Organizing (in) the Present:

A Case Study of Organizational Change, Management and Opportunity Forming -

based on the Strong Process View & Design Theory

DISSERTATION
of the University of St. Gallen,
School of Management,
Economics, Law, Social Sciences
and International Affairs
to obtain the title of
Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational
Studies and Cultural Theory

submitted by

David Griesbach
from
Thierachern (Bern)

Approved on the application of

Prof. Dr. Urs Fueglistaller

and

Prof. Dr. Johannes Rüegg-Stürm

Dissertation no. 4126

Difo Druck GmbH, Bamberg, 2012

The University of St. Gallen, School of Management, Economics, Law, Social
Sciences and International Affairs hereby consents to the printing of the present
dissertation, without hereby expressing any opinion on the views herein expressed.

St. Gallen, October 22, 2012

The President:

Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger

Preface

Research cannot be conducted in an empty box, without any influence from the
outside. The past and future play an important role in this dissertation, not only
content-wise but also literally. Science is an inherently dispersed, collective, and
collaborative act. I am therefore very grateful to all the persons who have helped me
directly or indirectly in accomplishing this thesis.

First, I would like to thank Urs Fueglistaller and Johannes Rüegg-Stürm for
supervising the dissertation. They supported me with encouragement, conviction, and
openness to explore the problem and solution spaces of this process. I highly
appreciated their in depth analytical, theoretical, and practical experience, which
helped me to find the suitable empirical context and to sharpen and focus the content
of my thesis.

I would also like to cordially thank Simon Grand for continuously supporting the
development of this thesis. He always asked the questions I missed or tried to avoid.
Simon introduced me to the process of knowledge creation. He has been an important
source for inspiration and influenced the theoretical and practical aspects in this
dissertation.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the CEO of the textile company, who made it
possible to conduct ethnographic research. He was very open to the project right from
the beginning and granted me almost total access to the company. His trust and
openness was very important to meet the specific methodological requirements of this
dissertation.

I would also like to thank my colleagues at RISE Management Research for their
support, inspiration, discussions, and friendship.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Samira and my family. Without their inspiration, I

would not have chosen the same topic and the same way of approaching it. They have
always believed in me and in what I am doing. This has helped me tremendously.

Zurich, October 2012 David Griesbach

I
Table of Contents

Preface ............................................................................................................................. I

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... II

List of Figures ............................................................................................................... V

List of Tables ............................................................................................................... VI

List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................ VII

Abstract ..................................................................................................................... VIII

Zusammenfassung....................................................................................................... IX

PART I: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1
1.1. Research Gap and Focus .................................................................................. 1
1.2. Theoretical and Conceptual Basis .................................................................... 5
1.2.1. An Experienced Version of Time in the Strong Process View ............ 6
1.2.2. The Present as the Source of Organizational Change .......................... 6
1.2.3. Transcending the Micro-Macro Distinction through Situational
Abstracting and Potentializing for Future Situations ........................... 7
1.2.4. Opportunity Forming as an Incomplete Process of Exploring Problem
and Solution Spaces .............................................................................. 9
1.3. Structure of the Dissertation .......................................................................... 10

PART II: THEORETICAL EXPLORATION ........................................................ 12

2. Organizational Change in the Making: A Theoretical Perspective ................. 12

2.1. Time in Theories of Organizational Change .................................................. 13
2.1.1. The Traditional View of Time: Chronological and Objectified ......... 13
2.1.2. An Alternative View on Time: Experiencing its Dynamics in the
Present................................................................................................. 15
2.2. Conceptualizing Organizational Change in the Making ................................ 19
2.3. Mechanisms of Enacting Present Situations .................................................. 24
2.3.1. Mechanism 1: Influencing the Future by Enacting the Present .......... 26

II
 2.3.2. Mechanism 2: Influencing Enactments of the Present by Imagining a
Future .................................................................................................. 28
2.3.3. Mechanism 3: Influencing the Past by Enacting the Present ............. 31
2.3.4. Mechanism 4: Influencing the Enactment of the Present out of the Past
............................................................................................................ 33
2.3.5. Mechanism 5: Influencing the Present by Enacting the Present ........ 35
2.4. Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................ 37

PART III: EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION ............................................................. 43

3. Research Design and Methodology...................................................................... 43

3.1. Research Strategy ........................................................................................... 45
3.2. Research Setting: The Case of a Swiss Textile Company ............................. 46
3.3. Data Collection............................................................................................... 51
3.4. Data Analysis ................................................................................................. 56
3.5. Methodological limits in the strong process view ......................................... 63

4. Empirical Focus 1: Managing as Transcending the Present............................. 64

4.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 64
4.2. Theoretical Background ................................................................................. 66
4.2.1. Strong Process View as a Basis for Understanding the Interplay
between Situational Activity and Organizational Development ........ 66
4.2.2. Towards a Model of Managing as Transcending ............................... 69
4.3. Findings .......................................................................................................... 73
4.3.1. Mobilizing Pasts and Futures for Judgment and Justification ............ 73
4.3.2. Transcending the Present through Potentializing the Actual Situation
............................................................................................................ 86
4.3.3. Transcending the Present through Generalizing beyond Present
Situations ............................................................................................ 89
4.4. Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................ 95

5. Empirical Focus 2: Entrepreneuring as Continuous Opportunity Forming 101

5.1. Existing Perspectives on Entrepreneurial Opportunity ................................ 104
5.2. A Design Perspective on Opportunity Forming........................................... 108
5.3. Mechanisms of Opportunity Forming at GARN ......................................... 113
5.3.1. Mechanism A: Making Sense of the Problem Space ....................... 114

III
 5.3.2. Mechanism B: Making the Problem Space More Concrete ............. 117
5.3.3. Mechanism C: Valuing the Problem Space ...................................... 120
5.3.4. Mechanism D: Exploring Borders of the Problem Space ................ 122
5.3.5. Mechanism E: Targeting for the Solution Space .............................. 125
5.3.6. Mechanism F: Learning by Experiencing ........................................ 128
5.3.7. Mechanism G: (Mental) Implementing ............................................ 130
5.3.8. Mechanism H: Valuing the Solution Space...................................... 133
5.3.9. Mechanism I: Developing Guidance for the Solution Space ........... 135
5.3.10. Mechanism J: Limiting the Problem Space ...................................... 137
5.4. Discussion and Conclusion .......................................................................... 139

PART IV: SYNTHESIS ........................................................................................... 143

6. Overall Discussion and Conclusion ................................................................... 143

6.1. Summary and Theoretical Contributions ..................................................... 143
6.1.1. Contributions to the Subject of Time in Organization Studies......... 144
6.1.2. Contributions to the Situational Emergence of Change in Organization
Studies............................................................................................... 145
6.1.3. Contributions to Transcending the Micro-Macro Distinction in
Organization Studies......................................................................... 147
6.2. Practical Implications ................................................................................... 149
6.3. Limitations and Directions for Future Research .......................................... 152
6.4. Conclusion.................................................................................................... 153

References .................................................................................................................. 155

IV
List of Figures

Figure 1: Line of argument based on the strong process view ....................................... 8

Figure 2: Structure of the dissertation........................................................................... 10
Figure 3: Conceptualization of organizational change in the making .......................... 24
Figure 4: Mechanisms of enacting present situations ................................................... 24
Figure 5: Screenshot of Codings with MAXQDA 10 Software ................................... 60
Figure 6: Conceptualization of managing as transcending ........................................... 71
Figure 7: Modes of potentializing the actual situation (source author) ........................ 86
Figure 8: Modes of generalizing from the actual situation (source: author) ................ 90
Figure 9: Modes of transcending towards the future (source: author).......................... 94
Figure 10: Opportunity forming in the making based on design theory..................... 112
Figure 11: Mechanisms of opportunity forming at GARN ........................................ 113
Figure 12: Towards a more comprehensive model of emergence .............................. 147
Figure 13: The reciprocal influence between micro and macro aspects of organization
(adapted from Lewis & Suchan, 2003) ..................................................... 148

V
List of Tables

Table 1: Data sources .................................................................................................... 54

Table 2: Sequence of data collection events during July 2010 and July 2011 ............. 55
Table 3: Overview and description of managerial issues ............................................. 58
Table 4: Mechanisms of mobilizing the past in managerial judgment ......................... 74
Table 5: Mechanisms of mobilizing the future in managerial judgment ...................... 78
Table 6: Mechanisms of mobilizing the past in managerial justification ..................... 81
Table 7: Mechanisms of mobilizing the future in managerial justification .................. 85
Table 8: Mechanisms A ‘Making sense of the problem space’ .................................. 115
Table 9: Mechanism B ‘Making the problem space to be more concrete’ ................. 118
Table 10: Mechanism C ‘Valuing the problem space’ ............................................... 120
Table 11: Mechanism D ‘Exploring the borders of the problem space’..................... 123
Table 12: Mechanism E ‘Targeting the solution space’ ............................................. 126
Table 13: Mechanism F ‘Learning by experiencing’.................................................. 128
Table 14: Mechanism G ‘(Mental) Implementing’..................................................... 130
Table 15: Mechanism H ‘Valuing the solution space’ ............................................... 133
Table 16: Mechanism I ‘Developing guidance for the solution space‘ ...................... 135
Table 17: Mechanism J ‘Limiting the problem space‘ ............................................... 137

VI
List of Abbreviations

CEO Chief Executive Officer

e.g. for example
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
EU European Union
IP Internet Protocol
IT Information Technology
SPV Strong Process View

VII
Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to further develop the theory of organizational change
and the theory of management on the basis of the strong process view as well as to
further develop the theory of entrepreneurship on the basis of design theory.
Traditionally, organizational change has been conceptualized as a retrospective
difference between two static states and as a sequence of process steps unfolding over
time, thereby loosing the inherent dynamics and uncertainty of an ever-transforming
world. In contrast to this, the strong process view gives ontological priority to
processes and acknowledges that the process of organizing is a situated act, being
confronted with complexity and ambiguity. However, most of the contributions in the
strong process view are theoretical and philosophical in nature. A coherent
conceptualization, which allows for empirical examinations, is missing. This research
gap is addressed theoretically and it is applied in the field of management research.
Similar to the strong process view, design theory focuses on present activities and aims
at explaining how ill-defined problems and not yet knowable solutions are
situationally enacted and matched. It serves as a basis to further develop the theory of
entrepreneurship by suggesting a situational conceptualization of opportunity forming.
This allows meeting the call for integrating the theories of opportunity discovery and
opportunity creation, which is the second gap addressed. Following this, the
dissertation answers three research questions: (1) How can organizational change in
the making be conceptualized for empirical studies? (2) How does the situational
nature of management influence distributed organizing? (3) How are opportunities
being formed from the perspective of a situational design theory?
In the theoretical part, organizational change in the making is conceptualized as a
continuous enactment of present situations and issues by referring to the past and
future. Thereby, organizational enactments in the future are influenced by collectively
creating generalizations and potentialities. Based on an ethnographic single case study,
the first empirical focus explores how management transcends its situational
interactions towards the organizational and vice versa by judging and justifying
current issues. The second empirical focus conceptualizes and examines opportunity
forming as a continuous process of exploring and matching problem and solution
spaces. Several mechanisms of managing and opportunity forming can be identified.

VIII
Zusammenfassung
Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist, die Theorie organisationaler Veränderung und die
Management-Theorie basierend auf der „Strong Pross View (SPV)“ sowie die
Entrepreneurship-Theorie basierend auf der Design-Theorie weiter zu entwickeln.
Traditionell wird organisationale Veränderung als Unterschied zwischen zwei
statischen Zuständen konzeptionalisiert. Dabei geht die in der Veränderung enthaltene
und eigentlich zu erklärende Dynamik verloren. Der SPV folgend besteht die Welt in
erster Linie aus Prozessen, wobei Stabilitäten temporär konstruiert werden. Diese
Sichtweise anerkennt die Komplexität und Mehrdeutigkeit, mit denen
Organisationsmitglieder laufend konfrontiert sind. Bis anhin sind die Beiträge in der
SPV jedoch hauptsächlich theoretischer und philosophischer Natur. Es fehlt eine
kohärente Konzeptionalisierung, die es erlaubt, organisationale Veränderung
empirisch zu untersuchen, ohne diese als Unterschied zwischen statischen Zuständen
zu erklären. Die Dissertation trägt zu dieser Forschungslücke mit einer neu entwickel-
ten Konzeptionalisierung bei und wendet diese in der Managementforschung an.
In ähnlicher Weise zeigt die Designtheorie auf, wie noch nicht vorhandene Lösungen
für unklare Problemstellungen situativ entwickelt werden. Basierend darauf wird
untersucht, wie unternehmerische Opportunitäten sich fortlaufend formieren. Dies
trägt zu einer weiteren Forschungslücke, der Integration der Entdeckungs- und
Kreationsperspektiven in der Opportunitätsforschung, bei. Die Dissertation
beantwortet folgende Forschungsfragen: (1.) Wie kann organisationale Veränderung
als Echtzeit-Prozess für empirische Studien konzeptionalisiert werden? (2.) Wie
beeinflusst situatives Management die Makro-Aspekte organisationaler Prozesse? (3.)
Wie formieren sich Opportunitäten kontinuierlich basierend auf der Design-Theorie?
Im theoretischen Teil wird organisationale Veränderung als fortlaufendes Bewältigen
von Situationen mittels Referenzierung zur Vergangenheit und Zukunft konzeptionali-
siert. Durch Potenzialisierung und Generalisierung beeinflussen Situationen die
Makro-Aspekte organisationaler Prozesse und umgekehrt. Basierend auf einer ethno-
graphischen Einzelfallstudie untersuche ich diese Konzeptionalisierung aus Sicht der
Managementforschung. Im zweiten empirische Fokus wird untersucht, wie sich
Opportunitäten durch fortlaufendes Erkunden und Abstimmen von Problem- und
Lösungesräumen formen. Entsprechende Mechanismen und Praktiken des Manage-
ments und der Formierung von Opportunitäten werden identifiziert und interpretiert.

IX
PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction

Change is a central phenomenon in organization studies and in practice (Orlikowski,

1996; Poole & Van de Ven, 2004b; Porras & Silvers, 1991; Van de Ven & Poole,
2005). However, there are different understandings of organizational change that have
lead to varying and sometimes contradictory conceptualizations on the basis of
different ontological perspectives (Poole, 2004; Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). In
contrast to variance-based studies, organizational change has increasingly been
explained with the help of qualitative-based process studies, to better acknowledge the
dynamics of change (Langley, 2009; Schreyögg & Sydow, 2011). This development
can be traced back to Weick’s (1979) often-referred-to suggestion of using verbs such
as organizing instead of nouns such as the organization for stressing the dynamic
nature of processes. Several sub-fields within the organization studies have taken on
such a processual view as the theories of managing (Mintzberg, 2009) or those of
entrepreneuring (Steyaert, 2007). However, even among process theories,
considerably different ontological premises can be found. In this dissertation, I draw
on the specific difference between a weak and a strong process view (Langley, 2009)
to further develop the latter and I draw on design theory to further advance the theory
of entrepreneuring (Steyaert, 2007). The goal is to bring forward the processual
theories of organizational change and its subfields of managing and entrepreneuring by
developing and applying a conceptualization of the strong process view that allows for
empirical investigations and by developing a design based conceptualization of
opportunity-related processes.

1.1. Research Gap and Focus

The strong process view differs from the weak process view by giving ontological
priority to processes instead of entities (Langley, 2009). Traditionally, the weak
process view conceptualizes organizational change as the difference between two
static states (Poole & Van de Ven, 2004a). In such a perspective, an organization is

1
regarded as an entity, which changes its state over time until it reaches a different
state. In a strong process view, change and process are all there is, and consequently,
change is conceptualized as ongoing and emerging through activities that contribute to
what we perceive of the organization as a stable entity (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002).
Traditional theories are criticized to be ‘not sufficiently “process-based” to adequately
capture the dynamics of change’ (Chia, 1999: 209). Instead of viewing change as
something exceptional, when an organization transforms from one state to the other,
the strong process view regards the organization as a stabilized exception in a world
that consists of processes only (Chia, 1999; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Chia (1999: 217)
cites Rescher (1996) when using the metaphor of ‘stability waves in a sea of
processes’ (p. 53) to stress that what we perceive to be stable is exceptional rather than
what changes.

The potential of the strong process view is rich, although challenging for theory and
practice (Gergen, 2010; Shotter, 2010). By focusing on processes in the first place, this
view promises to better understand the inherent dynamics of how we experience
change in our everyday interactions (Chia, 1999), admitting that organizing and
organizational change are usually perceived as highly fractional, dispersed, uncertain,
and tangled processes (Hernes, 2008). If theory is abstracting away too much of the
uncertainty and complexity of the ‘mess’ of life, we create what Law (2004) calls a
‘new mess’ because ‘simple clear descriptions don’t work if what they are describing
is not itself very coherent’ (p. 2). However, the strong process view is practically
challenging as we tend to normalize and simplify processes and events in our everyday
life (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999), even more when theorizing (Law, 2004). We
have been trained to develop stable categories for knowledge creation (Gergen, 2010)
and in our language use (Weick, 1979). Chia specifies that

We are not good at thinking movement. Our instinctive skills favour the fixed and the
static, the separate and the self-contained. […] Our dominant models of change in
general and organizational change in particular are, therefore, paradoxically couched in
the language of stasis and equilibrium [emphasis in the original]. (Chia, 1999: 209)

Alongside this challenge, the strong process view increasingly gains attention among
process scholars (see e.g. the edited book on Process, Sensemaking and Organizing by

2
Hernes & Maitlis, 2010). Still, the difficulty of being consistent with its own claim is
maintained, as every attempt to develop scientific accounts involves the creation of
some sort of fixed categories, which ironically have to represent the inherent dynamics
of a flowing live process (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). The risk of not meeting its own
requirements has probably led to the fact that most of the contributions in a strong
process view are theoretical and often philosophical in nature (Mullarkey, 2010).
There are only few empirical studies in the strong process view (Van de Ven & Poole,
2005).

One of the few examples of empirical studies in a strong process view is represented
by Wiebe (2010). On the basis of qualitative interviews, he explores how managers
narrate and thereby make sense of their experience in implementing change from the
perspective of time. He identifies five ‘worlds’, within which managers perceive
change and time differently. Some managers, for example, do not experience change at
all and consequently stress continuity while not identifying the differences between the
past and the present. On the other hand, some managers experience change as an
unrelenting phenomenon that never stops. Consequently, discontinuity is stressed
while prevalently focusing on an instable future. The study reveals valuable insights
about the different perceptions of change and time within a process of planned change.
However, I argue that empirical studies in a strong process view can be even more
processual. It can be argued that the contribution of Wiebe (2010) is still based on the
retrospective and entitative accounts of managers. They reflect on change and time in
substance-based terms, still referring to change as the difference between two static
states. There are missing the studies of how change emerges in real time in a strong
process view, acknowledging that organizational actors are not fully aware of the
emergence, but have to live and act through it in the ongoing flow of organizational
life. The goal of the dissertation is to contribute to this research gap and to
conceptualize organizational change from a strong process view. The aim is to build a
basis for empirically examining organizational change in the making. In this sense, I
try to ‘stop making (philosophical) sense’ only (Mullarkey, 2010: 38) and contribute to
how organizational change and its related concepts of managing and entrepreneuring
can be empirically explored in an ontology of becoming. On the basis of this goal, I
study three research questions:

3
How can organizational change in the making be conceptualized for empirical
studies?
(Theoretical exploration)

How does the situational nature of managing influence distributed organizing?

