Claus D. Jacobs - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Drafts by Claus D. Jacobs

Academy of Management Journal, 2020

This paper elucidates the political dynamics of organizational identity breach and reconstruction... more This paper elucidates the political dynamics of organizational identity breach and reconstruction. Drawing on the revealing case of UNICEF Germany, we develop a process model of four phases of identity breach and reconstruction: build-up of identity tensions, revelation of identity breach, identity reconstruction, and enactment of the reconstructed identity. Our analysis explains how each phase was characterized by specific political strategies employed by the managerialist and idealist organizational members, the effects of these strategies on the power balance and consensus/conflict over organizational identity, and how particular triggers explain shifts from one phase to another. By so doing, our analysis advances our understanding of organizational identity breach and reconstruction as political processes and paves the way for new studies of political identity dynamics in other contexts.

Papers by Claus D. Jacobs

We outline the dominant, positivist approach to conceptualizing and researching organi-zations th... more We outline the dominant, positivist approach to conceptualizing and researching organi-zations through multi-level research that views levels as independently existing, hierar-chically nested entities, and problematize this view by offering an alternative approach based on embodied realism. We operationalize this approach through a study of three organization development workshops where organizational actors constructed artifacts we label embodied metaphors. We propose that analysis of embodied metaphors can enable access to actors ’ first-order conceptions of organizational levels and related orga-nizational dimensions and reveals alternative qualities and interrelations among them; can support a clinical approach to organizations; provides a window to organizational, divisional or task identities; and poses substantial challenges to established conceptions of ontology and method in organization theory.

Actor network theory (ANT) has influenced other intellectual traditions in general, and more rece... more Actor network theory (ANT) has influenced other intellectual traditions in general, and more recently management and organisation studies (MOS) in particular. Few studies have explored the nature and extent of such "translation". Based on our analysis of 17 top-tier journal publications, the paper identifies four translation strategies and discusses implications for inter-domain transfer of concepts.

Scenario planning has been advocated as a means for strategists to review and shift their mental ... more Scenario planning has been advocated as a means for strategists to review and shift their mental models on strategic phenomena. While the process itself has traditionally involved the rational analysis of coherent narratives,there have been recent calls to consider scenario development approaches that involve more creativity and intuition. In response to this debate, we recall on March’s distinction between the ‘technology of reason’ and the ‘technology of foolishness,’ and pursue his suggestion to conceive of play as an archetype of foolishness. We then consider recent organizational and strategy research that develops the concept of serious play, and we explore normative implications of this concept for scenario planning in practice. Finally, we present an empirical illustration of a strategy workshop involving serious play in a large European telecommunications service provider..

Swiss Yearbook of Administrative Sciences

Sustainability

Scaling is a critical organizational phase for social organizations: their upfront financial need... more Scaling is a critical organizational phase for social organizations: their upfront financial needs increase dramatically. This paper responds—on the basis of initial research on capacity, up-, and deep scaling strategies—to the need for integrated knowledge on financing processes within the context of social organizations’ impact scaling phase. An exploration of a market leader’s processes uncovered both strengths and struggles, which in turn enabled new levels of understanding related to the research question, “How can impact scaling agreements enable effective social impact?” The fact that the financial provider examined in this empirical study lacked alignment in its scaling approach, goals, and reporting processes over time hampered its effectiveness and sustainability. The findings from this qualitative inter-temporal content analysis enable the development of a model for impact scaling agreements. This shows ongoing flows between the provider and recipient of financial and non...

Academy of Management Proceedings

As debates around nuclear energy or genetically modified food indicate, legitimizing a new techno... more As debates around nuclear energy or genetically modified food indicate, legitimizing a new technology is a non-trivial phenomenon. However, we currently seem to lack a satisfactory understanding of...

European Management Review

In order to facilitate the implementation of replication strategies, organizations often use a va... more In order to facilitate the implementation of replication strategies, organizations often use a variety of artefacts such as manuals and handbooks. Existing research has largely focused on the extent to which artefacts can act as knowledge repositories that help to facilitate replication. This body of literature has made significant contributions to our understanding of the role of replication, but has focused more on highlighting key challenges involved in the codification of knowledge. This paper demonstrates that artefact based replication is a double edged sword. While replication is enabled by, 'configuring' artefact-action relationships (focussing, situating, coordinating) our analysis also reveals that replication is constrained by 'decoupling' artefact-action relationships (accounting, differentiating, disengaging). Our findings contribute to research on replication and provide a more nuanced understanding of why the implementation of replication strategies might fail. We also add to the recent debate on socio-materiality in strategy research more generally.

