Discussion: 4.1Theory vs. Practice: Does Theoretical Knowledge Always Work Out? 4.2 Discussion: The Importance of Systems Methodology to Your Job

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PART II THREE METHODOLOGICAL VIEWS

Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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4 THE ANALYTICAL VIEW

This chapter will present the analytical view in detail. Concepts on which the view is based will be provided, such as models, causal relations, hypotheses, problem formulations, deduction, induction, verification and abduction, operational definitions and ceteris paribus. The relation of the analytical view to its paradigm and some typical results from this view will also be provided.

SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

There is good reason to say that a methodological view is its concepts. Major parts of this chapter are therefore devoted to presenting concepts that are often used by proponents of the analytical view: reality and models, causal relations, hypotheses, deduction, induction, abduction and verification, operational definitions, analysis and ceteris paribus (“other things being equal”). We will finish by discussing how the analytical view relates to its paradigm and look at various ambitions associated with being an analytical creator of knowledge.

REALITY AND MODELS

The analytical view is based on the assumption that reality is factive. There are objective facts and subjective facts. Both are looked at as true. Objective facts are circumstances, which, in principle, are indisputable, not questionable and not influenced by somebody’s opinion. This could be the age of a company, which product is selling best or the telephone number to the present general manager of the firm. There are also subjective facts. These are true opinions that people may hold. To the extent that they are facts, they are, from a methodological point of departure, treated in the same way as objective facts. When looking for facts, especially in the subjective case, the question of whether a finding is true or not often arises. In the case of the analytical view we are faced with the task of discovering elements (things,

events, opinions) that are invariant in spite of changes in the environment and variations in perceptions among different individuals. These have always been the requirements of the analytical view. That which is invariant is seen as more “true”. Two questions are consistently asked:

Which are the facts? Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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How can we explain these facts?

Being so concerned with invariance, it is natural that logic and mathematics have a dominant position in the analytical view. The following arguments are considered valid. a. Logical and mathematical knowledge is not subject to sensory illusions. b. Results from logical and mathematical analyses are universal and valid; they are not subject to change.

c. The only results that are precise and not subjective are those that can be formulated in mathematical terms resulting from calculations and measurements.

The ambitions in the analytical view are to work up pictures of factive reality (ambitions that the analytical view shares with the systems view). Some of these pictures can be called models. An analytical approach (we remind the reader that analytical “approach” means analytical view “in application”) is to look for representative models (many systems creators of knowledge have the same ambition). Models in the analytical view tend to contain quantitative elements. Models that are

quantitative, but do not adhere to laws of mathematics, must meet strict requirements as to their origin and form to qualify as models. In the analytical view, the researcher/consultant/investigator therefore has some guarantee that a model – if it is quantitatively based – actually reflects the invariant phenomena in question. Models with at least a certain minimum of generality can be part of the theoretical concepts

of the analytical view (see Box 4.1).

Box 4.1

Theory

Theory (from the Greek word theoria, reflection) is a term with various meanings, among others the following:

1. a hypothesis 2. a strictly verified assumption (vs. a hypothesis) 3. a purely intellectual explanation or understanding (vs. application or practice) (“theory

and practice”) 4. a set of systematically constructed theses.

In the analytical view we can say that theory contains models of factive reality, models that are valid for more than one case in real life. (The concept of theory is used in the systems and actors views as well. We will return to this.)

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CAUSAL RELATIONS, EXPLANATIONS AND HYPOTHESES

A very important concept in the analytical view is hypothesis. In this view, a hypothesis is a suggestion of an explanation of certain facts and a guide in surveying others. Not all analytical studies start with the formulation of hypotheses. Studies for creating

knowledge might be explorative; in other words, their objective can be to formulate hypotheses. Furthermore, there are a large number of studies that are of a purely descriptive character. The goal of these studies is to present facts without trying to establish the “logical consequences” of these facts; that is, without attempting to explain any described invariance. Hypotheses may include possible factive patterns – guides or templates that give structure to

purely descriptive studies. But because the highest ambition of the analytical view is to find explanations, we will reserve the concept of hypotheses to apply to what might be called “statements (confirmed or not) about causal relations”, or the assumption that one factor (or group of factors) determines the emergence of another. Traditional psychoanalytical theory provides an example of a hypothesis of this type: the hypothesis that asserts that a person’s early childhood experiences are an important factor in determining the person’s adult personality. “Hypothesis” is a concept that can also appear in the systems and actors views, but in those

instances it is usually given a less precise meaning – namely, a general assumption or an idea about how something is constructed or that a phenomenon will occur. What’s more, it is not related to causal thinking and determinism, and the close connection to theory is missing. Hypotheses can originate from various sources. A hypothesis may simply be based on a

guess. It can be the outcome of results from various studies and an expectation that a similar relation among two or more variables will be valid in the current study as well. A hypothesis can also come from existing theory that allows a creator of knowledge to predict that if specific circumstances are present, certain results should follow. No matter where a hypothesis comes from, it has the following important purposes right

from the start for those analytical studies whose aim it is to find explanations. It is the lodestar for: a. the type of data to be collected in order to confirm or reject the question formulated in the study

b. the extra data to be collected to test the veracity of the question formulated in the study c. the best way to organize these data for the analysis.

The background of a specific hypothesis is of great importance to the contribution the study can bring to the state of general knowledge (to existing theory). A hypothesis that originates in intuition or a mere guess can eventually offer an important contribution to the state in an effort to create knowledge. Yet if it has been tested in only one study, it has two limitations to its usefulness. First, there is no guarantee that the relations that were discovered between two variables in the study will appear in other studies. Second, a hypothesis based on a mere guess is probably not directly related to other knowledge or to existing theory. In consequence,

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results based on it have no clear connection to the great amount of social science knowledge that is now available. The results may well pose interesting questions or stimulate further studies and eventually be incorporated into existing theory. But until that happens, the results provide only some isolated information. A hypothesis that emerges from the results of other studies escapes the first of these two

limitations, at least to some extent. If the hypothesis is based on what other studies have stated and the subsequent study supports the hypothesis, the results verify that some kind of regularity in factive reality has been discovered. The possibility that the relations that have emerged depend on specific circumstances in a given situation is reduced, if not completely eliminated. A hypothesis that originates not only from the results of previous studies, but also from a

theory that is formulated in more general terms, is free of the second limitation as well – that is, of isolation from general knowledge. If connections are satisfactorily established between general theory and specific data from a study, and if the results from the study confirm the idea on which the hypothesis is based, the creator of knowledge has provided a two-way contribution. First, the results of the study assist in confirming that the theory holds in this new case as well as in previous ones. Second, by applying general theory to the specific case, the creator of knowledge is assisted in interpreting the results, that is, gets an answer to why he/she has come up with the results in question. Whether the character of an expected relation can be expressed explicitly from the start (i.e.

be formulated as hypotheses at the beginning of the study) depends primarily on the state of knowledge of the study area being focused on. Studies for creating knowledge can either be based on well-formulated hypotheses or they can produce them. From this it follows that formulating and verifying (or falsifying) hypotheses is one goal of studies that proponents of the analytical view want to call creation of knowledge. This goal cannot be reached without effort. In several business areas significant hypotheses are missing, which means that many explorative studies must be undertaken before hypotheses can be formulated. Such explorative work is an inevitable part of any effort intended to develop better knowledge about companies and related social phenomena. It does not make sense to say that studies that start by formulating hypotheses are more

knowledge-creative than others. Just when it is appropriate to formulate such hypotheses varies with the nature of the problem and the extent to which knowledge of an area already exists. Formulating and reformulating questions to create knowledge is a continuous process. A hypothesis implies that a special characteristic or event (X) is one of the factors that determine another characteristic (Y). Studies designed to test such hypotheses must result in data that allow creators of knowledge to conclude that X does or does not help determine Y. This leads us to causality. The concept of causality was discussed to some extent in Chapter 3. A deeper discussion

than that is beyond the scope of this book. Causality is, incidentally, a very complicated philosophical concept and has long been an issue on the agenda in many philosophical discourses. “Common sense”, in the context of causality, usually follows the idea that one circumstance (characteristic or event = cause) always leads to another circumstance (characteristic or event = effect). In analytical research, however, it is more usual to search for a number of determining factors (not just one) that, taken together, make possible the

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appearance of a characteristic or the occurrence of an event. Furthermore, basic and more advanced theoretical thinking may be focused on finding necessary and sufficient conditions for a characteristic or an event. However, the methodological issues are the same whether limited to one characteristic or event or considering several simultaneously, which means that our discussion can be based on the premise of one cause → one effect. A necessary condition (circumstance or event) is, by definition, a condition that must exist if

the phenomenon of which it is a cause is to appear or happen. If X is a necessary condition for Y, Y cannot appear or happen unless X exists or happens. A sufficient circumstance is one that always will be followed (contemporarily or later) by the phenomenon of which it is a cause. If X is a sufficient condition for Y, Y always appears or happens when X appears or happens. According to the analytical view in general, a condition can be both necessary and

sufficient for a phenomenon to appear or happen. If that is the case, Y will never appear or happen if X does not appear or happen. Furthermore, Y will always appear or happen if X appears or happens. Taken together, this means that Y appears or happens if, and only if, X exists or happens. However, in social sciences it is in practice impossible to find necessary and/or sufficient causal (extrinsic) relations. Social sciences usually go no further than presenting intrinsic or logical relations (compare the discussion in Chapter 3). The reason why the social science creator of knowledge cannot find causal necessary or sufficient relations in his/her reality is, according to the analytical view, understood to be that the social science creator of knowledge is not able, like the natural science creator of knowledge, to control his/her environment enough during various studies to be able to isolate what such causal relations might possibly be. Example of an intrinsic necessary relation: More than one company must exist in a market in order for that market to be competitive.

Example of a logical sufficient relation: If a machine breaks down, manufacturing done on that machine must stop.

A strict creator of knowledge would probably say that neither of the above examples is an explanation! However, to clarify, nothing in the analytical view in social sciences prevents them from generating causal relations. It happens all the time. However, they are never of a necessary or sufficient kind! As the reader has noticed, cause as well as effect can indicate a state (a characteristic) or a

course (an event). It is often arbitrary, or more the matter of how to interpret the meaning of a word, how we express it. As mentioned before, in the normal case a single cause and a single effect are not enough to

explain social events or phenomena. Creators of knowledge, therefore, try to find a group of causes that, combined, makes it more probable that an effect will take place or emerge. Conversely, most creators of knowledge search for several effects from a given cause. A usual additional complicating factor in business is that causes in a given situation interact

with each other. The cause–effect relation is rarely (if ever) one-dimensional, even though that is the ideal situation in the analytical view. Many analytical operative paradigms are

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nevertheless set up as if this ideal were possible. Creators of knowledge then consciously get a bundle of causes (or effects) as the outcome of the study (see Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 The Normal Hypothesis

Most hypotheses in business (and in the social sciences in general) are associated with contributing or alternative conditions and prerequisites under which the hypothesis is valid. It is therefore usually not possible to demonstrate directly that a given characteristic or event (X), either by itself or in combination with other characteristics or events (A, B, C, etc.) will automatically lead to an Effect Y. Instead, creators of knowledge find themselves, from the data observed, having to draw the conclusion that the condition X is a condition of Y is (or is not) defensible with a specified degree of certainty (if the study is done in quantitative terms, this degree may be possible to state in statistical numbers). Three stipulations are, as mentioned in Chapter 3, necessary to draw a certain and safe conclusion that the causal connection proposed between factor X and Y in a hypothesis is valid.

1. Relation between the Factors. The first stipulation is that factor X and factor Y co-vary in the way stated in the hypothesis. Let us assume that we want to test the hypothesis that X is a contributing cause of Y. If we find that the number of cases that contain both X and Y are fewer than the number of cases that do not contain X but do contain Y, we draw the conclusion that the hypothesis is not defensible. Furthermore, if our hypothesis also specifies the amount of Y that is determined by X, we should also find that cases showing a higher amount of X also show a higher amount of Y. (Instead of a positive co-variation between X and Y it is possible, of course, to consider hypotheses that suggest that the existence of X prevents the existence of Y or, if the creator of knowledge wants to express it more quantitatively, that Y increases as X decreases – or vice versa. In this case, our discussion would be analogous.) Suppose we want to test the following hypothesis: large market share for a product results in

high profit from the same market. We reject the hypothesis if our data do not show that in more cases where a product has had a large market share, the profit is higher than among those cases where a product has had a small market share. Two alternative relational forms of X causing Y

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may, however, be valid under these conditions: a. What we thought was a cause might actually be an effect (X could be an effect instead of a cause), and vice versa (Y could be a cause instead of an effect).

b. External or specific circumstances other than X could be the “real” causes of X being related to Y.

To return to our example, it might well be that high profit brings large market share instead of the other way around (see (a) above). It could also be the case that the cause of high profit as well as a large market share can be found in good senior management or that the study has looked only at industries that are particularly conducive to high profit no matter what. Other industries might have shown other results (see (b) above).

2. Chronological Order of the Factors. The possible alternative hypothesis – that high profit will cause large market share – leads us to the second stipulation necessary for saying that a hypothesis has been verified. A characteristic or an event cannot be considered a cause of another if it exists or happens later in time than the other one. A cause must always exist or happen before – or possibly at the same time as – an effect. Moreover, two factors can be each other’s causes and effects. The relation is then said to be symmetrical. In our example, it might be possible that large market share normally brings high profit. Yet this profit may be necessary for maintaining the large market share, by enabling the use of new resources. Even so, the chronological order itself, even if combined with an existing relation between

two variables (factors), is not enough for us to say that a causal relation has been found. A third prerequisite is necessary.

3. Elimination of Other Possible Causal Factors. In order to be able to say that X is a cause of Y, it is necessary:

that there is no background factor Z that can explain X as well as Y that there is no intervening variable W that gives a better picture of the causal relation.

The most serious of these is, of course, the background factor. If an intervening factor is present, it might simply improve our explanation. Examples of what having to deal with background and intervening factors could mean are illustrated in Figure 4.2 (compare Figure 3.5).

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Figure 4.2 Importance of Background and Intervening Factors

Let us summarize the three requirements for drawing the conclusion that a hypothesis is an expression of a particular established causal relation:

1. An existing covariation. X (the causing or independent variable) and Y (the affected or dependent variable) shall vary in a way that is predicted in the hypothesis; X and Y shall tend either to assist or counteract each other.

2. Y shall not have existed or taken place prior to X. 3. It shall be possible to eliminate other factors determining Y.

It must be pointed out that even if these three requirements are met, they are not proof (in practice) that X actually causes Y. It is possible to have overlooked a decisive cause other than X; alternatively, X might cause Y only under certain circumstances that are not determined in the study. In other words, we draw the conclusion that it is probable that X causes Y, but we can never be absolutely certain. Further studies will have to disprove or support our conclusion; in practice, it will never be absolutely proven.

THE CREATION OF KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM

As the reader has probably understood, the analytical view is rather formalistic and full of rules. There are rules for what should be seen as reality, there are rules for what is science and what is not, there are rules for what should be counted as an explanation, etc. The reader will later discover that there are rules in the analytical view for how to incorporate, develop, and/or modify previous techniques, results and/or theories, that is, methodical procedures and rules for how an analytical study is designed, that is, methodics. One aspect of the relatively tight discipline which is associated with the analytical view, is

its attitude to what is a creation of knowledge problem. Generally, when possible, the analytical view recommends that already at the beginning of the process of creating knowledge – even before the project starts – the creator of knowledge should state the research problem, and, if applicable, also the practical problem, which is to be studied.

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One may ask, of course, whether the creation of knowledge problem can always be described at the start of a study and, furthermore, whether it is always connected to a practical problem? Of course not! There are projects, which could be called explorative, which are designed to clarify a problem more than anything else. However, according to the analytical view, such studies should also be governed by a problem formulated in the beginning, even if a very preliminary one. As far the second part of the question is concerned, the creator of knowledge has the right, of course, to formulate problems, which have not yet been recognized in practice and/or concentrate on theoretical issues, which eventually will have a practical application in the future. Whatever type of analytical study is at hand, a problem should be guiding it, so the view in

question says. Also, there are several types of analytical studies in terms of what they aim for (this will be discussed further at the end of this chapter). Each of those should be introduced by a clear definition of the problem according to the analytical view. In this respect and with this view, there are basically three types of studies, that is, explorative, descriptive and explanatory.

The problem for the explorative study is to come up with a more precise statement of the problem, which can be brought forward in further efforts of creating knowledge. The problem of a descriptive study is to come up with as detailed a map as possible of some factive reality. The problem of the explanatory or hypothesis-testing study is to explain the connections between causes and effects of some characteristics or events.

The details of what is to be contained in these different formulations of a problem differ, but one thing is certainly common to all. Definitions of key terms and concepts should be given as early as possible in the study, according to the analytical view. The three studies above are of a more scientific type. The consultant and/or an investigator

outside the academic arena have, on top of these, almost always an ambition to suggest solutions to specific problems. If this is the case, in the ideal case, a formulation of a problem should answer the following questions:

What? Whom? How? When? Why? With what effect(s)?

For consulting and similar studies, it is possible to see a problem hierarchy in the analytical view. At the most general level, there is a management problem. The management problem represents a decision that a manager must make and is the problem prompting the research. At a more specific level, there is a research problem. A research problem is the single question

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or hypothesis that best states the objective of the research study. A study, which answers these questions or attacks these hypotheses is supposed to provide the manager with the desired information. On occasion, it may be more than one question, but often, it is just one. At the most specific level, there is an investigative problem. The investigative problem contains those more specific questions that the creator of knowledge must answer in order to satisfactorily answer the general research questions. There is, of course, nothing preventing an original problem formulation in an analytical

approach to be modified as the study goes on, depending, perhaps, on the fact that new information is received or new experiences are gained. New directions in the original design of the study or even restarts may be necessary.

DEDUCTION, INDUCTION, VERIFICATION – AND ABDUCTION

The analytical view is always focused on facts. From this it follows that creators of knowledge in this view are first of all collectors of facts. Second, they attempt to describe, in general terms, both what facts they see and what facts they hear people talk about in terms of what they have seen and what they think. Third, they make a prediction based on their theories and explanations, which – again – can be verified against facts. The most characteristic aspect of the analytical view and its operative paradigms is that they

are cyclical. They start with facts and ends with facts, and the facts of one cycle are the facts that begin the next. Creators of knowledge regard their theories, however, as only probable and are therefore always prepared to give them up if the data that emerge are not consistent with the predictions based on the theories. If a series of observations developed to verify certain predictions forces them to abandon a theory, they look for new and better theories. Because in the analytical view they expect the progress of knowledge (gained through scientific or other means) to go on in a chain of successes, they expect that this cyclical process will continue. See Figure 4.3 opposite for an illustration. The horizontal dashed line in Figure 4.3 separates the empirical world (the factive world)

from the theoretical world, which, in accordance with the analytical view, is more or less quantitatively constructed. In the world below the line we see creators of knowledge who, for instance, look into microscopes or observe behaviour or interview people. In the world above the line, we see a chain of mathematical formulae, logical sequences and systematically arranged data. We also notice three steps in the figure. The first step involves moving from original observations towards theories. This is known as induction – a way of creating knowledge whereby creators of knowledge conclude general laws from individual cases, that is, construct theories using factive knowledge. This can mean, for instance, that a mathematical formula is found that is perceived to suit the facts that a creator of knowledge is trying to incorporate in the theory. Then the creator of knowledge asks, “Is this really what I want?” The creator of knowledge is then forced to go back to the world of facts (factive reality) to verify his/her construction.

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A creator of knowledge cannot, however, check on a general law without first asking what it says about specific cases. The course of the stock market, for instance, cannot be observed indefinitely. The creator of knowledge may perhaps observe that average prices rise one day, that they rise the following day as well, and then, after one more day, fall, and so on. Any limited number of cases can be observed. Creators of knowledge using the analytical view must therefore decide what their general theory says about tomorrow’s development, for example. This step is reached through deduction – a way of creating knowledge whereby the creator of knowledge infers single cases from general laws; that is, a logical analysis of what general theory says about a specific event tomorrow. Not until then will creators of knowledge be ready to return to facts and find out whether or not their predictions were correct. This third and last step is the verification of the theory.

Figure 4.3 Cyclical Nature of Creating Knowledge in the Analytical View

So, in principle, the deductive mode means that the creator of knowledge goes from theory to facts and the inductive mode means that the process goes the other way around. The most common criticism directed at the pure deductive approach is precisely its dependence on theory, and the influence on sampling and operationalization of variables in the models being constructed that follow. There is a risk that those observations which are made will not fit that reality which they are meant to describe. This is a criticism of the deductive approach which is directed by Glaser and Strauss (1967), who with their so-called constant comparative method, based on an analytical view, recommend induction. However, in their version of methodology, they claim that the objective is not verification but to generate a grounded theory (more about grounded theory can be read in the Appendix): “Generating a theory from data means that most hypotheses and concepts not only come from data, but are systematically worked out in relation to the data during the course of research” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967: 6). Apart from induction and deduction, sometimes a third method is mentioned in this context,

that is, abduction (Peirce et al., 1998). Abduction means that a single (often surprising) case is placed in a general hypothetical pattern, which, if it is true, will explain the case, in question. The explanation should then be confirmed by new observations (new cases). The method then becomes a kind of combination of induction and deduction, but it also brings on new steps.

