (Chia 1996) or cyclical move (Hatch 2002; Hassard 2002) to the discrete segmentation ofphysical time scales; spontaneous inner life to the "ready-made" use of language, viewed as a spatialsegmentation of meaning; indivisible time to divided space (Cooper 2007; Nayak 2008); intuition tomediated thought; learning "from within" to learning "about" (Shotter 2006); "knowledge of

    acquaintance" to "knowledge about" (Calori 2002). The critique of semiotic mediations as "spatialillusion" can be radical. For example Nayak pleads for a phenomenological return to "the introspective

    reality in its immediate, epistemologically unmediated and purestate", to avoid that "our introspection(be) stained by admixtures unconsciously borrowed from our sensory experience" (2008: 177, my

    emphasis).It is an important contribution to the study of organizing processes and "organizational becoming"(Tsoukas and Chia 2002) to criticize the geometric reduction of time by rationalism. Organizational

    time is made of learning cycles, knowledge-intensive and knowledge-extensive moments, explorationand exploitation phases, and hardly corresponds to the geometric metaphor. But the extremesubjectivism of some authors, who exclusively trust the individual intuition of the subject to reunifyconscience with the world, sometimes mirrors the Cartesian dualism body-mind. Intuition, somehowassimilated with the "unmediated flow of time", is separated from the intentional structure ofconscience, somehow assimilated with the "mental geography of reflection", with its structure oforigins, destinations, and paths, in the same way as time would be separated from space. This"spiritualist dualism" which promotes time as the "true" dimension of living experience can lead todichotomous views in art and literature: "Picasso, Braque, and Duchamp stopped painting space and

    began painting time, and James Joyce turned inward to the psychosoul of characters confrontingthere the antics of Kronos" (Kramer 2004: IV, my emphasis). On the contrary James Joyce's Ulysses(Joyce 2000/1922), for example, can be viewed as an archetypical example of time-space integration,following the peregrination of Leopold Bloom through the time-space of one whole day in the city ofDublin, in the same way as Homer tells us the sea-wandering of Ulysses through the time-space of onedecade around the Mediterranean world. The importance of pre-reflexive thought in the process ofthought does not imply that unmediated, intuitive and unintentional pre-reflexivity is the essence ofknowing, discovering and creating. Merleau-Ponty reproaches Bergson his "blindness to theintentional structure of conscience" (Merleau-Ponty 1945).

    Towards an integrating time-space framework

    Anyway pre-reflexive awareness and reflexive awareness are rooted in the body, projectiontoward the future (time) but also projection to elsewhere and to others (space). If, unlike philosophersfocusing on the individual subject (Habermas 1970), we see human beings as inherently social anddialogical (Mead 1934; Vygotsky 1978, 1986), both intuition and intentionality are inscribed in an

    integrated time-space structure. Reflexivity, often identified with subjective "reflexivity"(Antonacopoulou and Tsoukas 2002) and with the psychological flow of duration, should then appear

    as closely linked with sociality and interaction rather than with "pure" subjects. In dialogical views ofreflexivity, human beings build their reflexive capacity within and through social interactions. Spacethen cannot be ignored as one mobile, living and fecund dimension of experience. The systematic and

    absolute historicism ended up ignoring that space too is a vital and creative experience, as MichelFoucault (1986, quoted by Ming Lim 2006) observes: "Up to the 1960s, as Foucault observes, space

    was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile. Time, on the contrary, was richness,fecundity, life, dialectic.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    5/29

    Actually the key issue is not defending space against time, but observing the deep integration of

    time and space into one unified "time-space" framework of experience and meaning. Time experienceis embedded in space experience, and vice versa. Time confers orientation and irreversibility to space:

    the neutral geometric structure of space gives way to an emotional "plotting" (Ricoeur 1984) where theepisodes of a story relate places and objects with events, paths with processes, spatial sets withtemporal sequences. Temporal structures (calendars, rhythms, events) are constructed in a social space

    and there is spatial "scope of temporal structures: how broadly they are recognized and enacted withincommunities" (Orlikowski and Yates 2002: 695). Symmetrically spatial structures may be

    continuously evolving. Their mutability of their permanence appear as key characteristics of theorganization. Daily organizational activities (producing, selling, scheduling, negotiating, training,eating, drinking coffee...) associates moments and places. "Time use in organizations is closelyconnected to space use. In future research on virtual organizations or virtual teams, time and spaceshould be taken into account altogether, not separately" (Lee and Liebenau 1999: 1053). Frequently

    organizational stories analyzed from one point of view, often a temporal point of view, can equally beread from the complementary spatial point of view. For example Staudenmayer, Tyre and Perlow tell

    us three stories where "temporal shiftschanges in a collective's experience of timehelp to facilitateorganizational change" (583). Those temporal shifts are also spatial shifts. At Ditto, "the introduction

    of an enforced "quiet time" during each workday" (589) meant that some periods were characterizedby the absence of encounters (spatial convergence) between engineers. The constant co-presence ofengineers was broken for some time and individual spaces of work were protected from interference.

    "At BBA, events that halted normal production activities, such as new product introductions, processrevisions, or equipment changes, created temporal shifts. By halting the production line, such rhythmchanges provided a sense of "found time" to workers... Individuals undertook special projects whilethe line was down" (589). Here again, those temporal shifts are also spatial shifts: through productioninterruptions, workers move from the production line to other working spaces, meaning differentactivities, for example to offices for quality analysis, or to training rooms. Even the space aroundmachines is another space when machines stop.

    As much as the living flow of time privileged by Bergson, the integrated time-space may be abasic ecological characteristic of human society rooted in the natural setting of life which we should

    re-discover, as suggested by Lefebvre (1974/1991: 95, quoted by Ming Lim: 126): "In nature, time isapprehended within space -the hour of the day, the season, the elevation of the sun above the horizon,the position of the moon and the starsthe cold and heat, the age of each natural being and soonnatural space was merely the lyrical and tragic script ofnatural time. Time was thus inscribed in

    space".The scholars who analyze time in organizations sometimes use the distinction between two

    concepts of time as defined by ancient Greeks: Kairos and Chronos. Chronos is the physical lineartime, measured in equivalent units, characterized by regular periodicity (day and night, seasons).Kairosis not linear; it is the time of opportunity and of favourable occasions. It rather qualifies thespecific depth of certain moments: "now is the right time to act". It is appraised, not through ameasurement tool like a watch, but through feelings. But it is worth noting that originally the Greek

    word "kairos" has a spatial meaning. It designates a particular point of discontinuity in a structure,

    some opening or cut. For example, in Homer's Iliad it is the split between bones - a weak point forwarriors. It is also a weaving term to name the technical tool which keeps warp threads separate. It isstriking to observe that organization scholars who use "kairos" as a temporal concept actually often re-discover its spatial implications, even if they do not explicitly stress it. Orlikowski and Yates (2002:

    686) link the dichotomy chronos-kairos with the dichotomy between "objective temporal structuring"and "subjective temporal structuring", but their field study shows that all the temporal structuring

    circumstances are actually spatio-temporal structuring episodes: project contributors collaboratingthrough a virtual network catch the opportunity of a conference to meet physically; from a certain datethey use the communication network to make votes without meeting physically; there is a permanent

    interplay between real space and virtual space, physical and virtual meetings, co-presence anddistance.