(Empirical focus 1)

How are opportunities being formed from the perspective of a situational design
theory?
(Empirical focus 2)

In the theoretical part, a conceptualization of organizational change in the making is

developed, which allows conducting empirical studies on the basis of the strong
process view. The first empirical focus applies and adapts the theoretical
conceptualization in the field of management research. On the basis of design theory,
the second empirical focus as well concentrates on how change emerges out of
situational enactments. It contributes to the field of entrepreneurship research
examining opportunity-related processes.

I am aware that any empirical endeavour in the strong process bears the above
mentioned difficulty of creating some sort of stabilized categories again, which may
miss the full dynamics of a processual world (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). However, I
think it is worthwhile and helpful to further develop our understanding of
organizational change beyond the comparison of the organization as an entity at
different points in time. I am furthermore convinced that the full potential for
empirical studies in a strong process view has not been tapped yet. Therefore, it is
important to bear in mind that the strong process view requires to ‘truly learn to think
in different terms than our largely substance-based educations have prepared for us’
(Van de Ven & Poole, 2005: 1390). Acknowledging these challenges, the study is an
attempt to further develop a theory, admitting that this is an incomplete process (Law,
2004) and a risky account (Latour, 2005: 121).

4
1.2. Theoretical and Conceptual Basis
Alongside the risk of missing to some extent the full dynamics of a processual world
by having to create stable categories for studying and communicating scholarly results
(Van de Ven & Poole, 2005), there is another challenge we are confronted with in the
strong process view. The situational character of an ever-changing world requires real-
time studies of micro-phenomena, while having to explain organizational change as a
phenomenon, which usually is perceived of in macro terms. In real time, it is not
predictable which micro-phenomena will become institutionalized and which will not
(Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). One could be tempted to identify how the micro aspects of
organizing influence the macro aspects over time. However, this would again imply a
weak process view. The institutionalization of the emergent micro-phenomena should
not be conceptualized as developing over time. If the difference between micro-
activities is compared on a time line (see e.g. Orlikowski, 1996), it still refers to a
weak process view (Langley, 2009). This problem gives rise to the question of how
organizational change can be conceptualized as an emergent phenomenon in the
making while not creating sequences of events, but still involving the macro aspects of
organizing. In the theoretical part and for the first empirical focus, I mainly point out
and analyze the specific aspects of the strong process view to develop and apply a
conceptualization that avoids sequencing over time and still integrates the influence
between micro and macro aspects of organizing. In addition, I make use of design
theory (Cross, 2006; Schön, 1984; Simon, 1996) for the second empirical focus. While
the strong process view builds the main theoretical basis for the dissertation, it is not
explicitly discussed in the second empirical part. However, several premises such as a
focus on situational emergence and on the mechanisms of coping with situational
issues also hold true within the design-based conceptualization of the second empirical
focus.

In the following, I will explain in condensed form why and how specific aspects of the
strong process view such as time, the present, potentiality, and generalization are
important to develop a conceptualization of organizational change in the making that
allows for empirical investigations. Furthermore, I will explain the role and use of the
design theory for the second empirical focus. The goal is to give a first overview of the

5
conceptual arguments that will follow in the theoretical and empirical exploration in
the second and the third part of the dissertation.

1.2.1. An Experienced Version of Time in the Strong Process View

The understanding of time in a strong process view fundamentally differs with the
main body of literature on change and process within the organizational theory. It
contrasts an experienced version of time and change to an objectified and
chronological idea of the physical clock-time (see especially Chia, 1999). While some
authors have made contributions regarding time and organizations (e.g. Bluedorn &
Denhardt, 1988; Hassard, 1996; McGrath & Rotchford, 1983), only few have written
about how time is experienced (e.g. Butler, 1995; Mosakowski & Earley, 2000). Their
understanding of experiencing time is, however, not as I interpret the call for an
experienced version of time according to the strong process view. Traditionally, the
experience of time is still grounded on the physical clock-time. For example,
Mosakowski and Earley (2000) and Butler (1995) conceptualize the experience of time
as a deviation of a linear clock-time. The experience of time differentiates by how fast
or how regular one perceives events to occur over time. However, time and change are
still measured on a physical timeline. The advocates of the strong process view
criticize the linearity of clock-time to lead to a conceptualization of change in spatial
terms, thereby missing the dynamics that were intended to be explained (Chia, 1999).
If the dynamics and flux of change, as we are experiencing them in each situation
within the flow of life, should be in the focus of study, the experience of time is
regarded to be an experience from within. In other words, the strong process view
suggests an experience of the dynamics of change in time during its occurrence and by
referring to the past and the future as opposed to a subjective experience of time. In the
theoretical part, I will elaborate on these differences and thoughts in more detail.

1.2.2. The Present as the Source of Organizational Change

If the dynamics of change are experienced in time from within instead of from the
outside (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002), the present becomes the source of change and the
focus of conceptualizing and studying organizational change in the making. Several
philosophers not only served as a theoretical basis for the strong process view but also

6
regarded the present as the source of change and as a starting point for understanding
the dynamics of change in process ontology. Whitehead, for example, suggests the
notion of ‘actual occasions’ as the only possibility to conceptualize a world of
processes without substances (in Hernes, 2008: 44). Mead ([1932] 2002) similarly
explicates that ‘the world is a world of events’ (p. 35) and regards the present as the
locus of reality. He thereby maintains an understanding of time and reality first
formulated by the philosopher St. Augustine in the 4th century AD (Adam, 2004).
Accordingly, only the present and the situation at hand are real, while the past and the
future are cognitive constructions that allow for experiencing change and time in the
present. Chia (1999: 220) has mentioned the notion of immanence to stress that each
situation in the present incorporates the past as it represents an application of one of
the many possibilities and potentialities that the situations in the past have created. In
turn, each situation creates new possibilities and potentialities for future situations.
The past and the future are thus not only cognitively constructed to make sense of the
present but are immanent in each situation. I will come back on these thoughts in more
detail in the theoretical part and for the first empirical focus.

1.2.3. Transcending the Micro-Macro Distinction through Situational

Abstracting and Potentializing for Future Situations
The present as a source of change and as starting point for exploring change as a
dynamic phenomenon experienced within situations allows avoiding the problem of
conceptualizing change as a sequential development over time as it is propagated in a
weak process view. However, the focus on situations bears the risk of overly focusing
on micro-activities, and hence, might miss to explain the organizational or the
institutional (Chia & MacKay, 2007). We cannot know what local initiatives may
become institutionalized (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) without comparing different static
states at different times. However, we can try to understand how the situational and
emergent creates the potential to become institutionalized in the future. Drawing on
Whitehead, Hernes (2008) introduces the distinction between the actual and the
potential to further stress that the actual within situations in the present creates
potential for future organizing. He furthermore stresses the distinction between the
concrete and the abstract, to show that making sense of experiences in the present
requires abstractions. This is similar to Chia’s (1999) notion of immanence in that the

7
abstract of the past and the future are actualized in the present. In turn, actualizing
previous abstractions creates again new abstractions and thereby potentially influences
future organizing. I furthermore argue that relating the situation to a heterogeneous
past and a heterogeneous future creates tensions in the present that have to be
collectively coped with. By coping with these tensions, temporary abstractions are
continuously created and recreated, which potentially influences future organizing.
Following this, if we are able to make the relating and mobilizing of the past and the
future explicit, we make immanence explicit and therefore are able to better
understand change as a situational and emergent phenomenon. Furthermore, we may
understand how the situation transcends toward the organizational and vice versa by
observing how tensions arise and are being coped with, thereby creating temporary
abstractions and potentialities for future organizing. This argument is further explored
in the theoretical part and for the first empirical focus.

To following graph concludes the line of argument developed above by referring to

specific aspects of the strong process view such as time, the present, the abstract, and
potentiality (see figure 1):

Time and change is The present and its The past and the To deal with
experienced through situations build the future are however situations in the
the ongoing flow of source of change; immanent in present present, we
our life. Compari- the past and the situations. explicitly or
sons of static states future are construc- implicitly refer to
create only an ted abstractions of the past and the
abstraction of reality. future.
change.

Relating the past, By collectively Acts of relating,

the present and the coping with these abstracting and
future creates tensions, temporary potentializing
tensions that have to abstractions and transcend the
be coped with. potentialities are situation and the
created, which organizational.
influence future
organizing.

Figure 1: Line of argument based on the strong process view

8
1.2.4. Opportunity Forming as an Incomplete Process of Exploring Problem and
Solution Spaces
Drawing mainly on the strong process view and on time in the form of past, present
and future relations in the theoretical part and for the first empirical focus, design
theory builds the basis for the second empirical focus, while at the same time
implicitly staying close to important basic assumptions of the strong process view.
Design theory is concerned with how the new emerges and comes into being (Cross,
2006). I make use of this theory for conceptualizing and empirically exploring how
opportunities are continuously being formed. Opportunities can be regarded as a more
specific but integral part of the process of entrepreneuring (Steyaert, 2007). I apply a
perspective on the process of designing that regards opportunities as not reaching
completeness (Garud, Jain, & Tuertscher, 2009). In this view, the design of
opportunities is continuously in a process of becoming as it is propagated in the strong
process view (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Another similarity, the design theory shows in
relation to the strong process view is its clear focus on situational activities and how it
emerges in the making (Schön, 1984). Design theory allows for reconceptualising and
integrating the concepts of opportunity discovery and creation into a continuous and
open process of opportunity forming. While the relation of the present to the past and
the future is in the foreground in the theoretical part and the first empirical part, design
theory suggests conceptualizing opportunity forming as a process of exploring and
matching problem and solution spaces. In this sense, the temporal enactment of
situations is extended with an inherently value-laden and creational dimension
(Steyaert, 2007) in the form of problems and solutions or in other words new means-
ends relationships (Eckhardt & Shane, 2003; Joas, 1996).

9
1.3. Structure of the Dissertation
The argument of this dissertation is built along six chapters, which are grouped into
four parts (see figure 2):

Research Focus: Research Focus: Research Focus:

Organizational Change Managing Entrepreneurship

Part I
Introduction 1 Introduction

Part II Organizational
Theoretical 2 Change in
Exploration the Making

Part III
3 Research Design and Methodology
Empirical
Exploration Empirical Focus 1: Managing
4
as Transcending the Present
Empirical Focus 2: Entrepreneuring as
5 Continuous Opportunity Forming

Part IV
Synthesis 6 Overall Discussion and Conclusion

Figure 2: Structure of the dissertation

Part I, equalling chapter 1, has introduced the research gap and focus as well as the
theoretical and conceptual basis.

Part II starts below with chapter 2 developing a conceptualization of organizational

change in the making, which is meant to serve as a reference for empirical studies in a
strong process view and which allows comparing and classifying existing theoretical
concepts on the emergence of change.

Part III starts with clarifying the methodological approach and the research strategy.
The research partner is introduced and it is explained, why this is a suitable context
and basis for finding promising answers to the research questions. The chapter is

10
followed by two related but distinct empirical focuses. In chapter 4, the
conceptualization of the theoretical exploration is applied in an empirical study on the
process of managing. It adopts the conceptualization by extending it with the
suggestion that the management judges and justifies current issues and thereby
transcends the situational towards potential future organizing. Chapter 5 then keeps
close to the focus on the present in enacted situations, while extending the temporal
view with a creational perspective to contribute to the theory of entrepreneurship.
Drawing on design theory, the study in chapter 5 examines how opportunities are
formed by situationally exploring and matching problem and solutions spaces.

Finally, chapter 6 (part IV of the study) develops the overall learning and contributions
of the dissertation that have emerged in the theoretical and empirical parts. Several
practical implications are identified, terminating with some limitations of the study and
a number of open issues for future research.

11
PART II: THEORETICAL EXPLORATION

2. Organizational Change in the Making: A Theoretical

Perspective

Change is a central phenomenon in organizational research. However, there are

different and somehow contradictory understandings of it that have lead to varying
conceptualizations of organizational change (Ford & Ford, 1994: 279; Van de Ven &
Poole, 2005). The theories of organizational change can, for example, be distinguished
by the modes of change (e.g. a priori prescriptions versus emergence of events) or by
the units of change (e.g. individual-, group-, or organizational-level) (Van de Ven &
Poole, 1995). Other meta-theoretical reviews distinguish between the tempo and the
rhythms of change (Weick & Quinn, 1999). I add on this and try to further advance the
theorizing of organizational change by focusing on the role of time as an important
foundational premise (Ford & Ford, 1994). While several contributions have been
made regarding time and organizing (e.g. Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence, & Tushman,
2001; Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002), only few scholars have
chosen time as a focal point in their argumentation (Lee & Liebenau, 1999). In
particular, within the theories of organizational change, the aspects of time and its
consequences have only marginally and rather implicitly been discussed (Van de Ven
& Poole, 2005), even though change could be regarded as a phenomenon of time itself
(Ford & Ford, 1994). In this chapter, I analyze time and organizational change on the
basis of the strong process view (Chia, 1999; Hernes, 2008; Langley, 2009; Tsoukas &
Chia, 2002) and aim to further develop this perspective by suggesting a
conceptualization of organizational change in the making, which allows for empirical
investigations.

The chapter unfolds as follows. In the first chapter, I begin with an examination of
why time is central to the study of organizational change and with a problematization
of the chronological view on time that most theories on organizational change are
based on. I then show how and why an experienced version of time, as suggested by
the strong process view, helps to further advance theorizing of organizational change. I

12
proceed by explicating, why the present is regarded as the source of organizational
change in an experienced version of time and introduce the conceptualization of
organizational change in the making. In the second part, I further examine the
introduced conceptualization by illustrating the mechanisms of referring to the past
and the future with existing theories that implicitly or explicitly incorporate the past
and the future. On the one hand, theories such as sensemaking (Weick, 2001) or path
dependency and path creation (Garud & Karnoe, 2001) help us to better understand the
mechanisms proposed. On the other hand, the conceptualization and its mechanisms
help to classify and further clarify these theories. I conclude by discussing the
implications of the proposed conceptualization and offer suggestions for further
research.

2.1. Time in Theories of Organizational Change

In this chapter, I will examine why time is central to the study of organizational
change and why a chronological view on time is limited in explaining the dynamics of
change. Secondly, I will elaborate on an experienced version of time, which is
contrasted to the chronological view on time by the proponents of the strong process
view. On the basis of these insights, I am able to examine why the present should be
regarded as the source of organizational change and suggest a conceptualization of
organizational change in the making respectively.

2.1.1. The Traditional View of Time: Chronological and Objectified

Several authors have contributed their seminal works on time and organizations in
general, in which the temporal orientations (e.g. the length of a time horizon) or the
timing of actions have been studied and differentiated (e.g. Bluedorn & Denhardt,
1988; Hassard, 1996; McGrath & Rotchford, 1983). While the concept of change
particularly relies on temporality, time has not yet received substantial attention in
theories on change (Burrell, 1992; Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). Time in these studies
is often only implicitly referred to by writing about the past and the future and by
writing about change that unfolds over time (Langley, 2009).

13
In most theories on organizational change, the underlying logic of time applied is
based on clock-time in a chronological and linear manner (McGrath, 1988). On the
basis of the days, weeks, months, and years, we have objectified time by bracketing
our ongoing flow of life into hours, minutes, and seconds, in order to be able to, for
example, schedule an appointment or measure the length of an activity (McGrath &
Rotchford, 1983). The two major streams of organizational change theory – episodic
and continuous (Weick & Quinn, 1999) – usually apply a chronological view on time
and change. Episodic or punctuated-equilibrium theories conceptualize change as a
transformation of an organization from an equilibrium state at time t1 to an equilibrium
state at time t2, arguing that we can clearly distinguish between phases of change and
phases of stability and continuity (e.g. Gersick, 1991; Tushman & Romanelli, 1985).
Both states are assumed to lie on a chronological timeline, whereas change has
occurred on the timeline in-between the steady states. Several scholars have identified
that continuity and change are not necessarily successive but can also occur
simultaneously and that change may occur continuously (S. L. Brown & Eisenhardt,
1997; Orlikowski, 1996). From a macro-perspective, we might identify change as a
difference between two steady states, but by applying a micro-perspective,
organizational change can alternatively be conceptualized as an ongoing adaption and
adjustment (Weick & Quinn, 1999). As such, the continuous-view started to depart
from a strict linearity and realized that the inherent dynamics of change may get lost
when comparing two static states. Orlikowski (1996) for example criticizes the
primacy of stability within the episodic theories of change and develops an alternative
view of organizational change that continuously emerges through situational practices
of organizational actors. However, what remains unchanged when compared to the
punctuated-equilibrium view is the underlying assumption of a chronological view on
time. Orlikowski (1996) empirically identifies several different phases in which
practices and structures are altered ‘over time’ (p. 69), and she displays the phases
called ‘metamorphoses’ on a timeline during her case study (p. 70). While the
continuous view on organizational change makes an important contribution to
identifying that the dynamic of change is emergent and omnipresent, it grounds its
arguments on chronological and linear clock-time.

14
The use of a chronological time perspective bears a fundamental challenge when
trying to explain and theorize change as an inherently dynamic and emergent concept.
Physical clock-time requires to be bracketed into several points on a continuous
timeline. To conceptualize change, several steady states have to be compared and the
difference between the steady states is what can be explained as change (Chia, 1999).
For the difference to be perceived, time needs to have passed from one state to the
other, and thus, change can only be identified retrospectively with a certain temporal
distance. Conceptualizing change in this way bears a fundamental downside. The
inherent dynamics within the movement of change are left aside. The difference
between fixed states does not resemble our lived experience of change anymore (Chia,
1999). In other words, its distinguishing features such as the fluidity, pervasiveness,
open-endedness, or indivisibility get lost (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002: 570).

In the last years, several authors started to propagate a strong process view (Chia,
1999; Hernes, 2008; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) which points to the problems of a
chronological view of time when conceptualizing organizational change. In this view,
change is the norm and stability is the exception. The world consists of processes only,
while entities are stabilizations and constructs within the ongoing flow of life. The
organization as an entity is regarded to be the reification of the processes that maintain
the organization by continuously constructing and de-constructing its boundaries (Van
de Ven & Poole, 2005). In the next chapter, I will highlight the specific experience of
time and change, the strong process view is grounded on, to build a theoretical basis
for developing a conceptualization of organizational change in the making

2.1.2. An Alternative View on Time: Experiencing its Dynamics in the Present

The strong process view is not first to contrast the linear physical time with a
subjective experience of time. Mosakowski and Early (2000), for example, write about
different time assumptions within strategy research. They differentiate between an
objective and subjective experience of time, while the subjective experience of time is
about how multiple views of time (for example, if a planned deadline appears to be
early or late) influences organizational action. Butler (1995) defines four different
categories of multiple time conceptions: clock-time, organic time, strategic time, and
spasmodic time. To differentiate the categories, he draws on how homogenously or

15
heterogeneously actors perceive the past and the future in general. In a clock-time
conception, for example, actors perceive the past in a homogenous way and must have
a highly congruent vision of the future. The other extreme is a spasmodic time view, in
which actors conceive past events in a heterogeneous way and envision the future also
with little congruence. Butler differentiates time experiences on the basis of what our
assumptions on time are, and accordingly, how we codify the knowledge about past
events. If we assume time and organizations to work like clockworks, the past is
assumed to carry forward into the future, and therefore, the future can be predicted on
the basis of past experience. In a spasmodic time view, Butler explicates, the present is
experienced through events that are irregular and novel. Following this, the past has
different meanings and the future is ambiguous.