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Another way to put it is to say that induction and deduction can be seen as two alternative research strategies, while abduction is more of a research tactic. Induction starts from facts and deduction from theory. Abduction starts from facts like induction, but it does not turn away theoretical knowledge and is, to that extent, closer to deduction. The analysis of facts may very well be combined with, or preceded by, studies of existing theory in the literature, not as a mechanical application to single cases, but as a source of inspiration to discover patterns for further explanations. This means that the research process consists of alternations between (existing) theory and facts, where both are seen in the light of each other. The single models of explanations, that is, deduction and induction, are then seen as too one-dimensional and unrealistic, compared with how research is done in practice.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS

All creators of knowledge must use a set of concepts when they organize their data so as to discover relations. A concept is an abstraction of observed events or characteristics, a short verbal representation of them. Some concepts may be relatively easy to relate to the phenomena they attempt to represent – such concepts are price tag, factory or machine. It then becomes possible to point out the corresponding phenomenon in factive reality. Phenomena represented by other concepts, however, can be more problematic to point out, observe or measure. These concepts are more abstract, more distant from the empirical world. Examples of such concepts might include creativity, image and organization. These more abstract concepts are sometimes called constructs. The closer a concept is to factive reality, the more operational the concept is said to be.

Because the analytical view is, to a large extent, occupied with creating knowledge of events, characteristics and behaviour in this reality, the creator of knowledge tries as much as possible here to formulate operational definitions, that is, concepts that in themselves contain a description of how a specific phenomenon is to be discovered in factive reality. Using the rules the definition provides, anyone should be able to discover the specific phenomenon in the reality represented by the definition. An operational definition should contain the following parts:

1. A statement of which object(s) or subject(s) are to be observed or questioned. 2. A description of the situation in which the observation or questioning is to take place. 3. A determination of the type of measuring scale to be applied to the observations made or

answers obtained. 4. Rules for how to handle the data obtained through the observation or questioning.

Here are two examples of operational definitions:

Level of stock: Average book value of a company’s stock during a year, calculated as the arithmetical mean of the public figures that can be read in the company’s accounts in the beginning and at the end of a given financial year. Improved product quality: More yes-

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answers than no-answers to the question: “Do you think the quality of Product X has improved since the last time you used it?” The answers should come from a random sample of at least 100 customers among those who have actually bought the product in question at least twice. The latest purchase must have taken place within the past 2 months. Each customer is to answer individually and independently from other customers. The survey can be conducted by phone or by mail, and the questions are to be posed by an impartial third party with no connection to the company that manufactures and markets the product in question, such as an employee of an independent marketing research firm.

THE CONCEPT OF ANALYSIS

We have given the name “analytical view” to the methodological view described in this chapter. It is therefore reasonable to justify the label of the view and to clarify the meaning of the concept of analysis. In our everyday language we make a distinction between analysis and construction. Without

going into a detailed and sophisticated discussion of the demarcation of different schools of philosophy, we can say that this distinction exists there as well. Analysis, then, means a thorough investigation of an existing situation. Construction has to do with putting together a new (and, perhaps, better) situation. (There is, in fact, a philosophical school, which is called the analytical school, a school, which the analytical view leans heavily on and which is, therefore, another reason for our name “the analytical view”. We will return to this shortly.) The analytical view, like the systems view, contains the concept of “analysis”. The concept

is, in fact, central to both. However, the analytical view, in its analytical concept, is oriented primarily toward the techniques used by the creator of knowledge, whereas the systems view is oriented mainly toward the results that can be employed by the user (the one who may use the results provided by the creator of knowledge). Analysis is therefore of primary (general) interest to the creator of knowledge representing the analytical view, whereas it is of only secondary (or rather of starting and finishing) interest to the creator of knowledge representing the systems view. The concept of analysis also has different meanings in the two views. In both cases,

however, analysis means a specific treatment of factive reality (or a model thereof), the existence of which is acknowledged both by those who represent the analytical view and those who represent the systems view. Factive reality, according to the analytical view, is best clarified by what can be characterized as disintegration or decomposition, that is, by studying its smallest components by themselves. The sum of these partial results becomes knowledge of the whole. Analysis as seen by the systems view (systems analysis), however, means that any part of the

factive reality is best clarified by studying components in relation to the whole. Yet the sum of the study of these individual components in relation to the whole does not constitute knowledge of the whole. In addition, it is possible to talk about the totality as such (the system) – for example, in relation to its environment (placing the system in its larger context). We return to the systems view in the next chapter.

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The analytical view is therefore based on a very important theoretical assumption: a. That the elements of an object or subject under study can be regarded as relatively independent of each other.

And a practical assumption: b. That the intrinsic properties of the object or subject under study does not change rapidly or in such a way that it is not possible to explain this object or subject by explaining its separate elements.

The systems view denies assumption (a) and sometimes assumption (b) as well. But both the analytical view and the systems view make the following assumption: c. That the analysis of an object or a subject can be done without influencing it in a manner that cannot be controlled.

Because analysis plays such a central role in the analytical view (plus the fact that “its” philosophy is the analytical philosophy), but only constitutes one part of the systems view, we see the name of the former view as totally adequate. Besides, the term analytical view is not our own. It was used more than fifty years ago by those who “launched” the systems view, and it is still used today in the sense of “the analytical view” versus “the systems view”.

CETERIS PARIBUS

The assumption in the analytical view that elements of the objects and subjects being studied are relatively independent of each other makes it possible for results that are developed from various operative paradigms of the analytical view to be formulated “ceteris paribus” (as if “all other things remain equal”, i.e. unchanged). Among other activities, sampling, hypothesis testing and theory construction in the analytical view are based on this assumption. In consequence, causal relations that have developed are considered to be valid provided “nothing else has changed”. Study the following three statements:

1. If the price of a product is falling, the demand for that product will tend to increase. 2. If the price of a product is falling and nothing else changes, the demand for that product

will increase. 3. If the price of a product is falling and the product is sold in a situation of perfect

competition, the demand for that product will increase.

Case 2 is what we mean by ceteris paribus. This is the usual case for business theories in the analytical view (although Case 3 could also exist). The systems view might accept Case 1.

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION OF THE ANALYTICAL VIEW

The philosophical foundation of the analytical view is definitely analytical philosophy. Just like any part of philosophy, explaining what analytical philosophy is isn’t straightforward. However, providing such as explanation is not the intention here. Rather, we want to bring up some points that have been raised by analytical philosophers over the years, points, which by no means have been left unopposed and some which are even not valid today, but they provide a kind of panorama which still flavours the analytical view today:

About philosophy: Can philosophy be done the way that science is? Can more rigor be introduced into philosophy by proceeding in a logical fashion? Can philosophy be reduced to logic?

The structure of reality is essentially the same as that of mathematical logic, that is, atomistic. Studying mathematics can tell us more about reality. Science is to be advocated as the only way to truly learn about the world (this is sometimes referred to as positivism, a stream which gave a start to analytical philosophy, but is no longer seen as of stand-alone interest within this philosophy) The principle of verification: only those propositions that can be verified are meaningful. An interesting statement can always be reduced to observation statements.

Analytical philosophy is largely a twentieth-century story. Famous analytical philosophers during the last century include Russell (1872–1970), Moore (1873–1958), Carnap (1891– 1970), Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Ryle (1900–1976) and Austin (1911–1960). Analytical philosophy is active today in many areas, particularly the philosophy of mind.

What we can call meaningful, how we find out about the factive world and what kind of facts it is composed of are central questions for analytical philosophers today. More about analytical philosophy (and positivism) can be found in the Appendix.

THE RELATION OF THE ANALYTICAL VIEW TO ITS PARADIGM

What the analytical view stands for today can be summarized in terms of the description of paradigm provided earlier in the book:

1. Conception of reality 2. Conception of science 3. Scientific ideals 4. Ethical/aesthetical aspects

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Let us look at business through “the lense of the analytical view”.

Conception of reality, or What Does Business Reality Actually Look Like? Business reality exists objectively in itself, independent of us as theorists and/or creators of knowledge and it exists subjectively as relatively stable opinions of, and beliefs in, this objective world. Such objective and subjective parts of reality can together be classified as factive. Even if we, through interference or through change of mind can make this reality appear in various forms, it is basically a stable construction. This basic construction has a summative character consisting of explanatory links that can be studied relatively independently of each other.

Conception of science, or How Do We Look at Business as a Science? Business as a science (and as it is applied by researchers, consultants and other kinds of investigators) is a picture of business reality. This picture consists of more or less definite facts that can be discussed in terms of “all other things remaining equal”. This picture will improve as time goes on and as more knowledge is created. Theories (as language) can be discussed with regard to how they are constructed (syntax),

in relation to what they stand for (semantics) and in relation to their users (pragmatics). Because theories should be based on facts, their terms (e.g. cost accounting, budget, matrix organization, long-term planning and advertising) should be as syntactically and semantically correct as possible, yet – as far as possible – be made independent of pragmatic controversies. It is therefore natural that the terms are, to a large extent, defined operationally, based on logics and mathematics. Business knowledge is logically separated from moral matters and ethics. This means, for

instance, that business can argue about which consequences different alternative actions will have in terms of formulated objectives, but deciding which objectives should actually be chosen is beyond its domain. According to analytical creators of knowledge, science (this pertains to business (practice) as well) should not take a definite position on which business objectives to choose, and related matters. There is also a sharp boundary between philosophy and creation of knowledge. Philosophy

can be used as a basis for discussion, but it can never provide the truth. That is the task of the creator of knowledge as researchers, consultants or other kinds of investigators.

Scientific ideals, or What Do We Want From Business as a Science? Gradually, the study of Business will fill in as many “empty squares” in our knowledge of business reality as possible. This knowledge will consist of verified assumptions (hypotheses) in factive reality, assumptions which follow certain formal rules. Knowledge emerges most surely with the use of well-tested techniques, many of which have been picked up from the natural sciences. The results will be an increasing number of, and ever more refined, logical models and representative, generalizable cases. Even if we aim for explanations that are as simple as possible (but nevertheless true), we

know that generally the more causes we find, the more complete the explanation of a given effect will be. We will continue to get increasingly more deterministic relations, but in the meantime we will have to be satisfied with results that are sometimes stochastic.

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Business knowledge is to be used to make better and better predictions of the consequences of various alternative actions that could be taken, and consequently to steer BUSINESS reality in a desirable direction.

Ethical and aesthetical aspects, or What Can and Should Business Creators of Knowledge Do, and What Attitude Should They Take Toward What is Done? These are relatively uninteresting questions to proponents of the analytical view. It is instead seen as important to regard creation of knowledge as progress; as business creators of knowledge we do not have to take responsibility for how people in business reality use the knowledge that will be presented as we go on.

We present further thinking associated with the analytical view under the headings “Discovery and explanation”, “General theses” and “Difficulties in relation to explanation”. Before we do so, however, we remind the reader of the outline of the book. Our intent, as far as possible, is to present each of the methodological views on its own terms. If you believe in the analytical view, you accept Chapter 4, and so on. This also means that the descriptions in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are in several basic respects often not comparable. It is important to remember that the different views are based on their own paradigms.

DISCOVERY AND EXPLANATION

From a methodological point of departure, the analytical view treats all social sciences as one. The reason is that all of them relate to humans and that they all use the same explanatory principles (if a creator of knowledge in that science has an analytical orientation). The view also often sees classical natural sciences as an ideal to emulate, because the

natural and social sciences are seen as having similar purposes, if not the same results. If an objective of creation of knowledge is to establish various general relations among phenomena in factive reality, if the test of veracity of relations relies ultimately on data, and if these data are collected in factive reality, then, according to the analytical view, you are doing science. All social sciences, basically, meet these expectations, according to this view. The differences between the classical natural sciences and the social sciences (to which

business belongs) are then more a matter of degree than of kind. Being engaged in the work of creating knowledge means, according to the analytical view, that you always face the same basic problem: to discover and to explain. In certain respects, the social sciences have not reached as far as the more exact sciences.

Furthermore, if some of the social sciences have established less reliable answers than others, this is not because the creators of knowledge were less ambitious or less intelligent. Nor is the reason, essentially – according to the analytical view – that less successful subjects are younger. Nor could the situation be explained by different methods being used in different areas, because the methods in analytical operative paradigms are the same. So, the differences are not caused by level of ambition, intellect, the age of the subject or the methods employed; they are caused by the built-up (complexity) of the problem being approached.

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According to the analytical view, every science has two basic levels of ambition: to discover and to explain. To discover can mean either to explore or to describe. Descriptions and explanations, in turn, may be used to forecast and to guide. The first (discover) determines whether the study area is to be called an area of interest to science, the second (explain) the extent to which we are entitled to call the science successful. To discover is either the same as developing problems of creation of knowledge or, if they already exist, to show the characteristics and the behaviour of objects and subjects in reality. This can be called discovery because the problems or the characteristics or behaviour might be unknown (at least in this format) until the creator of knowledge reveals them. To explain is to present more or less general relations among characteristics, behaviours, or both. Explanations in this sense are far more common in natural sciences than in social sciences, which some claim is a striking difference between the two. Descriptions and explanations are invaluable results of all creation of knowledge efforts

conducted according to the analytical view. Such results, that is, empirical theses, are more or less generalizable. So that they are not misunderstood, they should contain operational definitions as far as possible. Otherwise there is a risk that, for instance, explanations might be based on concepts that are not related to factive reality. Over the years, the social sciences have, through their use of the analytical view, put

together a huge number of empirical theses, some examples of which are given at the end of this chapter. If the first task of a science is to establish generalizations, the social sciences have established quite a few. Yet these generalizations are neither so general nor so exact as those in the biological or technical sciences, for instance. Among other things, the results are valid primarily for the industrialized part of the world, and they are stated with a number of provisos. It is difficult to find strict explanations in business. This is partly because we cannot easily

manipulate the objects and subjects being studied or the circumstances around them. For instance, it is difficult (even unethical) to experiment with people, compared with experimenting with things. Furthermore, people cannot be exposed to the same treatments or conditions as when testing new situations among animals and physical objects. This is also the reason why the creator of knowledge using the analytical view in a business context applies a number of statistical techniques as a control mechanism, even though they are considered to be less reliable than physical control. The most important task for business when creating knowledge with the analytical view is

to find explanations. Explanations are based on discoveries (formulations of problems and descriptions). To explain means to answer the question “Why?” Explanations should not only be directly supported empirically, but also indirectly follow as a natural consequence of existing theory (be deducted). This is so whether interest is directed towards a single phenomenon or a more generalizable thesis. It is in the area of finding explanations that the social sciences face extra problems.

GENERAL THESES

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The longer a science has been on “the road of explanations”, the greater the number of general theses it tends to contain. It is unfortunately true that business contains a relatively small number of such theses under the analytical view. It is also true that what can be claimed, as belonging to the subject of business is rather

vague. What should (or should not) be included (or omitted) from business is primarily determined by the problem: to occupy oneself with business. Often, therefore, results from such related subjects as Economics, Sociology and Psychology are used. From this point of view, the situation is considerably brighter. Acknowledging that they contain the same principles would, according to the analytical view, promote the development of knowledge. Business would, in this case, be further stimulated by the larger number of theories, concepts and methods.

DIFFICULTIES IN RELATION TO EXPLANATIONS

So, the difficulties of business are related more to finding explanations than to making discoveries. Business, in this context, operates (like other social sciences) at two levels at the same time.

It contains empirical theses about individuals (often collected from psychology), but also of aggregates of individuals – groups, organizations, classes and societies. The relationships between these two levels are not simple. In both the analytical and the systems view we treat organizations as if they were objective entities. This, of course, is only a simplification of factive reality. If we want to explain in greater detail why an organization behaves the way it does, why it behaves differently from other seemingly similar organizations, we would probably have to consider its individuals (although external circumstances could also explain different behaviour, of course). But this does not mean leaving the analytical view for the actors view. Instead, this can take place through what in the analytical view is called a reduction, in this case a reduction of organizational theory theses to psychological ones. There are difficulties associated with such reductions in business. There are certainly many

relatively rested theses in psychology, but they are only statistically true and they usually have a very limited scope. In business, for instance, we often find that a thesis that is valid under one set of circumstances is not valid under another set. When this happens, it is more likely that another thesis, sometimes the opposite, is valid. According to the analytical view, business does progress in its search for explanations.

Even so, there is still a gap between general business theses and the numerous empirical results that exist. This distance will most likely remain into the foreseeable future. One problem is that new (general) explanations are more difficult to find, because the new hypotheses (suggested explanations) that are formulated do not (yet) have a solid theoretical support on which they can be based.

EXAMPLES OF THEORETICAL RESULTS Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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Let us point out a few examples of theoretical results from the analytical view. The results presented here are not meant to be in any way verified as absolutely true according to the basic idea behind the analytical view, even less to be inclusive. The results are presented only to give the reader an idea of what kinds of theoretical results can be developed by starting from the analytical view, how they are usually formulated and at what level of general applicability they are normally kept. The examples are from an area that we could call “Organizations”.

Example 1.

The larger, the more complex, and the more heterogeneous the society, the greater the number of organizations and associations that exist within it. 1.1. Organizations tend to call forth organizations. If people organize on one side of an issue, their opponents will organize on the other side.

1.2. There is a tendency for voluntary associations to become more formal.

Example 2. The larger an organization becomes, the more levels of personnel it will tend to have.

Example 3.

A period of innovation and change affecting an organization is likely to produce a heightened amount of communication among the members, communication oriented both toward the task and toward mutual emotional support.

Example 4.

Other things remaining equal, the more friendly and helpful the boss,

the lower the absenteeism the higher the productivity the more likely that subordinates feel that the organization’s requirements are reasonable, and the more willing they are to accept changes in organizational practices the better liked the leader is the more strongly the subordinates associate with the organization the less tension there is within the organizational unit and the greater the internal cohesion the higher the subordinates’ morale

Example 5. The leader’s style of leadership tends to be influenced by the style in which he/she was led.

Example 6. The more closely a member holds to the organization’s professed values, the more likely he/she is to be promoted within the organization.

This chapter has only discussed the analytical view, the oldest of our three methodological views. As with all methodological views, it is greatly concerned with concepts. The concepts of the analytical view have consequently been presented in this chapter, including its fundamental concept of “ceteris paribus”. Also presented here is some basic thinking in

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the analytical view, like having definitions as operational as possible and regarding steps in creating knowledge, like deduction, induction, verification and abduction, as distinctly different from each other. At the end, the relation of the analytical view to its paradigm and some typical results of knowledge being created from this view have been provided.

POINTS OF REFLECTION

1. The analytical view talks about invariance. Explain this concept for your fellow students!

2. What is determinism? 3. Formulate what you consider to be three well-formulated hypotheses. 4. Think about and describe a cause/effect relation consisting of a main cause and at least

two contributing causes! 5. What does it mean to conduct an explorative study? 6. In the analytical view deduction, induction, verification and abduction are some

central concepts. Without any problem you may surely explain the first three concepts, but what is abduction?

7. To operationalize something means ......... What? 8. Ceteris paribus is Latin, but what does it mean? 9. What would your story look like if somebody asked you to present the relation of the

analytical view to its paradigm?

RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING

See the end of the Appendix and visit the website below.

Become a worldwide partner as a knowledge creator in the development of Methodology for Creating Business Knowledge by visiting the website: www.knowledge-creator.com. Here you can contribute by asking your own questions and you will also find answers to the most frequently asked questions. The website has been developed alongside this third edition of the book and the questions posted there will be used to provide input for future editions.

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http://www.knowledge-creator.com

5 THE SYSTEMS VIEW

The systems view contains many variations in practice, but, from a methodological point of departure, we believe it can be summarized in terms of philosophical influences, similarities and differences when explaining and understanding using the systems view, basic systems language, the relation of the systems view to its paradigm and typical theoretical results from the systems view. Such a summary will be provided in this chapter.

THE ROOTS OF THE SYSTEMS VIEW

Three overlapping philosophies make up the paradigmatic thinking behind the systems view. They are:

systems theory holism structuralism

Systems theory, in its broadest sense, is the interdisciplinary study of organizations with systems language and thinking. More specifically, it is a framework by which a creator of knowledge can analyse and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result. These objects can be, for instance, the components of a single organism, any organization or society, or any electro-mechanical or informational artefact. Systems theory as a general academic area of study predominantly refers to the science of systems that resulted from von Bertalanffy (1901–1972), who in relationship with many other scholars, for instance Rapoport (1911–2007), Boulding (1910–1993), Ashby (1903–1972), Mead (1901–1978) and Churchman (1913–2004), launched the General Systems Theory (GST) in the 1950s. As a transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary and multiperspectival domain, General Systems

Theory tried to bring together principles and concepts from Ontology, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Computer Science, Biology and Engineering and, later, Geography, Sociology, Economics and Business, among others, serving as a bridge for an interdisciplinary dialogue between autonomous areas of study as well as within the area of systems science itself. Systems theory was based on two fundamental ideas. First, all phenomena can be regarded

as a web of relationships among its components, that is, as a system. Second, all systems have common patterns, behaviour and properties which can be explained and/or understood to develop greater insight into the behaviour of complex phenomena and move closer toward the unity of science.

