Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

(Kleijnen, 2012: 33).To my idea this identified competition confirms that in practice
change is a many voiced affair with competitive contributions from different perspectives.
In the discussions regarding the evaluation report different perspectives can be recognized.
Inez Reker doing research into the effectiveness of our policy, advices to reconsider
the internal branding programme because of the apparently failure of its internalization
approach. In the positions taken by Cees Corte one can see a slight
repositioning from a top down to a more bottom up perspective on identity-management.
Remarkable is that generally speaking the members of the coordination team
have little affiliation with a strong top down approach, and one can see that reconsidering
the programme from that perspective is repressed by the team in the discussions.
The effect of all the discussions is that the conclusions and recommendations – as
illustrated before in the shifts – can be characterized as a mixture of control-oriented
and flexibility-oriented approaches. There is no winner, although given the repression
in the recommendations of a strict internalization approach one could say that at least
one player is down.
Given the discursive battle it becomes clear that the conclusions and recommendations
made up by the members of the coordination team define reality in a broader
perspective. The conclusions and recommendations are not solely about the branding
programme and its continuation, but also take position on how to manage the UAS or
the way changes should take place. In other words: in principle and in practice the
members of the coordination team try to talk each other into each other’s discursive
perspectives on reality (Shotter, 1993).
Contradictory compromises
In reformulating the discussions about the conclusions and recommendations I experience
the results as contradictory. I experience the results like the classical paradox of
‘be spontaneous’. The other members of the coordination team see open conversations
as an expression of what is signified as openness within our core values. For me
open conversations also are an expression of my perspective on how changes should
be initiated. From my defaults or taken for granted assumptions as described in chapter
3 I favour open conversations as a way of co-creative development of the UAS.
However, at the same time my preferences get intermingled with other perspectives,
because we proposed to install the core values into all of our policy making for instance
into our procedures for job application or yearly evaluations. As a matter of fact the
conclusions and recommendations of the coordination team promote an instrumental
perspective on identity-management. That is what for me feels like the paradox of
planned spontaneity. I think this emerged somehow unavoidably out of the discussions
because of the different perspectives on identity-management intermingled with
perspectives on how to develop or change an organization.
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