The examples of existing contributions on an experienced version of time try to depart

from the linearity and chronology of clock-time. However, the individual view on time
is still based on a linear and objectified idea of time, although the perception among
the individuals differs. If, for example, a planned deadline appears closer for one
person compared to the other, the difference in the experience of time is a difference in
the experience of clock-time. The deadline can be regarded as a clear point on a
physical time line reaching to the future. What differs between the people is how they
perceive the distance between the present and the deadline on the timeline. The
temporal experience can be distinguished as if a trained runner perceives a trail of ten
kilometres to be short, whereas an unathletic person is barely capable of running such
distances. The measure of reference stays unchanged: ten kilometres. In this sense, the
different temporal experiences are still based on physical time, perceiving temporal
distances in a different way. Butler (1995) goes the furthest and forestalls the more
radical view of an experienced time in the strong process view by introducing the
extreme case of perceiving time in a spasmodic way. In contrast to a linear clock-time
or a cyclical organic time, the author talks of spasmodic time as being elastic on the
basis of irregular events in the present and depending on different demands in the
moment. But even in such an irregular and heterogeneous environment, elasticity is
conceptualized in relation to a linear clock-time idea. While the organic time is
regarded as occurring less precise than linear clock-time and in cycles, the spasmodic
time seems to be even less regular. The degree of regularity or irregularity is

16
conceptualized as a deviation from the linearity of clock-time, and as such implies
clock-time as the point of reference similar to the runners example mentioned above.

The strong process view does not regard the experienced version of time as a different
interpretation and deviation from the linearity of clock-time, but more radically, as an
alternative stance on the dynamics of change based on an ontology, in which the world
consists of processes only. According to the strong process view, clock-time is
‘conveniently construed in spatial terms and thereby rendered infinitely divisible’
(Chia, 1999: 216), which enables movement to be reformulated by comparing different
states on a timeline. Existing contributions about the experience of time did not
question the idea that time is construed in spatial terms on a timeline. No matter how
narrow or irregular the points on the timeline may appear, it stays a spatial
representation of the continuing flux and flow of time as we experience it within each
moment. The movement of change is explored from the outside instead of from within
(Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). To explore the inherently dynamic nature of change from
within, a different kind of experienced time needs to be applied. Such a kind of time is
best described as the dynamics and changes we continuously experience in each
moment, living forward into the future and departing from the past. It is a focus on the
lived experience in time, rather than the experience of time as a subjective
interpretation of the objectified clock-time. Experience in time could be compared to
what Schutz (1971) describes with a stream of consciousness from one present
moment to the other through which we experience the present, reflecting on past and
future events. Lived change, in which movement is not conflated with trajectory (Chia,
1999), has to be part of real-time experiences. Consequently, a conceptualization of
change in the making must focus on the experience itself which can only occur as
activities and mechanisms in the present. It is evident that such a radical shift in
conceptualizing time and change has major implications for our ways of conducting
research and presenting insights.

This brings us two at least two challenges the strong process view is confronted with.
The first challenge, Van de Ven and Poole (2005) point out, is the difficulty to be
consistent with its own claim of better grasping the dynamics of change. If we want to
study the flux and fluidity of a processual world, the explanations and interpretations

17
of such a world are themselves fixed statically to scientific accounts. This challenge
represents an epistemological problem that holds true for every representational act in
research. By writing accounts of experiences, we lose the quality of the experience. If
a paper is written about an experiment in physics, the paper also is only a written
account that represents the experiment. Even though this problem cannot be solved
entirely, I try to be as close and honest to the dynamic experience in the present as
possible. A second challenge of the strong process view can be identified in the micro-
macro distinction. When comparing two static states, organizational change is
regarded to be a macro-phenomenon. The reason for this lies probably in the human
cognition because macro changes may become recognized more easily than the
changes we experience in everyday moments. We need to continuously filter the huge
amount of information that could potentially be processed all the time. In order to
prevent an overload of information, our habituated filter puts meaning to and
remembers only the events that have been attributed to be important to us (Daft &
Weick, 1984). However, if the world consists of processes and emerges continuously,
we need to take a closer look at the micro-phenomenon of emergence that we usually
miss or at least do not refer to as ‘organizational change’. Tsoukas and Chia (2002)
accordingly remark that even though in a strong process view, there are ongoing and
emerging processes, this does not mean that the entitative construction of the
organization constantly changes because ‘the local initiatives, improvisations, and
modifications individuals engage in may go unrecognized; opportunities may not be
officially taken up, imaginative extensions may not break through existing
organizational culture – in short, local adaptations may never become institutionalized’
(p. 580). It is difficult to identify which local adaptations may become institutionalized
and later identified as a macro-phenomenon. This is probably one of the reasons why
there are only few empirical studies of a strong process view (Van de Ven & Poole,
2005). To study the experience of change according to the strong process view, a
conceptualization of organizational change in the making is missing, which allows to
empirically investigate how organizational change occurs from a strong process view,
while trying to stay as dynamic as possible and while integrating macro-aspects of
organizing. This is the research gap I address in this chapter.

18
2.2. Conceptualizing Organizational Change in the Making
So far, we have identified that organizational change as an experience in time differs
considerably from organizational change as an experience of time. Traditional
conceptualizations regard organizational change as evolving over time (Dawson,
1997), in which change is defined as a comparison between states on a timeline of
physical clock-time. In contrast to this, my goal is to develop a conceptualization that
acknowledges the inherently dynamic, flux, and uncertain nature of change as it
happens. In other words, I try to explore the nature of change from within instead of
from the outside (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002).

To conceptualize organizational change from within, I suggest focusing on the present

moment and on the activities that occur in such moments. In the present, the inherently
dynamic nature of change and time is experienced as we live through our lives.
Several philosopher (e.g. Mead, [1932] 2002; Whitehead, 1929) do not only build the
basis for the strong process view, but also regard the present moment as the source of
time and as the starting point for understanding change in a world that consists of
processes only. Their contributions to time in social life and to the conceptualizations
of process and change have, for example, been examined by Adam (2004) or Hernes
(2008). Whitehead refers to the notion of ‘actual occasions’ as the only way to
conceptualize a world of processes, in which there is no substance (in Hernes, 2008:
44). He pursues a radical view of a processual world, in which there are only events
and experiences, and in which objects exist only as abstractions from events (Hernes,
2008). The focus on the present is furthermore supported by 18th-century philosopher
Kierkegaard, who writes about ‘the instant’ that is the ‘ambiguous moment in which
time and eternity touch one another, thereby positing the temporal’ (in Adam, 2004:
55). Also, Mead ([1932] 2002) remarks that ‘the world is a world of events’ (p. 35)
and focuses his philosophy on the present as the locus of reality:

If anything that exists is in some genuine sense temporal, as so many philosophers seem
now to agree, then its foothold in reality is to be found in that present within which it
not merely was or will be but effectively is, in the full and categorical sense. In a
temporalist philosophy the tenses of the verb “to be” must be taken seriously, and Mr.
Mead’s theory is, above anything else, a philosophy of nature in the present tense. It

19
 seeks to understand the world as centred in a present, and to locate past and future,
meanings and possibilities, in their function with respect to it. (Introduction of Arthur E.
Murphy, p. 11)

According to Mead there is nothing but the present, while the past and the future are
only constructed. As such, he continues an understanding of time and reality that was
first formulated by the philosopher and theologian St. Augustine at the end of the
fourth century AD (Adam, 2004).

While I suggest focusing on the present moment, the dynamical nature of change and
time in the present can only be experience because there is a past and a future.
According to Schutz’s (1971) notion of the stream of consciousness, we experience the
flow and thus the dynamics of an ongoing life by perceiving how one moment fades
away in the form of an immediate past while a new moment becomes real out of an
immediate future. As soon as an experience has faded away, there is only an
impression left, a mental picture. When having put meaning to the experience, the
impression may become memory and part of the past (Daft & Weick, 1984). There is
no experience of time in the past or in the future. However, because of the ongoing
flow of our live that continuously leaves a past into a future, time and the dynamics of
change can be experienced on the basis of constructed and experienced pasts and of
imagined and desired futures. St. Augustine similarly mentions that there is only time
in the present, because the present continuously becomes a new present, and if not, the
present would be eternal (Augustinus, 1997). Referring to St. Augustine, Adam (2004)
specifies that life involves the „interaction of memory, perception, desires and
anticipation’ (p. 53). And also Mead stresses the need for integrating the past and the
future in the conceptualization of change and process, because the present implicates
the past and the future to become the source of change (in Adam, 2004: 64). Referring
to Mead, Adam (2004) further specifies that if the present did not implicate past and
future and if one moment would not be distinguishable from the other, we would not
be able to conceive of ‘change and continued existence’ (p. 65). The implication of the
past and the future in the present, however, is not only cognitive in nature. Chia (1999)
introduces the notion of immanence when promoting the strong process view to stress

20
that activities in the present are influenced by the past and in turn will influence the
future beyond mere cognition:

[…] organizational outcome or ‘effect’ always already incorporates and hence

implicates the ‘weight’ or ‘traces’ of its genealogical past, which, in turn, creates
potentialities for the future as well as constrains it. According to this principle of
immanence, the past is immanent in the present and this fact implies that each outcome,
each situation or state, always necessarily incorporates and absorbs the events of its
past. Thus, the present is not merely the linear successor of the past but a novel outcome
of it. Each moment of duration absorbs the preceding one, transforming it and with it
the whole, constituting at each stage of the process a novel and never-to-be-repeated
occasion necessarily grounded in its past, but always projected towards a not-yet-
knowable future. Each happening or ‘event’ represents the actual realizing of one of the
many possibilities presented by the past configuration of events. This constitution of the
present by the past is a particular case of the necessary immanence of one thing in
others. More importantly, this objectivity of the past in the subjective present means that
contemporary fact is always loaded with possibilities and can be continually enriched
with newer and novel meanings, understandings and application. (p. 220)

According to the principle of immanence, the past and the future are not only
cognitively constructed to experience time and change in the present, but the present is
inextricably tied to actions of the past and of the future. The principle of immanence
allows to focus on the present, while relating it to the temporally and spatially
dispersedness of organizing (Tsoukas, 1996). The heterogeneous experiences and
versions of the past and the future represent the dispersed nature of organizing when
different organizational members collaborate while they are organizing in the present.
In this sense, to conceptualize the dynamical nature of change and time in the present,
the influence of the past and of the future have to be taken into account. By making
explicit how the past and the future are related to the present and how the present is
related to the past and the future, it is possible to examine how change occurs as an
ongoing process of organizing in present situation while at the same time incorporating
the temporally and spatially dispersed nature of organizing. I thus suggest
conceptualizing organizational change in the making as a continuous referencing to
and from the past in order to cope with existing situation. If organizational change

21
emerges out of referring to the past and the future within situations in the present, it
allows us to shed light on the ambiguity the lies in the present situations (Adam,
2004). Such a real-time-conceptualization allows overcoming an over-emphasize on
micro-activities (Chia & MacKay, 2007) and examining the uncertainty experienced in
situations by organizational members under study (Langley, 2009).

Alongside other influences, uncertainty and ambiguity in situations emerges out of

tensions that arise when relating the past, present, and future. Through the
confrontation of the past and the future in the present situation, there may be
differences among the three which need to be coped with. Past ways of dealing with
certain situations may for example become obsolete because of specific circumstances
in the situation at hand. And expectations about a certain future may have an impact on
what actions today might support the expectation.

Tensions are coped with in the enactment of present situations. Enactment is a notion
suggested by Karl Weick. It is understood as a reciprocal process between
organizations and their environment. Weick (1979) defines enactment as the ‘active
process of organizational members creating the environments which then impose on
them’ (p. 130). While enactment originally tries to explain the relationship between
organizations and their environment, I suggest additionally considering the
relationship between the organizations and their respective past and future. The
relationship between organizations and environments could be regarded as the
enactment of space, whereas the relationship between organizations and their
respective past and future can be considered as the enactment of time. Following the
argumentation above, the enactment of the present influences the construction and re-
construction of the past and the future. In turn, the past and the future influence the
enactments in the present and so forth. Thus, by enacting present situations and
collectively solving tensions, organizing is influenced beyond the situation as future
enactments will depend on present enactments. Hernes (2008) introduces two
important distinctions, which support the influence on future organizing: the difference
between the actual and the potential and the difference between the concrete and the
abstract. The concept of immanence (Chia, 1999) reveals that the present situation is
one of the possibilities created in the past, while it in turn creates possibilities for

22
future situations. Thus by conceptualizing organizational change as referencing to and
from the future and the past, the enactment of the present involves creating potential
for the future by acts of abstraction. Referring to Whitehead’s radical view on
processes, Hernes (2008) explicates the relationship between actual and potential
situations as follows:

Events make processes, and they can make processes only by connecting to other
events. Also, they can make up processes only by embodying the past, the present and
the future. In other words, for events to make up processes they have to form
transitions. In this lies an inherently process view, however difficult it may seem for
practical research. (p. 45)

And he furthermore stresses the influence of abstractions when influencing potential

situations:

However, progress does not come about with concrete experience alone; we need
abstractions for experiences to make sense. […] [and] abstractions influence concrete
experience as well. […] [however, abstractions] have the nasty way of taking over from
concrete experience, in the sense that they may be mistaken for concrete experience. (p.
5-6)

The suggested conceptualization includes the potential from the past which is
actualized within situations, which in turn create potentialities for future situations by
abstracting from the concrete experience. Different experiences and expectations of
organizational members are collected, discussed, and negotiated within the situation.
By levelling the experiences and expectations, interpretations of the past, the present
and the future are collectivized and normalized. The organizational members develop a
similar understanding of concrete situations. Out of this process, temporary
abstractions are derived which potentially influence future organizing. Following this,
I try to incorporate the potentiality for institutionalized change beyond the situation
(Tsoukas, 1996). The following graph shows a visualization of the conceptualization
of organizational change in the making as a continuous referencing to and from the
past in order to cope with existing situation while potentially influencing future
organizing (see figure 3):

23
 Influencing
Present
Past Future Future
Situation Organizing

Figure 3: Conceptualization of organizational change in the making

I will further deepen the thoughts on this conceptualization in the next section. By
analyzing several existing theories that implicitly or explicitly incorporate parts of the
aspects of referencing to and from the past and the future, I am able to illustrate the
conceptualization more in depth while at the same time helping to better understand
and classify the theories used for illustration.

2.3. Mechanisms of Enacting Present Situations

If organizational change is conceptualized as a situational coping in the present by
referencing to and from the past and the future, there are different ways of how the
enactment of the present influences the past and the future and vice versa. For
analytical reasons the act of referencing and its temporal influences can theoretically
be divided into five distinct mechanisms (see figure 4):

Past Present Future Description Existing Theories and Concepts

Influencing the future Trial-and-error, Experimentation,

Mechanism 1 by enacting the present Theory of Creative Action

Influencing enactments of Self-fulfilling prophecy, Imagination,

Mechanism 2 the present by imagining Organizational Foresight, Serious Play
a future Design Thinking, Forecasting and Planning
Influencing the past by Interpretation, Sensemaking,
Mechanism 3 enacting the present

Influencing the enactment of Organizational Routines, Path Dependency

Mechanism 4 the present out of the past and Path Creation,

Influencing the present by Western and Eastern Mindfulness

Mechanism 5 enacting the present

Figure 4: Mechanisms of enacting present situations

24
Alongside Butler’s (1995) distinction between more and less heterogeneous ways of
collectively interpreting the past and the future, I am only aware of one contribution
that similarly draws on the reciprocal influence of the past, the present and the future
as a basis for a theoretical conceptualization: Cunha (2004) contrasts the traditional
idea of organizational foresight that involves predicting the future by suggesting to
conceptualize foresight as invention. Instead of anticipating the shape of the future to
adapt, an inventive perspective of foresight is defined as ‘an attempt of articulation
between past experiences, today’s realities, and possible trajectories’ (p. 138). He
conceptualizes emergence within organizational change as temporal reflexivity in the
articulation between the past, present, and future. This idea is similar to the suggestion
of referencing to the past and the future. To further specify temporal reflexivity, Cunha
(2004) suggests nine different combinations of how past, present and future may be
intertwined what he calls ‘time travelling‘: (1) past-to-past, (2) past-to-present, (3)
past-to-future, (4) present-to-past, (5) present-to-present, (6) present-to-future, (7)
future-to-past, (8) future-to-present, and (9) future-to-future. I support his claim that
we need to understand how the past, present, and future interact, enable, and constrain
each other. I also support the idea of understanding emergence of change by focusing
on mechanisms what Cunha (2004) calls ‘time travelling‘. However, based on the
focus on the enactment of the present, some of the time travelling mechanisms cannot
be conceptualized as enactments of present situations. The idea that the past influences
directly the future may be observed post-hoc. However, every influence of the past
requires an enactment of present situations in-between following the focus of enacting
present situation as source of organizational change in a strong process view.
Similarly, the future may not influence the future directly without an enactment of a
present situation. I therefore suggest to distinguish between five mechanisms of
enacting present situations out of which four mechanisms reference to and from the
past and the future and one shows no reference to the past and the future (see figure 4
above).

It is important to note that the distinction between the five mechanisms is analytical
and supported by several existing concepts and theories. Each of the mechanisms can
be regarded as a starting point which may influence the other mechanisms in turn. In
line with the principle of immanence (Chia, 1999), the mechanisms do not operate

25
independently but overlap and interact. However, I do not highlight how the
mechanisms influence each other to avoid creating sequences that would imply again
change as developing over time. The reciprocal nature of the past, present, and future
occurs in the present situation at the same time. The mechanisms take apart the
reciprocal nature of this influence for representational and illustrational reasons.

In the following, I will illustrate and discuss each mechanism separately by referring to
existing concepts and theories, which support and further explain the mechanisms. I
thereby focus on if and how existing theories conceptualize the idea that situations are
transformed and related to create potential for future situations.

2.3.1. Mechanism 1: Influencing the Future by Enacting the Present

The first mechanism is concerned with how enacting the present influences the future
as a direct consequence. Actions in the present have more or less an influence on the
future. Some of these actions influence the future directly in that they create conditions
which constrain the future actions in a very clear way. When I for example have an
accident with my car and the car is broken, it will most probably not be possible to
drive any longer with the same care the day after. The action of breaking the car
influences the action of the future as I will have to travel with the public transport
system. In addition to such a consequential change in artefacts, changes in the
imagination and perception about the possible futures occur as well. The action of
breaking the car can lead to an intensive reflection upon my own security and the
security of the others. If I am pessimistic and anxious, I could end up by concluding
not to drive in a private car anymore in order to reduce the risk of further accidents.
The future will then be imagined quite differently which ultimately leads to different
enactments of future situations.

Several existing concepts and theories support the idea that there is a general
mechanism of how enacting the present considerably influences the future and how we
perceive the future. Simple trial-and-error-processes influence how we perceive the
future. They can be regarded as probes into the future in contrast to analytical plans or
investments in any version of the future (S. L. Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997). Trial-and-
error is a rather spontaneous process, which focuses on trying something out in a

26
situation accidentally. If an action is successful, it may be reproduced in the future and
abstractions may be created from learning processes which influence future situations.
A similar, but more sophisticated and more structured approach to probe the future is
the concept of experimentation. It is future oriented in that artefacts, insights, and
learning are purposefully created to impact the future. While most of the management
and business literature considers experimentation to be substituted by informed
management, planning and analysis, several authors stress the important creative and
thus future-oriented characteristic of experimentation. Peters & Waterman (1982)
define experiments as small manageable tests that foster learning, while most
companies are criticized to prefer analysis and debate over trying out being paralyzed
by the fear of failure. Sitkin (1992: 243) suggests that experimenting is equal to
intelligent failure. The definitions and specifications show that experimentation is a
more informed probing into the future than simple and spontaneous trial-and-error-
processes. By conducting structured and reflected experiments, small failure will occur
early, will be identified as such early and thus foster learning about possible futures.
Furthermore, experimentation as a more structured way of learning allows more easily
abstracting for future situations that less structured and less reflected trail-and-error-
processes do.