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Systems theory became a nomenclature that early creators of knowledge used to describe the interdependence of relationships in organizations by defining a new way of thinking about science and scientific paradigms. A system from this frame of reference is composed of regularly interacting and interrelating groups of activities. This was different to conventional models at that time that centred on individuals, structures, departments and components separate in part from the whole, instead of recognizing the interdependence between components and groups of components that enables an organization to function. The basic idea was that the whole sometimes has properties that cannot be known from an analysis of its components in isolation. General Systems Theory is seen as part of the history of science, but in business, like in

several other disciplines, its influence still lingers on to some extent. Structuralism refers to various theories across the humanities and social sciences, which

share the assumption that structural (patterned) relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. More accurately it could be described as a perspective in academic disciplines in general that explores the relationships between principal elements in their fields, where these elements are built up as tangible structures, cultural structures and/or structural networks. In the second half of the twentieth century, it grew to become one of the most popular

approaches in academic fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture and society. Structuralism can be found in, among other areas, Psychology, Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology and Literary Theory. Structural thinking is also often seen in business. However, due to its nature of ultimately

looking for better economic and human solutions, it is commonly called structural functionalism there. Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system (biological, chemical, social,

economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined, explained or understood by the sum of its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave. Reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science holds that a complex system can be explained and understood by reduction to its fundamental parts. In the second half of the twentieth century, holism led to systems thinking and its derivatives,

like the science of chaos and complexity. Scientific holism holds that the behaviour of a system cannot be perfectly predicted, no

matter how much data is available. We will be back to this last point a bit later in this chapter. The systems view could also be called the structural or holistic view. However, we prefer

systems view as it seems to be the most established term of the three in business.

SYSTEMS EXPLANATION AND SYSTEMS UNDERSTANDING

We have, on a number of previous occasions, mentioned that the systems view can have an ambition to explain as well as to understand (one of the two ambitions might be in focus; a

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combination of the two is possible as well). Let us explore what this means by first looking at Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 Is Q a Star?

Picture 1 in Figure 5.1 is a model. The idea is here to depict the reality as it is, in fact, in this case in a systems model. A good model is supposed to include aspects of the factive reality which are of importance, say, to explain the centre Q of the system, for instance its behaviour, etc. Picture 2 in Figure 5.1 is an interpretation. Apart from depicting reality as it is, something

else is added. A common way to do this is to bring a metaphor into the picture. A metaphor, in the systems view, is invented by the creator of knowledge and therefore not, strictly speaking, part of the reality of the study area per se. Such a metaphor is placed on the systems model in order to give further insight into what is going on, that is, to understand, and to do this by inspiring and generating some new questions, which are intended to guide the creator of knowledge in his/her further endeavor into the study area. So, the metaphor of a star in picture 2 may, for instance, lead to the following questions:

Is there really a star (recall Chapter 2, and compare with Figure 2.4)? Is Q really the centre of the star and what does it mean to be a centre? Have all the tips of the star been identified? Have any tips been missed? Are the tips of the star equally strong or which is the balance of power between them?

There are other ways to try to understand real systems, for instance by concepts or models added by the creator of knowledge, which do not have the symbolic aspects of a proper metaphor (the star in the example above is a symbol, that is, something is seen as if it were a star, which it is not in reality). Also, metaphors are used in the actors view as well, but then they are a result of a procreative effort by the creator of knowledge (see Chapter 6).

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EXAMPLES OF CLASSIC SYSTEMS MODELS

Let us look at some models and interpretations that have been presented in business during the last few decades. The illustrations are from organizations and organizing in business in general without going into functional areas like marketing, finance, manufacturing, service or human resource management, where in all cases a large number of models and interpretations have been suggested with a systems view over the years. Let us start with some examples of models and, then, in the next section look at some

examples of interpretations using metaphors. There are many classic systems models, some of which are based on concepts and ideas that are still in use:

March & Simon (1958): organizations are decision-making and problem-solving mechanisms. Burns & Stalker (1961): different kinds of environment require different organizational structures; the faster moving and the more unsettled the environment is, the looser the organization’s structure should be to succeed. Burns and Stalker refer to this as being organic instead of being mechanistic in your organization structure. Thorsrud & Emery (1964): organizations should best be seen as sociotechnical systems, that is, a mix of social and technical aspects. Etzioni (1966): power structures are important in organizations. Katz & Kahn (1966) derived the following eight characteristics that they claimed was a pattern for all human organizations seen as open systems:

The system imports energy into itself from the environment. Energy consists of resources, raw material, competence, and so on. The system processes resources and transforms them into products that are delivered in different forms to its environment. Activities have a cyclical character and there are dependent relationships between input and output. Negative entropy in living systems means that they tend to die. This is to be counteracted by the organization through importing resources and energy from the environment. Information and negative feedback makes it possible to control the activities of the organization within certain critical limits. Balance (homeostasis) among different components of the system must exist in such a way that the relationship to the environment is maintained. Differentiation, integration and coordination are necessary when handling complex relationships to the environment and trying to incorporate these variations with the system’s own structure. The system can reach its objectives in different ways. It can arrive at the same result through different types of structures (finality).

Thompson (1967): organizations are governed by the law of requisite variety and the need for buffering systems.

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Buckley (1968): organizations are complex, but socially adaptive systems. Lawrence & Lorch (1969): the importance of differentiation and integration differ between different environments. From the 1970s, consultants took on systems models. One such, then, commonly used model is shown in (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 McKinsey’s 7S-model Source: McKinsey. Reproduced with kind permission.

The idea with this model, of course, is to say that seven aspects of an organization, which could be referred to as components, should be identified in the company as a system. If you want a well-running firm, the seven components should fit each other, support each other and not counter and block each other. Then you will have the synergy effect, which is possible in systems, that is, to have a situation where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Some important concepts of classic systems models

We consider it to be possible to see some kind of common vocabulary or concepts in the above classical analyses of business systems as models. The words actually used in specific cases may not be the same as the following ones, but the thinking behind them and the orientations of the concepts are, in principle, along the same lines.

Variety. Variety is the more or less distinguishable components, states, events or behaviours

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shown from systems either as structures or as processes, components etc., that a system has the potential of showing and using at any given moment. A law of requisite variety of systems was formulated in systems theory a long time ago; it states that systems, in order to survive, must have at least the same amount of variety as their environment (for a business application of this law, see Thompson 1967).

Depiction. Depiction is the ability of a system to “reproduce” positions of the environment, the ability to allow the structure of the system to be “similar” to that of the environment.

Adaptability. Systems are adaptive. In order to be so, they require: (a) a certain degree of plasticity or irritability toward their environment, so that they have a continuous interaction with the events in the environment, considering them and if necessary reacting to them; (b) some source of mechanism for variety – to manage the problem of depiction and to introduce a new or a more detailed variety in a changing environment, if necessary; (c) a set of selective criteria or mechanism by which “the source of variety” can attract the variations in the system that reproduce the environment well and that deflect those that do not; and (d) an arrangement for keeping and/or developing successful reproductions (compare Buckley, 1968).

Existence of tensions and conflicts. Tensions and conflicts might exist in all systems. Systems that function well have the ability to use these in order: (a) to obtain information about what is happening out in the environment (what has caused the disturbance); (b) to obtain new ideas of suitable arrangements via deviations from existing ambitions; and (c) to create new, more purposeful arrangements.

Systems objectives. One outcome of the systems view is the realization that it is possible to talk about a system without having to talk of its parts. For instance, it is possible to talk about the system of a company and then state that the system has objectives. There are many suggestions for what objectives companies have and should have. The trend is definitely to combine strict financial objectives, like cash flow, profit and turnover, with softer objectives, like being socially and environmentally sustainable and the like, often in more process terms than before.

Management system. Systems, run by people, do not just develop by themselves, of course, even if from outside this may seem to be the case. They are a result of conscious efforts by what could be called “the management subsystem” of the company. By studying this subsystem, the creator of knowledge may get an explanation of how the system works as a whole.

Fit. Two or more interacting systems or subsystems that cooperate and support each other are said to fit each other. Systems that disturb or destroy each other are unfit to each other. To survive, a system should develop such that it fits the environment with all its changes and it should develop subsystems that fit each other.

Reactions to and in the environment. Open systems depend on their environment, which means that it is important for them to interact purposefully with the environment in order to

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derive a goal-oriented behaviour – and to behave accordingly. Researchers often talk about three kinds of environment and the associated purposeful reactions of the system, if the system reacts actively, which is not always the case. (There is a natural tendency among systems made up of people to resist change, even if the environment insists. This can express itself in the system neglecting external changes and continuing as before – which probably will not be a purposeful behaviour for long). The first of the three kinds of environmental change is variation (reversible change), that is,

a temporary deviation from a “normal” situation. This kind of change is often answered by the system varying its behaviour within existing areas of competence, provided the system has a sufficiently varied repertoire. The environment will eventually return to “normal”. The second kind of change in the environment is a structural change (even called

displacements), which is an irreversible change, that is, a permanent departure from a previous situation. Systems theory claims that organizations (as systems) must adapt with new structures to such a situation, that they must create a new fit with the environment in order to survive and grow. This can take place in several ways (that can be combined):

Reproducing the environment (see previous treatment) Matching, or a mutual adaption to another organization followed by exploiting the environment together Simultaneously optimizing and consulting, which means partly to cooperate with and support another organization in order to exploit the common environment, and partly to see the other organization as part of the exploitable environment (to cooperate and compete with the environment at the same time; a situation which is often claimed to be a characteristic of a good functioning business cluster) Domination, which means that systems may be able to dominate their environment all the way from having a superior variety to subduing the environment through force.

The third kind of change in the environment is also an irreversible one. It is what we might call a paradigmatic shift. In this case the environment changes so radically that only a completely new “model of the environment” can handle the new situation.

Dynamic conservatism. So far, our discussion has been almost exclusively about adequate behaviour of systems. Schon (1972) provides an interesting example of the opposite. His example has proved to be very common in general. A system often displays considerable inertia as far as changing its structure is concerned (this is sometimes called “the human factor”). According to Schon, members of the system then use various means in an attempt to maintain the system as it is: a. They ignore facts that influence and/or change the way the environment behaves. b. They pursue an internal economy in which changes in one area are offset by higher stability in another.

c. They each have an active interest in maintaining the subsystem of which they are a part.

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Later behaviours in the sequence are not considered until previous ones have failed (first (a), then, of necessary, (b), and finally, as a last resort, (c)). Schon calls this the strategy of dynamic conservatism. This strategy may be dysfunctional – not purposeful – for the system as a whole, but is

understandable from the point of view of the individual participants.

Recipe. Every human system has members that have gradually established mental clichés for how to manage its operations in the light of the environment in which they operate. Like all mental clichés, they are simplified versions of what is going on, but are generally considered as successful (at least as judged by performance in the past). This is what might be called the recipe for the system (Johnson & Scholes, 1999). This is a set of unquestioned beliefs and assumptions about what to do and what not to do in order to do well. Such a set is, of course, very much a result of the history of the system.

EXAMPLES OF CLASSIC SYSTEMS INTERPRETATION

The variety in using metaphors in the systems view as means of an interpretation in order to get an understanding of a system is not smaller than the variety in using models, which are used as a means of explanation – rather the opposite. Furthermore, it is fair to say that the use of metaphors has grown among systems creators of knowledge over the years, partly due to the fact that these creators of knowledge increasingly stress the importance of symbols in understanding real systems and their environments. Some examples of metaphors used are, to understand organizations as living mechanisms, the survival of which depends on financial capital (Miller, 1977), or as holograms, or to go beneath the surface of what appears to be happening by studying them in terms of cultures, conceptions and psyches (Kilmann, 1984), or as jingles (Pfeffer, 1992), as music (DePree, 1992), as factories (Hammer & Champy, 1993), as theatres (Jeffcutt et al., 1996), as jamming (Kao, 1997), as having souls (Salzer-Mörling, 1998) or as cognitive fields (Morgan, 1998). Let us finish this list of examples of metaphors by bringing up two examples from regional

development – Figures 5.3 and 5.4.

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Figure 5.3 The Cluster Diamond Source: Porter, 1990: 127. Reproduced with permission of the Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Competitive Advantage of Nations by Michael E. Porter. © Copyright 1990, 1998 by Michael E. Porter. All rights reserved.

These two last metaphors tell a story of the systems they portray more effectively than a simple snapshot would. This is what we have referred to as “understanding,” which, in a way, goes beyond “explaining”. In the first case, you think of a “diamond,” where all parts are to shine equally bright and in harmony for the system to work at its best. In the second, if you break the “circle”, the system will not work as well any longer!

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Figure 5.4 The Italian Village Business Circle Source: Normann, 2001: 302. Reframing Business. When the Map Changes the Landscape. Normann, R. (2001), © John Wiley & Sons Limited. Reproduced with permission.

SYSTEMS VIEW IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

During our present century, the number of proposals for suitable systems models and systems interpretations has grown ever bigger. However, it is possible to see aspects of systems being stressed more often than others:

Processes more than structure. In the modern life of constant change, so also in business, this is quite natural. Good relations to customers. Increasingly, customers are seen as components of the business system, not only as people to whom you try to sell your goods and services. Team-building. The fact that the company’s people are its most important resource is true – and having them work in concert is often necessary and a great asset for business. Temporary organizations/project organizations. Another aspect of (or rather response to) change is that no organization should be built up to stay that way for too long any more. New temporary project organizations should be designed to face new problems, always slightly different from before. Entrepreneurial organizations/organized chaos. It is less and less possible to forecast the future. The future is increasingly built by resourceful individuals and they seem to thrive best in a kind of organized chaos. The network perspective. It is often no longer most important what is happening inside organizations, but outside and between them in a kind of mutual adaptation. The innovation system. New situations require new solutions – and this at an increasing rate. The virtual system. This is due to an increasing range of computer information technology applications. Deep structures. Increasingly, systems are analysed in order to trace so-called deep structures, that is, patterns and processes which are not possible to see directly, but which, if assumed, can provide a good understanding of what is going on.

We believe that, before as well as today, it is possible in the systems view both to explain by models as well as to understand by interpretations (in the latter case to use, for instance, metaphors) and that there are certain guiding principles to keep in mind by the creator of knowledge using this view (Figure 5.5).

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Figure 5.5 Three Principles for Creating Systems Knowledge

The first principle is that it is important to stress the totality of a complicated world in which the parts are more or less dependent on each other (totality). Nevertheless, no matter how a picture of this complexity is created, every picture becomes relatively limited. Delimitations of two types have to be made:

external delimitations: It is necessary to delimit the picture of a system, if for no other reason besides a practical one, at the same time noting the systems relations to and from this environment. internal delimitations: There is a limit to how much detail can be considered in the picture of the system. It is always necessary to choose a certain magnifying level. (We will be back to this concept shortly.)

The second principle means that:

Every systems model or interpretation is a limited picture of reality, real or imagined. Every delimitation can be questioned. There are no absolute systems delimitations, only more or less useful ones in relation to a certain purpose. Being so multidimensional as real systems are, there are many options to choose from (complexity).

The third principle is that every systems picture becomes partly dependent on the one who constructs it. This is an important dissociation from the analytical view. The systems creator’s frame of reference is of great importance; it depends on the creator of knowledge as a person and how his/her angle and focus is delimiting the model or interpretation. To phrase it differently: there are no absolutely true or false systems pictures, only more or less comprehensive ones (to express it in more positive terms), or ones that are more or less dependent on the frame of reference of the creator of knowledge (to express it in slightly more negative terms). Churchman (1968), one of the first who introduced the systems view into social sciences, said that all systems models are “deceptive”, even “untruthful”, in the sense that it is not possible to present the whole truth in such models. In the system view, one can say that the American courtroom oath, to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”,

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is a myth (relativity).

A “COMMON” SYSTEMS LANGUAGE

In a sense, every methodological view is its language. So also the systems view, in spite of large variation in its structural and holistic attempts to explain and/or understand systems. The following systems language concepts will be illustrated here:

Systems, subsystems and components Open and closed systems Systems environments Real systems vs. models and interpretations of systems Magnifying level Systems relations Structural and processual perspectives Systems analysis, systems construction and systems theory

Systems, subsystems and components

The systems view in business started in the 1970s. At that time it came along as a way of looking at different academic activities as well as at industry outside the universities, in everyday language and in mass media. New titles and professions emerged, some of which are still in use, such as systems analyst, systems engineer and systems designer (which is not limited to associations with computers). And what student has not heard of concepts like control systems, information systems and reward systems? These (and similar concepts) have become a natural part of the vocabulary of business in practice as well as in business as an academic discipline. The background to this development is quite multi-dimensional. One dimension is the

development of energy and of technology, everything from feedback-controlled mechanisms like thermostats and missiles to modern communications and computers. This development, according to the systems view, has contributed to the tendency to talk, for instance, about technical systems instead of single, isolated mechanisms or machines. Another dimension of this development is the increasing complexity of society, for instance,

from an organizational point of departure. Now we talk about, say, the hospital system, the educational system, the political system, and more. What is the meaning of the concept “system” in these various constellations? Although there

are nuances in practice, in the context of creating knowledge from the systems view, there is general agreement on the following, seemingly simple, definition: a system is a set of components, which can be subsumed into subsystems and the relationships among them all (compare Figure 5.6).

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Figure 5.6 A System

Open and closed systems

The definition of systems demands a couple of additions:

A systems view is not an analytical view model that is exceptionally comprehensive or that considers more aspects than simpler one-dimensional models do. It is something much more fundamental than that. It is a reorientation of thinking compared to the analytical view. This reorientation means studying components that are in inevitable interaction with each other instead of in potential cause–effect relations. In order to explain or to understand an individual component it is not enough to study the component itself in isolation. A creator of knowledge must put the component in context. This reasoning can be carried to a higher level. In order to explain or to understand a system it is sometimes necessary to place it in its own context or environment; this makes it possible to distinguish between open and closed systems. Open systems are studied in the context of their environment; closed systems are not (see Figure 5.7). Business is normally not interested in closed systems.

Figure 5.7 Open and Closed Systems

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Systems environment

The systems environment is what lies outside the “boundary” of the system. This environment is usually seen as the factors that are important to the system to consider but beyond its control. It is always so that the environment of an open system is important. A large number of

theories from the systems view refer to how a system should act in a given environment. To give just one example: the more complications there are from outside, the more flexible the system needs to be from inside (compare the law of requisite variety mentioned earlier). Therefore, in business (using the systems view) there are a number of suggestions about how to classify the systems environment, for instance, shifting or not, demanding or not, friendly or not, and more.

Real systems vs. models and interpretations of systems

Just as the analytical view did, the systems view makes a distinction between factive reality (reality itself) and representations of this reality. Misunderstandings can arise in discussions if it is not made clear whether manifestations of factive reality (i.e. real systems) or representations of this reality (i.e. systems models or systems interpretations) are the topic. In the systems view, creators of knowledge are very open to what a systems model or

interpretation might contain. In the ideal situation, this is determined by the use for which the model or representation is intended and by the magnifying level desired. If the model or interpretation is intended only for descriptive purposes, the creator of knowledge may include a huge number of factors from reality. If, on the other hand, the model or interpretation is to be used for controlling the future of the real system, several factors in the real system might have to be omitted in order to make the model or interpretation manageable to use, not including too much detail. To take an example: a model of a university as a system might contain a list of different

subjects and departments, a list of available educational programmes, a map pinpointing off- campus localities related to the university, and – this is decisive for the systems model – the mutual relations among these subjects, departments, localities and so on. A model intended to show new students where to go to register for the Business department needs only a map of the city where an arrow is indicating the building in question and another arrow shows where the student is now. One might possibly criticize the person distributing the map of the university mentioned

above if it turns out to be ten years old and if the names of several streets and locations were omitted or outdated. The criticism is unjustified, however, if the map is up-to-date in the aspects that new students need, that is, informative enough to show them how to find the Business department. Suppose a new student wants a deeper insight into what world he/she is entering by studying

business at the university in question. He/she meets another student who has been studying the subject for one year already. This other student says:

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Remember that the Business department is the biggest department at this university in terms of number of students. You will feel like you are spending your student life on a lush and green hill with many dull small villages around on the university campus. You will have the impression that you are spending your life on the top and isolated from the rest of the world at the same time.

This is a systems interpretation and it might give an additional feeling to the new student of being prepared for something extra. Every systems model or interpretation is just one among many possible aspects of a real

system. If a creator of knowledge claims, therefore, that something takes place in a “system”, it should be made clear sometimes whether this “system” is a real system, or a model or an interpretation of the same, or possibly all of it (see Box 5.1).

