Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

zed by others. Without doubt the conclusions and recommendations of the coordination
team will find its way in the mission statement, midterm strategy development,
yearly planning and evaluation.
However, claiming the outcome as a victory from one of the discourses unintentionally
suggests that definitions of situations can be designed in rather straight forwarded,
pre-conceived and rational managed strategies. Meanwhile institutional policy - or
the conclusions and recommendations by the coordination team - appears not to be a
product of well-considered arguments, but a process in which many different interactions
converge into conclusions and recommendations.
Self-organizing transformative processes
From a complex responsive process-perspective something else happened. Conversing
resulted in organizing and organizing developed in conversing, as an inescapably
self-organizing process (Shaw, 2002), in which under the skin several psychological
mechanism did their job. The documented contagious aspects of the interaction
among the members of the coordination team underline a self-causing character of
interaction. Given the shifts in conclusions and recommendations which become
transparent during the discussions in the coordination team, it is obvious that this
self-causing character deploys a transformative causality. In line with the complexity
sciences this kind of causality explains that “... entities are forming patterns of interaction
and at the same time, they are being formed by these patterns of interaction.” (Stacey,
2010: 57; italics Stacey). In a common responsibility the members of the coordination
team and finally the board formed and were formed within the discussions concerning
the conclusions and recommendations, even if only virtually present. In reality things
happen as they happen and apparently sometimes lead to logically contradictory results.
Looking back I come to understand that given the inescapably self-organizing process
of interaction that even my co-creative input is part of a self-organizing process,
which as such is not defined by co-creativeness. Paradoxes, disappointments, contradictions
and compromises are unavoidably parts of the game. Despite that I know – as
stated before – that we try to talk each other into one of our own discursive perspectives
on reality, in a kind of naiveté I still supposed that my co-creative discursive input
would lead to co-creative results, away “ ... from conflict and fragmentation to the good
as the cohesion of shared vision and joint purpose.” (Shaw, 2002, p.155; italics Shaw).
Seemingly still with fear to have no control as a programme manager (Groot, 2010b).
The peculiar thing for me is that being a Foucault-adept it should have been obvious to
me that my co-creative input is part of a discourse that as any discourse must be seen
“... as an expression of violence we put on things, or in any case as something tangible
we lay upon them.” (Foucault, 1971: 42). Unnoticed I hoped that on another level of the
playing field I stealthily could convince my colleagues to become co-creationists. I
understand now that also co-creationists are not protected from using epistemological
including power strategies, even if they are aware of the whereabouts of that kind
of strategies.
4. Sense making in and of the internal branding project | 109