essai - doing time in organization theory

7/27/2019 Essai - Doing Time in Organization Theory

1/8

Essai: Doing Time in Organization TheoryMary Jo Hatch

Mary Jo HatchMclntire School ofCommerce,University ofVirginia,Charlottesville,USA

AbstractIn this essay I examine my proclivity to theorize time in a cyclical way. Usingartist David Hockney's reflections on representing time in art through movement,I suggest that, like Hockney's paintings, my dynamic theories of organizational cul-ture, identity and collective creativity were produced with an awareness of mymovement through time. Hockney not only helps me to explain the necessityof movement to understand organizing more dynamically, he also suggests thattaking a dynamic approach to theorizing introduces intimacy. On this hasis, theessay concludes with the speculation that my way of theorizing moves heyond theclaims of suhjectivity to interiorization a willingness to embed oneself in theprocesses of organizing in order to describe their dynamics from the viewpoint ofparticipation.

Descriptors: movement, time, dynamic theorizing

OrganizationStudies2002, 23/6869-875 2002 EGOS

Three Ways of 'Doing Time'It seems to me that there are roughly three ways to 'do time' in organiza-tion theory. You can firstly look for a difference between two static mea-sures of some pertinent variable and assume that the difference representschange taking place between the time of the first and second m easurement,or, secondly, you can try to isolate stages in the development of an orga-nization and array them in a sequence that explains how change occursover a more continuous idea of time. Both of these assume that time is lin-ear and moves in one direction only. The third possibility for doing timein organization theory is not linear, but cyclical. As I will argue below, itis also personal.This third way, much older than the first two, can be found in most or allsocieties and dates back to the ancients whom contemporary mythologistsand religious scholars believe were deeply affected by the cycles of nature,such as those of the moon, the stars, the seasons and the tides. Eliade (1954),for example, argued that constant confrontation with these natural cyclesshaped the early development of human consciousness and thus cyclicality


2/8

8 7 0 Mary Jo Hatchconsciousness in our own forms of cultural expression, such as our theoriing. While most organizational theorizing, when it takes account of time all, uses one of the first two forms, I believe the cyclical view is makingcomeback. For instance, some versions of political economy rest on notioof periodicity, although, like the first two, these demonstrate little concefor the personal experience of time (more on this point later).My own theoretical work takes the form of cyclical models. For exampthe cultural dynamics model (Hatch 1993, 2000) theorized interpretatioand symbolization within cycles that shape the meanings underlying organization's culture. Adding symbols to Schein's (1985/1992) model culture as artifacts, values and assumptions, I described how interpretatioand symbolization, along with manifestation and realization, produce, stbilize and change culture through repeating cycles that 'describe a contiuous dynamic state within which members forge their cultural infiuencand respond to them ' (Hatch 2000: 262). Referring to a diagram of the cutural dynamics model, which shows the four processes linked together cycles of mutual infiuence on the culture's assumptions, values, artifacand symbols, I concluded that:'[The] cultural dynamics model presents culture as two counteracting forces, one oented around the production of artifacts (sometimes called material culture) and tother oriented around the production of meaning ... . If we think of these counteraing forces as spinning wheels, one set inside the other ... then the outer wheel contuously spins out artifact-strewn landscapes or cultural geography while the inner whspins a web of symbol-rich heritage or history within which future artifacts and sybols will be shaped and interpreted. These artifacts and symbols intertwine in humexperience, providing the thread from which Geertz's (1973) famous web of culturespun.' (Hatch 2000: 252)I have since developed similar cyclical models of organizational identidynamics (Hatch and Schultz 1997, 2002), corporate branding (Hatch anSchultz 2000) and collective creativity in the production of photocopylo(Hatch and Jones 1997). In all of these articles, I insisted on using the terdynamics because it seemed to me, though I was pretty vague about it bathen, that they all had something to do with a different notion of time thadid linear models such as those put forward by evolution-minded organzation theorists (e.g. Greiner 1972; Tushman et al. 1986; Gersick 1988But pinpointing the difference was tricky. At first I thought it had to dwith offering a processual view, but evolution is processual too. There hto be something else.Parallel to developing these theories, I was learning to paint, and paintinbrought me into contact w ith the work of David Hockney. Along with othartists of his day, Hockney felt compelled to defend painting in the age photography, but, unlike his contemporaries, Hockney based his critiquwithin photography itself. In order to do this, he made photographs anused his experience not only to critique photography, but also to invent