    Chia (2002: 867) defines the time-space integrated framework in a clear way, quite close toBakhtin's concept of chronotope: "All societies organize their lives by firstly establishing rhythms thateventually, through the ages, become the spatio-temporal frameworks for regulating interactions,

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    6/29

    social activities and modes of thought. Such forms of social ordering inevitably influence, amongst

    other things, how the flux and flow of our life-worlds are structured and conceptualized into events,things and situations; how identity is established and social entities created; how taxonomies and

    systems of classifications are produced and with what effects; how reification takes place, how causalrelations are imputed, and with what consequences; and how symbols and representations are used tosubstitute for reality and with what outcomes" (my emphasis).

    The chronotope concept

    The Bakhtinian "chronotope" concept

    To conceptualize the integrated time-space framework of organizing and sensemaking, we shalluse the theory of "chronotope", a concept that Bakhtin (Bakhtin 1981, Todorov 1981) defined to studyliterary works and more particularly narratives. The chronotope concept has been extensively applied

    to literary, cinema and art critique, ethnology and social studies, but it is still seldom used inorganization studies. Bakhtin (1981: 84-85) defines the chronotope (literally: "time-space") as the

    "intrinsic connectedness of spatial and temporal relationships that are artistically expressed in

    literature. It expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). Inthe literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out,concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, spacebecomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes

    and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. The chronotope in literature has anintrinsic generic significance... It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genreand generic distinctions... The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to asignificant degree the image of man in literature. The image of man is always intrinsicallychronotopic". Space is a trace of time and time is a marker of space in literary narratives. The time-

    frame framework is a fundamental matrix of the "image of man", the way situations may beinterpreted, the meaning of stories and situations generated. Bakhtin analyzes some generic literary

    chronotopes: the chronotope of the encounter, the chronotope of the road, the chronotope of the castle,

    the chronotope of parlours and salons, the chronotope of threshold / crisis. Narrative genres involvechronotopes and relate them with generic characters: the pastoral idyll involves shepherds andmaidens, the novel of chivalry knights and ladies, the road movie travellers and static dwellers, thesalon plot ambitious young beginners...all provided with generic values, identities and competences.

    Bakhtin stresses that each generic chronotope is linked with certain types of emotions, values and,therefore, identitities: "In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations are inseparablefrom one another, and always colored by emotions and values. Abstract thought can, of course, thinktime and space as separate entities and conceive them as things apart from the emotions and valuesthat attach to them. But living artistic perception (which also of course involves thought, but notabstract thought) makes no such divisions... Art and literature are shot through with chronotopicvalues of various degree and scope" (Bakhtin 1981: 243). He also states that the chronotope does notprovide only the internal structure, map and configuration of the narrative, but also a link between thenarrative content and the social, cultural and historical context of the narrating / reading action.

    To summarize the Bakhtinian theory of chronotope stresses four ideas that we deem useful toanalyze the organizing process:

    the spatial and temporal frames of a narrative are closely integrated and make up one unique"spatial-temporal" frame (chronotope),

    the spatial/temporal frame of a narrative plays a key role in the production of meaning andsense,

    the chronotope of the narrative is closely linked with certain value systems, classes of identity(professional / organizational / cultural identities) and generic characters,

    the chronotope of the narrative relates its interpretation by a reader, a spectator, or a researcherwith the historic, social and cultural setting in which it is interpreted.

    The chronotope has an important abstraction function: to some extent, and paradoxically, thegeneric spatial-temporal configuration of the narrative, which first appears as a set of physical

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    7/29

    characteristics (when? where? how long? how far?), actually frees the meaning-making process from

    physical constraints. Each generic chronotope involves specific signs of time-space structures whichpoint towards a spatio-temporal framework beyond physical presence. It creates a whole background

    which can be taken for granted; "off the screen" characters and objects are "there" without beingshown. For example, in the chronotope of the road, the origin and the destination of the journey,maybe the pursuers, play a key role in the narrative though they may never appear in the visible

    setting. In the same way, the "future customer" plays a major role in the chronotope of productdevelopment, though it may not even exist yet as a real character: marketers and development

    engineers spend much time and energy analyzing the future customer's requirements, reactions, pricesensitiveness, etc. That is why Gregory criticizes "Giddens' conceptualization of space in terms ofpresence and absence because it does not adequately account for the production of space in both itsmaterial and symbolic representations" (Gregory 1989, quoted by Sahay 1997: 243).

    Deleuze's development of the "chronotope" concept

    The concept of "narrative process" should be understood here in a broad sense: a process isnarrative as soon as it presents a sequence of facts and acts, linked by some logical or meaningful

    relationship, starting from an original situation and ending with a final situation, for some listener /reader / audience. A text, but also a film, or even a painting or a photography, can be considered asnarrative. For example, Nick Ut's famous photograph of a Vietnamese girl running naked on a road

    after being severely burnt on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack is obviously narrative: ittells us a whole story. In this perspective, any form of reasoned thought, starting from a premise andreaching a conclusion follows a narrative structure. Gilles Deleuze (1984/2006) - an enthusiasticreader of both Bergson and Bakhtin - applies the chronotope concept to the analysis of thought as aprocess framed by a tacit temporal/spatial order. In a conference about cinema, he explains that anyphilosophical thought (he illustrates this analysis with Aristotle's and Descartes' examples) conformsto a tacit temporal structure in its sequences, accelerations and stops, and to a tacit "geographic"mapping, with destinations, aims, means and obstacles. I find it necessary to quote a large excerpt ofthis lecture, because it is not published (my translation from French and my emphasis):

    "Philosophy can, to a certain extent, be explicitly defined as the methodology of thought. Amethod has two aspects: a temporal aspect; the order of ideas; the organization of thought order is oneaspect of method. The method has another aspect: a spatial aspect; namely the determination of theaims and means of thought and of the obstacles it faces, all those elements compose the spatial aspect.What are the aims of thought? What are the means of thought? What are the obstacles to thought?How to think? That is the spatial aspect. Those are the two aspects of method, temporal and spatial.Thepresupposed imageof thought must not be confused with the methodof thought, it is presupposedby the method. The method does not tell us how thought pictures itself, what image of itself it builds.The method presupposes an image of thought, an implicit image of thought. A variable image. Thatpresupposed image of thought, assumed by every method, how could we call it as simply as possible?I borrow a word from the linguist and great literary critique Bakhtin: chronotope. He uses

