Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

Pursuing my research?
On a conceptual level I concluded that there was sufficient affinity between my defaults
and a complex responsive process-approach to pursue my research from a
complex responsive process-perspective. However, that was rather an intuitive than
rational decision. I became convinced that there was something to gain in the understanding
of my practice. At the start the affinity was not evident for me. As indicated
in chapter 1 I had a lot of questions regarding ‘doing policy’ and a colleague suggested
me to start a PhD in the graduate school of the Open University. Maybe I could find
some answers. After my admission for the PhD-programme I was directed to the
Complexity Group, apparently based on my intake and my shown interest in the work
of Homan (2005). That after a year of working I wanted to pursue my research within
this group and approach had not been my plan beforehand. Serendipity?
3.8 Reflections in hindsight
After three years reading back my first narrative - which was meant to clarify my
taken for granted assumptions about the way I reflect upon myself as a professional
and the organization I work for - I see myself as someone who reflected and acted on
a fuzzy mixture of different perspectives on life, work or management. To explain
what I did and why I fell back on organismic notions, fed by my Romanticism, inspired
by the concepts of co-creation and wisdom of the crowd. Moreover, I fell back on a
kind of cognitivism in which routines or default assumptions should be changed, on a
kind of historic and social determinism where organizations and individuals should
adapt to, and on a rather instrumental opinion of management. At that time factually I
gave a manager, and thus myself in that role, a lot of instrumental responsibility for
what is happening, for controlling what is happening, even for the way people feel
involved. Although now I think differently, at that time apparently I saw a manager as
positioned above instead as part of the daily muddle. This stance is also recognisable in
the way I reflected upon myself: an assemblage of defaults which apparently can be
‘switched on and off’.
This fuzzy mixture of different perspectives apparently was held upright by a deeply
ingrained anti-authoritarian relation with my fellow human beings and more specific
managers. I wanted to decide for myself what is good for me. Of course this will have
to do with the preferred status of a professional (Wanrooy, 2007), but also with me
being raised in the 1970s amidst all the emancipatory developments.
However, this fuzzy mixture also proofed to become an obstacle. The obstacle I experienced
is beautifully put into words by Alvesson and Sköldberg (2009: 58):”the risk
with too much book-learning is to become over-dependent on earlier authorities and
tangled up in all the old problems, so that it becomes difficult to see new possibilities.”
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