Box 5.1

Be or As a System?

The reader should realize that in one respect there are two kinds of creators of knowledge in the systems view. There are those who believe that reality in itself is systems-like and that the task of the creator of knowledge is to reproduce it or interpret it as such. On the other hand, there are those who see no reason to take a definite position for or against the way reality is ultimately constructed, but nevertheless find it useful, interesting, or both, to reproduce it or interpret it as if it behaved like systems. Similarly, there are two kinds of analytical creators of knowledge reproducing reality in

the form of cause–effect relations, in one case because it is assumed to be that way, in the other case because it is treated as if it were (in the latter case without taking a position on how reality in itself is constructed). Distinguishing between those two kinds of creators of knowledge is of minor interest

here. From a methodological point of departure they behave in the same way.

Magnifying level

Sometimes there is a reference to the relativity principle in the systems view: every component in a system is a potential system of its own. Every system is a potential component in a larger system. This smaller system is, as mentioned above, called a subsystem. The larger system, correspondingly, is a supersystem. This makes it possible to talk about various magnifying levels for systems. A low

magnifying level means that a model or an interpretation contains a number of details. Conversely, a model or interpretation with a high magnifying level would have few details (compare with a magnifying glass: the higher level, the fewer details, and vice versa; see Figure 5.8).

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Figure 5.8 Magnifying Levels of Models and Interpretations

Systems relations

What do relationships in a system actually consist of? The concept of “relation” could be seen as having a concrete or an abstract content (or a combination). We might, for instance, describe relations among different stages in a manufacturing process as the flow of material passing between workstations or as a flow of information progressing among different decision makers at these different stages. This gives the concept of relation a concrete meaning, which can be studied in Figure 5.9, where every relation in the figure is an expression of something concrete.

Figure 5.9 Concrete Systems Relations

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In another system, for instance, a creator of knowledge might want to explain how a group’s unity functions. It would be possible to talk about relations among the members of the group, for instance, in terms of their attitudes toward each other, of their family connections, of similar opinions about the value of unity, or of relations between the system and its environment as various threats that forge the workers into a group (see Figure 5.10). Note the differences in the content of relations in the systems view and the analytical view.

In the latter case, relations do not contain anything. They purely point out which causes are connected with which effects (see Figure 4.1). It is possible, in principle, to illustrate models (or interpretations) in the systems view as

diagrams of the kind we can see in Figure 4.1, that is, where the components contain variables, in this systems case producers and products (terms which we, as mentioned before, use in the systems view to point out the differences from causes–effects). However, such illustrations become much more complicated than they are in the analytical view and not very illustrative. It is such, for instance, that what is a producer in one model or interpretation can easily be a product in another – and vice versa. To give one example: in network analysis the following variables can be used to characterize a network (a kind of systems view model) (Shaw & Conway, 2000):

Figure 5.10 Systems Relations in How a Group’s Unity Functions

Morphological dimensions

Anchorage Reachability Density Range

Interactional dimensions

Content Intensity Frequency

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Durability Direction

However, these variables might as easily be seen as reasons for a specific network behaviour (producers) as the results of such behaviour (products). Due to the complexity of producer–product relations, relations which are far from so direct

as the cause–effect relations are regarded in the analytical view, we can formulate two more principles for the systems view apart from those three we have already examined (in the section, “Systems view in the twenty-first century”). The fourth one is: The principle of mutuality. (Producers and products can easily change place.)

We can also add a fifth principle to our systems view, based on what was said when we talked about holism at the beginning of this chapter: The principle of unpredictability. (Due to the way a system is constructed and because it is in constant interaction with its environment, there is a definite limit to predicting its future.)

Structural and processual perspectives

To describe a real system, creators of knowledge would have to indicate the positions of different components and relations at a given time. By indicating the position of all components and relations in the system and considering all characteristics of the system, the creator of knowledge indicates a systems state (remember that we refer here to a model or interpretation and not the real thing when we talk about “systems”. To indicate the position of all the components and relations in a system in reality would be theoretically and practically impossible). The description of the real system should be complete enough for the creator of knowledge to feel that he/she has explained or understood the real system in relevant aspects. Stressing the different characteristics of components and relations in a model or the interpretations of real systems, is traditionally called a structural perspective. The description of real systems may alternatively be intended to indicate the flow of

different components and relations over time. This has been called a processual perspective. It is, of course, possible, in one and the same study, to describe real systems in structural as well as in processual terms, as shown in Table 5.1. In traditional terms we can say that a structural description gives a static picture, whereas a processual description gives a dynamic picture.

Table 5.1 Structural and Processual Perspectives (Examples)

Structural perspective of System A

The system is three years old.

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The system’s objective is to represent its members. The system is constructed in a relatively simple way. One of the rules of the system prescribes that the leadership consists of M., B. and K.

Processual perspective of System A

The system added a new member during the past year. The system has a continuous interchange with System B. The system issues a newspaper three times a year. The system is stable.

Many creators of knowledge are of the opinion that it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between structures and processes in real systems. For instance, let us look at the three last examples of systems aspects from the list in the beginning of the section “Systems view in the twenty-first century” earlier in this chapter. When we talk about innovations systems, it is, almost by definition, something that is constantly changing in content as well as in form (otherwise it would not be very innovative). The word “innovation” in English can even be read as a creative process or as a new result (which might be a new structure). When we refer to a virtual system, this might be a large number of computers that are linked up with each other. It might be impossible in practise to provide a model of this build-up (its structure). But is this of interest to anybody? Is it not more interesting to get an understanding of what goes on in this system, its process? And is the distinction between structure and process useful here, really? Let us consider a third example, that is, deep structures. How can we call something a structure when it cannot be seen but only be assumed that it exists? Is it not rather a behavioural pattern we are talking about here (which can be seen)? Such “indistinct” circumstances as those just mentioned are not uncommon in the systems

view. It can be seen as a result of the pragmatism so characteristic of the systems view (see Box 5.2).

Box 5.2

Pragmatism

Languages can be characterized as sign processes. Those signs can be analysed in three “dimensions” or aspects of how they function: in relation to other signs (syntax); in relation to what they represent (semantics); and in relation to their users (pragmatics). Pragmatism also stands for the epistemological orientation that claims that the value of

knowledge is equal to its practical use. This is what we normally associate with the systems view. “The truth” of a statement of a systems description becomes equal to its consequences. See also “Validation techniques” in Chapter 7.

The realities that the business theorist is interested in never stand still in their concrete forms of expression. One could, therefore (and maybe rightly so), ask oneself whether the

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models and interpretations intended to describe this reality should not be dynamic as well. There are authors who claim that the interesting structures of real systems in social contexts are the stable behaviours that can be distinguished over time. It is therefore possible to differentiate between dynamic and static structures. In such a case, the statement “The system issues a newspaper three times a year”, for instance, would indicate a dynamic structure and “The system’s objective is to represent its members” would indicate a static structure. This would give a classification of:

static structures (fixed, stable characteristics) dynamic structures (regular processes) non-regular processes (which may even lead to a change of structure)

Non-regular processes are the aspects (characteristics and behaviours) of the system that are not stable. It is a question of one-time phenomena of various kinds. They do not necessarily have to be without interest; on the contrary, they may have a decisive influence on the course of the system (they could be critical events). Such singular phenomena may even lead to the system changing its structure (static and/or dynamic). We want to introduce the following distinction concerning systems perspectives:

Structural perspectives focus on stable and dynamic structures and on non-regular processes that mean (or can mean) a change of structure. Processual perspectives focus on dynamic structures and non-regular processes.

There are studies carried out according to the systems view in which these perspectives are combined so that in some stages the creator of knowledge has a structural perspective and in others a processual perspective.

Systems analysis, systems construction and systems theory

A creator of knowledge working according to the systems view may have several orientations. These orientations, systems analysis, systems construction and systems theory, do not exclude one another.

The knowledge orientations of the view

Systems analysis means to depict a real system in a systems model or interpretation without changing the real system, and to make clear to oneself the internal and external factors influencing this system. In a way, this is as much a question of synthesis as of analysis. In other words, systems analysis has both a descriptive and an explanatory or understanding purpose. We may say that it is partly a question of synthesis because systems analysis also includes the study of the totality of the real system, including its relations to the environment. Recall that in

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the analytical view totality did not have its own meaning as an object of study; there the situation is broken up into its elements and only the relations among those elements are studied. If the totality is discussed in the analytical view, it simply means the sum of the individual elements. In systems terminology we could call this a closed system without synergy – that is, no system at all. Systems construction means to develop a new system, that is, a systems model that the

creator of knowledge may hope to be able to construct in reality (a new combination in factive reality). The need for a new real system may emerge when, while analysing a real system, the creator of knowledge finds that it does not function very well. The creator of knowledge then might try to construct a new real system (on paper and possibly in reality as well). When talking about systems theory, either of two things may be referred to (usually the

latter):

General systems theories. These are inspired by the General Systems Theory mentioned earlier in this chapter, that is, they are theories of systems in general – alternatively, theories of different classes of systems – that do not allude to any specific real systems. Often the structure in such general systems theories is seen as the essential producer to bring about certain (hopefully purposeful and functional) products. General systems theories are therefore sometimes said to be homologically constructed, that is, based on similarities in structure. Specific systems theories. These theories are less general and refer to specific types of real systems or even a single real system. These theories often classify systems into different categories, but structure might not be the decisive producer anymore. These categories may instead be, for instance, types of technology, age, type of environment, size, complexity, strength of culture and many more. The ambition is to find similarities within these categories.

THREE ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES

Let us look at three real studies based on the systems view to illustrate how this language may be expressed in practice. We will see that these three studies have some thinking in common, even if they were done in three very different fields. The three studies are:

1. The success of Silicon Valley (Saxenian, 1996) 2. The Balinese culture (Geertz, 1973) 3. Female entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2007)

The success of Silicon Valley

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Saxenian’s study is an attempt to explain why the region of Silicon Valley in the United States has been such an economic success when the region of Route 128 has not. Silicon Valley has been created by people brought together from different firms and

industries, from public and private sectors, and from financial, educational and training institutions. An industrial community has been created where traditional boundaries between employers and employees and between corporate functions within firms have been eliminated. Instead, interdependent project teams linked by intense, informal communications mirroring the region’s industrial structure have been growing in large numbers. Individuals have also moved from firm to firm, both within and between industrial sectors,

from established firms to start-ups, and vice versa. At the same time, an expanding network of specialist suppliers and service providers has facilitated start-ups. This has resulted in a complex, highly social process rooted in an industrial community.

Silicon Valley’s producers are embedded in, and inseparable from, these social and technical networks. As a result, the region’s engineers have developed stronger commitment to one another and to advancing technology than to individual companies or industries. Informal conversations have been, and still are, pervasive and serve as an important source of up-to- date information about every issue that concerns business and technology in the region. They also function as efficient job search networks. This has been essential in Silicon Valley, where engineers move so frequently between firms. Mobility is not only socially acceptable, it has become the norm. The preferred career option in the region has traditionally been to join a small company or a start-up. The Silicon Valley culture has encouraged risk and accepted failure. Less formal social

relationships and collaborative traditions have developed that support experimentation. The geographic proximity of the firms in Silicon Valley has facilitated occupational mobility. Moving from job to job in that region has not been too much of a disruption from a personal, social and professional perspective. However, unlike Silicon Valley, the Route 128 region is so expansive that sometimes helicopters are used to link its widely dispersed facilities. Furthermore, in Route 128, entrepreneurs inherited and reproduced an industrial order based

on independent firms which, by and large, kept to themselves. The region is dominated by a small number of relatively integrated corporations. Secrecy and corporate loyalty govern relations between them and their customers, suppliers and competitors, reinforcing a culture that encourages stability and self-reliance. This has been valued over experimentation and risk-taking in the Route 128 region. Managers and executives in Route 128 firms are typically in their fifties and sixties while in

Silicon Valley, by contrast, they are often in their twenties and thirties. The blurring of social and professional identities and the practices of open exchange of

information that distinguished Silicon Valley never developed on Route 128.

Illustrated in our systems language, we can say about Silicon Valley that processes are more important than structures, that team-building across the functions of firms and between firms have been decisive, that many of these teams are temporary, entrepreneurial, of a network type and devoted to innovation. The system is very open; its environment is that part of the rest of the world operating in

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similar industries. This environment is certainly very shifting, complex and demanding. The study is made at a magnifying level where individual firms are of minor importance and

the relations between various components contain the latest necessary information to take the road to the commercialization of new technological ideas.

The Balinese culture

Geertz believes that human thought is social in its origin, social in its function, social in its forms and social in its applications. He spent quite some time in Bali to prove his point, examining how the cultural apparatus of that place make its people refine, perceive and react to each other. In Bali, there are six sorts of labels which one person can apply to another person in order

to identify him/her as a unique individual. These are: (1) personal names; (2) birth order names; (3) kinship terms; (4) teknonyms; (5) status titles; and (6) public titles. These labels are, in most cases, used simultaneously. Geertz (1973) refers to all this as “symbolic orders of person-definition”.

Personal names. The symbolic order defined by personal names is the simplest to describe for a foreigner, because it is in formal terms the least complex and in social terms the least important. All Balinese have personal names, but they rarely use them to refer to themselves or others. In general, personal names are rarely heard and they play very little public role.

Birth order names. The most elementary, standardized label bestowed upon a child, when born, is whether it is the first, second, third, fourth, etc., member of the sibling set. These birth order names are the most frequently used terms of both address and reference for children and young men and women who have not yet produced offsprings in Bali. They can be used on their own or supplemented by the personal name, especially when no other way is convenient to get across which is meant.

Kinship terms. Formally, Balinese kinship terminology is quite simple. An individual classifies his/her relatives primarily according to the generation they occupy with respect to their own, like siblings, half-siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts. The interesting fact about Bali, however, is that these terms are used very infrequently. With rare exceptions, one does not actually call one’s father (or uncle) “father”, one’s child (or nephew/niece) “child”, one’s brother (or cousin) “brother”, and so on. Kinship terms in Bali appear in public discourse only in response to some question or event, where the existence of the kin tie is felt to be a relevant piece of information. In short, the Balinese kinship terminology defines individuals in a cultural map where

certain persons can be located and certain others, not features of the landscape, cannot.

Teknonyms. If personal names are treated almost as secrets, birth order names are used only with children and not yet parents and kinship terms are invoked at best sporadically, how, then, do most Balinese address and refer to each other? For the great mass, according to Geertz, it is

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by teknonyms. This means, in Bali, that as soon as a couple’s first child (“X”) is named, they start to be referred to as “Father-of-X” and “Mother-of-X”. This is what they will be called (and will call themselves) until their first grandchild (“Y”) is born, at which time they will begin to be addressed and referred to as “Grandfather-of-Y” and “Grandmother-of-Y”. A similar transition may occur if they live to see their first great-grandchild. This means that what identifies a Balinese is reproductive continuity, his/her ability to

perpetuate him/herself. This has very great economic, political and spiritual consequences in the country.

Status titles. Almost everyone in Bali bears one or another title placing that person in an all- Bali status ladder. However, status in Bali, or at least that sort determined by titles, is a personal characteristic and independent of any social structural factors. It has, of course, important practical consequences and influences a wide variety of arrangements, from kinship groups to business organizations and governmental institutions. From a person’s title you know, for instance, what demeanour you ought to display toward that person. The human inequality embodied in status titles is neither moral, nor economic, nor political

– it is religious.

Public titles. Balinese have a high sense of responsibility and everybody’s duty as part of the public as a corporate body is charged by the special status that public titles express. At the same time, Balinese look at the public sector of society as a number of self-sufficient and self- contained realms, including the hamlet as a corporate political community, the local temple as a religious body, the irrigation society as an agricultural body, and, above these, the structures of regional government and worship, centring on the nobility and the high priesthood.

It is easy to understand that all this has great consequences for business life in Bali. Illustrated in our systems language, we can say that the Balinese culture is a closed and rigid system, where structure is much more important than processes and which has been built up by generations. One might even say that this system is closed and has no environment of interest to identify in order to understand the system. The content of its components differ with social situation and role, but its relations always

include religious aspects. The magnifying level to understand the Balinese culture should include all its members but their labels differ with social occasions. The details at individual or family level are of less importance for such an understanding.

Female entrepreneurship

Ahl’s (2007) study is about women’s entrepreneurship. She undertook a discourse analysis of a large number of research articles on women’s entrepreneurship published from 1982 to 2000 in order to find out how they regarded the female entrepreneur. The material was analysed using a framework by Foucault. In general she found that a female entrepreneur was consistently positioned as inferior to her

male counterpart, irrespective of which facet of entrepreneurship was studied. Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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Ahl asserted that feminist theories are examples of how different versions of knowledge imply different sorts of social order. Feminism is defined as the recognition of women’s subordination, and the desire to do something about it. The definition of discourse in the Ahl study is that it:

is a group of claims, ideas and terminologies that are historically and socially specific is a set of metaphors, representations, images, stories and statements that in some way presents a version of reality has some kind of effects, including power implications.

Some of Foucault’s procedures and principles as seen by Ahl and used in her study were:

1. You do not speak about everything, what is of most interest to a researcher here is the ideas and assumptions that are taken for granted about women, society, entrepreneurship, and so on, that are reflected in the reviewed articles.

2. What is true and what is false is historically contingent and dependent on institutional support.

3. Discourses are repeated and reproduced; founding fathers and the foundational texts on entrepreneurship can therefore not be neglected.

4. Writing and publishing practices are part of shaping and delimiting the discourse. 5. The disciplines, in this case entrepreneurship, carry out a restricting function and provide

regulations for research methods. 6. There are rules and rituals pertaining to who is allowed to speak (and write) on the topic

of women’s entrepreneurship in the research community. 7. The principle of discontinuity says not to forget that there is no grand narrative.

Ahl concluded that the entrepreneur was described in words such as bold, rational, calculative, firm, strong willed, achievement oriented and detached and that these words are male gendered. The words describing masculinity and entrepreneur are very similar. The femininity words are mostly their direct opposites. The most common research question was related to differences between male and female entrepreneurship in areas like personal background and firm characteristics, attitudes to entrepreneurship and intentions to start, psychology, access to capital, and performance but, contrary to expectations, few such differences were found. Within-group variation was typically larger than between-group variation. The arguments for studying female entrepreneurship in the reviewed articles were largely the same as for studying male entrepreneurship – to see how it contributes to employment and economic growth. It turned out, however, that the women’s businesses in comparison with that of men were, on average, a little smaller, grew a little slower and were somewhat less profitable. This was seen as a problem and a further reason for investigation.

Illustrated in our systems language, we can say that the above study is an attempt to find a deep structure an implicit arrangement between entrepreneurship scholars that contained opinions of female entrepreneurship. This structure seems quite closed, and the different components of

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it, like claims, terminology, models and findings, seem to support each other in their version of reality. Discourse processes in the system are consequently repeating and reproducing each other in their content as far as the topic of women’s entrepreneurship is concerned. They are so repetitive that they even might be seen as a structure which is constantly confirming itself. Another magnifying level than the usual one has to be taken in order to break the existing order.

THE RELATION OF THE SYSTEMS VIEW TO ITS PARADIGM

Let us, just like we did in the case of the analytical view, summarize what the systems view stands for in terms of:

1. Conception of reality 2. Conception of science 3. Scientific ideals 4. Ethical/aesthetical aspects.

Conception of reality, or, What Does Business Reality Actually Look Like? We can look at reality as either independent from, or dependent on, us as theorists and/or creators of knowledge. In the first case, we assume that it is systemically constructed; in the second case, we treat it as if that were the case. From a methodological point of departure the two cases are the same. In both situations we accept that reality contains objective as well as subjective facts. The subjective facts, however, can be treated as objective according to the systems view conception of reality and be described as systemic.

Conception of science, or, How Do We Look at Business as a Science? Business-as-a-science is a representation of business reality, either in models or in interpretations. The terminology developed within the framework of the systems view (which is plentiful by now) is related to various systems pictures. These pictures cannot be treated in terms of “other things being equal”, and they are mainly assessed in relation to their users and to the consequences they have when explaining, understanding and adding value to the purposefulness of different systems, and/or parts of these, to the members of corresponding real systems (pragmatics).

Scientific ideals, or, What Do We Want From Business as a Science? Eventually, Business is to provide better and better pictures of systems in business reality. This takes place as formulated producer–product relations. These relationships are strengthened as we,

reach better explanations and understandings of how various types of systems behave under different internal and external circumstances. The types that a creator of knowledge is studying change as we reach ever better systems knowledge. develop new concepts that better cover what happens in the systems world.