Strategic Organization

Academy of Management Proceedings

ABSTRACT From a semiotic point of view, we observe that technologies can increasingly be authore... more ABSTRACT From a semiotic point of view, we observe that technologies can increasingly be authored or written by their users. If we are to understand processes of user-driven innovation, we need not only to consider how the user writes the technology but also how the user is configured within and through different discourses. Our study aims at contributing to a more fine-grained concept of the user in organization studies by suggesting that the technological artefact as well as the user are simultaneously under recursive (social) construction. In supplementing typical innovation studies retrospective research design, we ground our argument in the empirical case of a currently ongoing development of a not yet stabilized technology, Grid computing, that allows us precisely to study in vivo how different versions of users are written and negotiated in the recursive development of technology and communities of users.

Strategy As Practice Theories Methodologies and Phenomena, Aug 15, 2012

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

Why responsiveness? The initial motivation and interest for a research subject is rarely made exp... more Why responsiveness? The initial motivation and interest for a research subject is rarely made explicit and can hardly be rationalized — at best in an ex post effort to do so. However, I would like to explicate where and how my interest in responsiveness and dialogue initially came from. Beyond the analytical dimension of this study, a historical perspective on the genesis of the topic might provide the reader with a broader frame for reading this study. My interest in responsiveness and dialogue can be discerned from my biography on the one hand, and from the practical experience as facilitator and process consultant in the Organization Development (OD) project called “Learning through Listening” (LTL) on the other.

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

The dialogue strand of organization and management literature (Isaacs, 1993, 1999; Scharmer, 1999... more The dialogue strand of organization and management literature (Isaacs, 1993, 1999; Scharmer, 1999, 2001; Schein, 1993, 1999; Senge, 1990, 1994) diagnoses an increasing differentiation in organizations and pluralism of subcultures. These developments and trends increase the need of perceptive, reflective mechanisms that make it possible for people “to discover that they use language differently, that they operate from different mental models, and that the categories we employ are ultimately learned social constructions of reality and thus arbitrary.” (Schein, 1993: 43). This problem definition suggests that differences in lifeworlds and language games call for an enhanced capacity of the organization to perceive, understand respond to issues voiced from members of the different contexts. Based on this investigation, I would refer to such a capacity as responsiveness. Most forms of organizational group talk take place in a confronting mode such as discussion or debate, usually resulting in a strategy of participants to maintain their certainties and suppress deeper inquiry into the root causes of problems. In contrast, dialogue, conceptualized by proponents of this literature, is considered “a discipline of collective thinking and inquiry, a process for transforming the quality of conversation and, in particular, the thinking that lies beneath it.” (Isaacs, 1993: 24–25). In the light of these considerations, the acknowledgment of pluralism in language and social construction of reality results in the suggestion to consider responsiveness as a means for enhancing and encouraging collective thinking, i.e. perception and reflection.

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

As to distinguish the quality of conversations in the different workshop settings, I will employ ... more As to distinguish the quality of conversations in the different workshop settings, I will employ Scharmer’s process archetype of conversation for the case analysis. Throughout the project and based on the properties of the different conversational modes as outlined in Table 6, I have identified the dominant conversational mode for each session. As sketched out in Chapter 2, Scharmer (2001) suggests to distinguish speech acts along two dimensions: (1) degree of reflection of speech act (reflective/non-reflective) and (2) orientation of speech act (primacy of social whole or parts).

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

At the time of the project, the Omega foundation provides residential care in 13 centers for peop... more At the time of the project, the Omega foundation provides residential care in 13 centers for people with physical and sensory disabilities. It was founded in 1963 as a foundation and has currently about 300 places in its centers with a total number of staff of around 400. Each regional health authority in which a local Omega Center is located funds the service provision. Local managers of the centers report directly to the CEO who is supported by a Head Office team that covers central function such as strategy and organization development, service user development, human resource management and training, financials and administration amongst others. The Board of Trustees in which voluntary members from the wider community as well as service users and staff are represented has the accountability for ensuring a quality service delivery as well as the strategic development of the foundation (Omega Foundation, 1999a).