    "chronotope" in a very simple sense. It is a time-space, a spatiotemporal continuum. For example he

    tells us that answering the question "what is the novel?" requires to determine the specific chronotopeof the novel, i.e. a type of time-space presupposed by the novel. In the same way, I would say thatthere is a chronotope of thought, and that every method refers to a chronotope from its double point ofview: first, the temporal order of thoughts; second, the distribution of ends, means and obstacles; and

    this chronotope can vary and undergo transformations. It is never given. What may be given is amethod, but not its presupposed frame. It takes specific efforts to determine it. This chronotope of

    thought, this time-space which is presupposed by any spatiotemporal organization of thought, how canwe recognize it? The philosophic discourse shapes and grows in its frame, but the chronotope is notitself an object of philosophic discourse. The philosophic discourse in course of development

    presupposes the chronotope. The chronotope itself can only be punctuated. It is not punctuated byconcepts as elements of the philosophic discourse; it is punctuated by something stranger. When trying

    to answer the question: "what is philosophy", I would say that the chronotope of thought, its time-space, is principally punctuated and signalled by screams. In other words, there are philosophicscreams which frame the implicit image of thought. Then there is the discourse, and the discourse

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    8/29

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    9/29

    sensemaking transactions with the world (selling to customers, getting produced goods delivered).

    Work is always "performed in conditions of joint, collective activity (...) Only through a relation withother people does man relate to nature itself, which means that labour appears from the very beginning

    as a process mediated by tools (in the broad sense) and at the same time mediated socially" (Leont'ev,1981). Collective activity is interactional (different actors interact) and transactional (it achieves sometransaction with the world to transform it).

    The chronotopes of the business processes

    All those processes are narrative in nature. They are triggered by some event (a customer's order, acustomer's complaint, the decision to develop a new product, a competitor's innovation, a call fortenders). They have a happy or unhappy outcome. They involve several characters - not only subjects,but subjects playing some generic role. They take place in a spatial and temporal setting - the generic

    chronotope of the type of process under consideration. Their actors play a kind of drama with wellestablished scenographies and plots. The division of labour and the organizational rules assign social

    and spatial places and timings. Temporal and spatial marks are deeply connected in processes.If we view the organizational processes as inquiries distinctively narrative in nature, it sounds

    logical to apply the concept of chronotope to them. Paraphrasing Bakhtin, it may be assumed that thereis an "intrinsic connectedness of spatial and temporal relationships that are actively expressed inorganizations. It expresses the inseparability of space and time. In the organizational chronotope,

    spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as itwere, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes practically visible; likewise, space becomes charged andresponsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion ofindicators characterizes the organizational chronotope. The chronotope in organizations has anintrinsic generic significance... It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that definesgeneric organizations... The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to a significantdegree the image of man in organizations". We may also attempt to define generic organizationalchronotopes, as Bakhtin did for literary chronotopes, such as the manufacturing chronotope, theservice chronotope, the engineering chronotope, the supply chain chronotope, the product life cycle

    chronotope, the onsite building operations chronotope, all characterized by specific spatial settings andtemporal scales.

    The chronotope of organizational activity and organizing inquiries is a semiotic mediation whichallows social interactions, communication and cooperation, and dialogical reflexivity, as a language.Similar questions can be asked about it as about language, particularly: does the chronotope makesense in situated or in generic ways? To escape this aporetic dichotomy, which locks the questionerinto an insolvable dilemma, it is necessary to recall that all semiotic mediations are like Dr Jekyll andMr Hyde: they carry generic meaning-frames - they constrain and channel situated interpretation, butthey also get a unique meaning in a concrete situation and they can evolve through their activeinvolvement in situations. Words have generic areas of meaning, which allow different subjects to usethem in communication and to reach some form of mutual intelligibility, but the sense of words

    changes through their situated and conversational uses. In the same way, the chronotope carries

    "ready-made" meanings but its actual meaning is situated and improvised, it is institutionally definedand locally reinvented, etc. Semiotic mediations, and particularly the chronotope, are essentialtheoretical tools to overcome dualism.

    The chronotope appears as both a resource, constraining and enabling organizational processes,

    and an outcome of organizational processes. Organizational processes are narratives inscribed inspecific temporal/spatial frames, in the sense of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of "inscription" (Latour

    & Alkrich 1992): they are mapped and drawn in the conventional world established by the chronotopicsystem of meanings. An engineer, or the prototyping activity, carry specific social and culturalmeanings in a product development process at some particular moments and in some specific places of

    organizational life. The chronotope can be contingent to a cultural environment: a product engineerdoes not have the same activity, purpose, competence and values in Germany, the U.S. and Japan.

    Organizational chronotopes, like literary chronotopes, involve an integrated spatio-temporalframework (order and mapping), generic roles and characters, with their identities and values, theirgenres of discourse and their typical tooling, boundaries and crossings, and the type of activities

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    10/29

    coherent with the spatio-temporal framework (actual, potential and projected activities).

    Organizational chronotopes do not only relate present action with already-built structures of meaning(past events, historic memory, spatial forms); they also build "projected outcomes" (Toyoki and Spicer

    2006: 110): " This is to say, by introducing a three-fold typology of social process we reject the[Giddens'] duality of structure and agency in favor of the three analytically distinct components ofinitial social conditions of action (structure), process of interaction (agency), and projected outcomes...

    three ontologically distinct temporal orientations, i.e. past as real - present as negotiated - future asconstructed." Organizational chronotopes have a constraining function: they shape, though do not

    determine, organizational arrangements and the corresponding collective activities / cross-functionalprocesses. They also have an opening and enabling function: they open potentials for change, byproviding a broader framework for meaning-making, questioning and transforming, though they rarelysuddenly and radically de-structure collective activities. Like the "organizational genres" analyzed byOrlikowski and Yates (1998), they "shape, but do not determine, how community members engage in

    everyday social interaction".

    From "genre" multiplicity to cacophony

    The concept of speech genre was defined by Michael Bakhtin (1986). A speech genre is a type ofspeech situation which is governed by recognizable conventions, such as greetings, interviews,committee meetings, conference speeches, proposals of marriage. By analogy with speech genres, a

    genre of organizational action can be defined as a type of organizational / collective practice - such as"interviewing a prospect", "traceable manufacturing", "answering a complaint", "customized design" -which is governed by recognizable conventions - such as a specific division of labour, modes ofcoordination (circulating memos, updating a data base), normal purposes, regulated priorities, steeringcommittees. In the same way as literary chronotopes articulate genres of speeches and action (theknight's genre, the lady's genre, the witches' genre) into a diachronic story, organizational chronotopesarticulate professional / occupational genres into cross-functional processes (the purchaser's genre, theseller's genre, the producer's genre, articulated into the supply chain story). They answer suchquestions as: what roles do purchasers, planners, producers, distributors, inventory managers, play in

    the supply chain, how do they coordinate? The chronotope is a system of genres: it articulatesprofessional genres which interact with each other in specific spatial and temporal settings (Bazerman1994) and meaning-making processes. It gives some coherence to their inter- relations, it interlockstheir purpose and it regulates the typical sequences which enact them (Orlikowski and Yates 1998).