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Ethical and aesthetical aspects, or, What Can and Should Business Creators Do, and What Attitude Should They Take Toward What Is Done? Systems creators of knowledge believe that the ethical and aesthetical consequences of the knowledge we gain through the systems view are increasingly emphasized as we consider the relationships between companies and their surroundings in the form of employees, consumers, environment, technology and energy. This is in keeping with the belief in increasingly interdependent relationships in the world, not only among different parts of the company but also between the company and its surroundings. Aesthetically, the systems view wants to provide holistic descriptions which, as illustratively and knowledge-creatively as possible, provide overviews and facilitate practical action at the same time as these descriptions can inspire other researchers/consultants/investigators as analogies.

EXAMPLES OF FORMULATION OF THEORETICAL RESULTS

Let us show a few examples of how theoretical results are formulated in the systems view. Again (as for the analytical view), we want to point out that these results are presented only to offer a perception of the type of theoretical results that emerge from using the systems view, how they are usually formulated and at what level of generality they can be kept. The examples are therefore not meant to be either important or comprehensive. General systems theories tend to be both abstract and general, as shown by the examples that

follow:

Different environments give different systems. How well they succeed depends on their structure. The systems structure is conditioned by history and can become an obstacle to future development. Demand for variety in a system is conditioned by the variety in the environment. If open systems are not provided with input from the environment, they will die. Mechanistic systems structures tend to prevent entrepreneurship while organic structures seem to facilitate it. What is the best system should most often be judged by what it leads to for its environment.

As we have seen quite a few examples of in this chapter, modern systems theories are usually of a more specific type.

The systems view is, in a sense, broad as well as having a focus and an orientation. It has spread into a number of different applications in business, in fact, too many to summarize or classify in any meaningful way. Therefore, in this chapter, we have tried to illustrate some of these applications by using those which we see as more typical than others. In doing so, we have made a distinction between explaining reality in (representative) models

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and understanding reality in (representative) interpretations. However, we believe that there is a central nucleus in the systems view. All its applications emanate from the same philosophical roots, there is a reasonably common systems language and the relation of the systems view to its paradigm is quite clear. This has also been presented in this chapter.

POINTS OF REFLECTION

1. The systems view talks about being holistic and structural in it orientation. Explain what this means to your fellow students.

2. Why is there an unlimited number of possible pictures of a real system? 3. In the chapter you could read about both the understand/interpret and explain/models.

These are two very important concepts in the systems view, concepts which you are not allowed to use among the set of concepts in the next point of reflection, but what do these two conceptual constellations mean?

4. When interviewed for a position you are asked to come up with six important systems concepts and describe what they stand for. Which ones would you choose? And what would your descriptions look like?

5. Why is there, in principle, a definite limit to perfectly predict the future course of action of a system?

6. Think about and describe a cause/effect relation consisting of a main cause and at least two contributing causes. Repeat the description in finality terms using producers and products. Differences?

7. Come up with a metaphor for the place where you work or study or for any situation with which you are very familiar. What does this metaphor say over and above a description based only on a model of this situation, where the model is based only on an attempt to depict as truly as possible what is going on?

8. Suppose you characterize one business firm in terms of “summer” and another one in terms of “winter”. What do these metaphors tell you about the firms in more practical terms?

9. What would your story look like if somebody asked you to present the relation of the systems view to its paradigm?

10. In the chapter we talk about five principles. What are they? What do the principles say to a person who wants to use the systems view?

11. In Chapter 2 you can find a heading “The importance of the perspective”. If you reflect on the essence of that heading and relate this to the perspectives of Structural and Processual in this chapter, how could you describe that reflection in terms of its characteristics (structure) and/or in terms of its flow (process)?

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RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING

See the end of the Appendix and visit the website below.

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http://www.knowledge-creator.com

6 THE ACTORS VIEW

This chapter will present the actors view in detail. Fundamental concepts such as meaning, intentionality, dialogue and dialectics on which the view is based will be provided. The relation of the actors view to its paradigm and some typical results from this view will also be provided.

AN UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

In modern Physics there is, among other things, talk about an uncertainty, which means that physical phenomena in micro-cosmos are not only particles but also waves. This aspect means the particles do not have any definite demarcation. The uncertainty, then, says that it is certainly possible to close the waves in between two obstacles in order to better determine the position of a particle. But the closing in is then decreasing the wavelength, at the same time as the frequency is increasing. The outcome is that what was supposed to provide a more precise measurement in reality is changing the energy of the particle. The actors view might, in parity with this, claim that man too should be seen both as a

particle (being) and a wave (becoming) with indefinite demarcation (freedom). What will then happen if we as creators of knowledge are closing her in – the authentic human being – between some items in a questionnaire in order to quantitatively determine the “position” of isolated characteristics of her? What type of knowledge will be the result of such a closing- in, asks the actors view? Is not the “energy” of this “particle” also changed by the very moment of measuring? Like the uncertainty principle that Heisenberg brought into modern physics (the Heisenberg

uncertainty principle), Arbnor asserts (2004) that it is possible to formulate an uncertainty principle even in the social science area by starting from the ultimate presumptions of the actors view (see Figure 6.1 on next page): From this principle it follows that every kind of statistical measurement as explanation of

human aspects/behaviour in social contexts (micro-cosmoses) leads to a gradual decreased understanding of ourselves as authentic totalities. And the opposite: the better we understand ourselves as authentic totalities, the more uncertain the quantitative aspects become – they can take any expressions, whenever, wherever. Because, as men we are free to act as unique subjects! Unlike phenomena in nature we also have the unique ability to think critically of what we are exposed to as well as uncritically be manipulated by it. We are creatures creating meaning one way or another. If we lose the qualitative feeling of totality and the meaningful context – our ability to create ourselves, as free actors in our own micro-cosmos – then we

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lose some of what is human, according to the presumptions of the philosophy of life according to the actors view.

Figure 6.1 The Arbnor Uncertainty Principle Source: Arbnor, 2004: 362

As creators of knowledge in the actors view we must therefore never stand outside in order to observe others as objects, because in such a case the others and their situation would appear as strange. Appearing as strange is a function of not participating ourselves. And if we do not participate as actors creating knowledge, that which appears as strange also looks like something determined (= conditioned by external factors and not by human free will). Because, if we participate ourselves, we will notice, as creators of knowledge, that things are moving by our own choice and actions and by others. Then, we will not be strangers to the dynamic flows of the present in human micro-cosmoses. (This problem of free will and determinism is one of the most disputed questions in the history of philosophy.) In the “closing in/locking” perspective of statistics/questionnaires most characteristics may,

according to the actors view, appear as determined and even similar on the surface. And according to the uncertainty principle above we will, by this explaining knowledge, understand human situations as free dynamic totalities increasingly poorly! We develop and measure us, so to say, into “unfreedom” in the sign of self-reference. The explanatory knowledge here becomes, according to the actors view, a kind of constructivistic vicious circle of unfreedom. Using the presumptions of the actors view as a basis, researchers, investigators, consultants

and business leaders are instead building their activities on developing and clarifying others as creative subjects (actors) in order to make themselves free. If we, as creators of knowledge, are aiming for human development and freedom, then the purpose of “making ourselves free” also becomes a prerequisite for this ideal. If we are better at realizing our own freedom, we also have better possibilities to realize this life value first in the study area and then also in society at large through that self-reference which always exists between scientific results and the development of society according to the actors view. The actors oriented creator of knowledge is therefore, in all different ways, searching for

the inner quality of those human micro-cosmoses he/she is meeting. And also, at the same time, he/she tries to re-create this quality in him/herself in order to be able to understand and to transfer these experiences through “the emancipatory interactive action” (see Table 3.1).

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SOME DENOTATIONS OF CONCEPTUAL MEANING

The section title mentions denotation of conceptual meaning (vs. providing definitions) because of the ultimate presumptions the actors view is based on, for example, that concepts within social reality are ambiguous and continuously reinterpreted.

Concepts as meaning

As stated earlier, the actors view postulates that reality’s ambiguity and changeability are a result of (among other things) the creator of knowledge’s interaction with, and search for, dialectic connections (knowledge that is dependent on the observer/actors). The actors view claims that the core of knowledge consists of understanding/meaning for the subjects; ambiguity is therefore as desired as it is essential to the creation of knowledge. The actors view talks for that reason about denotations whereas the other two views talk about definitions. A denotation of conceptual meaning refers here to the general understanding, meaning and significance that we, the authors, associate with the concept, while a specific meaning is given by the context in which it appears.

Intentionality

The concept of intentionality is an essential part of the basic assumptions of the actors view. It constitutes the foundation on which actors’ egological spheres (the internal logic of actors that constitute their subjective conceptual meaning) and finite provinces of meaning are postulated (see Chapter 3); that is, it describes how egological spheres and finite provinces of meaning can exist. Intentionality refers to the structure that gives a purpose to experience. Intentionality is not

the same as intentions; it is the dimension behind intentions. It is through intentionality that we bridge the gap between subjects and objects. The concept of intentionality is not used by traditional empirical researchers because it does away with part of their foundation. In strictly empirical thinking, people are seen as “passive” experiencers and interpreters of objects in external reality. That which is contained in intentionality, on the other hand, makes people active creators of the objects in their environment. May (1969) expresses it this way: “What really happens is that objects themselves conform to our ways of understanding. A good example of this is mathematics. These are constructs in our minds; but nature conforms ‘answers,’ to them” (1969: 226). May continues by quoting Russell, “Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover” (1969: 226). The concept of intentionality overturns traditional empirical thought, which states: we are

attracted by surrounding objects through our senses, and our senses make it possible to perceive them (the objects). On the other hand, intentionality asserts that via our purposeful consciousness, we reach out by using our senses and find or mould objects according to our purposes. This ability to create our environment is called intentionality.

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Consider how one and the same house can alter its look depending on the intentionality present. Suppose we work with the following alternative starting points for our intentionality: (a) We are to conclude a “quick deal”, that is, buy and then sell the house for a good profit; (b) we have been invited to spend a weekend with friends in the house. We will certainly experience the house completely differently in the two cases. This means that the house as an object will be molded according to the intentionality we have as a starting point for our sense impressions. The common saying that “seeing is believing” is consequently, according to the actors view, highly relevant to everyone. Intentionality connects us with the environment and makes us act as creative humans instead

of passive receivers (the result of the strict empirical idea). The degree of vitality and engagement among people is to be found in intentionality. It also directs our attention as creators of knowledge toward trying to understand the roots of intentionality in order to make the actors’ egological sphere and finite provinces of meaning intelligible.

Social science knowledge

According to the concept of intentionality, social science knowledge also becomes socially constructed with a self-reference to the society at large. The creator of knowledge should, according to the actors view, therefore consciously use this reference and construction in an open, ethical and emancipating way. This means, among other things, to work for a form of knowledge that emancipates one’s own thought as well as others and one’s own power, urge, passion and commitment as well as others. The conception of knowledge of the actors view is therefore procreative with a clearly expressed ambition to be present and to act – not to stand outside as an observer. The actors view claims that an action-oriented social research is needed which aims at

reaching deepened understanding as well as extended freedom in society, at the same time as research is providing a knowledge which is extending understanding of the complexity of the human society. And what is complex can not, according to the actors view, be divided into simple relations of causes and effects – in the spirit of determinism – because what is humanly complex will then be erased – that which we intended to understand! Complexity has the peculiarity that it can only be clarified through descriptions, which are rich in aspects and which show depth and composition and show the unique human/the actor behind and in this composition. Similarly, as Sartre once formulated his criticism of the labels of generality for human activity, “Franz Kafka is an intellectual-bourgeois, but every intellectual-bourgeois is not a Franz Kafka.” The knowledge interest of the actors view is definitely innovative, oriented towards

understanding, emancipation and action, unlike an explaining, deterministic search for generality of a cause–effect type of knowledge. As creators of knowledge we are always co- actors in a constant flow of the development of reality. And here the issue is, according to the actors view, that we are like “artists” who procreate and shape this interactivity and do not believe that it is possible to stand outside like observers and register something which afterwards is reconstructed in general models – statements which might not make one single

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man feel freer or more alive. What happens, says the actors view, if we more generally were to say yes to actors

oriented premises for what we call social science knowledge? And the actors view answers, according to Arbnor (2006), by providing the ambition criteria for actors oriented social and business knowledge shown in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2 Knowledge Ambitions

So, the actors oriented creator of knowledge aims at delivering what is potential in what is factual and, at the same time, aims at describing and shaping this process. It also becomes a means for critically reflecting the self-reference of general social science knowledge. In the process of realizing the knowledge ambitions (Figure 6.2), the creator of knowledge will also discover the existing social science knowledge representation of generality, normality, clichés, uniformity, etc. in individual human beings. The creator of knowledge therefore asks continuously what really should be called social and business knowledge, emphasizing science. To be a creator of knowledge in the sense of the actors view consequently means, as an

actor, to enter a dialogue with that reality which you, in a flow of the present, are at the same time part of creating in order to emotionally, imaginatively and qualitatively look for what is irregular, and clarify this reality using an authentic language (first hand expressions), where participants are made into subjects of an understanding, emancipatory and innovative knowledge interest.

Dialogue

The word dialogue is from dia (through) and logos (words), and is characterized by the interplay between “talking” and “listening” that takes place on equal terms for the participants. The word is the “instrument” of the dialogue, and it consists of two mutually dependent elements: reflection and action. If a word loses its element of action, reflection is affected. Words drained of action become elements of an empty language game – babbling – from both a

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scientific and an everyday point of departure. If, on the other hand, a word loses its reflective element, it becomes an empty activity, action for action’s sake; scientific as well as everyday activism. Words that have lost their intentionality – one or both of their elements – bring out what is not genuine (not dependent on individuals) in existence, in thoughts, or in both. The methodological purposes of the dialogue are twofold. Firstly, to clarify differences

(thesis–antithesis) in which the participants can reflect their original opinions. Secondly, to go beyond (synthesis) the original opinions with which you enter the dialogue as a participant. The interplay of questions and answers in the clarifying phase of the dialogue is close to

what we might call an “honest question”. To ask an honest question, you have to know that you don’t know. And when you know that you don’t know, you don’t use a direct method, because that implies that you only want to know something more thoroughly in the way you already know it (compare understanding an actor’s actions based on his/her finite province of meaning and not your own). Dialogue leads to a more intensive interaction than, for instance, questionnaires with their prepared questions. In a dialogue the creator of knowledge can not stand outside as an observer. The dialogue is based on nearness, authencity and willingness to emancipate and go beyond (create syntheses). In the continuous first hand expressions of the dialogue the subjectivity of man is refined. Dialogue could be called the basis of dialectics (see below).

A asserts a1 (thesis) B asserts b1 (antithesis) A asserts a2 (synthesis), which encompasses or is based on both a1 and b1, and which contains something over and above the pure combination of a1 and b1: A adds new information and/or gives a2 a specific structure. (Out of the clarified differences something new and qualitatively different is developed. In the ideal case the dialogue continues until a common understanding/action develops – a kind of meta-synthesis.)

The dialogue is a necessity in the social world of reflection and action between people. To interview someone in depth or to plant one’s own ideas with somebody else has nothing to do with the dialogue. Carrying out a dialogue is the basis of the act of creating knowledge and the participation of the creator of knowledge in the world. The dialogue as a method in the actors view therefore necessitates humility, undivided attention and a genuine curiosity on the part of the creator of knowledge, as well as a belief in fellow humans as actors who have their own free will and right to create social reality. Asking honest questions and being genuinely related to the words makes it natural for

actors creators of knowledge to use an interactive development of understanding as a prerequisite and to carry on emancipatory interactive action as part of the result.

Dialectics

The word dialectics comes from dia (through) and lektos (conversation). It was stated in antiquity that the best method for reaching “the truth” was to converse/argue (shed light on) an

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issue from a number of different angles (perspectives) so that various opinions could contradict each other. Dialectics is basically the study of the inherent contradictions in phenomena. By contradiction, we mean that everything contains its own negation; that is, what is general can only be revealed if what is specific exists: the finite only in relation to the infinite, what is quantitative in relation to what is qualitative (see “the Arbnor Uncertainty Principle”, Figure 6.1). In the previous illustration in which A and B made statements in a dialogue, we can reflect

on how contradictions appear in the dialogical situation itself. The concepts that might perhaps be used by A in the first statement a1 (the thesis) are given as something immediate. This immediate (the first) is later shown as the second in relation to itself; that is, as something mediated or referring to something else. This something else is the statement of the dialogical partner B (b1). That could therefore be called the negation of the first (antithesis). The immediate (a1 – the thesis) has been subordinated to the second (b1 – the antithesis), but the second is not an empty negation. The second is what is mediated and contained in the denotation of the first. The first is therefore preserved in the second even though it has been subordinated to b1 through the fact that it has been given another shape in relation to the negation (the antithesis). The second is simultaneously the mediated and the mediator. The second denotation

mediates something that is related to itself, that is, b1 to b1; it therefore contains its own second in itself. In this way the second denotation – as a contradiction – leads to its own dialectic. The negation that the second in itself will give rise to invalidates the contradiction (two minuses equal a plus, a double negative is a positive) and thereby restores the first immediateness. This immediateness is, in fact, part of the process of the third in relation to the first immediateness (the thesis) and the second mediated (the antithesis). The third is the unity (the synthesis–a2) between what is immediate and what is mediated. This is the trinity of dialectics (thesis–antithesis–synthesis). This is the basic idea of what we call dialectic relations, connections and/or

circumstances. Everything in our social lives originates in these starting points, according to the actors

view. This leads to social phenomena becoming ambiguous. What my actions are and what they become is partly fixed by others’ significant ambiguous denotations of these actions. Acknowledging that every social phenomenon in and of itself carries contradictory

tendencies and has an inherent capacity to accumulate quantitatively to new qualitative states will clarify why everything that exists (in the social world) is in the process of continuous development or intrinsic movement. It is because of this, according to the actors view, that we are able to understand the contradictions and breaks in continuity in our social lives. At the same time we can also understand the knowledge ambition of the actors view to emancipate what is potential (the antithesis) in what is factual (the thesis) and develop and create something new (synthesis). The meaning of dialectics can be summarized in three paragraphs:

The unity and struggle of contradictions. Contradictions condition each other and bring meaningfulness to the poles. Day conditions night and night, day. The day does not take the

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X. night and vice versa. The phenomena are each other’s prerequisites and create in their struggle a movement (e.g. learning – unlearning, quantity – quality, reflection – action, and other polarizing concepts).

The transition of the quantitative accumulation into a new quality. Quantitative change can quickly change into completely new qualitative configurations. Cold water can quickly turn into ice. A seed in the ground can suddenly start to grow after lying dormant for several years. A work team can quickly change qualitatively if some members leave and/or others are added.

Everything undergoes development and becomes its own contradiction. The seed in the ground becomes a plant – the negation (antithesis) of the first – that becomes a seed-case – the negation of the negations (the synthesis). This contradiction, once again, becomes its own negation, which may be the same as at the beginning but at a higher level – plants and more seeds. The synthesis looks like the thesis but at a higher qualitative level. For example, the need for the increase in knowledge within an area leads to specialists who carry their own contradictions around – a need for overview, more complete orientation, and so on.

The meaning of dialectics is also contained in the dialectical methodology of the actors view (refer back to Figure 3.15 at the end of Chapter 3). The simple circumstance of a theoretical person entering practice starts a unity and a struggle of contradictions (X). The accumulation of everyday language – the development of language by the creator of knowledge, leads to a new quality (Y) – descriptive and ideal-typical languages, that will negate what is immediately given – the descriptions in everyday language. The original interactive development of understanding leads to its own contradiction (Z) – the act, the emancipatory interactive action. Recall under “Dialogue”, above, that the genuineness of a word (its intentionality) is related to reflection and action as contradictory partners indispensable to each other.

Actor

To talk about actors is important in the actors view, because it indicates an interest in people as intentional, that is, as active, reflective and creative individuals. In a dialogue, interest is directed at understanding and postulating people as free, active, reflective and creative, not as conditioned by external factors by which they might be explained as components with systemic characteristics. It is therefore natural to talk about actions instead of behaviours. Action gives a person the role of an active creator of understanding, whereas behaviour gives a person a passive role as a receiver of stimuli and a generator of responses. To the creator of knowledge, the actor is an “object” to be studied as a free human being

who in the ideal case thinks freely and acts responsibly. This actor is often placed in a context that is more or less organized and that is also an object to be studied by the researcher/consultant/investigator. This context consists of other actors – other people with their own finite provinces of meaning.

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Observer

Observers in the sense of the actors view start from the fact that they must engage themselves humanly in the situation of the actors being studied in order to understand social action, but must periodically increase their dissociative distance in order to broaden the perspective of the data being collected. This method of working should not be confused with what is called participative observation, which can in principle be conducted without any engagement at all. The combination of engagement (interactive development of understanding) and dissociation (reflection), furthermore, minimizes the risk that observers will “drown” in the organizations they study. The observer’s course of action must be flexible and interactively oriented. Stringent and

well-regulated study plans will therefore hinder more than they will help. When the observer has reached a suitable combination of engagement and dissociation, a more coherent total understanding can be developed. Recall that observers can have more than one interest and knowledge ambition, and that

these can be incorporated in the descriptions the observers later provide. An individual observer might be interested in creating understanding, new thinking, emancipation, or some combination of these. This can be accomplished in many different ways, depending on the organization and the actors that creators of knowledge, as observers, work with. It is also important, because observers do work with creating understanding, new thinking and/or emancipation in the organization, for them to detach themselves more and more from any engagement in the organization.