The recent call for a theory of creative action (Joas, 1996) is another concept that
supports the first mechanism which assumes that the enactment of the present
influences the future. According to this theory, every action is necessarily creative as
we are confronted with tensions in situations for which we need to create solutions and
act on them (Kron, 2010). Action is regarded as the source of novelty and change
instead of solely as an adaptation process to constraining features and representations
of the world ‘outside’ (Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2006: 424). The theory admits that people
possess agency in the form of a potential to influence the social structure in the form of
identity (Grand & MacLean, 2003) and thus the future. However, identity and values
are not something that is pre-defined in a normative way but what continuously
emerges out of a collective coping with situations while reaching agreement on
temporarily solutions which have to be confirmed or adjusted in future situations
(Kron, 2010). While the present situation is the source of newness, the theory suggests
that the future is being influenced by coping with tensions that occur in situations.

27
All concepts ranging from trial-and-error-processes, experimentation to the theory of
creative action show a clear focus on how the situations in the present influence the
situations in the future and how learning in the present influences the future. The act of
coping with situations serves as starting point for identifying how the present
influences future organizing.

2.3.2. Mechanism 2: Influencing Enactments of the Present by Imagining a

Future
The second mechanism involves the question of how imagining one or several possible
futures influences how the present situations are enacted. In contrast to the first
mechanisms, not the situation itself builds the starting point but the future and how we
perceive the future. While there can be expectations about how the future most
probably may occur or intentions of how it should occur, the future remains unknown
and unknowable (Weick, 2006a). Even if we consider a near future, we are not able to
truly predict it. If we are for example sitting in a meeting with five persons discussing,
we can extrapolate from the present situation that within the next minutes, the same
five persons will still be sitting in the room and be discussing. However, one of the
persons could suddenly get angry because of the discussion and could leave the room.
This is an event that the extrapolation of the existing situation would not be possible to
reveal. However, if we expected that this person could get angry and leave the room,
we would change our actions in the present to prevent him from leaving. We would
probably further involve this person in the discussion or give more room to the claims
of the person. While on the other hand, if we expected the person to go on discussing
as done before, we would not try to prevent him from leaving. This example shows
that, the perception of an unknowable future influences how we enact present
situations. The imagination of the future and the related expectations and intentions
influence how we act in the present.

Several existing concepts and theories support the idea that the enactment of the
present is influenced by what we expect of the future. Either these concepts draw
directly on the influence possible futures might have on the enactment of the present or
they clarify how possible futures can be imagined, without considering its influence on
the present. The concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy most directly characterizes the

28
influence, imaginations and expectations of possible futures can have on the present
action. The concept was introduced by Robert K. Merton (1968), who suggests that
predictions of the future directly or indirectly cause themselves to become true. The
prophecy itself causes a positive feedback between belief and behaviour which
ultimately causes the prophecy to be fulfilled. Prophecy and predictions have a lot in
common with the notion of imagination. In the organizational theory, it has been
promoted by Weick (2006b) who defines that ‘imagination gives form to unknown
things and words turn these things into habituated meaning’ (p. 447). Imagination is
about making something unthought to become quasi-real in the here and now and thus
integrate the future into present actions. Weick explains this based on the premise that
organizing is about sensing and responding to surprise. Surprise may occur because it
is not expected as being possible (previously imagined but rejected as not possible) or
unthought (never been conceived of; a blind spot). If knowledge is used as a means to
manage surprise, the argumentation continues, knowledge can reduce what is
unthought of. However, increasing the imagined in organizations is difficult, as they
tend to be dominated by fixed categories, defined objects, and clear rules. Weick
stresses that organizations ‘tend to imagine the past and remember the future’ (p. 448)
instead of the other way around. In other words, truly new and truly unthought
expectations are difficult, because one tends to derive future expectations from past
experiences.

To work against the risk of remembering the future and being unable to think the
unthought, several concepts further specify, how predictions are created or changed.
The future has since long been of central interest for organizations and theorists alike.
In particular the discussion around the notion of organizational foresight tries to shed
light on how organizations can increase the potential to imagine previously unthought
futures. Tsoukas and Shepherd (2004a) for example regard organizational foresight as
an ability to anticipate different futures that might occur, while being aware that the
future is still unknowable. Referring to the philosopher Whitehead (1967), the authors
define foresight as ‘a deep understanding’ which involves ‘the ability to see through
confusion, to identify developments before they become trends, to spot mechanisms
before they fully emerge and to grasp the relevant features of social currents that are
likely to shape the direction of future events’ (p. 2). In other words, in experiencing

29
how we are living forward into the future, imaginations about the future arise, which
shape the enactments of the present. According to Tsoukas and Shepherd, tension that
arises through differences between ‘what might be’ and ‘what is’ activate the sensory
system of the organization and influence the way of how the present is enacted.
Scenario-based learning is one of the methods that try to foster thinking and foreseeing
the unthinkable, while trying to identify the probabilities with which the scenarios are
expected to occur. Tsoukas and Shepherd (2004a: 7) draw on Bateson (1979) and
Ingvar (1985) when writing of ‘visits’ to the future ahead of time that create
‘memories of the future’ which are then juxtaposed with ‘memories’ of current
actions. The authors specify that it is not about identifying the unknowable future.
Instead, it is about using plausible versions of the future to derive implications out of
comparing these versions with the current situation. As such, organizational foresight
changes the perception and imagination of the future which is compared to present
actions and potentially changes present actions in order to achieve the imagined future.

A playful approach to imagine potentially unthinkable but possible futures is

represented by the idea of serious play. Roos et al. (2004) found this method which
uses a set of playing materials and bricks of the toy company Lego. The goal is to
foster creative thinking and the imagination of the future through teams building
imaginary scenarios using visual three-dimensional Lego constructions. The founders
of serious play intended to change the social constraints (cognitive, social, emotional,
imaginative, and emergent) by altering the typically analytical work mode and suggest
a more playful one, by changing the typically two-dimensional media of organizational
interaction into three-dimensional and tactile media in order to enhance the creativity
and innovation in strategy processes. According to Roos et al. (2006: 30), play
increases spontaneity, which helps both to better imagine new possibilities and to
better be able to put them into practice. In this sense, the new possibilities of an
imagined future influence the practices of enacting the present.

Design thinking is another concept that supports the idea of the second mechanisms. It
has recently gained increased attention as a method for enhancing creativity by
scholars and practitioners alike (Boland Jr. & Collopy, 2004b; T. Brown, 2008), while
the study of how professional designers act and think has been of interest to research

30
since the late 1970’s (Cross, 2006). Cross (2006) cites an experiment conducted by
Lawson (1980) when comparing architects and scientists in order to better grasp what
the design process is built of. While the scientists focused their attention on
discovering the existing rule in an experiment, the architects focused on achieving the
desired result while indirectly learning about the problem by trying out solutions.
Designing can be characterized by a continuous attempt to transcend the world as it is
towards the world as it could be (Simon, 1996). The focus on the solution, which is not
yet existent and an aspiration for the future implies a strong focus on the future that in
turn influences the enactment of the present. In contrast to imagination or foresight, it
is less about trying to find out how the future will most probably be, but rather how the
future should be or how we want it to be (Boland Jr. & Collopy, 2004a; Jelinek,
Romme, & Boland, 2008).

While organizational foresight, serious play, and design thinking are implicitly related
to a creative imagination of possible futures, even traditional management methods to
forecast the future and plan for the future influence how the future is perceived and
imagined. Planning and forecasting are some of the most common management
practices. By developing a plan for the future, the chance will be higher that this future
will become reality as if there would not have been a plan. The plan of the future
influences what actions will be taken in the present.

All concepts, ranging from self-fulfilling-prophecy, imagination, organizational

foresight, serious play, and design thinking to traditional management techniques such
as forecasting and planning support the second mechanism. They show that what is
expected and imagined of the future influences how we act in present situations to in
turn reach what has been imagined.

2.3.3. Mechanism 3: Influencing the Past by Enacting the Present

The first and the second mechanisms have a clear focus on the future, while the third
and the fourth mechanisms focus on the past. The third mechanism is concerned with
how enacting the present influences the past. As the past has already occurred, it can
only be influenced cognitively.

31
One of the basic concepts supporting this mechanism is that of interpretation (Daft &
Weick, 1984) which is known as an everyday way of using present experiences and
interactions to re-think and re-create the past. We are not able to remember everything
what we experienced in the past. By ‘choosing’ what events and things will be
remembered, we put meaning to these events and thus interpret the events (Daft &
Weick, 1984). Being confronted with specific circumstances of a situation in the
present, we are enforced to interpret or re-interpret the past in the light of the situation.
The more we are surprised, the more likely we are to reflect in the situation (Yanow &
Tsoukas, 2009) and use the past as a reference for coping with the surprising
circumstances. If, for example, a company experiences a decrease in turnover, it might
try to understand this situation by reflecting on when and why in the past similar or
different situations occurred. The decrease in turnover might furthermore enforce to
find explanations in the form of developments and reasons in the past, which could
have lead to the situation at hand. The enactment of the situation thus forces to
interpret the various pasts in a way so that the situation and the chosen and interpreted
past can be related and explained in a consistent way. Such acts of interpretation and
(re)interpretation must not necessarily be explicit. Some events are more and some
events are less consciously and intentionally ‘chosen’ to be remembered and
interpreted.

Sensemaking represents another concept that supports the third mechanism. It is a

notion mainly promoted by Karl Weick (1995) and can be summarized as a
retrospective account to explain surprises. Sensemaking is however not only a
cognitive act of interpretation. Thomas et al. (1993) describe sensemaking as ‘the
reciprocal interaction of information seeking, meaning ascription, and action’ (p. 240)
cited by Weick (1995: 5), which adds that environmental scanning, interpretation, and
‘associated responses’ are all included in sensemaking. He explicitly stresses the
retrospective nature by mentioning that human situations are progressively clarified,
while this clarification most often work in reverse and outcomes develop and refine
prior definitions. Weick (1995) furthermore stresses that the focus on retrospect is the
most distinguishing characteristic of his conceptualization of sensemaking, citing
Schutz (1967) and others to stress that ‘people can know what they are doing only
after they have done it’ (p. 24). In contrast to future-oriented mechanisms such as

32
organizational foresight, retrospective sensemaking is regarded as a past-oriented
activity in which many possible meanings (referred to as equivocality) need to be
synthesized as opposed to a future-oriented reduction of a lack of meaning and
information (referred to as uncertainty) (Weick, 1995).

The concepts of interpretation and sensemaking have a retrospective focus and thus
illustrate that the third mechanism originates from the situation and possible surprises
and tensions that occur in a situation. It suggests that the enactment of the present
situation influences how the past is constructed. The concept of sensemaking is based
on an immediate reflection of the preceding situation and thus is an interpretation of a
past that just became a ‘fresh’ past. To interpret an immediate past, older experiences
and historical events are required. Making sense of situations thus involve influencing
and potentially (re)interpreting the past. Enacting situations in this way will potentially
influence future organizing by stressing, confirming, or altering the interpretation of
certain pasts. Current contributions suggest complementing the retrospective
conceptualization of sensemaking with an additional and explicit future orientation
(Gephart, Topal, & Zhang, 2010). Also, Gioia and Chittipeddi’s (1991) notion of
sensegiving has a future-oriented focus. Reading these contributions within the
framework of the conceptualization, they would refer to the first mechanism, in which
enactments of the present directly influence the future or to the general idea of the
conceptualization, in which abstractions stemming from situations potentially
influence organizing in the future.

2.3.4. Mechanism 4: Influencing the Enactment of the Present out of the Past
The fourth mechanism is concerned with how the past implicitly or explicitly
influences the enactment of the present. On the one hand, interpretations of the past
have an influence on how situations are enacted. If the past is interpreted in a way that
the reason for a decrease in turnover lies in malfunction of a product, such a past may
influence the enactment of the present by, for example, trying to find out ways of
correcting the flaw or changing the ways of developing products in general. On the
other hand, the past does not only influence enactments in the present as a result of
interpreting and making sense of the past cognitively. The concept of organizational
routines, for example, shows that the past may unconsciously lead to a habitual coping

33
with current situations based on past experiences. Routines can be defined as
‘repetitive, recognizable mechanisms of interdependent actions, carried out by
multiple actors’ (Feldman & Pentland, 2003: 95). Traditionally, they have been
regarded as sources of inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1984), inflexibility (Weiss & Ilgen,
1985), and mindlessness (Ashforth & Fried, 1988). Organizational routines stem from
the past and influence the present actions because they represent learned mechanisms
from the past which are activated in the present situation. As no activation is the same
and no local context is the same, every applied routine bears the potential to change
the enactment of the present situation. Feldman and Pentland (2003) thus suggest a
reviewed conceptualization of organizational routines that additionally acknowledges
its potential for organizational flexibility and change. In this regard, organizational
routines are not anymore understood as static and unchanging patterns. Routines
therefore do not repeat the past identically but adapt to the present context. The past
influences enactments of the present as some parts of the routine may be applied in a
similar way, while other parts can be altered and adjusted to the unique situations at
hand. However, routines are clearly historical and are activated in situations in a more
or less continuous way. The concept of routines is based on the influence the past has
on the present. Recent contributions do not deny this focus but additionally regard
routines as a source of emergence and change out of the present (Feldman, 2000).

Path dependency represents another concept, in which the past influences actions in
the present. According to David (1985: cited in Garud and Karnoe, 2001), who
introduced the concept, events of the past influence the flow of future events and
enable technological innovations to emerge. In other words, the enactment of present
situations is primarily dependent on the path that has been developed beforehand.
Garud and Karnoe (2001) contrast the concept of path dependency with their idea of
path creation. According to the authors, path dependency suggests that ‘temporally
remote’ events in the past influence the creation of novelty in the present and that
these events gain significance post hoc. Criticizing the lack of agency in the concept of
path dependency, Garud and Karnoe (2001) suggest that organizational members
rather ‘meaningfully navigate a flow of events even as they constitute them’ instead of
only ‘choosing to go with a flow of events’ (p. 2). The author call such a process
‘mindful deviation’, which involves intentionally deviating from past behaviour and

34
structures and being aware that such a deviation may create inefficiencies in the
present, when regarded from the old paradigm. The shift from path dependency to path
creation is described as a shift from ‘describing our past worlds’ to ‘shaping our
current states to create new futures’ (p. 9). Even though path creation and mindful
deviation point into the direction of the future, the explanation for future change is in
both concepts on the basis of events of the past that influence the enactment of the
present. While according to path dependency, innovation is developed on the basis of
being congruent and following the traces of the past events, path creation mindfully
departs from these traces to create something new. In any case, the past influences the
enactments of the present. The past is either to be continued or discontinued.

The concepts of organizational routines, path dependency, and path creation

demonstrate that the past implicitly or explicitly influences how we enact the present.
Recent contributions of routines as sources of change (Feldman, 2000; Feldman &
Pentland, 2003) and of mindful deviations from existing paths (Garud & Karnoe,
2001) do not only support the fourth mechanism but also point to the main claim of
this chapter in that they show the potential for change which rests in the emerging
nature of enactments of the present.

2.3.5. Mechanism 5: Influencing the Present by Enacting the Present

The first four mechanisms conceptually distinguish how the past and the future relate
to the present and vice versa. I argue that the circumstances of organizational
situations and relating the past, present, and future create tensions, which have to be
coped with in the enactment of present situations. By having to cope with such
tensions, abstractions for future enactments are being developed, confirmed, or altered,
which potentially influences future behaviour. However, not referring to the past and
the future creates tensions. An in depth focus and concentration on the present
situation itself, without an explicit reference to the past and the future, may create
tensions as well or reveal clarity and thereby potentially influences future behaviour.

The concept of mindfulness supports the idea of the fifth mechanism. Mindfulness is a
notion that Karl Weick promoted in the discussion of organizing and organizational

35
change. Weick and Sutcliffe (2007) define mindfulness as ‘a rich awareness of
discriminatory detail’ (p. 32) or more detailed as

the combination of ongoing scrutiny of existing expectations, continuous refinement

and differentiation of expectations based on newer experiences, willingness and
capability to invent new expectations that make sense of unprecedented events, a more
nuanced appreciation of context and ways to deal with it, and identification of new
dimension of context that improve foresight and current functioning. (p. 32)

The second definition reveals that the concept of mindfulness implies to raise the
awareness to the often implicit and unconscious influence of the first four mechanisms
in local situations in the present. Following this, it may be regarded as a meta-
mechanism that influences the other mechanisms. Existing expectations, for example,
refer to the influence they have on how we imagine the future and more or less
automatically act in present situations to strive for this future. The concept of
mindfulness suggests being aware of how and why we interpret certain experiences
and of how and why we imagine certain futures. It is concerned with making the first
four mechanisms more explicit. Weick and Putnam (2006) call this kind of
mindfulness a Western perspective. According to the authors it means to pay more
attention to external factors and to the content of mind, which includes past
associations, concepts, and reifications. Referring to the description of Ellen Langer
(1989: p. 138, 157 and 159), Weick and Putnam (2006: 267) stress three important
characteristics of mindfulness in the Western perspective which resemble the
conceptualization of organizational change in the making. It involves (1) an active
differentiation and refinement of existing distinctions, (2) the creation of new discrete
categories out of the continuous stream of events that flow through activities, and (3) a
more nuanced appreciation of context and of alternative ways to deal with it.

Weick and Putnam (2006) go further and contrast an Eastern perspective on

mindfulness, which is rather inward oriented and less consciously reflective. It
involves the ability ‘to hang on to current objects; remember them; and not lose sight
of them through distraction, wandering attention, associative thinking, explaining
away, or rejection’ (p. 276). Eastern mindfulness has its roots in the Buddhist tradition
and the exercise of meditation. Weick and Putnam refer to three characteristics

36
proposed by Gunaratana (2002): (1) experience is impermanent as everything is
shifting, slowly dissolving, rising, and falling, and there is only the moment-to-
moment experience; (2) as everything is impermanent, security is not possible and
fearfulness is the consequence; and (3) the self does not exist as there are really no
entities that are permanent but only processes. The main difference between Western
and Eastern thoughts of mindfulness is that the first one focuses on content and
rationality, which means making the mechanisms of referencing to the past and the
future more explicit, whereas the latter one focuses on process and additionally
involves emotions and the body.

While Western and Eastern versions of mindfulness may be distinguished, they have
certain features in common. Weick and Putnam (2006) stress, for example, that both
versions include an enhanced attention and awareness to the present rather than to the
past or the future. Mindfulness thus illustrates the fifth mechanism because tensions,
clarity, and change may emerge also from a close attention to the present situation and
not only by referring to the past and the future. A Western version of mindfulness,
which is rather cognitive, may reflect on the mechanisms themselves on a meta-level
and thereby influence enactments of future situations by influencing the mechanisms.
An Eastern version of mindfulness is rather emotional and embodied and thus
influences enactments of future situations in a less cognitive and conscious way.

2.4. Discussion and Conclusion

In this chapter, I suggest a conceptualization of organizational change in the making as
a continuous reference to the past in order to cope with the existing situations and
thereby influencing future situations. The goal was to further advance theorizing on
organizational change by focusing on the inherently dynamic and flux nature of
change that can only be experienced in the present and that traditionally gets lost when
conceptualizing change post-hoc as the difference between two static states. I have
drawn on the strong process view (Chia, 1999; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) to build the
argument on the basis of an experience in time by relating the past, the present and the
future to each other rather than an experience of time in a linear and physical manner. I
furthermore have argued that the relation between the past, present, and future has to

37
be made explicit in to form of a referencing act. The argumentation suggests that
tensions arise by comparing and relating experiences from the past, circumstances of
the situation in the present, and expectations about the future. By coping with these
tensions, the concrete situation is being collectively abstracted and thereby potentially
influences enactments of future situations and thus the organizational.