    Sometimes, for historic reasons, groups of actors develop their own local chronotopes and thedistinct chronotopes juxtaposed in the organization, instead of being articulated and coordinated, justconflict. That type of situation occurred in the computer industry case presented in part 4 of this paper.For example, each function concerned by the product (computer systems) had its own system to codeand identify the company products. They had specific semantic constraints: producers viewed productsas related with manufacturing processes (list of operations); sellers viewed products as functionsresponding to customers' needs (functional view); product engineers viewed products as technological

    solutions (organic and technical view). These different languages raised serious problems for the

    coordination of the supply chain, with such symptoms as high levels of inventory and delays indeliveries. But all the attempts to develop a common and unified language to identify products failed.This type of situation, when attempts to coordinate different functions concerned by the same productthrough some language fail, was analyzed by Bechky (2003) in the case of new product development.

    In her case study, the three occupational groups (engineers, technicians and assemblers) finallycommunicate by handling the parts themselves. In most cases, it is obviously impossible to

    communicate with objects instead of signs. The organization then remains a mosaic of distinct andunrelated chronotopes and narratives. There is no global meaningful narrative.

    The organizational narrative becomes then an incoherent cacophony. This endangers the very

    ability of the organization to make sense for its environment and it damages its relationship with itspartners / audiences: commercial relationship (problems of market and customers image), financial

    relationships (problems of investors' images, funding), political and social relationships.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    11/29

    Making sense for the social and institutional environment

    As a matter of fact, the capacity of an organization to make sense of its environment, in the same

    way as the capacity of a narrative to make sense for an audience, strictly depends on its inscriptionwithin the adequate chronotope. The literary chronotope frames the reading of a narrative by itsreaders and the perception of the readers by the narrator. The organizational chronotope frames the

    reading of its social environment by the organization and the reading of the organization by thesociety. Toyoki, Spicer and Elliott (2006: 111) observe this function "internal - external" coherence in

    the case of the temporal rhythms which dominate organizational activity: "Certain instances of socialreproduction may favor certain rhythmic dispositions over others". This observation can be extendedto the whole chronotope as a key mediation for the social, historical and institutional intelligibility /acceptability of the organization. The great German writer W.G. Sebald, in "Austerlitz" (2001),his lastnovel, one of the most significant German language works of fiction since 1945, shows how the

    central position of the clock in the monumental architecture of Anvers railway station links thearchitecture of the building with the unification of time all over the country at the end of the 19th

    century: the internal spatial structure of the building recalls travelers the role and the shape of time inthe new Belgian society, and it visibly demonstrates that the railway organization is a temple of time.

    Butler (1995), Forray and Woodila (2002) link the time-space frame with the type of organizationaland institutional context: "(for) the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the institution across timeand space(...) temporal frames provide meaningmaking structures that frame both individual and

    institutional experience, linking past, present and future through the codification of knowledge as asocial memory, and the congruence of participants over envisioned futures" (Forray and Woodila2002: 902). The chronotope of an organizing process links it with the rest of the society, the culturalenvironment and the historical setting through categories of meaning, ways of segmenting reality,values and generic identities. The time of accounting, budgeting, reporting, closure, fiscal year unifiesthe internal space of the company: all divisions and units, all over the world, report their financialresults simultaneously and are consolidated. Space contracts into a few corporate figures and annualreport comments. Those spatiotemporal structures at the same time mould the image of theorganization for external observers and link the internal management with financial markets, tax

    control, banks and shareholders: by synchronizing time, they bridge space: "meanings of timespace aredeeply embedded within social structures" (Sahay 1997: 255).

    Boundaries

    The chronotope is also the major source to define peripheral and internal organizationalboundaries. The boundaries of a collective activity often appear to actors themselves and to observersas "naturalized", objective and intangible data, as if they were objective characteristics of thecollective activity and of the organizational setting themselves. For example, engineers who design aproduct and manufacturers who produce it seem to belong to "naturally" separate spatial, temporal andsocial worlds (Bechky 2003). But a boundary - an occupational as well as a cultural or organizational

    boundary - is actually a collective judgement. Collective activity is segmented by socially constructed

    and cultural frontiers between functions, professions and competence areas. For example, in thecomputer group described in part 4, the financial management faced a problem of cost comparabilitybetween North American and European factories. The product cost was not calculated with the sameaccounting conventions, particularly as regards the classification of cost elements between the one-

    shot development phase (not included in the cost of inventoried products) and the recurrent productionphase (included in the cost of inventoried products). It was decided to harmonize the accounting rules

    worldwide, by imposing a precise boundary between development activities and manufacturingactivities, viewed as a sequence (development goes as far as activity A, manufacturing starts at activityB). It appeared then that the European and North American tacit definitions of development and

    manufacturing were distinct (some engineering activities considered as manufacturing support inEurope were considered as process engineering in the U.S.). What is worse, it appeared that the

    chronotopes were completely distinct: the cutting and the order of tasks were entirely different andtransformed the harmonization into a headache.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    12/29

    A narrative situation may be disturbed by the sudden necessity to call in some character who was

    not part of it so far, to keep the narrative going. The same type of disturbance may occur inorganizational situations. In certain situations disturbing events can destabilize the existingorganizational chronotopes by requiring, for example, to extend the spatial and/or the temporalframework, and to enrol characters who stayed outside so far. For example safety issues in buildingoperations may raise issues of design (technological or architectural choices) which require to invitethe architect, not involved so far, into the chronotope of work safety management. Reversely designissues may require on-site building experience and designers must extend their chronotope of"designing a project" to "doers", e.g. foremen, who are not usually participants in the "design" story.

    Systems of chronotopes

    In a given organizational situation - as in a given narrative text -, different chronotopes mayinteract and shape a chronotopic system by opposing or completing or replacing each other. Forexample, Cervantes' Don Quixote is built on the opposition between the traditional chronotope ofchivalry adventures (conventional time of wanderings integrated with a conventional space of forests,castles and lakes where strangeness dominates familiarity and new unknown places are permanentlydiscovered) and the realist chronotope of picaresque stories (realist countryside with uneducatedpeasants, taverns, thieves). In the industrial world, it is very common that organizational life is basedon the opposition between:

    the chronotope of "designing" (new product development, project management) and thechronotope of "operating" (series manufacturing, mass distribution),

    the chronotope of manufacturing standard goods and the chronotope of providingcustomized services,

    the chronotope of transforming matter (production) and the chronotope of moving matter(logistics).

    In the world of passenger transports, there is a frequent opposition between the chronotope oftransport (transporting from point A to point B in time X: transport time is wasted time and should beminimized, A and B are conventional points imposed by the transporter) and the chronotope ofmobility (ensuring the mobility from customized origin and destination of a working person withinher/his working process, and the continuity of the working process during this spatial move).