3/8

Essai: Doing Time in Organization Theory 8 7 1is more real than a painting. Hockney strongly disagreed. From his refiec-tions on why he felt this way, he built a defense of painting that focuseson how we experience time.Hockney's argument goes like this: The photograph is unreal, because it isunnatural for humans to see in the way cameras do. This is because theamount of time it takes to snap a photo is shorter than the briefest momentthat human experience can apprehend:'The experience of art is more real in painting than in photography. The moment islonger, and we can feel that moment, in a photograph we can't. Perhaps this is whythere are so few good photographs. The good ones that do exist are almost acciden-tal, one fraction of a second that looks as though it's longer than it is. We don't knowwhat an isolated fraction of a second is. We can't isolate a second in our lives, canwe? ... But if you asked the average person which looks more real, they would say thephotograph.' (Joyce 1999: 31)Because of the brevity of its process, traditional photography is static; itforces the photographer and the viewer to see from a fixed position, a one-pointed perspective. Thus, by preventing movem ent, photography squeezesout time.Hockney's ideas about the experience of time caught my fancy because itseems to me that organization theorizing of the first two types I mentionedalso squeezes out time, either by leaving it outside the model (in Type 1theorizing, two static views are compared) or by placing it outside thelived experience of those doing the organizing (nobody feels evolution inTVpe 2 theorizing). I asked myself, could there be something in Hockney'ssolution to his problem of defending painting that might provide help withmy problem of producing a cyclical way of doing time in organizationtheory?Hockney came to his solution by (re)tuming to Picasso's cubist work. Inattempting to reproduce the cubist vision in a photograph, he hoped tofind a way to put time into photography. As a result of this effort, Hockneyproduced his first 'joiners' photographic collages that juxtapose aseries of photos taken of a subject from different positions. The photographsare joined up in such a way as to present a coherent image, but theycan never be aligned perfectly so there are both gaps and overlaps in theimages. The gaps and overlaps make you aware that seeing involvesoverlooking (not seeing everything) and duplication (seeing some thingsrepeatedly).According to Hockney, joiners put time into photography because, likecubist painting, they record the memory of seeing by capturing the way asubject looks when seen over time from multiple points of view:'Memory must be part of vision, because everything is now. The past is now. ... this iswhat Picasso is about. If he makes a painting of a face showing front md sides, dif-ferent aspects, it 's a memory picture because we can't see those all at once. We seethem over a period of time. It's really a more truthful way of representing what we


4/8

872 Mary Jo HatchThis multiplicity of viewpoints must itself be multiplied, because each us has our own personal history. Furthermore, as Hockney concluded, odifferent memories make objective vision impossible:'Because each of us has a different memory, this proves to me that objective visiocannot be. When you look at this, you remember that you've seen things like it befoYour memory comes in and forms part of it, contradicting the objectivity of vision it makes you realize that what and how we're seeing are different for everybody becautheir memories are different.' (Joyce 1999: 56-57)However, the impossibility of objective vision does not preclude our abiity to engage someone else's vision, so long as we are willing to involvourselves personally (up close):' ... the closer things are to us, the more our eyes have to move. With the joiners, teffect is a very strong one of putting you in the place. It gives you a much greater feeing of being there.' (Joyce 1999: 78)Having learned from making joiners, Hockney then cycled his new undestanding of how to bring time into photography back into his paintinHis paintings of the Grand Canyon inspired by his own photographjoiner of it are painted on small, joined-up canvases across which hproduced one enormous image of the canyon. Here, at last, comes thconnection between Hockney's painting and my version of organizatiotheorizing.I was visiting the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art London a couple of years ago when I encountered four of Hockney's velarge paintings of the Grand Canyon filling up one full gallery of the exhbition hall. In the comers of the room, Hockney had hung mirrors so thyou could see nothing but the Grand Canyon, no matter which way yolooked and, looking into the mirrors, you could see yourself inside thpaintings! It was mesmerizing. I had to sit down. I sat there a long, lontime; and the longer I stared into these painted spaces, the more spatialbecame. I was literally absorbed by them, both objectively and subjectivelIt was one of those transformational moments for my art, but perhaps nothat I look back on it, even more so for my theorizing.Hockney demonstrated to me the third way to do time in organization thory, with which I have been stmggling. I am now convinced that this thirway is not just about cycles, but also about being drawn into that which to be described; to be a participant and to have and use a personal experence of organizing:Hockney. 'The joiners are about you moving: that's what the principle is. Cubism enta similar principle. I'm convinced now about Cubism. It is not about abstraction at aIt's about the depiction of reality in a more vivid way. I think the photograph has haan incredible influence on us, without our knowing it. It's made us see in a strait-jaceted way. It's mad that we find it difficult to see any other way, but the moment it