Several authors explicitly or implicitly support the idea that referring to the past and
future has an impact on the enactment of the present and therefore potentially
influences organizing beyond the mere situation. Adam (1990), for example, suggests
that the connections and relations between the past, present, and future are
dynamically constituted and potentially altered. Feldman and Pentland (2003) stress
that routines are at the same time learned mechanisms of the past as well as sources of
future change through the present performance of the routine. Chia (1999) mentions
the creative evolution that describes the outcome of the creative tension between
‘organization’ and ‘change’. Tsoukas and Shepherd (2004a) use the notion of foresight
to describe organizations ‘whose members spontaneously forge connections between
past, present, and future’ (p. 10). Also, the sociological concept of human agency can
be understood in the same way, which supports the suggested conceptualization.
Emirbayer and Mische (1998) conceptualize human agency as ‘a temporally embedded
process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its habitual aspect), but also
oriented toward the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and
toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within
the contingencies of the moment)’ (p. 963). In sum, several authors implicitly support
a conceptualization of organizational change as occurring in the present, relating to the
past, present, and future.

For analytical reasons, I have taken apart the conceptualization to show five different
mechanisms, among which different influences of the past, present, and future can be
shown. While being aware of the reciprocal nature of these mechanisms, the analytical
distinction allows re-interpreting a series of well-known concepts and theories in the
light of my research focus. At the same time, these concepts have helped to further
deepen the thoughts and demonstrate the value of the conceptualization. All the
theories referred to explicitly or implicitly suggest that the past, the future and the

38
respective referencing mechanisms influence the enactment of the present, and thus,
represent a source of organizational change in the making. Therefore, it is evident that
they all are embedded and situated in the present, while at the same time transcending
present situations beyond the situation only, potentially influencing future situations.
By enacting the world as it is, they all potentially or actually shape possible future
outcomes, without anticipating or referencing to any clear-cut outcome. They are thus
in line with the fundamental premises of a strong process view (Chia, 1999; Tsoukas
& Chia, 2002).

The theories and concepts discussed in the second part of this chapter, all show a clear
focus on either the past or the future. The concept of organizational foresight is clearly
future-oriented (Tsoukas, 2005c), while path dependency examines how past traces
influence current behaviour (David, 1985). Furthermore, it can be distinguished
between either departing from the present as an analytical reference or from the past or
the future respectively. While the theory of path dependency explains how past
behaviour influences current behaviour, interpretation is a concept that explains how
current behaviour influences what and how past behaviour is valued. The analytical
distinction between the five mechanisms is thus supported by the existing concepts.
The chapter also reveals that the temporal focus of several concepts has already been
questioned, which supports the idea of integrating all temporal dimensions into a
comprehensive framework and conceptualization. Cunha (2004) for example
contrasted the adaptive future orientation of organizational foresight with an inventive
view that involves mutually relating the future with the present and the past. And the
retrospective nature of sensemaking is complemented with future-oriented
sensemaking (Gephart, et al., 2010) and sensegiving (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991).

The suggested conceptualization helps to better identify temporal orientations and

classify complementing and contrasting contributions. It furthermore offers a
comprehensive idea about how the past, present, and future are related to each other.
The re-interpretation of well-known concepts allows better understanding often used
and unconsciously exchanged notions such as ‘experimenting’, ‘expectations’, or
‘interpretations’. Additionally, the five mechanisms represent a micro-foundation of
the strong process view, which integrates the macro-aspects of organizing by

39
incorporating the organizational influence on the situation and vice versa. In line with
the ontological premises of the strong process view, organizational change is regarded
as an ongoing act of stabilizing rather than destabilizing what we usually perceive of a
stable category: e.g. the organization (Langley, 2009). Stabilization occurs as
enactment in the present, experiencing the ongoing dynamics of movement (Chia,
1999) referring to past and future behaviour. Omitting an over-focus on micro-
behaviour, the macro-aspects of organizing (e.g. organizational patterns) are integrated
in the conceptualization by examining how and why references to the past and the
future influence the micro-perspective of current behaviour, and in turn, influences
future macro-aspects (e.g. organizational patterns in the future). While empirical
research in a strong process view is rare (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005), conceptualizing
organizational change with the help of referencing mechanisms thus allows to
empirically study and observe in the present how such references involve and
influence macro-aspects of organizing While the first four mechanisms should be
observable during for example discussions within organizational collectives, the fifth
mechanism is less easy to be studied. It could probably be observed as an explicit
reflection of the other four mechanisms on a meta-level and would in this regard
represent the Western version of mindfulness, while the Eastern version as a more
emotional and embodied sensing of the situation is more difficult to be identified and
interpreted in real time by an external observer.

Because it is possible to study and observe the mechanisms in the field, the theoretical
advancement of organizational change in a strong process view can be empirically
grounded and promises to be relevant for practice. Until recently, there are only few
empirical studies undertaken in the strong process view (Mullarkey, 2010). By
studying how organizational members cope with issues and tensions in present
situation, it allows to be closer to the uncertainty organizational actors experience and
to avoid the potential risk of making retrospective accounts seem more clear than they
were at the time of experience (Langley, 2009). If organization is understood as a
fuzzy mess of tangled processes (Hernes, 2008) rather than an entity with clear
borders, people perceive processes of organizing - while they occur - as uncertain and
complex (Tsoukas, 2005a). However, as soon as the present has occurred, people tend
to normalize and construct a clearer picture of the past than they experience it during

40
occurrence (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007). According to Langley (2009), the strong
process view requires to “reconstitute the evolving present” which involves “real-time
ethnographic research” (p. 415). The goal is to observe the activities of people and
“how these activities contribute to the creation of stable categories” (p. 415). The
mechanisms of referencing to the past and future will reveal, what is going to be
stabilized (e.g. a similar experience of the past or a consolidating expectation about the
future) and what is destabilized (e.g. a deviation from an experience of the past or an
altering expectation about the future). By stabilizing and destabilizing topics, issues,
practices and other organizational aspects, the activity in the present is connected to
the organizational, the general way of approaching issues and of coordinating among
people. Vice versa, the organizational aspects are applied, created and altered in
present enactments. Although observation is the most obvious technique in
ethnography to better understand how and why people behave in a certain way, the
support of visual aids such as drawings, maps, photographs, and videos might help to
go beyond language and supplement discussions with artefacts or bodily movement
(Gobo, 2008). Furthermore, people under study might be asked to record or write self-
reflections during their action (Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009) and on their action (Schön,
1984).

If we knew more about how the mechanisms of referencing occur and differ in
practice, practitioners could advance their understanding and awareness in their role as
reflective practitioners on action and in action (Schön, 1984; Yanow & Tsoukas,
2009). In this regard, the strict focus on mechanisms that occur in the present allows
practitioners to more easily transfer knowledge and experience from such studies on
organizational change than from theories that ground their data in retrospective
accounts and static perspective on organizations. The conceptualization promises to be
closer and more honest to what is experienced in everyday organizing.

However, the focus on present activities risks over-emphasizing (Chia & MacKay,
2007) the micro-aspects of organizing while having difficulties in describing and
explaining how particular macro ‘outcomes’ emerge from the situated everyday
actions. The macro-aspects of organizing are integrated in the suggested
conceptualization in two ways. First, collectively coping with heterogeneous

41
experiences of the past and expectations about the future involves the influence of the
dispersed nature of organizing on the situation. Second, the acts of collectively coping
with concrete situations create temporary abstractions, which potentially influence
future organizing (Hernes, 2008). It is an empirical question how and why experiences
of the past, circumstances within a present situation, and expectations about the future
create tensions that have to be coped with and how such coping creates abstractions,
which potentially influences future enactments. Empirical studies as well as
conceptual work will be needed to advance our understanding in this respect. Most
promising theoretical foundations are recent contributions in the sociology of
translation (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005) as well as in convention theory (Boltanski &
Thévenot, 1991; Thévenot, 2001, 2006). These theories provide conceptual
perspectives, which allow understanding the dispersed, iterative, situated, and
interactive processes, through which highly fragile, local, and ephemeral incidences
and experiences turn into more stable and robust mechanisms and practices. This
includes for example the processes of circulating references (Latour, 1999) in the
sociology of translation, or the economies des grandeurs in convention theory
(Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991), as well as through which established, taken-for-
granted, unquestioned practices and routines are re-interpreted and adapted, as well as
deconstructed and subverted in the mundane activities of everyday life.

In a world that consists of processes instead of entities, change is the norm and
stability is what we continuously are creating (Chia, 1999; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) to
better cope within the ongoing flow of live. In this flow, we continuously head for a
future that is inherently unknowable (Weick, 2006a) while leaving behind a past that is
also uncertain and open for ambiguous interpretations. By acknowledging the constant
uncertainty and complexity organizational agents are confronted with (Langley, 2009)
from one situation to the other, this chapter suggest a conceptualization of
organizational change in the making that promises to be closer to practice than
observing and theorizing change from a retrospective distance. Integrating and making
explicit how the past, present, and future interrelate rather than conceptualizing change
as a development on a timeline opens up new possibilities for understanding
organizing as an ongoing accomplishment (Orlikowski, 1996).

42
PART III: EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION

In this part, the subfields of managing and entrepreneurship are empirically examined
based on an ethnographic in depth single case study of a family-owned Swiss textile
company. In the first chapter, the research design and methodology is explained fol-
lowed by the two empirical focuses.

3. Research Design and Methodology

The strong process view fundamentally questions the ontological basic assumptions of
the traditional process view and of organizational change theories. The radical shift
from an ontology of being, which compares outcomes and static states, to an ontology
of becoming, which emphasizes movement, dynamics and potentiality (Chia, 1999)
also implies epistemological consequences. Chia (2003) stresses that knowledge in an
ontology of being is represented by the fixed and the general, whereas knowledge in
an ontology of becoming is represented by the dynamic experience and the concrete.
Law (2004) suggests that instead of imposing regularity on the world, studying
processes is more about the disentanglement of a world ‘out-there’. According to him,
the world is a mess and the attempt to clarify the world may further increase this mess.
However, he stresses that even the mess has a form, and thus, our attempt should be to
disentangle the mess without overdoing it, without increasing the mess again. Hernes
(2008) similarly suggests that knowledge creation in an ontology of becoming is more
about understanding than about measurement. Following these claims, we are not able
to fully avoid the difficulty of representing dynamic phenomena with static scholarly
accounts (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). However, I try to stay as close as possible to
the dynamics of experiencing change in everyday organizational life.

The focus on situational activities in the present and their relation to the distributed
world builds the starting point for the dissertation as a whole. In chapter 2 and 4,
change is experienced in situations and emerges by relating the past, present, and
future. In chapter 5, it does so by exploring and matching problem and solution spaces.
The strict focus on the situational and the present emphasizes that a real-time
qualitative approach is required to study everyday organizing within situations in the

43
present. Langley (2009) specifies this requirement drawing on Weick (1999), to
explain that research in real time, enables ‘to see events in a way that is closer to that
experienced by the participants on the scene that is sensitive to uncertainty, to activity
in the present, and to the very arbitrariness of the notion of “outcome”, where endings
and beginnings often flow into each other’ (p. 415). In this study, I conceptualize
outcome or the macro aspects of organizing as an open concept based on the potential
influence, situations may have on future organizing.

Empirical process research generates conceptual products such as patterns,

mechanisms, or meanings (Langley, 2009). The theoretical outcome of chapter 4 and 5
in this dissertation consists of mechanisms. They describe the different ways of how
situations are coped with by relating them to the past and the future or by exploring
problem and solution spaces. Patterns are not suitable in a pure strong process view, as
they would imply a sequenced ordering of how events evolve over time, which is
based on the traditional process view. Meanings are implicitly involved, for example,
when studying how management judges and justifies (see chapter 4) or when exploring
what is identified as a problem or as a possible solution (see chapter 5). However, the
subjectivity of interpretations is not in the foreground of the study. I rather concentrate
on the collective interpretation of, for example, specific experiences or expectations as
means to cope with situations at hand. To make explicit how the past and the future are
immanent in the present situations, discussions, and interpretations of organizational
members provide the main source of data to observe how the past, present, and future
are related.

To empirically study the dynamics of experiencing change and time within situations
and to develop conceptual outcomes in the form of mechanisms, I apply a specific
research design, which will be explained in the following. It consists of the research
strategy, the source for collecting the data and the way how the data is collected and
analyzed (Punch, 2005).

44
3.1. Research Strategy
The dissertation follows the grounded theory approach as a general research strategy,
which is widely used for qualitative research in the social sciences (Denzin & Lincoln,
1994). Its claim is to generate theory from data that is grounded in the empirical field
(Punch, 2005). This research strategy aims at developing theory in an exploratory way
by interlinking data collection, data analysis, and theorization (Strauss & Corbin,
1990). What distinguishes grounded theory from traditional research procedures is that
the data analysis does not start after the data collection has finished but several sets of
data will be collected and analyzed, subsequently guided by the emerging directions
from the first analysis (Punch, 2005). It is particularly helpful in capturing a richer,
more realistic understanding of ongoing organizational phenomena (Dougherty, 2002).
This strategy is thus suitable for addressing the research gap of this dissertation, by
examining how situations are coped with in relation to a broader context of the past
and the future or from the perspective of problem and solution spaces.

According to a purist view of the grounded theory approach, theory should not be
reviewed in advance, to be able to enter the field as open-mindedly as possible (Punch,
2005). The procedure in this dissertation will deviate from this requirement, as the
strong process view has to be further developed conceptually (see chapter 2) to be able
to empirically investigate it. Several reasons support such a procedure. First, if the
researcher enters the field without any idea of how to approach the field and what to
look for, he may probably be overwhelmed by the huge amount of data encountered,
and there is a risk that only findings with common sense may be identified (Prasad,
2005). Prasad further specifies that the results of research may be no less than a
translation of empirical situations that are relatively simple and unsurprising
descriptions of social processes, if theoretical preconceptions are strictly avoided.
Furthermore, it is difficult to enter a field without any theoretical idea as it is not
possible to leave behind all theories that a researcher has already heard and absorbed
in his previous life. Finally, the theoretical argumentation and conceptions within the
dissertation is relatively broad and open. It does not involve implicit hypotheses but
leave room for how, for example, tensions within situations are coped with. The
theoretically developed frameworks and conceptualizations thus serve as a general

45
guideline to empirically investigate and better understand how they work in more
detail rather than just looking for them in the data and trying to proof them.

While a pure grounded theory approach only allows the researcher to look at apparent
behaviours, I use certain aspects of the procedure and complement them with other
approaches such as case study research and ethnography to additionally reach behind
the apparent behaviours. This is particularly important because the conceptualization
of relating situations to the past and the future involves contextual information beyond
the mere situation. The grounded theory approach therefore mainly serves as a
guideline for the theory to be grounded in the data and for a traceable procedure of
linking data collection, data analysis, and theorizing.

The case study approach allows systematically grasping the contextual details in a
real-life context (Yin, 2003), which is necessary to understand how situations are
coped with by relating them beyond the situational. To get to know and understand the
specific organizational past and the specific organizational future is central for this
study and highly case dependent and context specific. The basic idea behind choosing
one or a small number of cases is that a full understanding of its natural setting,
complexity, and context helps to answer the research question (Punch, 2005). Yin
(2003) stresses that a case study is an empirical inquiry that examines a phenomenon
within its context, when the boundaries between phenomenon and the context are not
clearly evident. This holds also true for the study of situational action in relation to
distributed organizing (Tsoukas, 1996). The conceptualization implies a continuous
construction and re-construction of organizational boundaries. In this regard, the
phenomenon itself incorporates a questioning of boundaries, and thus, a case study is
suitable to examine such a context dependent phenomenon.

3.2. Research Setting: The Case of a Swiss Textile Company

It is important to find the right case depending on the research question (Huberman &
Miles, 1994) and the proper selection of related persons, places, and events for
observation represents a sampling problem in qualitative research (Stake, 1994). In the
following, I will explain why the case of an internationally renowned Swiss textile

46
company was a promising partner to collect relevant data for finding valuable answers
to the research questions. In the following, the organization will be called GARN.

GARN was founded almost two hundred years ago in 1819. The family-owned
business started with selling fabrics produced in mountain villages to citizens of the
nearest city. It mainly sells converted interior fabrics in the luxury segment to
wholesalers, retailers, and interior designers. While in the past, the company used to
produce its own fabrics, the current business model is that of a textile converter, who
buys greige fabrics and sells them as a finished product to cutters, wholesalers,
retailers, and others. The customers of GARN use the fabrics in the field of interior
design for producing curtains or furniture for their end customers. An interior
decorator usually first buys the samples from GARN to show his end customers. He
then has to order the textiles to sew for example curtains on his own. GARN is well-
known for designing creative and high quality textiles. The bi-yearly textile collection
is presented at the largest international textile fares twice a year. The second biggest
product group of GARN consists of luxury bed linen wear, which is still printed and
stitched to a high degree in Switzerland, while the fabrics are sourced from Turkey or
Asia. In contrast to interior fabrics, bed linen is a ready-made product for end
customers. The bi-yearly collection of bed linen is sold in upper-level interior shops
and shopping malls. In addition to the main product groups, there are smaller groups
such as bed ware (down and feathers), sleepwear, terry clothes, and carpets.
Furthermore, the company owns and runs several wholesale distributors worldwide,
including important showrooms at well-known streets in cities such as Paris, London,
and Tokyo.

Currently, about 450 employees work for GARN around the world. The group has its
own legal entities in their most important markets such as Germany, France, Italy,
Holland, and Japan, whereas the headquarters are located in Switzerland. Each entity
has its own CEO and organization, which are responsible for the profit and loss of the
respective country. In all other countries, there are external agents selling the products.
Interior textiles are internationally sourced and centrally stocked in Germany and to a
smaller part in Italy. Each customer order thus has to be transmitted to Germany or
Italy (depending on the collection), where the respective dimensions of the textile will

47
be cut, packaged, and delivered afterwards. The bed linen collection is sewed to
measure upon order in Switzerland and also dispatched from Switzerland. An Asia-
specific bed linen collection is sewed and dispatched from the factory in Thailand. All
the CEOs of the countries regularly meet to discuss and refine the collections and
group-wide issues. The topic of internet technology, for example, which suits as a
basis to illustrate the second part of the empirical findings, has been discussed within
this group on several occasions during several meetings. The discussions tended to be
very lively and controversial. The CEOs of the countries are rather autonomous about
how they work their markets; group-wide issues are always discussed collectively and
new ideas that emerge from the countries are often welcome as possible opportunities
for the group.

The current CEO of the group is a member of the family and leads the company in the
sixth generation. He has taken over this position from his father four years ago. The
handover took place when the father became 70 years old. Together, they defined this
date some years in advance as a fixed point in time. At this date, the son symbolically
took over the office from his father and the respective role. The father, while still the
president of the board and main owner, left his office and did not show up again in the
company for two months, and since then, he only visits the company once a month.
So, it was a clear cut. Furthermore, they both agreed on officially discussing company
issues once a month only instead of all the time they hear and see each other. These are
some of the reasons why both of them experience the transition to be successful.
Furthermore, the father never pushed his son to take over the role of the CEO, and
both of them are aware that the CEO of the group needs to deal with continuous
change and has to introduce new ways of organizing. Such emancipation is normal and
even required in the eyes of the father. Given my research interest, such a transition
phase in management is of particular interest, as managerial practice has to be re-
enforced and re-established by the new generation, which implies the transcendence of
situated interactions.