    The chronotopes of a chronotopic system interact spatially (spatial overlapping, spatialboundaries, distance between the respective chronotope spaces), temporally (temporal overlapping,

    temporal boundaries, disjunction, order) and socially (are there common characters or not betweenboth chronotopes, are there common, distinct or contradictory purposes and values).

    task

    A

    task

    B

    task

    A1

    task

    A2

    task

    A3

    task

    C

    task

    B1

    task

    B2+

    C

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    13/29

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    14/29

    The chronotope of collective activity combines habits and inquiries to rebuild habits.

    Designing versus operating

    The chronotope of "the designing story" imposes spatial structures (laboratories, engineeringservices in "white collar" offices) and temporal structures (the first phases of projects, "before"

    operations take place: a "pioneering" period; the design and engineering cycles) to organizationalmeaning-making. It links organizational situations with institutions and social identities, for examplethe definition of professions and diplomas dedicated to "designing", as opposed to operationalprofessions; or the development of scientific concepts proper to "designing stories", such as "epistemicobjects", as opposed to concepts more oriented towards "operating stories", such as "instruments" and"commodities" (Knorr-Cetina 1997). Circulations are virtual circulations of information and rarelyphysical circulations of material objects.

    The classical chronotope of "designing" is characterized by the sequential arrangement of time(visible for example, in the PERT techniques of planning and scheduling), on fairly long durations (thedevelopment cycle, which is much longer than the production cycle), the spatial and temporalsegmentation of action based on the technical structure of the product and on professional

    specializations (electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, design, system engineering, etc.), the

    clear-cut separation from the world of operations.At the end of the 1980s, particularly in the automotive industry, project management with light-

    weight or heavy-weight project managers worked its way against the traditional functionalorganization and tended to change the "designing" chronotope while keeping the same external

    boundaries. Concurrent engineering, for example, imposed continuous time (with overlapping phases)against the classical sequential time of project planning. The cross-functional coordination was

    enhanced and embodied in a heroic figure, the project manager, a boundary-crossing character: theproject manager crosses time boundaries (he/she manages the project through its different phases,from beginning to end), space boundaries (he/she moves from one place to the other while the project

    progresses: engineering offices, prototyping installations, factory) and social/professional boundaries(he/she manages a cross-functional structure which coordinates all the functions involves in the

    project). The project manager is particularly in charge of building a strict correspondence betweentime (phases, steps) and socio-professional space (coherence of technical choices, fit with customerrequirements), by organizing physical, virtual or even symbolic encounters (the product characteristics

    activities coordinated

    through habits:

    centralized

    mechanisms

    and/or formal rules

    habits are

    disturbed,

    triggering

    inquiry

    organizing

    inquiry:

    acting,

    mediating,

    sensemaking

    end of

    inquiry:

    new habits

    are tested

    and validated

    activities

    coordinated

    through habits

    habitual action:

    temporal duration spatial extension

    (multiple positions)

    habitual schemesdominate

    limited level ofdialogue

    inquiry:

    temporal duration spatial extension

    (multiple roles)

    abductive explorationof the situation

    intensive dialogicalinteractions

    habitual action:

    temporal duration spatial extension

    (multiple positions)

    habitual schemesdominate

    limited level ofdialogue

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    15/29

    must "meet" the functional requirements, the engineers' action must "meet" the customer's needs

    through the marketers' specifications).In modern project management, the cross-functional dimension is still reinforced, upsetting the

    spatial order. All functional teams involved in the project are physically gathered in the same place,around some 3-D representation of the future product - generally a mock up. The unification of time(concurrent engineering) is now linked with a similar unification of space. This re-integration of time

    and space into a de-segmented, re-integrated chronotope entails deep changes in values: theprofessional ideals migrate from the classical functional view ("I am a craftsman, I must accomplish

    my technical craft as well as possible") to the cross-functional and strategic, customer-oriented view("I am a member of the organizational team, identified with a temporal and spatial unit, I mustcontribute to the best systemic answer to customers' requirements"). The general logical schememoves from Cartesian problem solving (de-composing the problem into independent sub problems) toco-creating a new concept and a new object with other professions.

    The traditional "operating" chronotope imposes different structures than the "designing"chronotope: spatial structures (a large shared space, the factory, characterized by technological

    operations which impose their constraints - noise, temperature - to human beings); temporal structures(short and repetitive cycles: the production cycle, the distribution cycle). Circulations are mostly

    material circulations of physical objects.The classical chronotope of "operating" is characterized by the sequential arrangement of time,like "designing", but on much shorter phases ("operations" of a few minutes or hours, compared with

    design phases, measured in days, weeks or months). The apparently unified space of the factory isactually segmented in subspaces corresponding to distinct technological operations and professionalspecialties (functional layout). As a result of this form of machine layout, where only machiningoperations of a particular type may be performed in a limited area of the workshop, the workpieceitself must travel a considerable distance around the workshop before all the operations are performedupon it. There is a fairly high scheduling complexity (complexity of the relationships between wellknown and stable operations), whereas complexity in designing is rather a technical complexity(concentrated in the content of the operations).

    designing operatingMyth of innovation Myths of efficiency and reliability

    Unique events, unique dates Recurrent time of operations

    Design places: offices, labs; low noise andartificial world

    Operating places: factories, building yards: noise,smell of machines, contact with matter

    Circulation of information Circulation of physical objects

    Design tooling: CAD, images, data Operating tooling: machines, technical tools

    Design professions: design engineers, designers Operational professions: production engineers,shop floor technicians, workers

    Values: creativity, aesthetics, technologicalperformance

    Values: efficiency, quality, safety

    A specific type of tooling plays an important role to embody, constrain and reproduce thechronotope system: architectural tools (Kornberger and Clegg 2004). Architectural tools are toolswhich constrain the spatio-temporal frame, the sequential order of actions, boundaries and circulations,imposing or prohibiting the separation between actions and encounters between persons or objects.They link time and space structures in a specific way, for example assigning distinct places to tasks or

    phases in collective activity, or locating in one unique and specific place various steps of a process.Architectural tools are neither located in one unique place nor assigned to one unique task in theprocess: their use crosses time, space, and the social division of labour. Their user is not an individualor a local team, but the whole organization. Typical architectural tools are, for example, thearchitecture of a building (layout of offices, corridors, cafeteria, coffee machine, etc., organization of

    circulations, influence on encounter possibilities); an integrated management information system

    (ERP), which imposes sequences of operations (operation B cannot be achieved before operation Ahas been completed) and assigns operations to precise categories of actors (Lorino 2007b); process re-engineering, which re-organizes the sequences of tasks and re-locates them in the organization; supply

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    16/29

    chain management, which constrains the coordination and the cooperation of all the activities which

    handle the material flow of products and components. Architectural tools are cross-functional andinfluence the chronotope through several means: the form of walls and openings, the structure of data

    storage, the architecture of communication, the architecture of transactions (Sahay 1997). They canplay an important role in reproducing or transforming the chronotope of an organization.