5/8

Essai: Doing Time in Organization Theory 8 7 3Interviewer Joyce: '. .. It occurs to me that photography might actually have made uslook from a fixed position. People now stand around like tripods!'Hockney: 'Yes, our eyes have been made to do that, because we keep seeing photographsand thinking they are true. If we look at life, we then discover that the images haveaffected the way we look. I think that's now obvious, and it puts drawing and paintingback into a far m ore serious position than even I ever thought possible. Only there canwe expand our apprehension of things.' (Joyce 1999: 91)Following Hockney's lead, I now believe that expanding our apprehensionof the processes of organizing entails thinking about how we might embedourselves in organizing processes and then describe those processes fromthis embedded point of view. Referring to Picasso's 'Sleeping Woman',which shows a nude from the front and back at the same time, Hockneyexplained how this works in painting:' ... if you can see the front and back, it means that you, the viewer, are in the picture... [Picasso] made us not voyeurs, but participants ... it makes the world more intimateby drawing us into it.' (Joyce 1999: 111)To me, Hockney's insights about Picasso, photography and time mean thatwe must figure out how to understand from the inside what organizingprocesses mean and how they work.In my mind, the kind of theorizing that I've been doing addresses this prob-lem, because, to use my models, you need to put yourself into the spacedepicted in them, in order to move around the pathways they describe. Forexample, in applying my cultural dynamics model, you might watch howartifacts are transformed into symbols, by the symbolizing that cultural mem-bers do in the course of interpreting their experiences. While watching, beaware that your own interpretation processes draw on your cultural assump-tions to construct meaning that is manifested in the values you realize inthe artifacts you thereby (re)construct. Your reflections on your experienceof their culture and your own will give you personal insight into how cul-ture works in the cyclical fashion depicted by the model.While this may at iirst seem a strange example, it is nonetheless whatHockney has inspired me to see. He has made me realize that what I definedat first as a subjectivist epistemological position, is actually somethingbeyond subjectivity, something I can only think to label as interiorization looking at processes from inside their dynamics through a combinationof personal engagement and reflection. From what seems at first to bestrange, as Picasso's cubist works once appeared, a more vivid depictionof organizing will emerge (if Hockney is correct and my appropriation ofhim is sound). The theory will be more vivid, because it speaks to the wayin which humans naturally experience their organizations as they movewithin and around them.Hockney even prepared us for what comes next:


6/8

874 Mary Jo Hatch

You've no idea. It's fascinating, because you then realize that you are beginning make it yourself, creatively make it. The problem is that the rigid viewpoint is so fixin us, that aspect of measurement is deeply fixed. It was not so with Picasso, and ionly in the last few years that I've looked at Picasso and realized that there's no dtortion. None.' (Joyce 1999: 107)What Hockney gave us, I believe, is an aesthetic for developing our capaity to theorize vividly about organizing. Hockney says his approach to paining makes the world more intimate. By extension of his ideas, my approacto theorizing has the same aspiration for orgatiizations. My refiections this essay suggest that intimacy with cyclical organizing processes will prduce a reciprocal relationship between refiection and time: Theorizing timas cyclical assists in making us more refiective at the same time that beinmore refiective about our theorizing encourages us to consider the cyclicview. Could it be that cyclical theorizing will one day make it possible tembed refiection in organizing, or at least in our theorizing about it? If this our ambition, we will need to learn to see organizing in new ways, ashave been attempting to do in my cyclical theorizing. On learning to sein new ways, Hockney leaves us with a final inspiring thought:'You have to learn quite a few things to be able to see another way, and to be able depict that way of seeing on the canvas. Unless you leam about your own movemeand your own body, you will still look at things the old way. There are people who tto put the whole room into a painting. You don't feel the body is moving. The paining is just trying to take on more rather like the way the wide-angle lens sees. you take in a head movement, that point becomes much bigger. It becomes whGeorge Rowley calls "the moving focus". Movement is life, essentially, isn't it?' (Joy1999: 78).

References Gersick, Connie1988 'Time and transition in work teams:Toward a new model of group devel-opment'. Academy of ManagementJournal 3 1: 9 ^Greiner, Larry1972 'Evolution and revolution as organi-zations grow'. Harvard BusinessReview 50: 37^ 6 .Eliade, Mircea1954 The m yth of the eternal return or,cosmos and history. Princeton:Princeton University Press.Hatch, Mary Jo1993 'The dynamics of organizationalculture'. Academy of Management

Review 18/4: 657-693 .

Hatch, Mary Jo2000 'The cultural dynamics of organing and change' in Handbook organizational culture and climaN. Ashkanasy, C. Wilderom and MPeterson (eds.), 245-260. LondoSage.

Hatch, Mary Jo, and Michael Owen Jone1997 'Photocopylore at work: Aestheticcollective creativity and the sociconstruction of organizations'. Studin cultures, organizations and soety 3/2: 263-287.Hatch, Mary Jo, and Majken Schultz1997 'Relations between organizationculture, identity and image'. Eurpean Journal of Marketing 31/

356-365.


7/8

Essai: Doing Time in Organization Theory 875Hatch, Mary Jo, and Majken Schultz2002 'The dynamics of organizationalidentity'. Human Relations 55: 989-1018.Hatch, Mary Jo, and Majken Schultz2000 'Are the strategic stars aligned foryour corporate brand?' HarvardBusiness Review (February): 128-134.Joyce, Paul1999 Hockney on art: Conversations withPaul Joyce. Boston: Little, Brown.

Schein, Edgar H.1985 Organizational culture and leader-ship. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Schein, Edgar H.1992 Organizational culture and leader-ship, 2nd Ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Tushman, Michael L., W. Newman, andElaine Romanelli1986 'Convergence and upheaval: Man-aging the unsteady pace of organiza-tional evolution'. California Man -agement Review 29: 1-20.


8/8

essai - doing time in organization theory

Documents