Martin Duffy | Dublin Institute of Technology (original) (raw)
Papers by Martin Duffy
This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be view... more This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics(Langley and Tsoukas, 2010), meso-discourse analysis (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1969) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a ‘system of meetings’. The primary data draws from 130+ hours of recorded meeting proceedings, spanning 58 meeting events, from multiple sub-groups within a medium sized company. The paper first provides an exploration of how organizational participants may broadly construct inter-connectivity between their meetings. The data is initially viewed from both a process and systems perspective: In process terms, the organizational discourse is conceptualized as a ‘river of discourse’, within which meeting discourses take place, over an evolving time span, and thus contribute to the inter...
Strategy workshops are frequently used by Executive management teams to discuss and formulate str... more Strategy workshops are frequently used by Executive management teams to discuss and formulate strategy but are under-researched and under-reported in the academic literature. This study uses Discourse Analysis to discover participant roles and dialogic patterns in an Executive management team‟s strategy workshop, together with their effect on the workshop‟s operation and outcome. The study shows how the workshop participants adopt different roles through their language and content. It then identifies a dialogic pattern in the workshop discourse, with the emphasis on achieving shared understanding rather than winning the debate. The workshop facilitator‟s role is shown to bring discussion as a counter balance to the group‟s dialogue, focusing the evolving dialogic discourse on actionable outcomes. The study goes on to show how these two discourse features combine to enable a comprehensive exploration of a strategic topic in a limited time frame and to build a consensus based strategy...
m each other (Dittrich et al., 2011). Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them a... more m each other (Dittrich et al., 2011). Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them as locations of organizational sensemaking (Schwartzman, 1989), this paper considers meetings collectively as a process of sensemaking within the organization. Sensemaking is viewed as both a retrospective action and also as a prehensive process. Prehension in this context is proposed as taking conscious steps in the present that are intended to inform a future sensemaking process. Meetings are explored as a locus of enactment (Weick 1988) to reconcile this apparent past and future dichotomy. The data analysis identifies mechanisms that support adopting a systemic view of meetings. If collective mind is accepted as an inherent feature of all organizations (Weick and Roberts, 1993), and collective minding (Cooren, 2004) is a process through which it is achieved, adopting a systemic view of meetings provides a process of becoming (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002), referred to here as collective mind...
In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative... more In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative response from many people. This article proposes an alternative way to conceptualize organizational meetings. Considered as a collective organizational resource rather than as isolated events, there may be a latent capacity for meetings to contribute more to an organisation than just the sum of their individual parts. Three concepts are proposed as a basis for developing a systemic view of meetings – Collective mind, Sensemaking and the Communicative Constitution of Organization. When considered together, these three elements provide the potential to re-orient how meetings are viewed and to achieve a form of enhanced organizational awareness termed here as Collective Mind[ing]. While still subject to more detailed research, a tentative view is provided of how organizational thinking may need to change in order to embody such a systemic view of meetings.
Guided by a systemic and processual perspective, this research considers meetings as a collective... more Guided by a systemic and processual perspective, this research considers meetings as a collective organizational phenomenon and analyses how they contribute to the constitution of organizations. Longitudinal immersion as a participant observer in one organization's 'river of discourse' prompted initial abductive theory development to conceptualize meetings as a collective phenomenon, rather than studying them as individual-centered events. Preliminary analysis conducted during data recording indicated collective agency that could not be attributed to individual meetings, nor to the intentionality of meeting participants. Subsequent bifocal analysis of the meetings' discourse data reveals modes of meeting connectivity that reflect and contribute to their holistic nature and their agency collectively. Following a zoomed-out analysis informed by sensemak.ing and a zoomed-in analysis guided by ceo theory, the research findings indicate that meetings collectively exhibit ...
In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative respons... more In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative response from many people. This article proposes an alternative way to conceptualise organizational meetings. Considered as a collective organizational resource rather than as isolated events, there may be a latent capacity for meetings to contribute more to an organisation than just the sum of their individual parts. Three concepts are proposed as a basis for developing a systemic view of meetings -Collective mind, Sensemaking and the Communicative Constitution of Organization. When considered together, these three elements provide the potential to re-orient how meetings are viewed and to achieve a form of enhanced organizational awareness termed here as Collective
![Research paper thumbnail of Pros - 148 - More Sensemaking Meetings - A systemic view towards enhanced collective mind[ing] (2013)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32792889/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Research on meetings has tended to reinforce their individuality and relative isolation from each... more Research on meetings has tended to reinforce their individuality and relative isolation from each other . Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them as locations of organizational sensemaking , this paper considers meetings collectively as a process of sensemaking within the organization.
![Research paper thumbnail of Systemic contribution of organizational meetings to enhanced collective mind[ing] - (Duffy and O'Rourke) - EGOS 2013](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32792879/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Research on meetings has tended to focus on them as individual episodes (Dittrich et al., 2011, H... more Research on meetings has tended to focus on them as individual episodes (Dittrich et al., 2011, Hendry and in relative isolation from each other. In this paper, CCO underpins development of a systematized view of meetings, using a collective of meetings as the unit of analysis. The paper addresses how meetings exhibit systemic characteristics and potentially contribute to collective mind [ing] in organizations.