Observer–Actor

An observer of social action will of necessity, according to the actors view, also retain the role of an actor. This means that at the same time that an observer (the creator of knowledge) observes other actors, these actors will observe the actions of the observer – who becomes an actor to them. In these constant role shifts, where the observer becomes an actor and the actor an observer, the observer’s knowledge and theories as well as the actor’s understanding of his/her own situation will be improved. Observers of social action can never stand outside of what they are studying. According to

the actors view, it is a dialectic necessity that observers appear as actors at the same time that they influence and are influenced by what they are studying. To believe as a creator of knowledge that it is possible to stand outside and observe others creates a kind of estrangement, which is deceiving the creator of knowledge into seeing what is happening as something determined (by different causing factors and not by human free will). A researcher/consultant/investigator as an observer might therefore be called an observactor.

Diagnosis

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Development of understanding

The word diagnosis is from dia (through) and gnosis (deeper insight). To diagnose is a way to understand and interpret actors and situations through deeper insight, so that “tools/processes” can be developed that can increase self-understanding among actors and help them in their future actions. In the actors view, the most important aspect of the diagnosis is to see actors as human

beings with intentional characteristics, rather than as artificial beings arranged in some a priori descriptive scheme. As creators of knowledge we are human beings as well and therefore constructed basically the same way as our studied actors. This gives a unique potential possibility for understanding others (and really, understanding would not be possible without it). The possibility is, however, potential because training and reflection are necessary to be able to understand others through oneself: the risk is great that only such experiences of others that suit the finite province of meaning held by the creator of knowledge will be observed and noted. In the same way, there is a risk that the experiences of the actors will be interpreted from the finite province of meaning held by the creator of knowledge, instead of from those held by the actors themselves. It is therefore important for the actors oriented creator of knowledge to search for the inner quality in those human micro-cosmoses he/she meets and at the same time re-create this quality within him/herself in order to be able to understand and bring the experiences on. We describe the purpose of diagnosis in social science (i.e. business) as a three-step

process for an interactive development of understanding: preunderstanding, understanding and postunderstanding.

Preunderstanding

Diagnostic preunderstanding is supposed to bridge the differences that exist between the finite province of meaning held by the creator of knowledge and the finite provinces of meaning held by the (other) actors. Preunderstanding can then function as a linguistic bridge, a dialogue, between the intentionality of the creator of knowledge and that of the actors. A genuine relation to the words and honest questions are the starting points for this interactive development of understanding (see “Dialogue” above where one of the two methodological purposes of the dialogue is described as to clarify differences). Diagnostic preunderstanding is not to be confused with the general preunderstanding brought

up in Chapter 3 (see Table 3.4, summarizing the actors view, at the end of Chapter 3). General preunderstanding is related to the collected experiences that creators of knowledge bring to every new study situation, whereas diagnostic preunderstanding is always developed in a specific study situation and becomes associated with that situation. In order to develop diagnostic preunderstanding, a historical study of the actors of interest

(and their organization) is necessary. It is only against the background of such a study that it becomes possible to understand the finite provinces of meaning that guide the actors’ actions. This preunderstanding or language commonality is the eventual basis of the continuing dialogue and development of understanding in the next two stages, understanding and

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postunderstanding.

Understanding

The development of understanding itself comes about by using the relations and the dialogue that the creator of knowledge established during the preunderstanding stage. It is worth remembering that the ultimate purpose of this situation and the ongoing dialogue is to improve the ability of the actors to be free to solve their own problems. For this reason it is essential to see the development of the diagnosis as a development of an understanding that is shared by the creator of knowledge and the actors. This is supposed to take place through the earlier described “observer–actor” relation in which mutual development and an increase in knowledge takes place. This second stage (diagnostic understanding) consists of a reflection process in which the

researcher/consultant/investigator, in both dialogue and action with the actors, tries to find essential patterns in the information that are based on the actors’ everyday language. During this dialogical reflection process, the creator of knowledge as well as the actors grow in capacity. At the same time, the creator of knowledge gradually develops descriptive and ideal- typified languages (see “Dialectics”, above).

Postunderstanding

Diagnostic postunderstanding is the third stage in the development of understanding. Here a process is initiated whereby the languages developed are related to what is factual and actual, as well as to existing theory. In this stage, the languages being developed become an integral part of the knowledge creator’s “tools”, which means that these languages will provide the bases for the continuing emancipatory interactive action, an interactive action that creates a solid understanding among actors of what is old – and what is new.

Language development

To develop descriptive and ideal-typified languages, in other words to develop “language”, might seem somewhat obscure. How do you develop a new language – like the creation of Esperanto or what? Language development in the sense of the actors view has nothing to do with this kind of language. When we talk about language development in the way the actors view does, we have in mind all the instruments that creators of knowledge can use, antithetical to the everyday language, to express their experiences and understanding. Actors creators of knowledge are intent on communicating through actively forming what

they experience as subconsciously and unconsciously significant in their relation to the actors’ life-worlds. The word communicate is from the Latin communis (common), and is the road to common experiences and insights. To form, in this context, means to “vivify” something, where the observer becomes an important part in creating meaning around what is vivified. The processes, the means (the instruments) that actors creators of knowledge develop

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and use understandingly, emancipatorily and creatively in order to express themselves are what we call languages. Recall that we earlier divided these into descriptive and ideal-typified languages (a further development of this dichotomy is illustrated later in the chapter). We can, in this respect, compare creators of knowledge who use the actors view to artists,

poets, composers and the like, as far as “the passion” for communicating new dimensions of experience is concerned. May (1969) explains what we mean: It is the artists who teach us to see, who break ground in the enlargement of our consciousness; they point the way toward the new dimensions of experience which we have, in a given period, been missing. This is why looking at a work of art gives us a sudden experience of self-recognition. Giotto, precursor to that remarkable birth of awareness known as the Renaissance, saw nature in a new perspective and for the first time painted rocks and trees in three-dimensional space. … The new view of space by Giotto was basic for the new geographical explorations of oceans and continents by Magellan and Columbus which changed man’s relation to his world, and for the explorations in astronomy by Galileo and Copernicus, which changed man’s relation to the heavens. These new discoveries in space resulted in radical upheaval of man’s image of himself. … The psychological upheaval and spiritual loneliness in this period was expressed by the poet John Donne. (1969: 320–1)

Actors researchers/consultants/investigators normally do not communicate their insights in the form of drawings, films, or paintings. But to indicate the road to new dimensions of experience, they must be able to use all possible linguistic features. Actors creators of knowledge must therefore not be ignorant of such methods as slide shows, light and sound shows, or multimedia combinations of these means of expression in order to create an antithesis to everyday language. The actors view agrees entirely with the philosopher von Wright (1986) who, in Vetenskapen och Förnuftet [Science and Reason], asserts: “The understanding of reality in earlier scientific categories has reached its limits. In order to go beyond the limit, these categories must be transformed or replaced by new ones” (1986: 46; our translation). It is through a conscious and re-creative development of language that we, according to the actors view, give ourselves the chance to emancipate “the potential in what is factual”. Then we can go beyond old categories of created knowledge and make more cost- effective and attractive ways of life and work for ourselves. Business revival, according to the actors view, necessitates this language development, too. When constructing language expressions and phrases, which are condensed through the use

of various artistic means of expression, creators of knowledge can use new well-connotated word combinations, analogous concepts, contradictory terms, new concepts and terms, metaphors, analogies, simplifications, newly constructed words, and illustrations and drawings to advantage. When researchers/consultants/investigators, using the instruments just described within the

framework of various models of the actors view (i.e. using scientific language; we remind the reader that it is not necessary to be a scientist to use a “scientific” language), develop a coherent formative pattern in relation to some area under study, we talk about language

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development – a discourse.

Action

Intentionality makes us acting subjects. The word is the instrument of the dialogue and consists of both reflection and action! Action is, in reflection, its own contradiction and vice versa – the contradictions condition each other and give each other a meaning. An actor is an active, reflective and creative human being. We have come to understand that these are some of the implications of using action as a concept and a practice in the process of creating knowledge within the framework of the actors view. The opinion that I as a creator of knowledge have of others must, according to the actors

view, be one to which I myself am willing to conform. It therefore becomes natural for actors creators of knowledge to engage in active emancipatory action as an important part of the process of creating knowledge. At the same time that this role of action is criticized by the two other views, the actors view asks whether creators of knowledge who are analytical and systems-oriented might not like to have their own knowledge-creating activities explained/understood as they explain and understand the activities and development of others; that is, as an expression of various external factors – causes or producers – that determine what they do or that arrange them as components of a system. An actors creator of knowledge who does not take the role of action seriously is as

defective, in the actors view, as analytical and systems-oriented creators of knowledge who do not accept that what they posit for others and their environment applies to themselves as well. It is often language that limits the actions of creators of knowledge when in the field. What at

any moment is the given language (whether everyday or scientific) limits the potential that creators of knowledge have for structuring their experiences out of the interactive development of understanding. Creators of knowledge who do not progress in language development and action can speak and write about only the characteristics and relations for which there are words in the given language. If a transformation of what is given does not take place, the work of these creators of knowledge leads only to a confirmation of what is already known, because every existing life-world also constitutes a knowledge-world in which language is an important part of the structure of reflection, action and legitimacy. Co-reflecting and co-creating with the actors in the field become important prerequisites for

a transformation of what exists in the everyday world as well as in the scientific (research/consulting/investigation) world. Through action, meaning can be wrung from reflection, and through reflection, action can be scrutinized. As much as action designates reflection, reflection designates action – the unity and struggle of contradictions. This distinguishing mark of actors is a guarantee that the creator of knowledge has a genuine relationship to words (see “Dialogue”, above). Business as research/consulting/investigation and research/consulting/investigation as

business could be the motto for the business researcher/consultant/investigator who wants to be involved with creating knowledge through emancipatory interactive action within the framework of the actors view. This includes the creative act and the direct act as important

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elements. The creative act encompasses the “artistic” development of language (see above). The concrete participation of creators of knowledge in practice – such as creating businesses, starting ventures, transforming organizations – constitutes the direct act. The reason the actors view talks about these acts as “emancipatory interactive action” is related to what we have described as the solid connections between language and existence – in both directions. If the knowledge ambitions of the actors view (see Figure 6.2) and the potential in what is factual are to be made visible, intelligible and believable, emancipatory interactive action in the form of creative and direct acts out in the field is necessary. In the actors view, it is important to convey the message actively to the actors out in the field

that the alternative to the laws of causality does not have to be vagueness and make believe. The alternative is meaningfulness and freedom in reflection and action.

REALITY: A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

Transformation

The central assumption of the actors view is the existence of a social reality. This means that reality is not independent of us, but consists of an interaction between our own experiences and the collected structure of experiences that we have over time created together with others. The process by which we create our own experiences is called subjectification. This process is prescribed by the concept of intentionality and by the Arbnor Uncertainty Principle (see Figure 6.1) and constitutes the basic idea that humans are a subjective reality. When through our common language we make these subjective experiences externally

available, we talk about externalization. With externalization we create the surrounding reality and can therefore say that society is a human result. The process by which an externalized human act might attain the characteristic of objectivity

is called objectification. Through objectification, externalization loses its subjectively significant structure and becomes a typification, that is, it is given a virtually objective significance structure. Typification is related to our way of attaching various labels and typical designations to – having different understandings of – the people and things around us. Examples of such typifications could be, commuter, entrepreneur, chief, Englishman, snob or scorcher. We expect, and then take for granted, that what is typified behaves according to the understanding mediated by the typification. The typification is not completely objectified until it has gone through a process of institutionalization and legitimization. The process of objectification, in turn, constitutes the basis for the assumption that society is an objective reality. The fourth and last of these processes in social reality is called internalization. This stands

for taking over the world in which others already live, and so it constitutes the dialectic process through which we become members of society. We are not born as members but become such via internalization with its primary and secondary socialization phases. This is the basis of the fourth assumption, that humans are a societal result.

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We have now described four different transforming elements in the total dialectic process that molds our reality. It is important to remember that they work simultaneously at all levels of the social order. In order to understand organizations/companies, it is essential that these transforming elements – processes – are considered with a perspective of totality in their simultaneity (see Figure 6.3). It is not possible to understand any of these processes in isolation. They must be understood

in relation to each other, to their constant movement – dialectics. They constitute transforming elements in the unity and struggle of contradictions at the same time as they are each other’s prerequisites for the transition of the quantitative accumulations to a new quality, in which they again develop and become each other’s contradictions (see “Dialectics” above).

Figure 6.3 Simultaneous Processes

For ease of description, we will describe each of the elements – the processes – separately. The reader is therefore asked to keep the dialectic idea in mind and to relate the following presentation to Figure 6.3.

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Subjectification

We experience our fellow human beings in a direct way when we share a community in time and space. When we share this community with another, we reach a contemporaneousness in our consciousness. We perceive each other’s bodies as an unspecified field of sensations by which this consciousness manifests itself in us. In these dialogical, everyday meetings with others we continuously externalize ourselves and consequently lay the foundation for social dialectics. This dialectic relationship also lays the foundation for various finite provinces of meaning that are developed by society’s actors. How externalization and development of these finite provinces of meaning take place is to a large extent related to what we call the subjectification of a person or an actor (see Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4 The Subjectification of a Person or Actor

This subjectification is attributed to how individual actors develop themselves as subjects on the social stage. An individual actor’s interpretations are attributed to his/her subjectification process. How each actor makes this interpretation is related to the finite province of meaning by which he/she is oriented and the egological sphere and interpretation he/she uses. That this finite province of meaning and egological sphere are possible at all is based on the assumption of intentionality, which describes the principles of human consciousness as such. If these principles are related to an actor’s total situation and factual way of interpretation, we can infer the actor’s egological sphere and finite province of meaning, that is, we can develop an understanding of the subjectification process. The knowledge ambition of the actors view (see Figure 6.2) to act reinforcing the subject

for what is unique relates directly to this process of subjectification. It is the belief of the view that unique individuals in a dialogue support a creative development of the society, which in turn relates to the innovative knowledge interest of the view.

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Externalization

Externalization stands for the assumption that we take part in creating our surrounding reality (society is a human result). When we communicate our subjectification to others through our common language, that is, make something externally available, we enable them to react to our previous subjective experiences and thoughts. We externalize ourselves continuously in various actions that we communicate to fellow humans in everyday relations. These other human beings then function as reflections of our externalizations. By means of this communication we may possibly transform the original content of a thought and formulate a new or refined thought. This mutual relation with others is dialectic and leads to the continuous reinterpretation and change of meanings. A creator of knowledge should therefore, according to the actors view, interest him/herself

in a language development (see above, p. 141–2) which is extending our externalization possibilities to express, vivify and clarify what is pregnant, sublime, subtle, creative, difficult to express etc. This is also about the special knowledge ambitions of the view (see Figure 6.2).

Objectification

Our externalized subjective thoughts and intentions constitute moments (stages) or parts of complicated dialectic processes. After several reflections (reinterpretations), and changes in the original subjective thoughts, these thoughts may finally approximate the character of being objective. The environment, then, has generally started to accept the externalization as meaningful. This process of acceptance is what we call objectification. What was earlier externalized has now become part of our objective reality. We can divide objectification into two phases: institutionalization and legitimization.

When, between different actors, there is a common typification of some habitual act, we can say that an institution has emerged. (By “institution” here can be meant everything that we go on, from the established descriptive language of the society and its applied social science research, to different public authorities.) All human actions are in one way or another subject to routinization. These habitual acts are incorporated into our experience as knowledge routines, and because they are characteristically taken for granted we call this type of knowledge cookbook knowledge. The origin of all institutionalization, in other words, is in the typification of one’s own and

others’ conduct. We typify not only the actors but also their actions. This makes it possible for us to handle others’ (as well as our own) performances safely as generally accepted and objective acts. In this way we assign to ourselves and to others certain typified roles that are attributed to typified action patterns. If these partially objectified, finite provinces of meaning become too much a part of our interpretation of ourselves, there may be negative consequences for our self-experience. An objectified finite province of meaning can completely paralyse our subjectification, leading us to develop normal pathological acts – that is, acts that are so normal in our society that they are active obstacles to a renewal that might be necessary and

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desirable. It is in situations like this that creators of knowledge work with an emancipatory knowledge interest; that is, they work to emancipate the actor from this paralysing basis of interpretation and action. Because this situation is more or less valid for all of us, we have a tendency to express our purposes and action patterns from a basis of objective meaning structures. We unconsciously hide our subjective meaning, a fact that in the actors view is worthy of thought for all researchers/consultants/investigators engaged in interviews of any kind. For the next generation of individuals, those who will take over the institutions, some kind

of social control is necessary because at different ages these individuals “are forced” to become members of a number of different institutions and cannot return to conditions as they were before. The second important phase in the process of objectification, therefore, is legitimization. This works as a kind of second degree of objectification in which we weave legitimization into the institutions themselves in order to explain and to justify them. We can divide the legitimization process into three stages: linguistic legitimization,

proverbial legitimization and theoretical legitimization. Linguistic legitimization is already built into our everyday language, because it comes from

and is developed in the objectified reality (see “Action”, above). Most words in our language already contain “objective” information. For example, a child learns that another child can be called a cousin. This word (cousin) conveys certain information about how the child might act in relation to the other child and, therefore, legitimizes this specific “cousin” action. Or a new employee finds out that the boss is the founder of the company as well, or he meets other so- called pre-scientific or subject-specific concepts which exist with inbuilt “directions of use” for thinking beforehand. Proverbial legitimization can be attributed to our use of proverbs to legitimize some of our

actions. If a child or anyone else asks why you act as you do, you might answer: “Many a little makes a mickle.” Any other explanation becomes unnecessary. In fact, such a question asked at the workplace may well be justified, but because the typification on which the institution is based has the characteristic of taking things for granted, nobody reflects on why they act as they do and instead uses the proverbial legitimization built into the typification as an answer to the question. By taking too much for granted, according to the actors view, we become “slaves” to institutions we ourselves have created. Theoretical legitimization is more sophisticated and is used at a higher level than those

mentioned above. This can be related to all kinds of quasi-scientific explanations given to legitimize an institution. According to the actors view these processes are operating together and in parallel with that

form of knowledge creating activities that are going on within a large number of social institutions with different legitimizing dignity. Knowledge creating activity does not then stand outside this social dialectics and the view speaks therefore about the self-reference of knowledge creation. We can therefore, according to the actors view, develop knowledge about ourselves which is reducing us – making us unfree in the sign of this self-reference (see Figure 6.1 and for a reminder of the meaning of “self-reference”, see the Glossary). We can alternatively work with emancipating acts within the knowledge ambitions of the view (see Figure 6.2). This is a choice that the knowledge creator makes in what we call the scientific

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ideal in a paradigm.

Internalization

Internalization stands for the element with which we accept a world in which others already live. In other words, we become members of the society. The internalization process can be seen in the phases of primary and secondary socialization (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Primary socialization, which takes place in childhood, is the most important phase for a

person’s development. Most of the “objective” world that is accepted by a child is imparted by others. Therefore, knowledge being transferred becomes emotionally conditioned and identification becomes a necessary prerequisite. Children, for instance, identify themselves with a role or an attitude. This identification is a continuous dialectical process between the experience of others and the identification of oneself. It is in primary socialization that the first understanding of reality is founded. Language becomes the most important internalizing factor of primary socialization. Yet socialization is a continuous process that does not end with the primary phase but continues throughout a person’s entire life as secondary socialization. Secondary socialization mainly encompasses the internalization of specific institutional

sub-areas. The content of this internalization depends on the complexity and the work specialization in the area in question. In this phase, the learning of role-specific knowledge and the professional language associated with the area are often necessary. The learning situations of the two socializing phases are different to the extent that the degree of anonymity is considerably higher in the secondary phase. For this reason there is not the same demand for identification as in the primary socialization.

Social dialectics

A continuous synthesizing process

Just as we have described how reality is socially constructed in a society, we can describe various organizations in the society. This means that we can talk about the social reality of a company and can follow its construction using the four elements. It is only a question of levels in the social order – while keeping in mind that a company is only a small piece of the total social dialectics. In order to understand what this social dialectics means, we have to realize that each

individual actor simultaneously represents both subjectified reality and objectified reality. We have to understand how we can see the general in what is personal and the personal in what is general. These contradictions are inseparable and, in fact, produce the transformation in the thesis–antithesis relationship, which becomes a continuous synthesizing process, namely, the development and self-movement of social reality (see Figure 6.3 above and Figure 6.5 overleaf). In the development process just described, society’s actors construct their finite provinces

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of meaning, which then reflect simultaneously both what is subjective (personal) and what is objective (common). The common set that emerges when all the finite provinces of meaning are aggregated in a society, a company or any organization constitutes the objectified reality for that organization. This is the reality in which we live our daily lives as members of society. It is always there before us; its total existence is very rarely or never in doubt, only minor aspects of it are questioned. This objectified reality is what we call everyday reality (see Figure 6.6).

