Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

From a radically reflexive stance it is obvious that an outsider’s or spectator’s position
as a researcher is neither postulated nor possible. This way of doing research is research
in the living present of the researcher self. In line with the pragmatism of Mead
one can speak of a social realistic point of departure (Lewis and Smith, 1980). Mead
underlines the often repeated quote of Thomas & Thomas (1928) that a definition of
reality is true in its consequences, by stating that “the meaning of what we are saying
is the tendency to respond to it” (Mead, 1934: 67). Responsiveness is a process of
construing a reality which is true in it temporarily social construction. This transitional
point of departure does not imply that through conversation anything goes. The
consequences of the definitions of reality which emerge in conversations are real for
those involved. This realness is real in patterns, social objects, routines, habits and
beliefs, however exists and changes on-going due to polyvocal perspectives. This
realness is reinforced and changed at the same time in and through social interactions.
One can speak of an ongoing reconstruction of the past in the present. Therefore it
seems to be appropriate to speak of a reconstructive (Wagner, 1999) social realistic
research methodology to qualify research from a complex responsive process perspective.
Research from a complex responsive process-perspective helps to understand the present
by placing itself within a social and dynamic perspective on reality and by offering
opportunities to reflect and reconstruct the present and the past. In doing so this
approach can be placed somewhere in the middle between post-modernistic relativism
and modernistic objectivism. As such it represents a breach with modernistic
scientific presumptions of objective observation.
Research in the living present from a radically reflexive stance in which the partiality
of the researcher is fully acknowledged leads consequently to a point of view in which
ontology and epistemology are not differentiated anymore. A difference between
what the reality is and the way the reality is known, cannot longer be made. Writing
narratives, analysing and reflecting upon experiences in the present are a designated
way to catch the present. To catch what is happening, not from an assumed objective
perspective, but from a perspective to describe how an organizational reality is construed.
From this radically reflexive perspective there is no way to escape from valuebased
postulates, which, is illustrated by Verschuren in the way he includes a criticalemancipatory
perspective in his model.
But again if ontology and epistemology are not to be separated the case still is that
from this perspective a discussion about standards of sound research should be advanced.
Regarding a complex responsive process-approach I will do that in the next
paragraph by going into discussions about criteria for sound research which evolved
around auto-ethnographic research. I doing that I assume that a complex responsive
process-approach will be confronted with the same criticisms as auto-ethnographic
research and that something can be learned from these discussions.
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