Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

process of the constitution of nations and states. Because from the Middle Ages the
monopoly on violence was appropriated by the national state, people developed new
ways of protecting their interests. The emerged civilized behaviour is provoked by
growing interdependence and characterized by social morals of self-restraint, moderateness
and non-physical ways of self-protection. In this behaviour the micro-politics
of power are played out.
Elias underlines two developments. First are the unforeseen outcomes of historical
developments. Second is that the way we behave has changed. The first outcome
points to the absence of a deliberate design or rational planning of social processes or
society. Second the outcome points to the importance of conversation which has
become the pre-eminently way of managing our affairs, the art of peaceful fighting
(Achterhuis and Koning, 2014).
The three foundational concepts together underpin a complex responsive processapproach
in its approach of organizational reality as conversational processes of
interdependent persons. However, not only as a conversational process, but also as a
social process which evolves in an unpredictable way out of which new developments
emerge.
A complex responsive process-approach and reflexivity
The foundational concepts of a complex responsive process-approach point to a
reflexive way of doing research. If it is contended that neither choice nor planning is
decisive and responsiveness and interdependency are typical, then trying to understand
what is happening in organizational life is trying to understand something
ever-changing. After all, in a dynamical understanding of social reality, understanding
is a matter of responding and not an isolated act of an observer at a distance. In order
to try to understand what is happening, a reflexive stance seems to be more appropriate.
Because of the ‘personal’ basis of the research a radically reflexive stance is needed.
Reflexive research and by that a complex responsive process-approach express a
commotion within scientific and philosophical communities, and in extension within
OMS. The amount of proclaimed turns - paradigm shifts (Kuhn, 1962) – within social
sciences is an indication for the amount of this commotion within the international
scientific community. Apparently humanistic, feministic and post-structuralistic
(Denzin, 1992), rhetorical and critical (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994), linguistic (Deetz, 1992),
discursive (Grant et al., 2009), historic (Abma, 2011), complexity (Johannessen, 2009),
reflexive (Etherington, 2004), micro-social (Brinkmann, 2012) and practice (Nicolini,
2013) turns are challenging the existing paradigms within the social sciences.
As far as a complex responsive process-approach differs from seminal research within
the social sciences, I approach this perspective as constituted by and co-constituent
for the discussions about science as indicated by the different turns. A complex responsive
process-approach is embedded in the discussions within social sciences, more
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