Everyday reality

Husserl (1931) described everyday reality as the reality in which we find ourselves at every moment of our lives (the Lebenswelt), where we accept it exactly the way it presents itself to us in our everyday experiences. This reality is extended in an indefinite way in both time and space. Its existence is never in doubt; this applies to both its physical and its sociocultural aspects. Doubts, of course, do arise and things often prove to be different from our previous experiences. Yet these doubts, questions and corrections concern mainly details within this reality and never reality as such and in its entirety. So when we face problems that are not routinized we try to relate them to our “cookbook” knowledge: we try to find some kind of everyday life explanation rather than worry “unnecessarily”. Sometimes we don’t find such an explanation and so have to turn to our own, very subjective, reality. The subjectivity we experience as a result can hardly be communicated to others in a meaningful way because our common language is based on everyday reality; trying to externalize this very subjective experience will necessarily distort it.

Figure 6.5 Social Construction of Reality

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Figure 6.6 Social Dialectics and Everyday Reality

It is therefore important for a researcher/consultant/investigator to consider language barriers when subjectification processes are to be made intelligible. In the section titled “Language Development” (above), we stated that the creator of

knowledge should not be unfamiliar with various instruments for communicating and for manifesting the antithesis of everyday language. We want to stress the importance of this once more.

THE RELATION OF THE ACTORS VIEW TO ITS PARADIGM

In general

In Chapter 1, “The Language of Methodology” we described a paradigm as a model or a general mechanism for controlling the creation of knowledge and as consisting of the following parts: a conception of reality; a conception of science; a scientific ideal; and an ethical aesthetical part. In the previous section we presented the most central standpoint in the actors view, that is,

the conception of reality on which the view is based. This description is a thorough presentation of the first part of the paradigm to which the actors view is related. The second part encompasses the conception of science on which the view is based. We have already described this conception as the prerequisites, the development of understanding and the results with which the view works. In the rest of this chapter we will concentrate on this second area, the conception of science held by the actors view. This means that its scientific ideal and ethical aesthetical parts will not be specifically described because they, as mentioned earlier, are more associated with the goals of individual creators of knowledge than with any specific theory. The content of the two latter parts of the paradigm of the actors view, however, is implicitly intimated throughout the whole chapter and more specifically under “Action” (above) and “Some theoretical and action-oriented starting points” (below).

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Prerequisites of the actors view: Metatheories

Of the conditions we brought up in Chapter 3 concerning the methodological views and their prerequisites, explanations/understanding and results, all, except what were referred to as metatheories, are attributed to contributions from previously conducted actors research/consulting/investigations. These contributions from such previous actions cannot be regarded as parts of the paradigm, so they will not be treated here (see Chapter 12). What we earlier described as constitutional factors under the results of the actors view in Chapter 3 can, however, in some situations contribute to a development of the metatheories mentioned and, as such, be incorporated into the paradigm. When we talk about metatheories we refer to the background theories in the conception of

science that are held by creators of knowledge and that, in general terms, guide their practical research/consulting/investigation and are therefore related to the paradigm. These are the guiding theories in the actors view, which means that creators of knowledge use them to develop not only an understanding of their object of study – understanding others – but also for understanding themselves. Because creating knowledge in the actors view is to a large extent aimed at understanding others by understanding oneself, we realize that creators of knowledge who within themselves are not trying to re-create that inner quality they meet in the actors, are not creators of actors knowledge. We can say that a person (an actor) is simultaneously psychological, social, historical and

political. Political in the sense of power-political; that is, various actors (including creators of knowledge) both exert power and are subject to power. In association with each of these basic aspects of human life, we talk about metapsychology, metasociology, metahistory, and metapolitics – different meta-areas that become part of the conception of science in the actors view. Metapsychology points out that human beings are subjective interpreters of their reality in

accordance with being, becoming and freedom (see the beginning of this chapter and Figure 6.1). People cannot be described and explained in terms of their environment alone. The researcher/consultant/investigator must therefore, according to the actors view, try to understand the subjective constitution of knowledge, interpretation and action. This understanding can be developed by trying to get the actors to express problems and opportunities in their own words – first hand expressions. The meaning of formulated problems and opportunities, and the corresponding language, can be seen as the knowledge that opens the creator of knowledge’s understanding of the actions among the actors. It is of great importance in the actors view that an interpretation of an actor corresponds to certain action patterns. The actor, however, does not live in a social vacuum. Interpretations and actions take place

in a social reality with several other actors. We can also talk about the actor’s structural environment, which – as mentioned earlier – is, according to the actors view, dialectic as far as its intrinsic character is concerned. The actor shares a number of things with other actors such as interpretations, actions and language. Many of our actions, however, are controlled or influenced by the objectification that historically emerges around various patterns of interpretation, action and language.

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In these historical processes we also discover how various power-political games have taken place in the interface between externalization and internalization, and have been powerful forces behind many objectifications. In consequence, the historical and political aspects are included as essential metatheories in the conception of science in order to understand the psychological and sociological aspects (see Figure 6.7 and study it in relation to the previous Figures 6.3 and 6.5).

Figure 6.7 Metatheories

Looking at Figure 6.7 we can say that: A. Metapsychological theory, with such advocates as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Fromm, Kelly and Heidegger, offers guiding principles to creators of knowledge for interpreting the subjectification process of individual actors. Yet this is not enough to make intelligible what happens in the illustrated interaction among several actors.

B. Metasociological theory, with such advocates as Schutz, Fromm, Berger & Luckmann, and Mills, offers an understanding of how externalized meanings become objectified and how reality is socially constructed. This makes visible the “game” that is played among actors. Even so, what may seem like inexplicable “game patterns” can appear. These cannot be understood without a full understanding of the power-political elements to which the illustrated group is either subordinated or else dominates.

C. Metapolitical theory, with advocates like Weber, Schutz, Marcuse and Foucault, can bring an understanding of why an actor acts in a way that might contradict his/her personal convictions. Why are, for instance, these specific individuals where they are, and why do

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they act as they do? What brought them there? How and where have they acted before? Or questions such as why certain actions, thoughts and ideas are given a better externalization space than others, and why certain actions, thoughts and ideas are given a more tangible legitimizing and internalizing power than other, similar ones.

D. Metahistorical theory, with advocates like Schutz, Habermas and Foucault, bridges the historical vacuum and thus brings an understanding in terms of historical processes, which clarifies the questions that have just been raised.

These metatheories are among the prerequisites of the actors view as well as part of the interplay when the creator of knowledge tries to reach an understanding and give a meaning to that understanding. They are therefore not arranged in a fixed order of 1 through 4, but are all used simultaneously in the development of understanding. These metatheories were partly explicated in the section titled “Reality: a social

construction” (above, p. 144) when we described how the elements of subjectification, externalization, objectification and internalization socially construct our reality. The rest of the description that can be devoted to them in this book is intertwined in the presentation of the other parts of the conception of science in the actors view, that is, the development of understanding and results. They are not regarded as part of what we refer to as methodology. We believe that our coverage will be sufficient to begin applying the actors view.

Understanding and results

Language

In this book, language is regarded primarily as a social science phenomenon, as a way of externalizing social reality. We experience the world in language. We act in, and reflect on, the world through language. We hold conversations, exchange thoughts, express feelings, create technology and cooperate. Using language we build our companies and organizations. The generally oriented social scientist (as a researcher, as a consultant, or as a general investigator) in the actors view is guided by what language means to people’s way of life as a means of expressing and intermediating knowledge and information in the form of language. It is through language that the knowledge creator attempts to catch what Max Weber called “the subjective logic of actors”. We call this “a person’s egological sphere”. What goes on between people in, say, an organization can therefore be seen as a language

game. The actors view thus postulates that the use of language is controlled by more or less visible rules that give meaning to the symbols and the actions. We can talk of language games as containing ideological, referential and technological rules in which different language games also reflect different life practices (see also, for instance, Arbnor, 1976; Winch, 1958; Wittgenstein, 1953). The various relationships that an organization has with its environment can also be seen as

language games in which the actors of the organization interpret the environment by using the rules of their language games, and in which the environment in turn, using its own rules,

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interprets the organization. In this language game and the interpretive processes that are shaped by it, we can find connections and relations to various patterns of activities, actions and interactions. These connections are based on the assumption that behind every human act there is a more or less conscious process of interpretation. The assumption is related to the conception of social reality, of man, and so on. Language is a means and a medium for describing our interpretations, activities and actions.

People use language to describe and to intermediate reality to themselves and to others. In the same way, creators of knowledge use language in their interactive development of understanding, externalizing descriptions in order to describe and form the reality being studied so they themselves and others can visualize “the egological sphere of actors” and “the finite provinces of meaning” (see Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8 The Actor and the Meaning of Language

While we are making it clear to ourselves that language is of essential importance to the construction of social reality, we must not forget that language can be inadequate for capturing the egological sphere. People have a number of systems and means of expression apart from language – gestures, physical movements, and “internal brain work”, to name a few. Furthermore, linguistic descriptions of reality are ambiguous. People show an amazing flexibility when it comes to attributing varying meanings to words and actions, in spite of the fact that social language games throughout history have attached many stable and objectified meanings to words. In consequence, as an actors creator of knowledge one faces an almost impenetrable surface that can hide the original and most important meaning. At the same time that language is the most important tool for the actor creator of knowledge, it has serious shortcomings that he/she often can do nothing about. Human beings are at the same time, according to the actors view, conscious and unconscious, complex and simple, subjective and objective, ambiguous and unambiguous, dialectic. From the conception of science represented by the actors view, as far as the vision of human

beings and social reality is concerned, it follows that there is no single answer that provides the truth about a problem. Creators of knowledge must admit that reality has such a

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simultaneousness of uniqueness and generality (dialectics) that it cannot be subjected to experiments in a laboratory. Subjective reality concerns subjective meaning and logic, the pattern of which creators of knowledge should try to verify in as many ways as possible, but the procedures of control and validity must not be based on “faulty” conceptions of the nature of reality. Reality, according to the actors view, is a relativity that can only be “dis-closed” by awareness, action and self-reflection. Language – the object of study according to the actors view – is a social invention that is used by and for human beings in this relativity. As such, language is a social and historical construction and should therefore be understood and studied accordingly.

The different levels of language

Hand in hand with the building of societies over time, people have invented various specialized realities to solve various types of problems. This has resulted in a division of work into a number of dissimilar specialist roles. In each of these specialized realities, more or less unique languages are developed. Handling and developing these specialized realities would not be possible within the framework of everyday language. Scientists (researchers/consultants/investigators) have therefore also constructed their own language (see Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.9 Specialized Realities

Within social science research/consulting/investigation, such a development of specialized languages has also taken place. The actors view claims that this language development has to a large extent forgotten the connection to what is most fundamental, that is, to everyday language. Language development so far has been based too heavily on analogies from the worlds of mathematics physics, mechanics and biology. According to the actors view, it is as if one were describing summer by the language usage of winter. For lack of a more suitable term, we use the word “bureaucratic” for the type of scientific language that, according to the actors view, has lost its dialogical connection to the language base of the described phenomena themselves. The starting point for the creator of knowledge should therefore be actors’ everyday

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descriptions, which are then interpreted in a creation-of-knowledge way. This actors-based interpretation is thereby different from a bureaucratic knowledge-based interpretation. This is because other knowledge interests and demands govern the actors researcher/consultant/investigator. From different realities (subjective, specialized and everyday) follow also different forms

of language use in which the meaning of knowledge differs in relation to the various realities. According to the actors view, we must learn to understand how language and the quality of reality stand in a mutual dialectic relationship to each other (reality constitutes language – language constitutes reality). With this in mind, we also realize that we can only understand a reality in and through the language that is related to it. Creators of knowledge must therefore use interpretation, action and reflection to be able to “translate” the language of one reality into the language of another reality (in particular, everyday language into a scientific language). According to the actors view, social phenomena must be understood on their own terms, and

what they mean in the language game and in the reality in which they appear. The knowledge will otherwise become rootless in relation to practical and emotional actions in everyday life. The expression “Theory is one thing and practice is another” is possibly an expression for such a kind of rootlessness.

Scientific language

It is through the processes of interpretation, action and reflection talked about thus far that scientific language is developed in the actors view. It is important to keep in mind that this development takes place starting with what phenomena mean in the reality in which they appear and in the language with which they are described. This meaning becomes externalized, however, after the process of interpretation, action and reflection into a language other than everyday language. This is because everyday language cannot go beyond its own phenomena. Phenomena in any reality appear when the given language in this reality does not allow a description of them. When we talk about phenomena in everyday reality, we must understand that we are actually referring to experiences that cannot be totally externalized through everyday language. Actors research/consulting/investigation aims at depicting this immanent, not externalizable, understanding. Language development, therefore, means expressing experiences in a language in which they can be externalized (compare to a poet’s language for expressing what is difficult to express). Yet this translation cannot be made unless phenomena have been interpreted in the light of the finite provinces of meaning and that egological sphere that has produced them (see Figure 6.8). To help in their interpretations, creators of knowledge have the four metatheories (see Figure 6.7); the historical one takes on a decisive meaning. The actors view therefore stresses the historical perspective when studying social phenomena. To be able to express an experienced phenomenon (consciously or unconsciously) in our

everyday reality scientifically, the phenomenon must, through action, be “extorted” for significances and interpreted, because the phenomenon has a subjective, social, historical and political connection to its language as well as to its reality. Only after such a process of

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interpretation, action and reflection can the researcher/consultant/investigator externalize the phenomenon by means of language – a scientific language. Remember that the criticism that the actors view directs against the other methodological views has to do with their neglecting this process of interpretation, action and reflection, and instead describing the phenomena of everyday life in terms of what they mean in their scientific language. If phenomena are experienced starting from the scientific pictures of reality, it is not certain in the actors view that they constitute real phenomena in everyday reality. If we were to describe the construction of the scientific language in the actors view in

dialectic terms (see above and compare “Dialectics”) we might say that this language is the second in relation to the first immediate (the first hand expressions by the actors). The first immediate (the thesis – the positive) is the phenomenon as expressed in everyday language, which in a scientific language appears as the second in relation to itself, that is, as the mediated (the antithesis – the negative). The immediate now appears as something mediated in relation to itself. This mediated (the phenomenon in the scientific language) is at the same time the mediating (it is fed back to the actors in everyday reality) and the second (the scientific language) therefore negates itself (- -) and thereby becomes the origin of its own dialectics. The self-negation of the second nullifies the contradiction (- - = +) and restores the immediate, which is then the third in relation to the first immediate, that is, the synthesis is at hand. As actors creators of knowledge, we understand from this: if the first immediate does not

refer to the experienced phenomenon by the actors in everyday reality but to the creator of knowledge’s experience of the phenomenon starting from the reality of the community of knowledge creation, the scientific language will not appear as something second to the actors (they simply feel like strangers in the presence of the scientific language – knowledge has become rootless). This is because the creators of knowledge did not enter into a dialogically honest relation with the actors; nor did they try to interpret the phenomenon starting from its egological sphere. That is, they did not lay a foundation for any mutual dialectics (creator of knowledge actor — scientific language everyday language). The dialectics that now emerges is related only to the reality of the scientific community; that is, the second (the antithesis) appears in dialogue with colleagues in the scientific reality. In other words, there will never be a mutual dialectic relation between the different realities. Because no mutual dialectic relation is developed, there is a great risk that the relation becomes unilaterally dialectic. Creators of knowledge will then, according to the actors view, use their language in a way that implicitly denies other people’s freedom (see Figure 6.1) and thereby they will stretch and mold everyday reality and people in the same way a potter controls a lump of clay (human beings are made into things), because our relation to things are then unilaterally dialectic. We use this to direct the reader’s attention to the most important starting point for the actors

view: namely, that phenomena must be interpreted according to the meaning, significance and purpose they have for the actors. After such a process, phenomena also become phenomena to the creators of knowledge, who then attempt to externalize these interpreted phenomena to the actors by means of a scientific language. This means that the descriptive and ideal-typified languages developed by researchers/consultants/investigators must reflect the richness of variety in social reality, its dialectic nature, its relative and its unique characteristics – in other

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words, be based on the reality they try to describe. The languages can then be developed with various degrees of specificity and detail. In this way we can find various levels of abstraction, not only in everyday language but also within the framework for handling the scientific language. It then follows, according to the actors view, that actors creators of knowledge use their language also to clarify their special responsibility for the self-reference of creating knowledge and such actions in social development.

Diagnosis

In denoting the conceptional meaning of diagnosis, we began with three stages of understanding: preunderstanding, understanding and postunderstanding. We also brought up the objectives of the stages and what they contained in general. We did not, however, illustrate the way of thinking that guides the diagnostic work of the actors creators of knowledge during these stages. During the entire diagnostic process – all three stages of understanding – creators of

knowledge work by placing themselves alternately in two different situations: by personally engaging themselves in, and dissociating themselves from, the actors being studied. While personally engaged, the creators of knowledge have an opportunity to co-act with and interpret the actors in a dialogical relationship (see “Dialogue” above) and thereby attain an immediate understanding. In order to get perspectives on the immediate understanding, the creators of knowledge dissociate themselves from the actors for a while and attempt to disregard factual circumstances. They then use metatheories – referred to earlier – for interpretation. During this dissociation an intermediate understanding is developed. Through this interplay, both actors creators of knowledge and other actors grow in capacity and insight. This means, of course, that the first engagement situation and the immediate understanding associated with it will not be the same as the second one, and the second not the same as the third, and so on. This is also true for the dissociating situations and the intermediate understanding (a dialectical process of development). Below, we describe some of the thinking in a first situation of engagement and dissociation.

Engagement

The actors bring data and information to the creators of knowledge through externalized language descriptions. In principle, the steering that the researchers/consultants/investigators have means only that they want to achieve a dialogical situation, by means of which they hope to capture an actor’s egological sphere. They know that this result is not obtained at once. The process is considerably longer, with learning/unlearning and development of understanding. Creators of knowledge have something in their background that initiates an interest in an organization even before arriving on the grounds. Certain problems, questions, motives and actions work as incentives to this interest. An actors creator of knowledge wants to understand the significances behind problems, opportunities, questions, motives, actions, and more. Based on these conceptions, the creator of knowledge attempts to guide the dialogue. The actors, on

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the other hand, are expected to share their versions and interpretations within these restrictions. In this case, the actors have the leading role, at least quantitatively. The working results of this first phase depend on the spirit and actions that can be created

between a creator of knowledge and the (other) actors. The possibility of sustaining an inter- subjective communication depends on whether the parties see each other as genuine parties to the conversation. This of course requires that both parties are open and honest during the dialogue. In this first phase, an immediate understanding is developed that is, however, created in a dialectic relation that is still weak. Before entering a dissociative situation, creators of knowledge must be reasonably sure of

the actors’ denotation of the conceptual meaning of various questions. Creators of knowledge therefore implement a kind of validity control that has possibilities for a corrected immediate understanding. This takes place in such a way that the actors are allowed to check their own interpretations from the first phase. The feedback may result in new dimensions of the problems, new self-interpretations, new awareness, new repressions, new defence mechanisms and new tendencies to cover up. This can lead to a change of, or supplementation to, the original externalized descriptions. The finite provinces of meaning held by the actors may therefore seem to change in this second phase. The creator of knowledge, however, should not take these new versions for granted. The interpretive creation of knowledge in the dissociative situation, therefore, should encompass versions from both the first and the second phases.

Dissociation

In a dissociative situation, creators of knowledge free themselves from the actors for a short time in order to make a further “validity check” based on other sources. They try during this time to place the whole problem or opportunity complex within brackets in order to separate it from the actual situation. They do this in order to obtain further perspectives on the finite provinces of meaning, to discover the potential in what is factual and thereby obtain an intermediate understanding. The actors’ own interpretations of the egological sphere are related to other sources of interpretation and to metatheories described earlier. The development of understanding and the “validation” thus continue by means of the creator of knowledge’s attempts to interpret the reasonableness of the externalized descriptions. The creator of knowledge therefore supplements the actors’ original descriptions with other sources and his/her own interpretation of reasonableness. The actors’ original descriptions and self-interpretations nevertheless remain important sources of knowledge in the diagnostic process.

The continuation

This alternation eventually continues with a new situation of engagement in which the knowledge from the dissociative stage is fed back to the actors. The objective is to allow the actors to obtain deeper insights into their own interpretations. In return, the

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researcher/consultant/investigator is given the opportunity to obtain a deeper interpretation of the reasonableness of the consistency among manifested actions, alternative actions not taken, and the actors’ denotations of the conceptual meaning of various actions and non-actions. As a result, the creator of knowledge obtains a new immediate understanding and continues his or her work with a new dissociation, and so on. During this continuing dialectic process, a larger and larger co-created awareness of what is factual and what is potential is developed.