Within the past four years, the new CEO introduced several projects for the future of
the company. Most of the showrooms have been renovated according to new corporate
design guidelines and the image campaign and product presentations have been

48
changed. Furthermore, the company has introduced two collections of recycled
textiles. One is made out of a 100% recycled cotton and polyester mix that allows
significant reduction of textile waste and the consumption of precious raw
compositions such as cotton, water, and energy. The second collection is made out of
polyester yarn of the highest quality that is made out of empty PET bottles due to a
pioneering technological process. This innovation was invented together with a
supplier and has been acknowledged internationally and won several awards.
Furthermore, a collection of high quality carpets has been introduced and a new
collection of accessories was being developed during my observations. The
organization is thus in transition between two management generations, which implies
that some important, well-founded references, and collectively shared perspectives on
major issues are no longer propagated, while new references are in the process of
emerging.

The case is attractive for the study of organizational change and the related subjects of
managing and entrepreneuring in several ways. The long history and heritage oblige to
refer and consider the past in the form of experiences, knowledge and important
stories. This holds even truer because the company is still led by a member of the
founding family. On the other hand, it was the intention of the former as well as of the
current CEO to clearly demonstrate a cut between their ways of managing and
organizing and to make room for new developments. While there was a clear cut, this
also obliges the new CEO to demonstrate and live his new way of managing and
organizing so that his management colleagues and all the other company members
learn how to cooperate with him and how to individually act according to such ways of
managing and organizing. The CEO therefore needs to continuously translate his way
of managing from specific issues and contexts to general issues and future contexts
and vice versa. Additionally, the other members of the national and international
management team cannot rely anymore on their ‘old’ ways of managing, which had
been neglected with the previous CEO. They need to reconfirm or renew their way of
managing on the way of cooperating with the new CEO. In other words, by observing
this case shortly after the transition from one to the other generation, the management
must transcend the present behaviour into future organizational behaviour. Such
translation processes occur even though management is not necessarily aware of it

49
because each enactment of an issue at present co-creates, alters, or re-affirms together
with other organizational members a way of coping with such issues. Additionally, the
dynamics within the textile industry promised that the company has to continuously
find new ways of generating revenues and redefining its markets. The company is
faced with high uncertainty in an industry that has considerably changed within the
last thirty years. While Switzerland was well known for producing high quality fabrics
that were sold all over the world, most of the textile fabrics today are produced in Asia
and Turkey. Only few textile companies have survived in Switzerland. Most of them
had to focus on a niche product or segment and had to position itself more clearly and
more uniquely in the market. Such market aspects oblige the companies to
continuously renew themselves and regularly innovate in order to stay competitive. In
this sense, not only the tensions that arise between the past, present and future are
promising but also the need to continuously form new opportunities for the future.
Furthermore, creating two innovative and surprising collections a year assumes a
dynamic way of moving forward into the future. The CEO of the group brought this to
the point with a statement on the website: ‘For six generations our company has
brought beautiful fabrics to the market. I consider it a challenge and an opportunity to
continue this tradition. Linking tradition with the contemporary is our challenge’.
Finally, the openness and almost unlimited access to meetings, people, and documents
allowed to truly follow an ethnographic approach by becoming a part of that natural
setting (Fielding, 1996). It was, for example, possible to attend and observe the regular
meetings of the executive board and bi-yearly meetings with the business managers of
the international subsidiaries. Furthermore, all members of the management board
have been interviewed. The open access to people and data was crucial to study the
phenomena in real-time, which is one of the main requirements in a strong process
view.

I chose the theme of internet technology as a comprehensive example to illustrate the

findings in the second empirical part, because it evolved to be the most controversially
discussed opportunity-related theme during data collection. However, other opportu-
nity-related topics have been discussed and enacted as well such as developing a new
carpet line of highest quality with almost unlimited possibilities for customization or
developing the market of architects by investing in show-rooms. Internet technology is

50
a topic that allows identifying opportunity-related processes in line with a Schumpete-
rian ([1934] 2000) understanding of opportunities: a new combination in the form of
products, processes, markets, or sources of supply. There are several reasons for this
decision. First, GARN has not yet dealt with the internet technology a lot, as the main
competences of the company consist of purchasing, designing, branding, and selling
with sales staffs in the business-to-business market. GARN runs a website, although it
only displays information about the company and parts of the collections. Following
this, the topic is unknown, ambiguous, and complex, which promises a rather intensive
exploration of problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, practice and science do not
know the best ways of using and benefiting of internet technology yet. It is still an ill-
defined topic. It is unclear how the textile industry will approach it and what issues
would have to be resolved by companies such as GARN. The discussion also revealed
that introducing a direct sales channel over the internet would directly compete with
the existing clients of GARN, which run shops selling bed linen and interior textiles.
On the other hand, it could be risky to react very late as some competitors have already
made use of the internet technology, and also, clients have started to build web-shops
for interior textiles and bed linen of GARN. Finally, the topic of internet technology is
suitable for illustrations in the second empirical part as it had started to become an
issue during my observations, while other topics had already been discussed inten-
sively and decided upon before I entered the organization.

3.3. Data Collection

The case study approach allows applying different methods to collect data, while many
existing studies use sociological and anthropological field methods, such as
observations, interviews, and narrative reports (Punch, 2005). I followed an
ethnographic approach for collecting the data. The study took place between July 2010
and July 2011. The ethnographic procedure implicates intensive fieldwork and high
levels of research involvement with the subject being studied (Prasad, 2005).
Ethnography particularly gives priority to observation as the primary source of
information (Gobo, 2008). Observation is most promising and necessary to examine
real-time mechanisms that organizational members may show while they interact on
an everyday basis in their natural setting. Right from the beginning of the study, the

51
new CEO granted me access to all data, meetings, and persons I required. This was
particularly important, as I had to capture the processes of managing and
entrepreneuring as they occur in the making during natural discussions and
conversations. I conducted participant observation, which involves a direct
relationship with the actors and a staying in the natural environment of the culture to
be studied (Gobo, 2008). This was important as I had to talk to the people to
understand their roles, standpoints, and histories in the context of their behaviour
observed. It allowed me not only to observe mechanisms of managing and
entrepreneuring itself but to learn and understand how and why within these
mechanisms certain pasts and certain futures or certain problems and solutions were
drawn to in order to make sense of issues and opportunities at hand. Such background
knowledge was particularly important to interpret the data in a way that respects the
specific features of the context. However, being aware of the impact and change that
could have been induced because of my presence as a researcher, I tried to stay as
neutral as possible during the observations. I assumed no bias from my involvement
because the managers under study forgot about my presence and never watched me or
talked to me during the observations. Likewise, the CEO of the company told me at
the end of the studies that he appreciated not noticing me at all during the meetings
observed.

I was able to make observations of several important meetings. For example, I

attended three international meetings, out of which each lasted three days and for
which the directors of Italy, France, Germany, Holland, and Japan gathered to discuss
international topics and new textile collections. Furthermore, I attended most of the
meetings of the Swiss management board which were held more or less once a month.
These meetings were chosen as they promised to involve issues that are uncertain and
ambiguous, however, important for the organization. Alongside such formal
gatherings, I could observe informal discussions not only before and after the meetings
but also for example by attending lunches or dinners with national and international
managers.

Additionally, I relied on semi-structured and informal interviews as another data

source. I did several semi-structured interviews with the executive members. The

52
interviews lasted from 45 minutes to over two hours in length, and they were
conducted one-on-one with participants in a meeting room. They served two purposes:
First, by asking questions about past, current, and future issues, the interviews helped
to learn about the context of the case, about its history, and about what possible futures
the interview partners constructed. The interviews thus suited to understand the
complexity and uniqueness of the case and its context. Second, the interviews served
as an observational account. Such a procedure is supported by ethnomethodologists,
who do not regard language as representing reality but as producing and building it
(Prasad, 2005). I asked open questions about what the current organizational issues are
and could thereby observe how these issues and current situations are enacted while
for example mobilizing certain pasts and certain futures during the interview. In this
sense, the interviews had an experimental character, and they revealed further insights
on issues that had not been discussed during the observations of the meetings.
Additionally, informal interviews were held ad hoc for example in the form of short
discussion with managers during meeting breaks. The informal interviews suited
mainly for a better understanding of specific issues, roles, or behaviours. Furthermore,
I could follow the CEO during one day while he was visiting the Italian branch. I was
allowed to record all meetings and interviews in order to be able to re-listen or
transcribe them.

Finally, I could make use of archival documents and artefacts as data sources. I got
access to historical documents as well as presentations, which were shown during
meetings. Furthermore, I regularly received the meeting notes and got in touch with all
the textiles and accessories the company creates, produces, and sells. The documents
and artefacts mainly helped me to understand the case in its entirety and context rather
than revealing direct insights about how situations have been coped with.

The table below gives an overview of the formal occasions of the data collection (see
table 1):

53
Data collection method Occasion
Participant observation 1 Meeting to inform the personnel
6 Meetings of the Swiss executive board
4 Operational meetings (marketing, collection)
3 Meetings of the international executive board
(6 days in total)
3 Meetings of the international marketing committee
(3 days in total)
1 Workshop with president of the board and CEO
Interviews 3 Interviews with the CEO
5 Interviews with all the executive members
Several informal talks
Several informal observations
Shadowing 1 Journey of the CEO visiting the Italian branch

Table 1: Data sources

During the period lasting from July 2010 to July 2011, the different data collection
methods were more or less evenly distributed over the time (see table 2 below).
Participant observation involves the paradox of having to participate in the social life
of the actors observed, while at the same time keeping enough distance to neither alter
the behaviour of the actors nor loosing the ability to see the phenomena from the
‘outside’ through the eyes of a ‘stranger’ (Gobo, 2008). The even distribution of data
collection events allowed being aware of and avoid possible changes in the perception
of the researchers. All data has been equally involved, while data coding and theory
development occurred iteratively during the entire data collection process.

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Date Data collection events
01.07.2010 Interview with the CEO
01.07.2010 Meeting to inform the personnel
13.07.2010 Shadowing during journey to Como (Italy)
16.08.2010 Meeting of Swiss executive board (1/6)
01.09.2010 Operational meeting (marketing)
01.09.2010 Operational meeting (samples definition)
02.09.2010 Interview with the Head of Bed Linen
06.09.2010 Meeting of Swiss executive board (2/6)
08.09.2010, Meeting of international executive committee (1/3)
09.09.2010
10.09.2010 Meeting of international marketing committee (1/3)
15.09.2010 Operational meeting (alignment of production and design at
the textile printing company)
22.09.2010 Operational meeting (carpet production)
05.10:2010 Interview with the Head of Design
05.10.2010 Interview with the CEO
18.10.2010 Meeting of Swiss executive board (3/6)
20.10.2010 Interview with the Head of Sales
20.10.2010 Interview with the Head of IT
21.10.2010 Interview with the Head of Finance
21.10.2010 Interview with the Head of Purchase
08.11.2010 Meeting of Swiss executive board (4/6)
17.01.2011 Meeting of Swiss executive board (5/6)
21.02.2011, Meeting of international executive committee (2/3)
23.02.2011
17.05.2011, Meeting of international executive committee (3/3)
18.05.2011
09.06.2011 Workshop with president of the board and CEO
20.06.2011 Meeting of Swiss executive board (6/6)
10.07.2011 Interview with the CEO
Table 2: Sequence of data collection events during July 2010 and July 2011

During the data collection, it was particularly important to compare managerial and
entrepreneurial action in the context of various meetings, workshops, and informal
interactions, on the one hand, with managerial reasoning, in particular of the CEO,
during interviews and informal conversations. Applying a ‘sociology of translations’
(Latour, 2005), my aim was to identify traceable associations that may have been
generated through translations between the management and other mediators. I have
primarily focused on the translation activities of the CEO as in a family-owned

55
company, the CEO presumably is attributed a strong agency. However, I am aware of
the distributedness of activities within organizations (Tsoukas, 1996) and that a limited
potentiality represents one of the core thoughts of a sociology of translations.
Likewise, the CEO may exert a high but still limited influence.

3.4. Data Analysis

To make use of the huge amount of data gathered and to draw rigorous and relevant
conclusions from it, I tried to analyze data in a systematic and disciplined way so that
the process from data to conclusions becomes traceable and comprehensible for the
readers (Punch, 2005). There are three different components that interacted throughout
the data analysis: data reduction, data display, as well as drawing and verifying
conclusions (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Conclusions have, for example, not only been
drawn after the compression of data but already in between in a vague and ill-formed
way. To reduce the data, I followed the three steps of the grounded theory approach as
explained by Punch (2005): (1) Open coding aimed at finding conceptual categories in
the data at the first level of abstraction. (2) Axial (or theoretical) coding involved the
interconnection and comparison of codes that emerged from the open coding. They
represented the concepts on a higher level of abstraction that connect the first-level
codes. (3) Selective coding aimed at conceptualizing and accounting for the
relationships of the axial coding at the highest level of abstraction. These steps are not
to be seen as sequential but interacted and occurred simultaneously during the whole
process of analysis until the conclusions and theoretical constructs became robust. This
approach helped me to reach an abstract level in theory, while still grounding it strictly
in the data.

Data analysis for the empirical focus 1: managing as transcending the present
To analyse the data for the first empirical focus, I entered the field with a general idea
of how and why managers, and in particular the CEO mobilize the organizational past
and the organizational future, in order to enact current issues. The first coding
consisted of labelling the data with different modes of referencing to the past or the
future. In a second step, I started to group together the topics and to make a selection
of the most important ones. The importance of these topics depended on the length

56
during which they were discussed, how often they were discussed, and on how
controversial they were. The higher the length of discussion, the more often the issues
appeared and the more controversial the issues were discussed, the more important
they were identified. Accordingly, the following table introduces the most important
issues (see table 3):

Issue Description
1. Losses in sewing The sewing factory in Thailand is responsible for sewing textiles for the Japanese
factory in Thailand market. Due to the specialized taste of the Japanese people, there is a special line of
textiles that must be produced and shipped at low costs. This is the reason why
Thailand has been chosen as manufacturing country. During the last years, the sewing
fabric has not been profitable anymore. There are two main reasons that can be
identified for the losses: the decrease in orders from Japan and the inability of the
existing management in saving costs.
2. Losses of the During the last years, the Japanese company has lost money mostly because of the bad
Japanese company economic situation in Japan, as GARN is one of the biggest players within the
Japanese market.
3. Growth by opening In the past, GARN used to own a company in London in which its own marketing and
a showroom in sales personnel used to sell and distribute the products. Because of a decrease in sales
London in the United Kingdom, the personnel had to be laid off, while their activities were
handed over to an external agent. Considering the fact that there is a high market
potential for home textiles in the United Kingdom and because of a location
opportunity in the most important design centre in London, GARN has just opened a
new showroom. The company therefore has been reactivated. The aim is to attract
architects and eventually close contracts for larger projects.
4. Losses of showroom The showroom in New York is located in the most important design centre of the city.
in New York New York and its surroundings represent the most important market potential for the
USA. However, the showroom is still losing money.
5. Growth by securing The clients of home textiles can roughly be divided into private and contract clients.
large contracts While private clients buy the products at their regional decorator, architects and other
institutional clients will ask for direct sales with a lower price due to higher sales
volumes. GARN is interested in acquire large contracts that secure high revenues. The
idea is to enforce marketing and sales activities for the contract business.
6. Expansion of the There are ongoing activities to expand the product range within the limits that it has to
product range be either home, bed or bath textiles. The German company introduced a small carpet
collection. While there were some sales, it did not match the high quality and design
standards of GARN. This is the reason why carpets are now taken seriously, and there
is a collection to be developed which meets the necessary standards. Furthermore, there
is a project that covers the introduction of living accessories such as plaids or cushions.

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Issue Description
7. Development of Some years ago, it was decided to continually build own stores to sell bed linen
own bed linen directly in addition to the indirect sales channels. While the first shop is quite
stores successful, the second shop was a disaster. It never made profit mainly due to the bad
development of the newly built shopping mall it was located in. Today, GARN has
closed the second shop, and the development path has been temporarily stopped.
8. Competitors There is a difference between the businesses of home textiles and bed linen. The first
one is a niche market with clearly definable competitors, while the bed linen market
also include mass competitors such as IKEA or fashion labels such as Ralph Lauren.
Due to the limited shelf space, there is much more pressure from competitors in the bed
linen market.

9. Development of new Twice a year, there are new collections developed for the home textile as well as for
collections the bed linen business. Each collection represents an addition to the existing collections
while some of the older textiles will be sorted out. The regular development of the
collections structures the way GARN is organized. Especially when it comes to interact
between the country companies. Furthermore, each collection will be presented on
specialized purchasing fairs, and this serves as the main reason for the sales staff to
regularly meet their clients.
10. Difference between The home textile business and the bed linen business differ considerably. The home
home textiles and textiles are semi-finished goods that are sold in the form of samples to interior
bed linen designers. It raises the chance that the end client will chose one of the textiles of
GARN. The end client most probably does not know the brand. Having distributed the
home textiles, the interior designer will further work with it in order to develop the
finished product such as curtains or a couch. On the other hand, bed linen is a finished
product which is mainly sold in specialized shops or shopping malls. The product will
be bought directly by the end client. The brand of GARN is known to them.

Table 3: Overview and description of managerial issues

In line with a grounded theory approach, data collection, data analysis, and
theorization was conducted in an iterative way (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This means,
that after having collected the first data, I already started with coding and theory
building. On the basis of the coding, the above mentioned issues have been identified
to occur often and to be discussed intensively. They have not been identified as such
from the beginning. On the contrary, they evolved to be important for the company
members under study during the observations. Furthermore, the issues are not
themselves considered as representing organizational change, but as bearing the

58
potential for having an important impact on present and future organizing within
GARN. The future will show, if these issues can additionally be analyzed in the light
of organizational change from a more traditional perspective, looking back on the past
and re-interpreting them.

I analyzed how and why mobilizing of pasts and futures occur in a specific way to
judge and justify behaviour, decisions, and standpoints. To do this, I coded the
material with predefined codes such as ‘past’, ‘future’, ‘judgment’, and ‘justification’.
While a pure grounded theory approach requires entering the field without any
theoretical preconception, I had to develop a theoretical conceptualization that allows
empirically exploring organizational change from the strong process view. The
following table shows a screenshot of the software MAXQDA 10, I used to put code
labels to discussion and interview transcripts as well as field notes (see figure 5):

59
Figure 5: Screenshot of Codings with MAXQDA 10 Software

During these codings, new codes were inductively generated to describe the different
mechanisms behind the mobilizing, judgment and justification. On the basis of this,
several different mechanisms of judgment and justification could be identified. In a
second step, the particular practices of managerial judgment and justification have
been identified, clustered, and structured with respect to the question, whether they
rather refer to the past or to the future. In accordance with the research question, the

60
further analysis attempted to answer the question of how and why judgment and
justification potentialize and generalize for future enactments. This step of analysis
was done on a second order level, on the basis of the mechanisms that were identified
by the first order analysis. The clustered and structured judgment and justification
practices have been conceptually bundled into an empirically grounded, as well as
theoretically inspired concept, which differentiates the specific qualities of justification
and judgment, as well as the specific dynamics of relating the present, past, and future
in judging issues and themes, as well as justifying decisions and actions. In a fourth
step, it has been explored how transcending the enactment of the present through the
mobilization of the past and the future, in different situations and interactions, leads to
the transcendence of the situational, as well as to the creation and establishment of
potentialities for the emerging organizational development.

