Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

Theories of change have built up mass, of which the rich diversification in perspectives
is an eye-catching feature. At the same time the effectiveness is debated, leading
amongst others to an appeal for evidence based practices (Cozijnsen, 2013; Sonnaville,
2005).
Legitimacy of the adviser
In general advisers have an external or internal position and apparently “every time
when you try to change or to improve a situation without having a direct influence on
the implementation, you advise.” (Block, 1996: V). In his position the adviser is depending
on his client, both for his assignment and for the adoption of his advice. Therefore
the adviser often will be unsure if his advices will gain at least some recognition. There
are doubts about the effectiveness of advisory work. The adviser runs the risk of
encapsulation (Strikwerda, 2004; Twist et al., 2007) and confirmation to the sponsor
(Weggeman, 2003). Instead of being the jester as a finder of hidden truth and being an
adviser for actions which for sure will have a practical result, the adviser may have
become the one who performs his trick and leaves (Homan, 2005).
Doubts about the profession culminate in questions like whether commercial interests
due to the professionalization of the advisory work have brought about that the
adviser is no longer the little boy who tells the emperor that he wears no clothes. The
adviser might have become someone who seeks a problem for his ‘proven’ method
(Hellema and Marsman, 1997). After hundred years of making a living out of advice the
profession is criticized for being a myth, a rhetorical construction of those who call
themselves advisers (Sonnaville, 2005). The growing doubt whether organizations are
manageable (Stacey, 2010; Weggeman, 2003), a legitimate question becomes if there
is a need for another kind of adviser.
Critical assessment of the discourse on change from a complex responsive processperspective
From the perspective of a complex responsive process-approach the rhetoric – the
many theories of change - of the advisory work is criticized (Stacey, 2007). Despite the
diversity theories of change still hold on to a common but consequential assumption.
Common is that stability is seen as the normal state of affairs (Chia, 1995; Stacey,
2007). Different in the theories is only the way stability is created or evolves. Whether
prescriptive or descriptive, whether by planning, visionary or distributed leadership,
power games, individual or collective learning processes or by wearing out a next
phase in an organizational life-cycle, fundamental in this discourse is a state of rest or
equilibrium. In case of disturbances of stability processes are initiated to restore the
balance, although the new state of rest might not the same as before. In that case it is
assumed that people or the organization have learned or passed an evolutionary
phase.
The fact that change is approached as an temporarily situation – apparently as an
inconvenient and precarious intermezzo in between stable situations - emphasizes
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