    Two episodes of organizational change

    Transformation of chronotopes in the computer industry at the beginning of the 1990s

    This episode was lived by the author 20 years ago. The author was then the controller of BullCompany, a large computer manufacturing company. This retrospective analysis of such an oldmaterial is not properly action research, since at that time it was not viewed as research and bydefinition this study cannot change anything in the analyzed situation. It appears as a reflexive analysisof past events and experience allowing to build a case study. It is not introspective, since thoseepisodes were discussed many times, first with co-actors in the situation, second with former co-actorsin the three or four years following the situation, third with other researchers after formal presentations

    in seminars or conferences. Those mirroring efforts create some distance from personal experience.One could speak of "post-action research" or "retrospective case study" with a very long learning loop.Nevertheless those events were never analyzed with the chronotope theoretical framework, whichbrings a new light to the interpretation and understanding of those now historical events. Theconsiderable temporal distance may be a problem for the accuracy of some facts and data, but, on theother side, it better guarantees a certain emotional and political distance. Being an interpretiveresearcher, I do not believe in so-called "research objectivity", but in the pragmatist validation ofhypotheses through subsequent action and events. In this case, the later events - the general collapse oftraditional computer manufacturers (Digital, Control Data, Univac, Burroughs, IBM as amanufacturer, Bull) - tends to bring a historical validation of the hypothesis proposed here. Apart fromanalyzing the documents of that period - as a controller, I had access to a lot of first hand information,this type of empirical research, close to history, requires the post-action effort to make events an object

    of discussion, critique and controversy.Actually, this study may be a hybrid between classical management case studies and historical

    inquiries. At the end of the 1980s and beginning of 1990s, the computer industry underwent radicaltransformations. Till the mid-80s, it had developed within the classical chronotope system ofmanufacturing industries (situation A). It then moved to situation B, with three fairly disjoinedchronotopes. In many cases, the move from A to B proved almost very difficult and generated

    organizational chaos.

    Situation A (till 1988)

    The manufacturing cost and value added were very high, particularly so because of sophisticatedelectric and functional testing operations of newly produced computers, requiring complex and

    expensive testing machines. Though computer technology was R&D intensive, the average life cycleof a product was still fairly long, around seven years. IBM 360 was introduced in 1966 and replacedby IBM 390 in 1990 - a long 14 year career.

    This industry, like most classical manufacturing industries, articulated three main chronotopes ina sequential way: the chronotope of " product development", the chronotope of "productmanufacturing" and the chronotope of "product sales". The boundaries between chronotopes were

    materialized by "buffers", one material buffer, one informational buffer:

    At the boundary between manufacturing and sales, a buffer inventory of finishedproducts; before entering the inventory, products underwent continuous physicaltransformations in the course of the production process (the "manufacturing story": thematerial metamorphoses of the product); once they entered the buffer inventory, they

    became commercial objects and they were not supposed to undergo any more physicalmodification; they were objects of negotiation, contracting, exchange and payment.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    17/29

    At the boundary between engineering and manufacturing, a buffer data base of producttechnical data (bill of materials, production routing, technical versions and levels); before

    entering the technical data base, the technical data of the product underwent continuoustransformations in the course of the engineering process (the " engineering story": theinformational metamorphoses of the product); once they entered the buffer data base,they became the stable guidelines of production and they were not supposed to undergoany more significant modification.

    The engineering chronotope The manufacturing

    chronotope

    The selling chronotope

    Spatial frame Engineering offices in

    centralized engineering

    buildings: quiet and hightech atmosphere

    Manufacturing

    shopfloor in factories:

    industrial atmosphere

    Scattered commercial

    offices in local commercial

    branches

    Temporal frame Very long development cycle (1

    year) for long life cycles (7

    years), sequential time

    Long production cycle (3

    months), sequential time

    Short selling process

    Meaning-

    making

    principles

    Central role of the "future

    product", viewed as a virtual

    and technological object.

    Central roles of the product,

    viewed as a physical object,

    and of the process

    (machines).

    Central roles of the product,

    viewed as a functional

    object (what functions does

    it fulfil?) and of thecustomer.

    Roles and

    characters

    Product engineers, strategic

    marketers, controllers.

    Production engineers,

    workers, foremen, quality

    controllers, cost controllers

    Sales managers, sellers,

    distributors, customers.

    Values Clever transformation of

    information.

    Technological performance,innovation and technical

    expertise.

    Clever transformation of

    matter.

    Productivity, quality, respectof time schedule,

    manufacturing expertise.

    Clever transformation of

    value.

    Long lasting relationshipbased on trust, capacity to

    convince, expertise on uses

    A "crossing

    character": the

    product

    The product is a concept; it

    undergoes conceptual

    metamorphoses.

    The product is an object; it

    undergoes physical

    metamorphoses.

    The product is a set of

    functions; it undergoes

    economic metamorphoses

    (discount, payment).

    Tooling Computer-aided design,

    scientific models, simulation.Business planning.

    Manufacturing machines,

    standard and variancecosting

    Sales commissioning,

    functional analysis, contractmodels.

    Boundaries Starts with market analysis,

    ends with (i) product data base

    "freezing", (ii) pilot production.

    Starts with pilot production

    and ends with delivery to the

    finished product inventory.

    Starts with (i) the prospect

    first contact, (ii) the product

    availability in inventory.

    Ends with sale contract

    signature.

    manufacturing

    = material

    transformation

    selling = value

    transformation

    engineering =

    informational

    transformation

    information

    buffer:

    product

    technical

    data base

    physical

    buffer:

    finished

    product

    inventory

    the engineering chronotope:spatio-temporal framework of

    the "engineering story"

    the manufacturing chronotope:spatio-temporal framework of

    the " manufacturing story"

    the selling chronotope:spatio-temporal framework of

    the " selling story"

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    18/29

    Situation B (then announced for mid-1990s)

    There was a deep transformation of the computer manufacturing industry at the turn of the

    decade, as a result of several strategic evolutions:

    the move from proprietary operating systems (such as the IBM 360 or the DigitalEquipment VAX family of products) to standard operating systems shared by allmanufacturers increased the level of competition and dramatically reduced production

    and sales margins,

    the development of standard components reduced computer manufacturing to assemblingpurchased components, which reduced production margins too,

    product standardization also transformed the after-sales service, which more and moreused hardware replacement rather than customized repairs; this trend reduced theimportance of product testing (some rate of faulty parts and products was easier toaccept);

    the migration of the market from information systems specialists, buying computingpower, to final users such as accounting services, HR departments, banks, who boughtcomplete turnkey solutions ("accounting solution, employee pay solution, bank agency

    management solution"): this market transformation reduced the commercial importanceof hardware and enhanced the importance of application software and services (systemengineering, installation, customization);

    because of the quick evolution of micro-processor and memory chip technology, theaverage life cycle of a computer (PCs) shortened from 7 years to less than 1 year; thiscreated high obsolescence risks for inventories.

