Ruined paradigms and networked projects (Editorial reflections about JOCM 6/2017)

Citation

Magala, S.J. (2017), "Ruined paradigms and networked projects (Editorial reflections about JOCM 6/2017)", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 842-843. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-07-2017-0279

Ruined paradigms and networked projects (Editorial reflections about JOCM 6/2017)

When we want to express our concern with the recent developments in our domain of knowledge production, we use the labels marking them off from previous products. We speak of contemporary (views), modern or post-post-modern (ideas), present (opinions), recent (reflections), current (understandings), latest (sensemakings), “cutting edge” (philosophies) or new, emergent explanations and predictions. The papers selected for the present issue of JOCM reflect this new stabilizing of the field of knowledge production. Stabilizing, but not freezing and not immobilizing. We seem to have agreed that our castles of paradigms have all been ruined, but our projects may continue to network, with a little chance for fencing the competitive knowledge ventures off. Paradigms are ruined, walls of methodologies are down and projects migrate through networks, get smuggled in theoretical trucks or technological projects across all epistemological borders, ending up in unexpected places. Gone are the days when philosophy of science was a strong republic of letters and numbers, ruled by the enlightened elite of the best, the brightest and the not yet falsified. Subsequently Popper had been challenged by Kuhn from the political side and by Feyerabend from the artistic side. Kuhn told Popper that his evolutionary epistemology negotiated in academic parliaments does not hold under fire from the academic revolutions and that the revolutionaries of today are the established oligarchs of tomorrow. Feyerabend told Popper that if the tribunal of cognitive justice is not corrupted by fads and foibles of fashion, then the only valid principle is the Dadaist battle cry “everything goes” (and to hell with the illusion of order and progress). Nowadays, we are dealing with a thousand new Kuhns and Feyerabends everyday, who want to occupy the academic commons and let a thousand paradigms bloom. Can we have some rough consensus on how to go on? Even if we cannot go on, but we have to go on?

Do not relax but note that we have already established a tacit consensus that a marketplace of ideas is the hidden archetype of knowledge production. We tend to imagine oscillating valorisations in the stock exchange of theories and applications as collective and polymorphous mothers of invention or rather of all explanations, whether we file them under inventions or discoveries or both. The present bleeding edge of JOCM is no exception. It opens with “Managers and employees contradictory argumentations of spatial change” by Jaana Nasanen and Outi Vanharanta, which introduces the element of “class struggle” into the dynamic explanation of consequences in redesigning organizational and public spaces. Social or coffee corners are not the only case in point. The issue continues with another analysis of the dynamics of democracy at the workplace – the paper “Collaborating across the researcher-practitioner divide: introducing John Dewey’s democratic experimentalism” by Linh Chi Vo and Mihaela Kelemen is followed by an essay by Hongli Wang entitled “What stops creative employees to implement ideas? Individual culture value orientation approach”. Mary Jo Hatch, who had introduced jazz improvisation to the repertoire of managerial instruments in organizational change would be amused reading the title of the next paper – “The development of a theoretical framework of organizational rhythm” by Truus Poels, Danielle Tycker and Joop Kielema. The next paper has a more systemic edge to it. A team of researchers led by Karen Elliott (and including Ad van den Oord, Arjen Wittelostuijn, Melody Barlage, Laszlo Polos and Sofie Rogiest) wrote on “A cognitive organization theory (COT) of organizational change: measuring organizational texture, audience appeal, and leadership engagement”, which signals some attempt at the quantitative pacifying or policing of qualitative research intuitions. “Cognitive” turn in social sciences is one of the two new rallying cries, the other being linked to the “behavioural” focus. Needless to say, some researchers are trying to link the cognitive and the behavioural inspirations and write, like David Shaw, on “Managing people and learning in organizational change projects”, or like Jennifer Linda Dorling on “Impact of psychological capital on the resistance to change during post-merger integration: a theoretical model”. Insights from two challengers to the EU-USA-centred knowledge production market, Africa and China, close the issue. Moses Kibirango, John Munene, Waswa Balunywa and Jovent Obbo report on “Mediation effect of novelty-ecosystems on interpreneurial behavior process within an organizational dynamic environment among Kenyan universities: a complexity approach”. Qiao Shi and Suchuan Zhang analyse “The relationship between subjective well-being and workplace ostracism: the moderating role of emotional intelligence”. Paradigms may be ruined but networks are doing fine. Networked we stand, unplugged we fail and fall?