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

Conceiving of organizations as coalitions of interests (Cyert & March, 1992), policy making i... more Conceiving of organizations as coalitions of interests (Cyert & March, 1992), policy making is at the core of organizational processes of decision-making. The means of moderating organizational conflicts are political arenas that allow for the different coalitions to voice and support their concerns and interests. The plural interests of stakeholders emerge from and are embedded in specific lifeworlds and language games of participants that exist ‘within and around’ the organization, i.e. subcultures within an organization (e.g. a department, a subunit) as well as social configurations in the private life of stakeholders. Participants of an organization, i.e. its members and stakeholders, will develop individual or group interests that represent their goals for the organization. The goals of the organization, however, are defined in formal or informal conversational arenas (Kirsch, 1991). Drawing from Habermas (1984,1987), lifeworlds are defined as areas of social interaction that are enacted and constituted by language games, i.e. rules of behavior and language that are learned and developed by participants of these contexts. These rules provide a ‘grammar’ of the specific lifeworld and provide a framework for cognition and sensemaking. Consequently, members of different lifeworlds will have difficulties to communicate easily. The agony of translation is a strong indication of incommensurability: “Members of a community of context will have less difficulties to communicate with and among each other than they have when communicating with externals.” (Kirsch, 1991:120–121; my translation).

Organization Studies, 2015

Cultural entrepreneurship and symbolic management perspectives portray entrepreneurs as skilled c... more Cultural entrepreneurship and symbolic management perspectives portray entrepreneurs as skilled cultural operators and often assume them to be capable from the outset to purposefully use ‘cultural resources’ in order to motivate resource-holding audiences to support their new ventures. We problematize this premise and develop a model of how entrepreneurs become skilful cultural operators and develop the cultural competences necessary for creating and growing their ventures. The model is grounded in a case study of an entrepreneur who set up shop and sought to acquire resources in a culturally unfamiliar setting. Our model proposes that two adaptive sensemaking processes – approval-driven sensemaking and autonomy-driven sensemaking – jointly facilitate the gradual development of cultural competences. These processes jointly enable entrepreneurs to gain cultural awareness and calibrate their symbolic enactments. Specifically, while approval-driven sensemaking facilitates recognizing c...

Strategic Organization, Aug 1, 2014

A comprehensive strategic agenda matters for fundamental strategic change. Our study seeks to exp... more A comprehensive strategic agenda matters for fundamental strategic change. Our study seeks to explore and theorize how organizational identity beliefs influence the judgment of strategic actors when setting an organization's strategic agenda. We offer the notion of "strategic taboo" as those strategic options initially disqualified and deemed inconsistent with the organizational identity beliefs of strategic actors. Our study is concerned with how strategic actors confront strategic taboos in the process of setting an organization's strategic agenda. Based on a revelatory inductive case study, we find that strategic actors engage in assessing the concordance of the strategic taboos with organizational identity beliefs and, more specifically, that they focus on key identity elements (philosophy; priorities; practices) when doing so. We develop a typology of three reinterpretation practices that are each concerned with a key identity element. While contextualizing assesses the potential concordance of a strategic taboo with an organization's overall philosophy and purpose, instrumentalizing assesses such concordance with respect to what actors deem an organization's priorities to be. Finally, normalizing explores concordance with respect to compatibility and fit with the organization's practices. We suggest that assessing concordance of a strategic taboo with identity elements consists in reinterpreting collective identity beliefs in ways that make them consistent with what organizational actors deem the right course of action. This article discusses the implications for theory and research on strategic agenda setting, strategic change, a practicebased perspective on strategy, and on organizational identity.

Conversation is central to the process of organizational learning and change. Drawing on the noti... more Conversation is central to the process of organizational learning and change. Drawing on the notion of reflective conversation, we describe an action research project, "learning through listening" in Omega, a residential healthcare organization. In this project, service users, staff, members of management committees, trustees, managers, and central office staff participated in listening to each other and in working together towards building capacity for creating their own vision of how the organization could move into the future, according to its values and ethos. In doing so they developed ways of engaging in reflective conversation that enabled progress towards a strategic direction.

Academy of Management Journal, 2020

Swiss Yearbook of Administrative Sciences

Sustainability

Academy of Management Proceedings

European Management Review

Strategic Organization

Academy of Management Proceedings

Strategy As Practice Theories Methodologies and Phenomena, Aug 15, 2012

Managing Organizational Responsiveness, 2003

Organization Studies, 2015

Strategic Organization, Aug 1, 2014