Changing Conversations in Organizations

This book draws on the theoretical foundations laid out in earlier volumes of this series to describe an approach to organizational change and development informed by a complexity perspective. It sets out to make sense of the experience of being in the midst of change. Unlike many books that presume clarity of foresight or hindsight, the author focuses on the essential uncertainty of participating in evolving events as they happen and inquires into the creative possibilities of such participation. Most methodologies for organizational change are firmly rooted in systems thinking, as are many approaches to process consultation and facilitation. This book questions the way such thinking suggests that we can choose and design new futures for our organizations in the way we often hope. Avoiding the widely favoured use of 2 by 2 matrices, idealized schemas and simplified typologies that characterize much of the management literature on change, this book encourages the reader to live in the immediate paradoxes and complexities of organizational life, where we must act with intention into the unknowable.
The author uses detailed reflective narrative to evoke and elaborate on the experience of participating in the conversational processes of human organizing. It takes as central the conversational life of organizations as the activity in which we perpetually sustain and change the possibilities for going on together. This book will be valuable to consultants, managers and leaders, indeed all those who are dissatisfied with idealized models of change and are searching for ways to develop an effective change practice as participants seeking to make a difference.

Author Biography

Dr Patricia Shaw (University of Hertfordshire, UK)