This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be view... more This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics , meso-discourse analysis Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking ) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a 'system of meetings'.
ii Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the prog... more ii Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of MSc in Strategic Management is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for assessment for any academic purpose other than in partial fulfilment for that stated above.
This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be view... more This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics(Langley and Tsoukas, 2010), meso-discourse analysis (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1969) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a ‘system of meetings’. The primary data draws from 130+ hours of recorded meeting proceedings, spanning 58 meeting events, from multiple sub-groups within a medium sized company. The paper first provides an exploration of how organizational participants may broadly construct inter-connectivity between their meetings. The data is initially viewed from both a process and systems perspective: In process terms, the organizational discourse is conceptualized as a ‘river of discourse’, within which meeting discourses take place, over an evolving time span, and thus contribute to the inter...
Strategy workshops are frequently used by Executive management teams to discuss and formulate str... more Strategy workshops are frequently used by Executive management teams to discuss and formulate strategy but are under-researched and under-reported in the academic literature. This study uses Discourse Analysis to discover participant roles and dialogic patterns in an Executive management team‟s strategy workshop, together with their effect on the workshop‟s operation and outcome. The study shows how the workshop participants adopt different roles through their language and content. It then identifies a dialogic pattern in the workshop discourse, with the emphasis on achieving shared understanding rather than winning the debate. The workshop facilitator‟s role is shown to bring discussion as a counter balance to the group‟s dialogue, focusing the evolving dialogic discourse on actionable outcomes. The study goes on to show how these two discourse features combine to enable a comprehensive exploration of a strategic topic in a limited time frame and to build a consensus based strategy...
m each other (Dittrich et al., 2011). Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them a... more m each other (Dittrich et al., 2011). Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them as locations of organizational sensemaking (Schwartzman, 1989), this paper considers meetings collectively as a process of sensemaking within the organization. Sensemaking is viewed as both a retrospective action and also as a prehensive process. Prehension in this context is proposed as taking conscious steps in the present that are intended to inform a future sensemaking process. Meetings are explored as a locus of enactment (Weick 1988) to reconcile this apparent past and future dichotomy. The data analysis identifies mechanisms that support adopting a systemic view of meetings. If collective mind is accepted as an inherent feature of all organizations (Weick and Roberts, 1993), and collective minding (Cooren, 2004) is a process through which it is achieved, adopting a systemic view of meetings provides a process of becoming (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002), referred to here as collective mind...
In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative... more In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative response from many people. This article proposes an alternative way to conceptualize organizational meetings. Considered as a collective organizational resource rather than as isolated events, there may be a latent capacity for meetings to contribute more to an organisation than just the sum of their individual parts. Three concepts are proposed as a basis for developing a systemic view of meetings – Collective mind, Sensemaking and the Communicative Constitution of Organization. When considered together, these three elements provide the potential to re-orient how meetings are viewed and to achieve a form of enhanced organizational awareness termed here as Collective Mind[ing]. While still subject to more detailed research, a tentative view is provided of how organizational thinking may need to change in order to embody such a systemic view of meetings.
Guided by a systemic and processual perspective, this research considers meetings as a collective... more Guided by a systemic and processual perspective, this research considers meetings as a collective organizational phenomenon and analyses how they contribute to the constitution of organizations. Longitudinal immersion as a participant observer in one organization's 'river of discourse' prompted initial abductive theory development to conceptualize meetings as a collective phenomenon, rather than studying them as individual-centered events. Preliminary analysis conducted during data recording indicated collective agency that could not be attributed to individual meetings, nor to the intentionality of meeting participants. Subsequent bifocal analysis of the meetings' discourse data reveals modes of meeting connectivity that reflect and contribute to their holistic nature and their agency collectively. Following a zoomed-out analysis informed by sensemak.ing and a zoomed-in analysis guided by ceo theory, the research findings indicate that meetings collectively exhibit ...
In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative respons... more In an organizational context, the word 'meeting' tends to evoke an immediate and negative response from many people. This article proposes an alternative way to conceptualise organizational meetings. Considered as a collective organizational resource rather than as isolated events, there may be a latent capacity for meetings to contribute more to an organisation than just the sum of their individual parts. Three concepts are proposed as a basis for developing a systemic view of meetings -Collective mind, Sensemaking and the Communicative Constitution of Organization. When considered together, these three elements provide the potential to re-orient how meetings are viewed and to achieve a form of enhanced organizational awareness termed here as Collective
Research on meetings has tended to reinforce their individuality and relative isolation from each... more Research on meetings has tended to reinforce their individuality and relative isolation from each other . Adopting a systematized view of meetings, and seeing them as locations of organizational sensemaking , this paper considers meetings collectively as a process of sensemaking within the organization.
Research on meetings has tended to focus on them as individual episodes (Dittrich et al., 2011, H... more Research on meetings has tended to focus on them as individual episodes (Dittrich et al., 2011, Hendry and in relative isolation from each other. In this paper, CCO underpins development of a systematized view of meetings, using a collective of meetings as the unit of analysis. The paper addresses how meetings exhibit systemic characteristics and potentially contribute to collective mind [ing] in organizations.
This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be view... more This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics , meso-discourse analysis Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking ) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a 'system of meetings'.
ii Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the prog... more ii Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of MSc in Strategic Management is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for assessment for any academic purpose other than in partial fulfilment for that stated above.