Complex Thinking, Complex Practice: The Case for a Narrative Approach to Organizational Complexity

“Some may object that representation of processes in empirical time series and mathematical models overly ‘variabilizes’ them (Tsoukas and Hatch 2001).”

“In addition to relational elements, agency also implicates temporal elements (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“Stories do not tell themselves, they are told by storytellers, and are ‘a product of contingent human construction’ (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001, p. 999).”

“Thus, narratives and innovations coevolve, with one influencing the other over time (Tsoukas and Hatch 2001).”

“We need process thinking because traditional cross-sectional models provide a partial picture of the world that evacuates the role of time (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001) and assumes an equilibrium state (Meyer et al., 2005; Bromiley and Papenhausen, 2003).”

“Specifically, entrepreneurs contextualize innovation through their narratives (see Law and Moser, 2012; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001 for arguments from outside the field of entrepreneurship).”

“Yet, the sad truth is that, in strategy research, most theorizing (especially be more precise, cannot handle time, except in a spatialized, “abstract” manner - time as a series of snapshots (Guerlac, 2015: 30-33; Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“Tsoukas and Hatch (2001) argue that in such complex situations researchers should privilege qualitative and narrative approaches; approaches that attempt to render actors’ interpretations.”

“Tsoukas and Hatch [44] give an important paper on complexity and the subsequent need for narratives, differentiating between logico-scientific and narrative thinking, and explaining how, because of the na-”

“Moreover, given our increasingly complicated world, we believe tools that help ‘differentiate’ ideas whilst simultaneously ‘integrating’ them to generate new insights will be perceived as more useful (see Bartunek et al., 1983; Martin, 2007b; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“…setting is similar to that faced by Olson, namely when practitioners are simultaneously pulled in different directions, knowing that they need to find a way of attending to several frames at once (e.g., moral, legal, and business frames; Badaracco, 2002, 2006; Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001; Weick, 2001).”

“" The property that allows the mutual definition of the whole and its parts in a narrative (Ricoeur 1984, Tsoukas and Hatch 2001) is also the property that enables organizational actors to gradually create meaning around unusual experiences.”

“Many organizations today, especially global ones, exhibit a complexity that Tsoukas and Hatch (2001) characterize by dynamic processes, unpredictability, novelty, and emergent forms.”

“We sought to find “nuances of event, relationship, and purpose” (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001, p. 998) that offer glimpses into the meaning making of social actors as they choose to be subjects.”

“Through representing routines as genres of speech organizational members frame (“freeze”) commonly available experience and stabilize meaning, thus producing stability, while by narrativizing representations (speech genres) organizational members create the conditions for the destabilization of meaning and thus change…”

“Also, each telling or reading of a story produces another layer of context (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001).”

“The first is a construction of the environment in their minds, which entails a subjective interpretation of external complexity (see Taylor 2001; Tsoukas & Hatch 2001) – in effect ‘sensemaking’ (Weick 1995).”

“connections among events, but also to preserve multiple temporalities (Tsoukas and Hatch 2001), especially kairotic timing.”

“" Wilson (1978) has been perhaps the most influential in attempting to foster reenchantment through an alignment of social theory and natural science.”

“Our main premise in initiating this debate is that crisis creates and exacerbates complexity, which “ is not only a feature of the systems we study, [but] it is also a matter of the way in which we organize our thinking about those systems ” (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001, p. 979).”

“Knowledge creation and discovery often occurs through narratives and demonstrations, and is a process of translation as well as diffusion [54, 55, 57].”

“A narrative perspective also gives ‘access to and appreciation of context’, or specific characters, events and relationships, that yield sensitivity to salient situational particularities (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001: 998-999).”

“Even the most morally committed organization will necessarily ground its explicit value commitments to tacitly held assumptions and unspecified morals (Anteby, 2013; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001: 994).”

“This brings us to an analysis of the way BNs influence organising participatory processes and second order complexity (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“This significant indirect effect is consistent with the assertion that narratives hold potential to help readers see the causes of social problems, and strategies to address them, in a multifaceted and complex way (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001).”

“A range of tools and processes have emerged that promote reflexivity including the use of narratives and metaphors (Argyris 2006; Tsoukas and Hatch 2001).”

