Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

interactions and their constructive impact. An organization is approached as a temporarily
social construction.
The conversational interactions, in which an organization is established, should not be
idealized according to some sort of utopian norm. In the interactions negotiations
about what is real are constantly going on. These interactions are loaded with power
differences. Due to the interdependency of the persons involved, mutual relations fluctuate
all the time. Thus the interactions are neither interpreted as one-sided or topdown
affairs nor as an idealized communicative process. Point of departure is the
working of the micro-politics of power (Foucault, 1976) incorporated in the mutual
gestures (Mead, 1934) of the persons involved. In the fluctuating and interdependent
interactions emerges what sort of organizational reality is accepted for the time being.
However, the temporality of the organizational reality is not to be interpreted as if
every day this reality is built up from scratch. Within a complex responsive processapproach
one speaks of transformative causality (Stacey, 2010; Stacey and Griffin,
2005) to catch the idea of continuity and temporality at the same time. Basically the
idea is that the past is not present in the present in a deterministic way, but as the
point of departure for the present. As point of departure the past has caused the
present - human beings are historically and socially entrenched - but due to the
ongoing interactions different pasts emerge every day. Within a complex responsive
process-approach it is argued that in the living present the existing social reality is
constantly sustained and transformed.
The foundational concepts in a nutshell: complexity, responsiveness and process
To my idea transformative causality can be taken as a suitable expression of the
confluence of concepts which are foundational for a complex responsive process-approach.
The foundational concepts of a complex responsive process-approach originated
predominantly from complexity sciences (Prigogine, 1996; Prigogine and Stengers,
1988), figurational sociology (Elias, 1969, 1970) and interactionist psychology from a
pragmatist’s point of view (Mead, 1932, 1934). I give a short introduction of the concepts,
in the coming chapters these concepts will help to develop some understanding
about what is happening in organizational life.
Complexity
In the 1970s and 1980s according to Stacey (2007) complexity sciences started to
influence discussions in the natural sciences by introducing concepts as chaos, dissipative
structures, strange attractors and non-linearity. Instead of a predictable, stable
and mechanical picture of nature a picture of perpetual change, unpredictability,
self-organization, emergence and diversity was painted. A basic contention is that, although
initial conditions may be known, to predict how things will evolve is not possible.
The flaws in weather forecasts are a useful illustration of the unpredictability. Due
to tiny variations in the initial conditions unpredictable patterns evolve in the long run,
which cannot be reduced to what preceded them. A process is irreversible. The notion
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