    Manufacturing tended to limit itself to assembling standard components. Then the manufacturingcost and value added became lower and lower, particularly so because product testing operations didno longer exhaustively apply to the production but just to statistical samples and they were less andless sophisticated (standard products). Simultaneously the relative weight of component purchasing inthe final value of the computer became more and more dominant. The cost of components andinventories increased due to frequent obsolescence, which imposed costly inventory write-offs. The

    level of manufacturing value added became so low (less than 8%) and the economic importance ofpurchased components so high that manufacturing value added ended up being lower than the cost ofcarrying inventories (around 10% of sales value). The computer industry looked more and more like alogistic activity, which moves high value objects without adding value to them, rather than a classicalmanufacturing activity, which adds value to objects by transforming them. At the same time, customerservice moved from the technical installation of a computer and the after-sales maintenance of acomplex technical machine towards the analysis of the specific customer needs, the engineering of acustomized solution, the management of its technological as well as functional evolutions and thetraining of users. As for the design and engineering of products, they were still major activities, but

    they were mostly located in other organizations than the computer firms (software houses developingnew operating systems, such as Microsoft, or components developers, such as Intel).

    In that context a new chronotope system gradually emerged, with three new chronotopes whichwere not the simple temporal and spatial re-ordering of the former chronotopes, but a complete newway of narrating the computer business. The three new chronotopes were partly parallel and partlyoverlapping: the chronotope of life cycle management (managing dematerialized product information),the chronotope of the supply chain (moving objects quickly without transforming them) and the

    chronotope of customer service (responding to customized information requirements and situatedredesign of solutions).

    This was not only a transformation in formal organizations and in management systems. Itinvolved deep paradigmatic changes, in the definition of professional identities and values, in the wayof making sense, in the list of characters involved in each story, and in the relative importance of

    generic characters in the system. It would particularly involve a radical loss of importance of"manufacturing heroes", for whom the change would prove to be impossible to accept.

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    19/29

    Product life cycle

    chronotope

    Supply chain

    chronotope

    Customer service

    chronotopeSpatial frame Engineering, planning

    and marketing offices in

    centralized headquarters

    buildings.

    Warehouses, logistic

    centres, logistic planning

    offices.

    Service branches offices

    and customer sites.

    Geographic mobility and

    dispersion.Temporal frame Short life cycles (10

    months). Overlapping

    cycles and cycle phases.

    Short logistic cycle (2 to

    3 weeks), concurrent

    time periods.

    Long projects, ongoing

    relationship with major

    corporate customers.

    Meaning-making principles Quick development:

    products mostly

    profitable in the 1st

    weeks of their life.

    Quick moves of objects:

    object carrying is the

    main economic burden.

    Perennial and

    sustainable relationship

    with major customers.

    Roles and characters Product engineers,

    strategic marketers,

    purchasers, planners.

    Logistic engineers,

    purchasers, cost

    controllers.

    Expert consultants,

    major account managers,

    customers, projectmanagers.

    Values Innovation /

    technological reliability /market orientation.

    Reactivity and reliability. Technical expertise,

    ability to listen andunderstand, reliability.

    No more "crossing

    character": no common

    "hero"

    Products are permanently

    re-developed; central

    object = product

    portfolio.

    Time-spaceis the central

    focus. Products are still

    important, as objects to

    move quickly.

    No more concept of

    product. Complex and

    customizedsolutions.

    Tooling Computer-aided design,

    scientific models, market

    specs, business planning.

    Planning and scheduling

    systems, forecasts,

    automated warehouses.

    Tools for information

    systems engineering

    (CAE).

    Boundaries Starts with market

    analysis, ends with

    product phasing out

    (which overlaps next

    product starting).

    Starts with sales

    forecasts, ends with

    deliveries to customers.

    Starts with the prospect

    first contact, ends with

    project completion (or

    even with first contacts

    for next contract)..

    system life cycle management chronotope:

    future market analyzing, designing, engineering, midlife

    redesigning, and phasing out the product

    logistic cycle chronotope:

    sales forecast, customer order management, procurement scheduling,

    production scheduling, inventory managing, distribution scheduling

    servicing chronotope:

    customer need analysis, technical/financial proposition, contracting, solution

    (hardware + software + service) engineering, installation, after sale service

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    20/29

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    21/29

    we are in practicing our profession". In that moment I understood a phenomenon which so far had

    partly escaped my attention. My colleague was attached to that ratio, not in a rational way, but ratherthrough strong affective links, because for him O/DC ratio was a sign, which referred to a complex

    system of professional values and beliefs, to a story of knights and fairies, far beyond the crudealgorithm which it seemed to be, in a way quite similar to the flag of a country, which means muchmore than the two or three colours it exhibits. For the production manager and his colleagues in the

    manufacturing activities, activities such as procurement, logistics, scheduling, were considered as"supports" to production. Offices were the "unavoidable evil" of an industry which had transformed

    the garage of pioneers like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard into modern, clean and silent factories.Where innovators equipped with a soldiering iron had invented revolutionary objects, now troops ofqualified workers produced sophisticated, elegant and reliable computers. What happened beforeproduction - engineering, purchasing - and what happened after - distributing, selling - was entirelybased on admired and sophisticated objects, the computers, which required careful production and

    advanced electrical and functional testing. The computer industry had adapted traditionalmanufacturing values (quality, productivity, automation) to the dream of all-intelligent and all-

    integrated information systems, present in the product and in the production process. Far from theproduct, administrative activities, stockpiling in warehouses, selling, were not the noble activities

    which could tell the story of the computer, the most advanced manufacturing product of industrialhistory!This emotional identification was even exacerbated by the situation of computer industry, which

    was moving away from traditional manufacturing models. They knew factories would cease to play animportant role, or even to play any role at all. Their professional pride was threatened, and that madethe O/DC ratio even more loveable. Through the O/DC ratio, the production manager was telling me astory, or even a history, the long and rich history of the computer industry, of inventors who designedsmart calculating machines in backyards, manufactured them in small workshops and later in largefactories, a collective history which stretched in space and timefar beyond his - and my - personalexperience. The chronotope of manufacturing went hand in hand with the whole history ofmanufacturing crafts and values: in it human actors could read the extension and the history of aprofessional culture, the manufacturing culture of performing machines and competent engineers. The

    O/DC time ratio appeared as the last fortress of an assaulted culture!Later on, many other episodes confirmed the dramatic transformation of time-space frameworks,

    and, through them, identities and values. It was a kind of collective tragedy, even if most individualactors could move to computer services or other manufacturing industries. For example, an attempt tointroduce target costing and value analysis into the company demonstrated the extreme defensiveseparation between functions and their inability to rebuild a common system of chronotopes.

