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In Bouwen (2001), René Bouwen discusses the case of an R&D department in a metal refinery developing a new refining process, only to have it at first rejected by the Operations department as too difficult and time-consuming to implement notes. Yet later, when it was reintroduced at an opportune moment in a discussion — occurring within the context of a task force established by the Business Unit manager to study new innovations — the too revolutionary new process was accepted for implementation. About this event René Bouwen remarks: “The implementation of innovation really means a ‘crossing of the boundaries’ between the departments […]. The innovative breakthrough can be attributed to a frame-breaking interaction […]. Frame-breaking thinking does not occur in isolation but as a consequence of close interaction with significant others who provide the necessary challenge and safety to pose a new framework […]. The crossing of the communities of practice allows for the new technological innovation to emerge […]. Only ‘interruptions’ in one's modus operandi create opportunities for new exploration of meaning among oneself and significant others” (p. 362). He then goes on to discuss another case, a second example from the domain of rural development in the Southern Andes in Latin America. Here, a whole multiplicity of different “communities of practice” (Wenger, 1998) is involved: a local NGO supported by representatives from the local Indian population, an international NGO, officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, local university geology researchers, the local water management authority, and social scientists from a neighboring university. Starting from the principles of “multiparty collaboration,” this last group organized a platform for all those involved to come together.

Mary: To begin, I think it is important that we take into account some milestones in the development of multivoiced organizing. This will also set the stage for our extension into the realm of polyvocality. For example, we owe a debt here to work that René Bouwen did with Chris Steyaert (1999) on global organizing. They were among the first to promote multivoicedness in describing how an organization might be affected through the inclusion of many voices. They distinguished four metaphors that were useful in exploring how multivoicedness could influence global organizing: “building the Tower of Babel,” “dialogical imagination,” “polyphonic chorus,” and “strangers’ meeting.”

To date, grievance research has made little use of behavioural concepts developed in the literature on organisational conflict. Such concepts form the basis for a model of grievance behaviour that relates the sources of grievances to grievance actions and outcomes. Sources of grievance conflict are explored by analysing interviews with Belgian and American employees concerning their complaints in the workplace. As an alternative to the limiting substantive classifications traditionally used, a categorisation of grievances is presented that corresponds to grievants′ own formulations of the causes of conflict. Applying this categorisation scheme to the interview data revealed that most grievances have multiple sources and that a grievant typically distorts public statements concerning the sources of the grievance. Behavioural analysis of grievances can benefit researcher and practitioner by providing insight into the organisational function of conflict and into employees′ most basic beliefs about their organisation′s values.

What if we were to take an explicit relational perspective on organizing? What if we put our organizational conversations and interactive practices right in the middle of our scholarly focus on organizations? In this contribution, I wish to document how the concept of “relational practices” can be formulated as a generative approach to organizing in emergent and multiplex organizational contexts. Starting from the main concern of developing “actionable knowledge” about organizing, I will compare and contrast a relational constructionist approach with a mere instrumental approach to organizing. Beyond the purposive coordination of the means to attain intended goals, organizing will be considered as an essentially relational activity. Actors acknowledge mutually meaningful contributions and, at the same time, mutually enact organizational membership through joint engagement in “relational practices.” Relational organizing is as much a goal in itself as a means to an end.

By focusing on grievants′ formulation of their grievances, behavioural analysis can further our understanding of grievants′ actions and their assessment of grievance outcomes. Building on concepts reported in the preceding issue of this journal and examining the grievance reports of over 200 Belgian and American employees, a multi‐episodic model of grievance formulation, actions, outcomes and reformulation is developed and examined. Persistence in pursuing a grievance through several episodes, while risky for the grievant, was positively related to the grievant′s satisfaction with outcomes. This effect is explained by increased opportunities for reformulation, including learning which action strategies are most likely to lead to success. Successful action strategies differed between Belgian and US contexts, in ways consistent with their structural and institutional characteristics. Implications for researchers and third party intervenors include the need to manage grievances in a manner that favourably influences grievants′ beliefs about the organisation.

This book focuses on the concept and role of relational practices as a way to understand, conceive, and study processes of organization, and subscribes to a processual view of organization that, since Weick's seminal book The Social Psychology of Organizing, has turned the study of organizations into one of organizing. More than 30 years later, the field of organizing has increasingly expanded Weick's interpretive framework of sense making, resulting in a rich palette of conceptual frameworks that vary between such diverse processual approaches as complexity theory, phenomenology, narration, dramaturgy, ethnomethodology, discourse (analysis), practice, actor-network theory, and radical process theory (Steyaert, 2007). These various theoretical approaches draw upon and give expression to a relational turn that has transformed conceptual thinking in philosophy, literature, and social sciences, and that increasingly inscribes the study of organization within an ontology of becoming.

From previous research projects in the context of technological innovation and social development the author argues that knowledge development, as well as knowledge sharing and integration, are essentially relational activities. Actors define and deal with content issues while mutually defining each other and the emergent social membership at the same time. These relational aspects are handled mostly implicitly: people talk “content” and “enact and experience” the relational mode. In process consultation approaches in training and development contexts, consultants work explicitly on the relational reflexivity. Examples are given of a third mode, a dialogical mode of creating relational practices while attending both aspects: the content and the relational in an integrated skilful mode.

Modern organizational forms are subject to isomorphic processes (Di Maggio & Powell, 1983) that create a narrow range of organizational types. These types dominate discussion in the management literature, creating the impression that they represent the proper, advanced way to organize. As a consequence, critical scholars are calling for management research and education to become committed to praxis, “the ongoing construction of social arrangements that are conducive to the flourishing (our emphasis) of the human condition” (Prasad & Caproni, 1997, p. 288). According to this view, researchers should seek to generate knowledge of alternative social forms that provide options to organizational leaders. This chapter represents our attempt to do so.