The results have been discussed several times in the research community as well as
with both the CEOs of the group, what allowed gaining further insights from another
perspective. There was, for example, a workshop held at the company, in which the
father and the son discussed together with other entrepreneurs and managers about
how they were able to successfully hand over their roles as the CEO. Furthermore, the
results have been discussed with the new CEO of the group. During this discussion, he
not only confirmed most of the findings I presented but also started to reflect how and
why he potentializes and generalizes for future enactments.

Data analysis for the empirical focus 2: entrepreneuring as opportunity forming

To analyse the second empirical focus, I entered the field with the general idea of
finding out how opportunity forming occurs by exploring and matching problem and
solution spaces. The first coding consisted of labelling the data with different activities
that compromise either the exploration of the problem space, the exploration of the
solution space, or the matching of both spaces. At the beginning, the codings were
accumulated quite fast until it seemed that the most important codings were identified.
This analysis generated a set of recurring themes that referred to how the activities
continuously altered the problem-solution frame. Activities that resembled each other
much were integrated, while activities which occurred very seldom were not
considered further on. In a second step, I re-examined the data in terms of these

61
activity themes and grouped them as a second-order construct to more general
mechanisms of opportunity forming.

At the time of my study, several opportunity-related topics have been discussed and
enacted intensively such as developing a new carpet line of highest quality with almost
unlimited customizability or developing the market of architects by investing in show-
rooms. Even though the identified activities and mechanisms of exploring and
matching problem and solution spaces were observable for all opportunity-related
topics, I chose the theme of internet technology as a comprehensive example to
illustrate the findings. There are several reasons for this decision. First, GARN has not
yet dealt with internet technology a lot, as the main competences of the company
consist of purchasing, designing, branding, and selling with sales staffs in the
business-to-business market. GARN runs a website, although it only displays
information about the company and parts of the collections. Following this, the topic is
unknown, ambiguous, and complex, which promises a rather intensive exploration of
problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, practice and science do not know the best
ways of handling the internet technology. It is still an ill-defined topic. While there are
some existing solutions and some successful companies using internet technology in
different markets, it is unclear how the textile industry will approach it and what
technological issues would have to be resolved by companies such as GARN. The
discussion also revealed that introducing a direct sales channel over the internet would
directly compete with the existing clients of GARN, which run shops selling bed linen
and interior textiles. On the other hand, it could be risky to react very late as some
competitors have already made use of the internet technology, and also, clients have
started to build web-shops for interior textiles and bed linen of GARN. Finally, the
topic of internet technology is suitable for illustrations as it had started to become an
issue during my observations, while other topics had already been discussed
intensively and decided upon before I entered the organization.

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3.5. Methodological limits in the strong process view
In the beginning of this section, it was mentioned that the strong process view creates
an ontological shift from a world in which change is the exception towards a world
that consist of processes only and in which stability and entities are constructed.
Accordingly, developing knowledge in such a view must be adapted to the ontological
premises. Chia (1999) stresses that, in an ever-changing world, knowledge creation is
a representational attempt that is required to deal with reality. However, fixed concepts
are themselves subjective constructions. The strong process view therefore denies
epistemological realism and favours constructivism. With similar arguments, Law
(2004) and Hernes (2008) point out that studying the messiness of process is less about
reaching clear cut knowledge but understanding how organizing is experienced by the
individuals and groups under study. According to Van de Ven and Poole (2005), the
strong process view faces an irony because “its representation, interpretation, and
explanation of processes must always reify the processes – which are evanescent and
in flux – in words and diagrams fixed statically to the page” (p. 1390). Following these
presumptions, there are methodological limits for empirical studies in a strong process
view. This dissertation with its words, concepts and mechanisms represents fixed
categories that are on the one hand necessary to develop and disseminate knowledge
beyond the researcher’s subjective experience. On the other hand, a concept or a
mechanism is only a representation of what the management team at GARN
experienced during their interactions in real time. Watching a video tape of the
management meetings would be most accurate to their experience of how the world is
changing and of how the organization is becoming. However, there is still the need to
abstract for scientific purposes and of course for the aim of this dissertation. Therefore,
to record the meetings, transcribe the interactive talk and to generate conceptual
categories of the management practice seems to be a valuable procedure to reach a
balance between inter-subjective abstraction and subjective experience.

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4. Empirical Focus 1: Managing as Transcending the
Present

The theoretical exploration in chapter 2 has shown, that if organizational change is

conceptualized as an ongoing process occurring in the present, it can be meaningfully
described by acts of referring to and from the past and the future. The goal of chapter 2
has been to develop a conceptualization of organizational change in the making that
contributes to overcoming the difficulties with empirical studies on change regarded as
an ongoing phenomenon and being in line with the strong process view. This chapter
adopts the conceptualization of chapter 2 by extending it with the suggestion that the
management refers to the past and the future in order to judge and justify during
enactments of current issues. It applies the conceptualization empirically in an in depth
case study as has been introduced in the methodological chapter above. The focus is
on the theory of management and the chapter contributes to the question of how
managerial action and its institutional influence interrelate.

4.1. Introduction
Managerial practice is characterized by a focus on short term issues, momentary
challenges and situated decisions (Mintzberg, 1971; Tengblad, 2006). In other words,
managing predominantly consists of situational activities (Mintzberg, 1971). However,
is it not the influence and impact which goes beyond situational interactions that
would distinguish managers from non-managers? Stated differently: how do
managerial activities influence a distributed organization (Tsoukas, 1996) beyond the
situational interactions to secure the long-term development of an organization, for
example, by shaping the resource allocation into strategic initiatives (Gilbert & Bower,
2002), by exploiting long term opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000, 2003), or
by following strategic intents (Prahalad & Hamel, 1996)?

Existing theory usually approaches these questions by distinguishing between a micro

and a macro perspective on managing (Tsoukas, 1994). The micro perspective
concentrates on management as a situated activity (Tsoukas, 2005b) and tries to
examine and explain what these individuals regularly do (Tsoukas, 1994). The macro

64
perspective concentrates on the organizational outcomes of management in the form of
for example strategies (Floyd & Lane, 2000), innovative products (Leonardbarton,
1992) or financial success (Zahra & Covin, 1993). Both perspectives bear the risk of
losing sight of the interplay between managerial activities and company development.
The micro perspectives tends to miss explaining how managerial activities influence
the organizational (Chia & MacKay, 2007) and the macro perspective tends to black
box (Latour, 2005) managerial action .

The aim of this chapter is to expand our understanding of the often neglected interplay
between managerial action and company development. I follow Willmott’s (1987)
claim for more empirical studies on managerial work that focus on the interrelation
between managerial actions and their organizational significance. On the basis of the
chapter 2, I further develop the respective theoretical advancements by exploring how
management situationally enacts current issues by referring to the past and future,
thereby creating abstractions and potentialities for future enactments. Based on these
thoughts, the research attempts to find answers to the following research question: how
and why does management chose specific pasts and futures in order to influence future
organizing?

In the following, I will first display the theoretical basis for this study. I will explicate
how the strong process view helps to contribute to a theory of managing as
transcending. On the basis of this, I develop a theoretical conceptualization that allows
us to empirically examine how management generalizes ways of organizing and
creates potentialities for future courses of action. Following this, I show several
mechanisms of how management mobilizes pasts and futures. Finally, I discuss the
results and show how the results contribute to a theory of managing as transcending to
better understand the interplay between managerial action and company development.
I conclude with a short summary, a discussion, some limitations of the study and the
implications for practice and for future research.

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4.2. Theoretical Background
In the following, I will first examine how the strong process view in general helps to
better understand how micro activities influence organizational development and vice
versa. In the second part, I will explain a framework that shows how managing in
particular may be conceptualized as a situational activity that influences organizational
developments from a macro perspective.

4.2.1. Strong Process View as a Basis for Understanding the Interplay between
Situational Activity and Organizational Development
The strong process view (Chia, 1999; Hernes, 2008; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) is a recent
movement in literature that favours ‘activity over product, change over persistence,
novelty over continuity, and expression over determination’ (Langley & Tsoukas,
2010: 2). Organizations are regarded to be in an ongoing process of becoming
(Tsoukas & Chia, 2002), they are not ‘things made’ but processes ‘in the making’
(Hernes & Weik, 2007), which is a concept and idea being developed on the basis of
process philosophy (Rescher, 2000).

Time is a crucial dimension when studying the interplay between continuous activities
in the present and company development from a longer term perspective. Time has
however rather rarely been in the focus of management and organization literature
(Wiebe, 2010). The strong process view suggests a radical shift for the concept of time
from an objectified version of time to an experienced version of time (Chia, 1999). An
objectified version of time is based on clock time, which brackets the flow of life into
discrete points on a linear timeline and uses static states to explain the change between
those states (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). In such a view, the fluid, dynamic, and
heterogeneous character of how we experience change in our lives on an ongoing basis
gets lost. I apply an experienced version of time as it allows studying how
organizational agents situationally deal with the dynamics of an ever changing world.
There are several aspects in an experienced version of time that I want to highlight and
which build the basis of the conceptualization:

66
First, the present becomes the focus of observation and study. Even though, this is not
always explicitly mentioned, the strong process view implies that understanding the
flux and the dynamics of managing and organizing requires focusing on the present in
which experience occurs. If organizations are conceptualized as processes ‘in the
making’ (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010), scholars should better understand the present in
which organizations are made and reproduced. If something occurs ”in the making”, it
is only possible to be observed in the present. Hernes (2008) refers to Whitehead when
pointing out that ‘… the world presents itself to us in the form of ‘occasions’ of
experience’ (p. 35) and that we cannot go beyond these occasions, as they are the
ultimate version of a reality in how we experience this world of process. Not going
beyond occasions of experience means to focus on the present in which these
occasions are experienced.

A second aspect of the strong process view that allows developing a conceptualization
of transcendence is the influence of the past and the future on the present and vice
versa. According to the principle of immanence, the past is immanent in the present in
that each present event represents the actual realization of one of the many possibilities
developed by the past events, and each present event projects towards a ‘not-yet-
knowable future’ and ‘creates potentialities as well as constrains it’ (Chia, 1999: 220).
Also Butler (1995), suggested a theory that relates to our experience of time in the
present. While we experience what is happing in current moments, we experience time
in the present ‘only by relating ourselves to a past and to a future’ (p. 928), and he
further explicates that fundamental to our experience of time in the present is that we
interpret and experience events ‘through knowledge derived from the past, while
envisioning possible futures’ (p. 925). In this sense, if we study the present, we also
study the past and the future by observing the possibilities from the past that have been
actualized and the potentialities and constraints that are being created in the present for
the future. Purser and Petranker (2005) take an even more radical position when
suggesting to regard the future as being “unconditioned”, which means that because
the future cannot known, it should be improvised in the present without having any
preconception or idea about the future at all. However, we all have implicit ideas of
the future, for example in the form of wishes or beliefs. The concept of immanence
says that such ideas about the future shape our actions in the present and that each

67
action of the present may have an influence on future situations, as it changes the
world as it is. From a perspective of organizational agents, this implies that action in
the present is always at the same time shaping the situation at hand, as well as
transcending the situation towards other situations in the past as well as in the future.
The past, the present and the future are necessarily intertwined.

As a consequence, a third important aspect of the strong process view is represented

by the idea of a relational ontology, in which everything does only exist by its relation
to other things (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010). Human thinking usually involves a
separation of time and space in that when something takes place here and now, it is
separated from what takes place later and at another place (Hernes, 2008). However,
other events that may have occurred in the past, elsewhere in the present, or in the
future, will be influenced by the actual present and vice versa. There is some sort of a
connection to other events that transcends the actual actions in the present to
constructed and perceived outcomes that are produced and reproduced in future
actions. In such a relational ontology, one must be aware that there is no single present
but as many presents as there are actors acting and experiencing in each and every
moment. Of course, alongside obvious reasons not being able to study all existing
presents, researchers must concentrate on the present that is experienced by themselves
as observers and by the actors being observed. While the transcendence can be argued
theoretically, we still lack a conceptualization that allows for empirically studying it.

For this, it is important to highlight a last aspect of the strong process view that is
important for the conceptualization: the difference between the actual and the
potential as well as the difference between the experienced and the abstract (Hernes,
2008), which is similar to the idea of immanence (Chia, 1999). The actual experiences
bear the potentiality for what is experienced in the future and the actual experiences
embody the potentiality of other past events (Hernes, 2008). Managerial action can
thus be understood as a particular way of transcending the actual towards the possible,
in view of organizational processes. Similarly, the distinction between the concrete
and the abstract reveal that there are concrete experiences in the present as well as
abstractions of past events and for future events. From a managerial perspective,
abstractions are necessary to collectively make sense of and within organizing and

68
thereby to generalize ways of organizing, while at the same time gaining only precise
meaning in relation to specific situations. If organizing is regarded to be ‘a process of
reducing differences among interacting actors’ (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010: 4), the
process of abstracting creates or reduces such differences and creates as well as
constrains potentialities.

4.2.2. Towards a Model of Managing as Transcending

The specific conceptualization of time in the strong process view explicated above suit
as a basis to build a framework that allows empirically studying how management
influences organizational development beyond its situational engagement. The aim is
to examine how interactions in the present potentially influence interactions and
developments in the future, by transcending the situated present towards creating
future potentialities and abstract generalizations through the interaction in the concrete
and specific moment. Thus, the main focus is at first on the present moment within
which management acts and interacts. I thereby conceptualize the present as the
enactment of a current issue, and managerial action as a series of engagements in
situated presents. Empirical observations have identified that management is mainly
confronted with and interested in current issues that need to be tackled for organizing
in the present as well as in the future (Mintzberg, 1973). The present is an ongoing
moment in which a certain issue is collectively discussed, reflected, changed,
developed, or as I say, enacted. Ultimately, the present is regard to be the only source
of reality while the past and the future are constructed, as they do not exist anymore or
do not exist yet (Mead, [1932] 2002).

While issues are enacted in the present, the past and the future are usually involved to
make sense of and to enact an issue. First, the present always represents an
actualization of one of the many potentialities created in the past (Chia, 1999; Hernes,
2008). The past, in this sense, is not an entity but a collection of individual and
collective memories and experiences of actors interacting in the present. The past is
also dynamic as we are free to interpret our past and the respective memories
differently again and again. One could argue that the present and its unique
circumstances even require us to re-interpret the past again and again. It is the
performance in unique situations in the present that urge us to apply and potentially

69
adapt learned mechanisms and our interpretation of the past (Feldman & Pentland,
2003). Secondly, how we perceive the future influences our enactment of current
situations and issues (Garud, Kumaraswamy, & Karnoe, 2010; Gephart, et al., 2010).
Also, there is not only one future, as we continuously co-create the futures we will be
living in. Furthermore, the future is open-ended and fundamentally uncertain (Garud,
et al., 2010). While the influence of the past and the future in the present may be
referred to as immanence (Chia, 1999), I suggest making explicit what pasts and what
futures are involved in the enactment of the present and how this involvement
influences the potentialities and abstract generalizations for future enactments and thus
the macro aspects of organizing. Implicitly or explicitly, certain pasts and certain
futures are chosen and used to make sense of and enact current issues. I use the notion
of ‘mobilization’ (Garud, et al., 2010) to express that the process of choosing and
interpreting specific pasts and futures in specific ways is the core of the creative
capacity of human agency (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). The pasts may appear in
several different kinds, for example, as experiences, as knowledge, or as stories, while
the futures may appear, for example, as expectations, visions, intentions, or beliefs.

The mobilization of the pasts and the futures is not done without value. On the
contrary, particularly management implicitly or explicitly influences organizing by, for
example, telling a specific story, by highlighting a specific aspect of a problem, by
differentiating between right and wrong or by asking specific questions to understand
an issue. The value that is collectively attached to issues and ways of handling issues is
what Giddens (1984: 29) calls ‘signification’ and ‘legitimation’. He describes
signification as processes of ‘meaning constitution’ (p. 28) and interpretation. It is thus
an open concept, which is close to sense-making (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005)
as it involves putting value to certain topics on the way of trying to better understand
the topic. I refer to it as ‘judgment’ because such processes will lead to temporary
decisions on how management values a topic. Therefore, it is important to emphasize
that that judgment is characterized by its situated, implicit, and intuitive qualities,
which lead to situation-specific, often spontaneous valuations of particular events,
occurrences, opportunities, and possibilities. According to Giddens (1984: 29),
legitimation can be described as processes of norm creation, confirmation and
application. He draws on to notion of ‘accountability’ to express that ‘“accountable”

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for one’s activities is both to explicate the reasons for them and to supply the
normative grounds whereby they may be “justified”’ (p. 30). I therefore refer to the
second process as ‘justification’. It is important to emphasize that justification, in
contrast to judgment, implies the introduction of specific arguments, reasons,
references, and legitimations for making a particular point in the present. So, I adapt
Giddens’ thoughts and suggest regarding the mobilization of the past and the future as
processes of judgment and justification by which, on the one hand, specific issues are
reflected, discussed, resonated and decided upon. This is the micro-aspect, so to say,
the pure enactment of current issues. On the other hand, through the explicit or implicit
judgment and justification, potentialities and generalizations for future enactments and
future organizational developments are continuously created, re-created, and changed.
The following illustration summarizes these thoughts as a theoretical basis and
conceptual framework to empirically observe the interplay between a situated and
managerial practice and organizational development (see figure 6):

Past Present Future

Experiences, Expectations
Knowledge, Intentions,
Mobilizing for
Judgment and
Mobilizing for
Judgment and

Stories, ... Beliefs, ...

Justification

Justification

Collective Potentializing and

Experiences, Expectations
Knowledge, Enactment of Intentions, Generalizing for
Stories, ... Beliefs, ...
Current Issues Future Enactments
Experiences, Expectations
Knowledge, Intentions,
Stories, ... Beliefs, ...

Figure 6: Conceptualization of managing as transcending

Each situation is transcended in processes of potentializing and generalizing. Being

aware of the distributedness of organizational action (Tsoukas, 1996) and the
respectively limited influence and power of management (Tsoukas, 2005b), the
theoretical basis still supports the idea that management is qualified as explicitly or
potentially impacting processes of organizing. There are several aspects and reasons
for which I assume management to have a particularly high influence for future
enactments within these processes of potentializing and generalizing.

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With respect to generalizing, I particularly emphasize the following aspects: First,
management is more often confronted than other members of organizations with
situations and issues that in themselves are highly relevant for organizational
processes. There is therefore a high likelihood that specific enactments of management
transcend the situational. Second, power is not only determined through the roles
defined in structural charts and lived by management subjects but also by non-
managers that confirm such roles and expect management to be highly influential
within important situated enactments. Third, there is a formal space of resources that
the management can more easily draw on than other members of an organization are
able to. The management, for example, often has a certain budget within which it can
decide on investments without permission of others. Again, the likelihood for
transcending the enactments is increased. Finally, the management usually defines its
own role as rather macro-oriented and transcending than being concentrated on
specific enactments of day-to-day tasks and issues, even though empirical research has
revealed contrary findings (Mintzberg, 1973). This explains why I assume
management to have a higher potential than non-managers to transcend the situated
present towards the more general, which holds beyond individual situations.

While there seems to be a high likelihood of the management transcending its

enactments of present situations to the macro-aspects of organizing, from a process
perspective, there is no ‘guarantee’ that transcendence occurs. I thus complement the
emphasis of transcendence as generalizing with an emphasis on transcendence as the
creation of potentialities or on potentializing. Enactments within the present may over
time lead to self-reinforcing mechanisms that lead to organizational processes. If
concentrating on the present only in empirical observations, the study is limited to
identifying enactments and respective mechanisms. By exploring how managerial
activities transcend the situated present by relating multiple situations and mobilizing
pasts and futures, we are allowed to explore the particular impact of management on
future enactments.