    In that time, the company structure included five main structures:

    the headquarters functional departments, including Strategy and Finance, the sales networks, organised on a geographical and application-specific basis, the R&D division, responsible for designing and engineering new products, the industrial division, responsible for manufacturing, a number of product lines oriented towards strategic marketing, responsible for product

    business plans and managing the life cycle of the products.The product life cycle was viewed as a link between the various functions. It was tightly codified

    and regulated by regular reviews and decision-making meetings. Strict rules concerned managementdocuments (marketing plan, advanced engineering plan and volume production plan, quality audits) to

    submit at each step. They were expected to provide input for the increasingly complete and detaileddrafting of the product business plan, as the development phase moved forward.

    The company leaders realized that the performance of the life cycle suffered from the lack ofcooperation between functions. They decided to introduce value analysis, product functional analysis,cost estimation and profit planning techniques, because they hoped that the target cost and profit of the

    new product would be a linking pin between functions, a "crossing character". Basically target costingimposes a market-based cost target to all functions concerned by the product: engineering, purchasing

    and manufacturing should meet a target product cost calculated as the customer future value (forecastselling price) minus the target profit. It was viewed as the linking pin between marketing (in charge ofestablishing the future customer value), engineering, purchasing and manufacturing (in charge of

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    22/29

    determining the actual cost) and strategic and financial analysts (in charge of determining the target

    profit).The target costing practice which actually prevailed was as follows:

    1. The product line defined the general (marketing) specifications for the new product. It carriedout a market survey and a strategic study, for the purpose of defining target cost C1, designed toachieve a profitability level compatible with the global strategic projections of the company. The

    financial forecasts of the product business plan were based on cost C1, which was communicated bythe product line to the R&D and industrial production divisions, as the target which had to be met to

    ensure the success of the product.2. The R&D division carried out initial design work on the basis of specifications supplied by the

    product line. When the detailed design stage was reached, the R&D division brought in its valueengineering team to calculate a detailed cost estimate, not based on company normal productionconditions, but on ideal production conditions (lowest hourly rates in Europe, components purchased

    at lowest prices, optimal productivity, and strict adjustment of capacities to actual productionvolumes). This cost (C2) was communicated by the R&D division to the manufacturing division, as

    the cost objective which the design of the product should enable the manufacturing division to meet,provided it could achieve the most favourable conditions of productive competitiveness.

    3. On the basis of the detailed product design, the manufacturing division finished productionengineering, calculating a new estimated cost (C3), according to the conditions which it consideredcorresponded to the real situation of the company. The product line then had to negotiate a revised

    product business plan with the manufacturing division.On the basis of this brief description, let us examine the "crossing hero" "target cost". Cost C1,

    which could be regarded as a target cost (a customer value based objective), appeared to be usedinternally by the product line only, in support of the decision to initiate the R&D phase or not. Oncompletion of the initial phase, cost C1 was discarded, and above all not used for comparison withsubsequent cost figures. This was reflected in a tendency by the product lines to underestimate cost C1systematically in order to get their products accepted, bearing in mind that the product lines werecompeting with each other in the investment resource arena, and had little sense of responsibility forthe realism of this cost value, which was not subject to any follow up.

    Cost C2, calculated using sophisticated quantification instruments (cost tables, functional andorganic analysis, and data bases), was determined by the R&D division at the detailed technical designstage, at which point it was too late to have any significant influence on design. In other words, C2was calculated by the R&D division when it could not play any role in managing the R&D work.Presented as a design optimisation tool, it could actually not play that role under any circumstances,because it emerged too late. In fact cost C2 clearly was intended to control future productionperformance, and in the event of a future cost overhang, to discriminate between what could beattributed to the designers fault and to the manufacturers fault respectively. Furthermore, it wassignificant that the designers were very attached to the calculation of cost C2, in order, in their ownterms: "to measure the specific competitiveness of the designer and the specific competitiveness of themanufacturer, and to distinguish the respective performances of the designer and the manufacturer".

    The manufacturing division regarded cost C2, not without some justification, as unrealistic and

    non-significant, and hurried to recalculate its own estimated cost C3 "at the normal manufacturingconditions of the company". But given that it did so at its own initiative, without consulting the otherfunctions, there was nothing to prevent the manufacturing division from including the safety marginsit considered prudent to maintain "to allow for contingencies". At the time when the final version of

    the product business plan was prepared, the difference between the initial hypothesis for cost C1 andestimated production cost C3 was invariably significant, to the point in certain cases of threatening the

    economic viability of the product already developed.

    Construction industry: the implications of the traditional chronotope system for work safety

    In the construction industry, the chronotope system traditionally articulates the chronotope of

    "project design" with the chronotope of "on site building". These are two very different worlds.Spatially, "project design" takes place in modern and functional engineering offices, whereas "on sitebuilding" takes place outdoor and faces weather conditions (actors of "on site building" boast about

  • 8/12/2019 Bakhtin Chronotope

    23/29

    their suntanned and craggy faces, compared with the pale face of design engineers...). Temporally,

    design engineers - along with sales engineers - give birth to new projects. They literally "invent" them.Site managers, foremen and workers transform what they consider as "dreams" - sometimes badly

    designed dreams - into solid and standing realities. Their values, myths and reasons to be proud arefundamentally distinct, but they may generally sound compatible and even complementary. Theirdifferent individual profiles often correspond to different phases in their professional life: a good

    adventurous site manager at 35 may become an experienced, wiser and less bold design engineer at 45.Problems of coherence emerge when safety issues are raised. In the project design chronotope,

    work safety plays a secondary role - it is a minor character. In the site operations chronotope, worksafety plays a major role: it is an important character.

    The project design chronotope The on-site building chronotope.

    Spatial frame Headquarters offices, engineering and

    commercial offices.

    The engineering site is physicallystable.

    Building site, outdoor, weather and

    ground constraints.

    The building site is a physical site whichpermanently evolves in 3-D.

    Temporal frame First phases of the project; two to three

    months.Time can mostly be planned.

    Building phases: six months to two years.

    Unforecast events (weather, ground) makeplanning difficult.

    Meaning-making

    principles

    The project should be optimized from a

    technical and economic point of view,

    to get the contract (call to tenders).

    Ongoing transformation of information

    about the building and the building

    process.

    The building operations must be firmly

    managed to respect the time schedule

    (heavy penalties for delays), ensure the

    quality of the building (risk that the

    customer does not accept it) and ensure

    work safety.

    Roles and characters Design engineers, architect,

    engineering subcontractors (structural

    engineering, etc.), sales engineer,

    customer, future site manager (at theend of the chronotope).

    Site manager, foremen, safety controllers,

    workers, building subcontractors,

    suppliers, customer.

    Values Technical expertise, ability foreconomic optimization, creativity in

    inventing design options.

    Managerial authority and leadership,commitment, ability for situated

    improvisation, decision-making, field

    experience, relevant judgment.

    The building is a

    "crossing character"

    The building is a virtual object, it is the

    focus of information treatment (it is "an

    epistemic object".

    The building is a virtual object, it is the

    focus of information treatment (it is "an

    epistemic object".

    Tooling Information systems, calculation

    models, structural models, economic

    simulations, drawings, plans.

    Drawings, plans, building machines