A comment

These alternating procedures continue throughout all three of the diagnostic stages described above: preunderstanding, understanding and postunderstanding. The number of alternations necessary within each stage in order to fulfil its purposes and knowledge ambitions (see Figure 6.2) must be decided from case to case.

The objective of creating knowledge

The knowledge-creating objective of understanding conceptual meaning and egological spheres is related, among other things, to the actors view opinion of the social sciences as a science of conceptually denoted meaning and the idea of how social reality is constructed. In this context, the egological sphere (the logic in constructing subjective conceptual meaning) is sovereign. Human beings do not act without interpreting reality. The actors view postulates that there is a connection between interpretation (the actual denotion of conceptual meaning of action) and action. In the terms of an egological sphere, the actors view creators of knowledge attempt to understand this dialectic relation typical of human beings as sensible social creatures. Individual actors ascribe a significance, a purpose, an understanding, to themselves and

their actions that is noted by the creator of knowledge. Added to this are a number of different interpretations that other actors make of these actions, as well as the designation of meaning, which is viewed as controlling their actions. Researchers/consultants/investigators must therefore give variety-rich descriptions of the content of the egological sphere of the specific actor in order to reflect the potential in what is factual through the ambiguity that is an inherent part of social reality. Creators of knowledge now act at two levels of language. At the “lower” level, they give

extensive and manifold descriptions of the content of various conceptual meanings that are denoted as action by the actor in question. At the scientific level, on the other hand, the point is for researchers/consultants/investigators to denote the egological sphere from an actors and structural, as well as from a dialectic, point of departure.

Actors-based denotation of conceptual meaning

An actors-based denotation of conceptual meaning can encompass both concrete and ideal- typified actors. Creators of knowledge may then, if they wish, verify the actors-based

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denotation of conceptual meaning against the structurally and dialectically based denotations of conceptual meaning. In this way the creators of knowledge may, through their overview, bring understanding to a large number of actors-based denotations of conceptual meaning. The strategic question for such a study of conceptually denoted meaning is: “What does it mean?” If this question is prescribed in the “right” way, it can result in an experience of “damn it!” or of “aha!” or of “what is going on?” – that is, the potential in what is factual is manifested.

Structurally based denotation of conceptual meaning

When creators of knowledge form structurally based denotations of conceptual meaning, they try to clarify how typifications and institutions (see above) emerge (e.g. “business concepts”) as taken-for-granted structures in the dialectic play among the denotations of conceptual meaning by various actors in and through a life practice. Over time, these institutions will acquire a more and more objectified and unambiguous character in a social reality that is otherwise highly multifaceted; they therefore tend, for good or ill, to create a strong prescribing power on patterns of interaction and action, and on the way of thinking within a particular life practice (e.g. a company, a family, a political party). Structurally based denotations of conceptual meaning reflect entire organizations, and they exist as “the organization’s finite province of meaning to itself”, constructed by – yet at the same time independent of – the denotations of conceptual meaning of individual actors. It is these institutionalized, somewhat rigid, provinces the creator of knowledge attempts to form for the purpose of making them understood.

Dialectically based denotation of conceptual meaning

The dialectically based denotation of conceptual meaning refers mainly to a diagnosis of the denotation of conceptual meaning as a process among various groups of actors, institutions, and single actors. With its starting point in the construction of social reality, a dialectic play takes place (see Figure 6.10).

Figure 6.10 Dialectically Based Denotation

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A denotation of conceptual meaning for groups of actors consists of a historical diagnosis. Through such a diagnosis, the researcher/consultant/investigator may find various epochs with different types of patterns that give structural characteristics to the period. The creator of knowledge should ask for the meanings of different periods of history, the implications of different patterns, what was significant in different epochs and how different epochs were understood by different types of actors. A historic diagnosis also involves a study of changes and change potentials. What does the change imply? What are the characteristics of different change potentials? In this dialectic play, many denotations of conceptual meaning will be objectified – acquire stable structural characteristics – but many others will change with time. Forming a dialectically based denotation of conceptual meaning obviously becomes more

extensive than working with the denotations of conceptual meaning for a few specific actors. We are here dealing with larger social groups or with a more complicated actor level than the one involving individual and specific actors. The dialectic, the language and the actors all bring an ambiguous character to social reality. The possibilities for change and stability exist simultaneously as expressions of human unfreedom and/or freedom.

Denotation of conceptual meaning and scientific language

The denotation of conceptual meaning is consequently the basis on which the scientific language of the actors view rests. This language is there to communicate (to form) these denotations of conceptual meaning, which will then appear as the second in relation to the first immediate denotations (so-called first hand expressions) of conceptual meaning given by the actors. The language will then give rise to its own dialectics in the formation dialogue with the actors. Through this dialectic play, a development of understanding is made possible for the creator of knowledge as well as for the (other) actors. This could be called the third stage of diagnosis – the postunderstanding. We have divided the scientific language of the actors view into two levels: descriptive

language and ideal-typified language. We have also explained some of the basic differences between the two levels. We now continue this presentation by describing the connection between the denotations of conceptual meaning described above (actors-, structurally and dialectically based) and the two language levels. Under descriptive language we can find three kinds of models: situational interpretive

models, institutional models and process models (we recommend the reader look at Figure 3.14 again, where the different language levels and models are illustrated). We relate the situational interpretive models to the actors-based denotation of conceptual meaning; the institutional models to the structurally based; and the process models to the dialectically based denotation of conceptual meaning (see Figure 6.11).

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Figure 6.11 Actors View Models and Denotation of Conceptual Meaning

A descriptive language is based on a direct connection with the part of the social reality that it describes. The main purpose of the descriptive language is to communicate understanding and initiate action in relation to this specific part of reality. By giving the actors an opportunity – in the form of a descriptive language – to experience the various denotations of conceptual meaning formed as something mediated, a dialectic process will emerge in which the potential in what is factual can be developed. In order for the interpretations and clarifications presented in the three models of the

descriptive language to convey more universal knowledge, the creator of knowledge must refine the results; “take away” what situationally influences the shape of the descriptive language. This condensation/qualification leads to the second language type in the actors view: ideal-typified language, in which we again find the two kinds of models, typified cases and constitutional ideals. By condensation the different models in the descriptive language, a case description of typified actors who carry typified actors’ conceptions and pursue typified actions under typified circumstances can be developed – namely, models for typified cases. These models have an ideal character because in their condensed form they describe various ideal states that “imaginatively” can reflect human freedom and potential, and thereby engage various actors in procreating dialogues in which the potential will be transformed into the factual, that is, into a new social reality. Typified cases, in spite of being ideal, have a connection to the “living” social reality, although no longer characterized situationally, but essentially. In order not to bring the description too far into the concept of essence, we can, as a

simplification, use the examination of a musical piece as an analogy. In the three models of descriptive language (see Figure 6.11) the “denotation of melody” of the social reality is presented by (starting from) the situational “denotation of tones”. In a model of typified cases, on the other hand, the situational “denotation of tones” is deepened, and the “denotation of melody” as such is studied and described. This “denotation of melody” (essence) we can

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produce only through a process of interpretation, action and reflection. If we go further in the process of condensation/qualification, we can ask ourselves what

constitutes the “denotation of melody” and find that the answer is “the theme”. The second form of ideal-typified language is therefore about constituting ideals: in our musical analogy, the “denotation of theme” (theme in the meaning of motive for creating a melody). In models of typified cases the “denotation of theme” is described by the “denotation of

melody”. In a similar fashion, the “denotation of melody” is described by the “denotation of tones” in the models of the descriptive language. We can thus see how various forms of models (except models of constitutional ideals) describe something by the use of something at different levels (see Figure 6.12 opposite). So, models of constitutional ideals belong to the final “core” in which something cannot be

described by anything else, only by itself. By going beyond the “denotation of melody”, “denotation of beat”, “denotation of tempo”, “denotation of harmony”, and so on, we achieve the “denotation of theme” that constitutes higher levels; that is, we get the constitutional factors of social reality. Similar to models of typified cases, models of constitutional ideals have an ideal character, but by means of the condensing process retain a connection to social reality.

Figure 6.12 Language Development

The condensing referred to can be seen as an understanding of the radical shifts that creators of knowledge make in their interpretive, active and reflective orientation in order to reach the “hidden” subjectivity of the knowledge of social reality; that is, in order to clarify both the historical and future meaningfulness in the potential and (at the same time) in the factual present. Using this kind of language for creating knowledge the actors oriented

researcher/consultant/investigator is developing something unique, but something which also goes beyond what is singular to something as universal as music. Like a composer, to continue the music analogy, he/she wants with his/her language

development to create excitement and a mood by varying “rhythm, tonality and timbre” in the descriptions. The “rhythm” we could call the “pulse” of the activity/text, which is increasing and decreasing in a conscious way, in order to create a tight and varying experience.

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“Tonality” is an implicit keynote, which is there all the time, even if it is not heard – to compare with denotation of theme. To break the keynote – the theme – and do this without “playing out of tune”, is called the composer’s modulation. The actors creator of knowledge is happy to modulate his/her descriptions and actions in order to create moments of surprise or situations that require imagination, interpretation and insight – a way to mark or reflect on the denotation of theme. The “timbre” – the instrument or voice that performs the tone – is created in commonality in the actors view by personalities from different life-worlds – everything from participants in the researched activities in the study area to the readers of the different descriptive languages. The dialectics in social reality then becomes visible in an understanding and action-oriented way. When all the actors involved are given the possibility to feel their own participation in the resulting knowledge creation, they will understand that things are moving through their own choices and actions and by those of others. One does not, then, become alienated facing the inner flow of the dynamism of our socially constructed reality. When you are participating as a knowledge creating actor, everyday life does not appear as something determined (= conditioned by different external factors and not by the free will of man).

SOME THEORETICAL AND ACTION-ORIENTED STARTING POINTS

Social phenomenology and the actors view

The actors view developed in this book is inspired by a social phenomenology tradition with Alfred Schutz as the major representative scholar. Social phenomenology attempts to make clear the variety and the relativity of social reality and how it is maintained by the language used to describe it (see Appendix). In this way, the actors view stipulates that all collected data are “impregnated with theory” from the social sciences, alternatively from less systematic theories like the basic conceptions of everyday life, or from both (we have previously in the book called this phenomenon “the self-reference” of social science). It is therefore in the interest of the actors view to use, among other things, linguistic

innovations, pictures, sound, and more, as working tools/processes in order to puncture taken- for-granted structures in the conception of reality that often stifle development and that are maintained by scientific as well as everyday theories from the language fields. In order to make creators of knowledge aware that data are never theoretically neutral, the actors view prefers to refer to the construction of data instead of the collection of data. If we accept this premise, that data are “impregnated with theory”, it leads us, according to the actors view, to acknowledge that a “fact” is a variable thing, in time as well as in place. This is the background for why the actors view does not accept the idea of an objective, observer- independent reality against which we can test our statements. A creator of knowledge, according to the actors view, cannot be objective in the sense

stipulated by the analytical view (see Chapter 7). Instead of, as the actors view puts it, Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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conducting an artificial struggle by trying to isolate the creator of knowledge in a kind of external relation to what he/she is studying, the actors view makes the creator of knowledge a central figure responsible for how data are constructed and how knowledge is created. In this tradition, the opinion is that it is not possible, and therefore not desirable, to establish a clear boundary between the subjects aiming for knowledge and the “objects” providing it. But don’t misunderstand this, it does not mean that knowledge is subjective in the sense of not being accessible or of not being capable of testing for reasonableness by others. Subjects and objects as understood in the actors view exist in a meaning situation, a

meaning context. We always meet subjects and objects in connection with import and meaning. According to the actors view, objects cannot exist in a social vacuum. Ob-ject means for- somebody in this view. The consequence is that what we call the object of a study will always be woven into a fabric (a net) of relationships of understanding that consists of everything from the creator of knowledge’s own pre-scientific and scientific theories to the actors’ “theories” of meaning. For instance, using a questionnaire to ask people about matters whose personal significance (engagement or, interest in, significance for, in their everyday actions) we cannot possibly know, will, according to the actors view, produce meaningless knowledge for the actors in question and most likely also for the creator of knowledge. Knowledge becomes knowledge of object-like things (an objective, independent, artificial world) that, according to the actors view, triggers a biased and unethical knowledge of other human beings (see Figure 6.1). The only meaning relation the questionnaire has as a technique for asking questions, according to the actors view, is to the creator of knowledge’s own engagement and understanding, not to the individual respondents’ worlds. This is what keeps expressions like “theory is one thing, practice is another” alive, according to the actors view. Social reality consists of people – human beings – and their freedom to interact. The phrases

human being and freedom are important in this context. In fact, this orientation is embedded in the denotation of “the actors view” (see Figure 6.2). By stressing the term actor, an important characteristic of social reality is described. A person is also dependent on other people in social reality. The position of dependence among human beings must consequently require interaction in various forms of externalization, such as when we talk with each other and when we work together. Social interaction is based on people being generously equipped with the ability to interpret their reality. Dialectics is characterized by this interplay of interpretations being based on interactions and interactions based on interpretations. The dialectic is marked by multiplicity, ambiguity and change, among other reasons because people are subjects who come from different environments, have different historical backgrounds, and, furthermore, play different roles in social reality. Social multiplicity can be externalized and described via different human vocabularies. The denotation of conceptual meaning that is expressed by the human use of languages is an important constitutional factor for the way social reality looks. The actors creators of knowledge take great pains to study this social language game. This is because the opinion of the actors view is that the language game in dialectic terms simultaneously shows subjective ambiguity and structural non-ambiguity. We reproduce in a number of theses a basic perspective of social reality based in social

phenomenology and the actors view:

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1. A theoretically articulated agreement between reality and view/approach is needed. 2. Social reality can be seen as a language game in which it is important to understand the

three kinds of denotations of conceptual meaning of various phenomena. 3. The pre-scientific idea stipulating that the more accurately a phenomenon can be

measured the better it can be understood, is of no relevance to the actors view (see the Arbnor Uncertainty Principle, Figure 6.1).

4. Various dialectic processes characterize the construction of social reality. 5. Everyday reality is fundamental to the understanding of social reality. 6. That which is expressed in everyday life as factual has an important significance in terms

of diminishing what is potential. 7. Free human beings are seen as carriers of interpretations, having the ability to create

knowledge and actions in a net of meaning relations. 8. In order for new knowledge to breed insight, development of personality, and direct

action, it must be related to meaning and purpose – i.e. the actors’ own emotional relations (including those of the creator of knowledge).

9. Business is a human science. Human beings construct social business reality. 10. Business is about transforming resources, where the most important ‘capital’ is made up

of the human ability to interpret, create knowledge and act (an engagement in the world) within the framework of structural denotations of conceptual meaning (see Figure 6.2).

From the above it is apparent that the actors view consciously encompasses the philosophical aspects of life as well. Out of the ultimate presumptions on which the actors view is based, what is known as the

network idea as a model for social organizing and change has also emerged. The idea of being able to describe social phenomena simultaneously as structure and process by seeing phenomena in terms of network relations is based on the central idea that it is common value structures that connect people to each other and give them the power to create unexpected changes. In terms of the actors view, this can be described as a meaning context in which the quantitative accumulation is transformed into a new and unexpected quality (see Figure 6.3). The original network idea, according to the actors view, was nevertheless distorted when it entered the world of researchers/consultants/investigators because the analytical and systems views chose to start to “construct” networks for others, thereby losing the very essence of the genuine construction of networks: the spontaneous and free driving force in meaning relations among people. Despite this, the actors view regards the network idea as an interesting descriptive language for making social change understood.

Developing human procreative power

The intent of the actors view is to achieve understanding, insight, emancipation and action for various actors in society (e.g. business leaders, researchers, consultants, investigators). In order to create this, creators of knowledge (being business leaders, researchers, consultants, or investigators) can, within the framework of the models described above under the heading “Denotation of conceptual meaning and scientific language”, use various instruments to

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develop language. These instruments are not only of a purely descriptive nature referring to actors concerned in the study area, but should also be seen as serious instruments of communication that, at the end of a project, can produce understanding in the meaning relations for other actors and other creators of knowledge as well. The written word, emanating from the creative act, is one aspect of the way the actors view

communicates via procreative reports (see Chapter 7 “The procreative report”). Another is the direct act. In both cases the dialogical structure is central. In the same way as we in a dialogue can use the language subconsciously, we may here be

able to use it consciously to create new thoughts, open new perspectives, create involvement, etc. This is all related to those knowledge interests (understanding, emancipating and innovative) and those knowledge ambitions (see Figure 6.2) which engage the actors oriented creator of knowledge to use language in a way where life is enriched. Working with reports that create knowledge, in the actors view, is a means of

communication that should attempt to go beyond the traditional research/consulting/investigative report. Compared with a rational ideal picture in which descriptions are assumed to be expressed objectively and perceived unambiguously, the descriptions here are intended to give possibilities to interpretations and actions as objects for the development of knowledge – that is to release the potential in what is factual. This is a kind of knowledge development where metatheory, empirical reality and ultimate

presumptions are up against each other in a parallel fashion, where creation of knowledge and action are inside and outside of the same helix. The totality is polyphonic if we use our earlier musical analogy, but we don’t find the music by explaining the instruments. We have to understand, according to the actors view, the complex interrelation between actors and their construction of meaning in the social reality as denotation of “tones, melody and theme” (see Figure 6.12). In this area, with reports that create knowledge according to the actors view, we find

ourselves at the beginning of an exciting development. The actors view encourages legitimate experiments. Furthermore, there is a striking similarity between the almost bewildering confusion that is revealed by the actors approach’s view of the knowledge-creating process of description and Bohr’s principle of complementarity in modern physics. Bohr’s principle claims that it is impossible to reduce the nonreducable variation in reality to one single language. And this, according to Bohr, is not a resignation but a development in thinking that Bohr himself, apparently, said made him dizzy. The actors view often borrows complementary ideas from other areas, including artistically

oriented activities, that can lead to a situation in which knowledge recognizes previously unseen connections, or in which out-dated knowledge can be overcome, and so on. By means of a theoretically well-founded actors view, theory will, through its proponents, become the best practice. Theory will not be something that is done before or after practice but will become an integrated part of practical development. In pedagogic contexts, therefore, the actors view recommends the objective (the ob-ject) of

creating knowledge that alternates between theory and practice, rather than the time periods of creating knowledge that are to be sequentially partitioned into practical and theoretical stages, a view that is common in many educative contexts. As the actors view sees it, a partitioning of

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time may lead instead to the possibility that an old-fashioned theory based on meaningless generalizations might survive. And this could, in turn, eventually give nourishment to what is otherwise such a mistaken opinion about the strict difference between theory and practice. Theory and practice, according to the actors view, are two sides of the same progressive coin – our social life.

Reality is, according to the actors view, a human construction in which actors are involved. “Actor” here becomes a central concept when studying the individuals of society. It is a person with the potential freedom to act and to create his/her own life-space. Other concepts like intentionality, dialogue, understanding, denotation of conceptual meaning, action and others, are in this chapter given a dialectic significance. The chapter describes how these and other ultimate presumptions of the actors view together create the frames for a view with an understanding, emancipating and innovating knowledge interest and with knowledge ambitions to reinforce what is unique, look for what is different in what is similar, be meaning-and action-oriented, emancipate the potential in the factual, etc. The chapter also provides the necessary “philosophical” and theoretical background in order to be able to practically apply the actors view in different research/consulting/investigation situations.

POINTS OF REFLECTION

1. The Micro-cosmos of man and the Arbnor Uncertainty Principle are two analogies to natural sciences used in the chapter. Talk to your friends about what in the chapter has been described as being, becoming and freedom. What do these three concepts mean in relation to what is called determinism?

2. Please illustrate what the actors view talks about as intentionality? 3. The actors view has several explicit knowledge ambitions. Which ones? And knowledge interests as .……… Which? What would these ambitions and interests mean to you personally as a creator of knowledge?

4. Why should a dialogue not be mixed up with discussion or debate? Which are the two elements of the dialogue and its two methodological purposes?

5. Construct an example that can vivify the concept of dialectics? 6. Actor is the very central concept of the view. Which important qualities of the view are

indicated with this concept? 7. If you were to develop language in order to describe the actors view to your fellow

students, what metaphors and concepts would you then use in order to come up with a procreative description?

8. Why is the knowledge creating act so important in the actors view? 9. What does reality as a social construction mean? And which are the processes by

which this construction is described? Arbnor, I., & Bjerke, B. (2008). Methodology for creating business knowledge. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from indwes on 2021-03-24 14:46:46.

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10. The construction processes are dialectically related to each other. Can you present what is meant by “a dialectic relationship” in this context?

11. Meta-theories are mentioned in the text and they are four in number, but how are they denoted and what do they stand for?

12. What is meant by denotation of conceptual meaning? 13. Which models do you come up with when you describe what is contained in

descriptive language? And how do you make the models comprehensible for those who do not know what descriptive language is all about?

14. Which models are described under ideal-typified language? And what is an ideal type?