“With this, it can build the basis for actionable knowing particularly for complex thinking and complex practice ( Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001”

“Deductive strategy making stands comparison with Bruner's logico-scientific mode of thinking which characterizes this approach as: top-down, theory driven, de-contextualized and consistent, and as involving argument, tight analysis, reason, Aristotelian logic and proof ( Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001”

“The need for narratives and storytelling arises from the fragmented and contradictory nature of organizational events: stories serve as a device to bring order to the flux of organizing, and thus instil meaning and connection, which would otherwise be largely absent (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“For example, seeking to explain the high reliability of an aircraft carrier, Weick and Roberts (1993) use the concept of ‘collective mind’.”

“This view is consistent with wider process theorising in organization studies (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“Others talk about the role of strategic or ‘good’ conversations 27,10 —what does this mean?”

“…Job The perspective of complexity frames managers in a paradoxical situation: because they are part of the causal loops they try to comprehend, their understanding is imperfect and their actions impact with unintended consequences the processes they are trying to control (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“Foucault ’ s genealogical analysis reminds us of the importance of considering time and space, but not necessarily in order to control it (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“We recognize that the narrative approach for research is compatible with the need to appreciate the complexity of organizations (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2005).”

“Some of these studies argue that narratives, due to their inherently causal nature, have a persuasive advantage over other message forms in conveying causal information about social issues (Lundell, Niederdeppe, & Clarke, 2013a; Niederdeppe et al., 2013; Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001).”

“…and that actors employ narrative to capture ongoing activity by meaningfully connecting and reconnecting past and future events to establish their trajectory through time (Cunliffe & Coupland, 2011; Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015; Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001; Weick, 1995; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005).”

“…in a complexity theory framework “Second order complexity” (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001) is the domain of thinking about complexity rather than thinking with complexity, and it can “expose epistemological and methodological issues that have important implications” (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001, p.981).”

“…2006); and for this reason are accessible to the conscious representations of schemata (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Jarzabkowski, 2004), scripts (Barley & Tolbert, 1997) and narratives (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001) used in social discourse – what Giddens calls our discoursive consciousness (1979).”

“Stories or narratives1 also play an important role in producing knowledge (Berry, 2001; Currie & Brown, 2003; Lanzara & Patriotta, 2001; Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001).”

“It draws from research by Blackman, 2001; Byrne 2001, Fonseca, 2002; Harvey, 2001; Medd, 2001 a,b; Stacey, 2003; Shaw, 2002 and Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001 and investigates their relevance to understanding tourism policy within its social and relational context.”

“…extensive process thinking practice is needed, because the above-mentioned traditional project model provides only a partial picture of the world that evacuates the role of time (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001) and assumes a state of equilibrium (Bromiley & Papenhausen, 2003; Meyer, Gaba, & Colwell, 2005).”

“In terms of the model, it appears that there are degrees of performativity and connectivity and “tipping points” within each circuit which, if not achieved, serve to “short circuit” discursive activity, a point also alluded to by Tsoukas and Hatch (2005)”

“Emerging industries should be viewed as complex environments in which many influences interact (Zimmerman and Zeitz 2002) and are arguable, such complex contexts are well-suited for qualitative and narrative approaches (Tsoukas and Hatch 2001).”

“), or even time stretching ( Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001”

“A different notion of complexity is that of ‘second-order’ complexity (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001).”

“In this, we agree with Tsoukas and Hatch (2001: 997) that there is a tendency that ‘when the narrative statement and the act of narrating are considered together the position of the narrator (along with the motives of the narrator) becomes an issue for reflection’.”

“His study demonstrates how narratives can be a ‘means by which we organize and make sense of our experience’ (Cunliffe and Coupland, 2012), and narrating can provide a context for sensemaking (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001), while narratives are also outcomes of collective sensemaking processes.”

“In such complex systems, distinguishing cause from effect can be problematic, as relationships tend to be non-linear and sensitive to initial conditions (Richardson and Cilliers 2001 ; Tsoukas and Hatch 2001 ; Colbert 2004 ; Houchin and Maclean 2005 ).”

“Stories, therefore, bring valuable social knowledge of individual meaning constructions (see also Czarniawska, 1998; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001; Hansen, 2006).”