On the basis of the theoretical explanations above, the aim of the empirical part that
follows is to find out, how and why management chooses specific pasts and futures in
order to influence future organizing.

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4.3. Findings
In the following, I will present the empirical findings in three parts. First, I identify
several mechanisms of how management mobilizes pasts and futures for judgment and
justification during the collective enactment of current issues. On the one hand, the
mechanisms illustrate the theoretical basis developed above. On the other hand, the
mechanisms themselves show in more detail, how the mobilization of pasts and futures
occurs in practice. In the second part, I show how the enactment of the present
transcends, as management potentializes for future enactments, while in the third part,
I explore how management generalizes for future enactments.

4.3.1. Mobilizing Pasts and Futures for Judgment and Justification

On the basis of the theoretical introduction, I can identify a series of mechanisms of
justification and judgment, with respect to their mobilization and translation of the past
and of the future in present situations and enactments. The mechanisms will be
grouped into judgment or justification as well as into the mobilization of past or the
future. This leads to four distinct, but related groups of mobilization mechanisms.
Each group of mechanisms will be analyzed separately by explaining one or two
examples.

Mobilizing the past in managerial judgment

We can identify several mechanisms of how management judges issues by mobilizing
past situations, ideas, decisions, or experiences. The following table gives an overview
of the identified mechanisms (see table 4):

Past
Mechanism Citation
The loss in Thailand is relatively high this year. Presumably 200
Valuing the issues to 300,000 Swiss Francs or 7-8 million Bath.
as severe We are still using money in Japan because the revenues are even
Judgment worse, than we could ever imagine in our worst nightmares.
The loss in Thailand isn’t necessary. This must not be. We
Unnecessary issue really have to ask ourselves, what we are doing there.

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 Past
Mechanism Citation
There is a relatively new manager in Germany since two years.
Proofing previous He came from another company, which is strong in the business
estimations and of contracts for objects. And he started to build the business this
plans year and could attract a major deal. Really big deal that
contributes 7% of the total revenue.
We could also call it Competitor-X-project. They have shops,
you will see often in Germany. We don’t want to go that far. He
Comparison with just does everything. He sells everything in the same style. You
other companies can go there and buy the interior design for a whole house.
Everything is done very nicely. We don’t want to go that far.

If we entered the furniture field, it would be much more

difficult. We really don’t understand anything of furniture. How
to build a couch? We needed a very good partner, which we
could rely upon and who knows what he’s talking about. He had
to empower us and then we had to teach that all the people in
Comparison with our company from the top to the bottom. This would be a big
denied alternative step.
Well, a lot of our clients [interior designer] also sell furniture.
The channel would be there. But considering the product, it
would be very complicated. We don’t touch furniture at the
moment. This would be a big step.
The design [of the new carpet collection] is very nice and
creative. Well, there are a lot of nice and creative designs out
there in the market. This will not suffice. And the quality is top.
These are the benchmarks in this specific field.

Unfortunately, the bed linen collection [of a new competitor] is

very bad. It is beautiful, but it will not hurt us extremely.
Anyhow, we don’t sell a lot of bed linen to our interior designer.
This are the only clients, the new competitor could gain some
market shares.
The only competitor, which was on the same level as we are, is
Estimation of the competitor X. And he moves into another direction [...] I have
future (on the basis the feeling that he often does what we are doing. A year later,
on past situations the does the same as we have done before. He better should
and developments) show up with something unique.
No, the cycles to develop new collections have not become
shorter. Especially when it comes to the interior and home
textiles. It is normal for the bed linen that a collection last for
about a year. This is very close to the fashion industry. There are
end clients. If the last year, orange was the preferred colour, you
cannot sell orange the current year anymore. It is just like that.
And when it comes to bed linen, it’s not different.
The interior and home textiles are bought every ten years.
Unfortunately, this rhythm has not changed... (laughing). The
rhythm doesn’t get shorter.
Table 4: Mechanisms of mobilizing the past in managerial judgment

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The management judges, for example, the current loss of the sewing factory in
Thailand by valuing the issue as severe (issue no. 1). The factory in Thailand is
responsible for sewing the customized orders of the Japanese company. As a
consequence of the bad economic situation in Japan, the factory in Thailand suffers
from the decreased orders. The situation in Thailand and Japan are thus related, and
furthermore, they are judged by making multiple implicit or explicit references to
other current managerial issues:

CEO: ‘The loss in Thailand isn’t necessary. This must not be. We really have to ask
ourselves, what we are doing there.’

The showroom in New York loses a similar amount of money year by year (issue no.
4). In contrast to the loss of Thailand, the loss of New York is regarded to be
reasonable, because it suits as an investment into one of the biggest markets in the
world and thus promises to pay in the future:

CEO: ‘We are talking of CHF 200,000 of losses per year because of the New York
showroom. This is also a lot. But in comparison, the losses in Thailand aren’t
necessary.’

Furthermore, the loss in Thailand is critically evaluated as resulting from the limited
local managerial capabilities, while the losses in New York are seen as inherent to the
investment into new, promising future markets.

By judging these issues differently, management mobilizes the past in different,

partially contradicting ways: in some cases, past experiences are seen as coherently
explaining what takes place today. The New York showroom is, for example, treated
as being worthwhile to be continued while continuity does not hold in other cases: the
losses in Thailand, for example, have to be stopped as soon as possible.

By proofing previous estimations and plans, the management shows another

mechanism of judging issues in the present. There are three showrooms, which the
management regularly refers to and discusses. There is a newly built showroom in
Germany, which is intended to support the strategic focus on the contract business in

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Germany. The idea of the showrooms is to allow architects getting access to the
complete range of available interior textiles in order to get inspired and ultimately
place large contracts for institutional objects. Shortly after having opened the
showroom in Munich, there was a huge success by closing an exclusive contract with
one of the fastest growing hotel chains of Germany (issue no. 5). The success story
began by the client visiting the showroom, and the contract contributes 7% to the total
revenue in Germany:

CEO: ‘The large order in the contract business stems from the showroom that we have
built recently. Not least it’s ours because we want to do business with architects. There
are much more architects visiting the showroom in Munich.’

On the other hand, there is the showroom in New York (issue no. 4) that constantly
loses money, what may create objections and discussions within the organization.
Furthermore, GARN is currently investing heavily in a new showroom in London
(issue no. 3). This investment also may create objections and provoke questions within
the organization. By referring to the success story of the large contract in Germany, the
management uses the example as a platform to proof its previous estimations that
introducing showrooms are a promising new approach and very important for wining
contracts and gaining access to the architectural world, which is seen by the new
management generation as a promising opportunity. In addition, referring to these
different issues allows the management to further support the previously stated plan of
focusing on the contract business. The recent past is mobilized to activate the link
between the newly opened showroom in Germany and the success story of the hotel
chain.

Mobilizing the future in managerial judgment

The study identifies several mechanisms of how management judges issues in the
present by mobilizing potential situations, impressions, expectations, visions, or plans,
which are related to future possible developments, as the following table shows (see
table 5):

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 Future
Mechanism Citation
There is the alternative possibility to do the sewing in Japan
[instead of in Thailand]. This would not cost more.
Alternative This means we could ask ourselves to stop sewing on our own
Option(s) in Thailand and outsource it in Japan in order to reduce the loss.
Letting Japan go broke would be an expensive alternative.
Next year, we will launch a new carpet collection, an improved
and extended one. On a higher level, than to existing one. On a
more creative level. This is the first step for the expansion into a
Plan for the future lifestyle supplier....
First of all, we want to stay in the textile business…
…but we want to establish an accessories collection in the
textile field, a carpet collection.
There must be a positive cash flow from the sixth year on. Or
rather, there must be increasing revenues from the second year
on.
Until now, we don’t want to make furniture or lamps… I say
‘until now’. In five or ten years, it maybe looks different. But
for the moment, we stay in the textile business.
There are no boundaries. But I just tell this here… (laughing).
For the time being, the boundaries are set by the textile business
because we know this field.
The next step will be to enter the field of accessories. I mean
products such as plaids or throws. That’s not difficult, that’s just
fabrics with nice sewing. That’s what we all know. We don’t
Projecting existing need to explain this to our representatives.
Judgment
plans into a New products should enable to benefit from synergies. One
concrete picture of product should support another product. The sales channels
the future must be existing.
One could say that if we could launch a really well designed
lifestyle program, we would become better known in general.
This would promote the brand at the end consumers’. And the
some of the architects would know the brand and would be
more interested.
Well, why should the competitors be interesting? Of course, if
we enter the carpet market, there are a lot of competitors, which
are much stronger in this market. We don’t want to become a
carpet company. We have got our brand, we have got our
standards for quality and services and that’s what we will
deliver. And if one of our clients tells me that he will buy
everything from a competitor....fine, the he should buy there...
I say, if Gucci starts to sell bed linen, then competition starts to
become important. Because in this case, we cannot compete
anymore. If Gucci wants to enter this market, he is able to kick
us out of some of the department stores.
In the bed linen stores, the new competitor must fight for an
Estimating how the
entry into the shelf. The bed linen stores haven’t heard yet about
future will be
the name of this competitor. This is a new brand which has to be
introduced at first.
In turn, if the well-known brands decide to extensively enter the
bed linen market. If they decide to do advertising with a much
higher financial capacity, this will be a problem for us.

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 Future
Mechanism Citation
In our company, the product management and the design
department are very important. If the people there are not
capable to work anymore, the replacement would be crucial. It
is especially important that these people get along well with the
sales representatives, in order to get the information that is
important for the development of the new collection.
The interior and home textiles will stay a niche market. The big
names are not interested in this market. Some of them had
begun but stopped again, because they didn’t make money with
it. It is so much about details... branding is just not important.
Table 5: Mechanisms of mobilizing the future in managerial judgment

The management judges issues by projecting existing plans into a concrete picture of
the intended future. GARN is currently extending its product portfolio (issue no. 6), as
a part of the new management’s strategy. An improved and optimized carpet collection
is being developed. Furthermore, there is a plan and there are development activities to
introduce a lifestyle program, consisting of cushions or plaids which could easily be
sold in the same channels as the interior textile and the bed linen collection are. The
management mobilizes the future by extensively discussing their plans and thus
making the picture of the aspired future state more concrete:

CEO: ‘We will now think about doing some accessories. Home accessories, living
accessories. That will be...That could be sold to a bed linen customer just as well as it
could be sold to a decorator or more likely an interior store. But most importantly,
needless to say, it’s the brand that is the same. And I think as our strategy....Because the
brand is the same, some of the customers are the same, the look and the feel of the
visuals should overlap. It should look like the same company. They shouldn’t be
identical. But it should feel like “ah you do bed linen, you do interior fabrics” and it
feels like the same company. And very importantly, not to forget the consumers we are
targeting are the same.’

The manager creates a mental picture of to which customer groups the intended
accessories could be sold. And he goes further by explicating how it should look and
feel. This is emphasized by giving an example of a customer’s reaction in the direct
voice. Furthermore, important requirements for the execution of the plan are
explicated as coherent continuation of the present into the future: high quality is

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systematically leading to business success; a well-founded concept pays off; focus on
the firm’s competence areas ensures credibility into new products. In parallel, the
limits of the extension are also clarified by explaining that furniture as a possible
further extension of the product portfolio is currently not intended to be part of the
extension, even though it could be in five to ten years.

When discussing competition, the management regularly judges it by estimating how

the future will be. The management, for example, tries to foresee potential moves and
plans of existing and new competitors (issue no. 8). The competition is thereby judged
differently when comparing the market of interior textiles and the market for bed linen.
An important difference seems to lie in the potential risk of a well-known brand such
as Gucci or another fashion brand entering one of the two markets.

CEO: ‘I am not afraid of big brands in the interior textile business. If Gucci starts to
sell curtains, this isn’t very thrilling. In the bed linen business, I’m a bit worried. […] If
Gucci starts to do bed linen, I’m going to be interested in competition. Because then, I
cannot compete. If Gucci decides to capture the Swiss market and to outcompete
ourselves, they will succeed. If so, it starts to become interesting, because we will have
a problem.’

While there is a chance of, for example, Gucci entering the bed linen market, the
management assumes a low plausibility of such an entry in the interior textile market.
The interior textile market is highly fragmented and rather a niche market, where only
specialists with explicit knowledge survive and in which the brand is less important for
the end client. Gucci could thus not multiply its brand value to the same degree as they
could in the bed linen market. However, if a well-known fashion brand entered the bed
linen market, GARN would probably suffer a lot from the entrance because such a
brand possess much more market power and could even gain the shelf space of GARN
within the existing sales channels. The management clearly tries to foresee different
potential developments by drawing to a possible market entry of a competitor. In
addition, the probability of such a development is being discussed and judged. The
discussion is particularly complex for GARN, as it was forced some years ago to sell
its fashion-related business, in order to finance the continuation of the company.
Today, the relation of the new management to fashion-related themes, with respect to

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competition as well as to the creation process of new collections, is highly ambiguous,
almost like a blind spot in the overall business perspective of the organization. In this
sense, the discussion about Gucci also tends to clarify the relationship to the fashion-
related business in that the company has not enough market power to compete there
any longer.

Mobilizing the past in managerial justification

While issues are being judged, and thus taken as given and relevant, it is not obvious
that an issue should be discussed in the first place. Or in other words, a topic must first
become an issue to be communicated and discussed, may it be positive or negative.
Furthermore, judgments are not always self-evident and need to be justified as well.
Additionally, issues are translated into courses of action, plans, and decisions by being
explained and legitimized as being relevant challenges which require managerial
decisions and actions. Referring back to Giddens (1984), justification also implies a
normative orientation for what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ and the respective
decisions and courses of action. Accordingly, I can identify several mechanisms of
justification by mobilizing the past as the following table shows (see table 6):

Past
Mechanism Citation
There are two reasons [for the loss in Thailand]…
[Japan compared to Thailand] has a very active management,
which correspondingly could reduce the costs
And until now, there must not be asked the question, if we
want to stop with Japan. The Japanese company has a lot of
deposits and borrowed funds, which are guaranteed from the
holding.
And there is another reason: we are market leader in Japan. It
Reasoning and would be a pity to give up this position.
Justification
giving evidence When it comes to contracts, this is also the reason for our
showroom in London. London is the biggest specifying centre
in the world, as it is called. This means that architects specify a
certain fabric, which should be used for an object.

This is the biggest market for interior and home textiles in the
world, the city of New York, and its surroundings. We have to
keep the showroom in the most important design centre, one
has to say. It means we are willing to make losses.

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 Past
Mechanism Citation
And a further way to growth is to promote contracts for objects
in Germany. This is something we are already very active in
Switzerland and France. In other words, we sell through the
architects.
As stated before, we actively do contracts for objects in
Switzerland and France. One third of the revenue is generated
from this field. It is about big purchases in this field.
We need it [lifestyle products and accessories] because of two
reasons: The first comes from Japan. The Japanese company
needs more creative accessories. The ones we already sell there
are very boring. They have nice fabrics and they create some
cushions or plaids, and that’s it. There is neither rhyme nor
reason in that.
Furthermore, we are talking about this with a big department
store, which wants to purchase lifestyle products from us.
The major order in the contract business came from the
showroom, which we have developed. We also have
Giving evidence for
established the showroom to get into business with architects.
decision
And the contracts increased in the surroundings of Munich.

The new showroom in London is located in Chelsea Harbour.

Weighing up pros
It’s a little bit expensive, but it is the best place to open a
and cons
showroom.
We are talking about 200,000 Swiss Francs a year [loss of the
showroom in New York]. Well, that’s also a lot of money, but
Comparison of
compared to the sewing factory in Thailand [which shows
similar issues
similar losses], which is just unnecessary

While the shop in Basel is a disaster… It has no

Deeply reflection of communication impact, nobody visits. We don’t sell anything.
negative And if we did not close it, we just would have lost more
experiences money.

Table 6: Mechanisms of mobilizing the past in managerial justification

By reasoning and giving evidence in relation to past experiences, decisions, insights,

and opportunities, the management legitimizes certain issues and topics as being
worthwhile reflecting in the present, and that the respective decisions secure the future
development of the company. The introduction of a new IT system in the different
countries is an issue that needs to be considered and discussed. There are different IT
systems installed so far in most countries, and there have already been discussions
about implementing a centralized system. However, it is not obvious and clear, if there

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is an urgent need for such a difficult transformation. Discussing about the issue of
urgency in each country and in general has to be justified in the first place:

CEO: ‘We will have a common IT system in 2012. I’m glad

to say that we won’t make that. (laughing) Nobody here
was, I think, particularly eager to change the IT
systems. We will have to. Eventually. But 2012 is not
the year that we will be running on a new IT system.
No way… Couldn’t do it... Except for Japan and
Thailand. Japan and Thailand had a special situation.
They had an old...oh sorry, ancient SAP version.
(laughing) That is no longer supported by SAP. SAP
cannot offer any support anymore. They don’t even
know how it runs anymore.’

Product Manager: ‘That’s scary…’ (laughing)

CEO: ‘Yeah, and the only person, who does know how it
runs....So we already have huge risk because if the
responsible person....something should happen to
him....but he is also...70 I think?’

Japanese Manager: ‘74’

All: (murmuring and whispering)

CEO: ‘Ok, 74 and surprisingly, he wants to retire. (laughing).

So we had to change. That was the urgency of the
change in the IT system. Because if it broke down and
he is on holidays or something, nobody could help us.
So we have changed in Japan, running on the new IT
system since the first of September. Things are not yet
running smoothly. That was to be expected. The
situation in Japan is very complicated, on top of the
things. It’s lots of different conditions with different
customers. Thailand and three or four currencies to deal
with. So it’s a complicated environment. But I think
you (to the Japanese manager) are delivering? So that’s
already done.’

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Following the discussion above, there is no controversy on the issue that a common IT
system is required. However, the aspect of timing has to be justified in order to be
discussable. The exception in Japan suits as an example to justify why it could
suddenly become very urgent because of past risk considerations. As there have not
been mentioned any other risk considerations alongside those of Japan, the urgency of
the common IT system is not being discussed directly. Implicitly, the extreme example
of Japan justifies that there is not the same risk in the other countries and that the
common IT system is not as urgent as the one in Japan was. The implicit justification
is further stressed by several laughers, which diminishes the urgency of the issue. The
justification of having to discuss the timing of the implementation of a common IT
system and the justification of judging the urgency as low is done by mobilizing an
extreme case from the past: the recently changed IT system in Japan. Giving details
about how old the only person supporting the previous IT system is stresses how risky
it was and why one had to change the system immediately. By mobilizing this example
the other cases and its previous risk analysis are mobilized as well. At least the country
managers will probably reflect on their specific situations.

Deeply reflecting on negative experiences represents another mechanism I identify as

important for managerial justification by mobilizing the past. The bed linen shop in
Basel, Switzerland, shows how the management enacted in this way. The previous
strategy intended to open at least one new bed linen store every year (issue no. 7). The
target was to increase the channels and by that the availability of bed linen products.
The new shop was opened in a new shopping mall, which promised to attract wealthy
clients, which turned out differently. The shop has caused a considerable amount of
losses every year. Unfortunately, the management had signed a long-term contract, but
finally, the lawyers found a solution and GARN could close the shop:

CEO: ‘Monolabel stores for bed linen. This a very important

point...’

Bed linen manager: ‘We still work on it. Because by chance, if we have a
chance in Munich, if they open something really
intelligent, we do it, I think.’

CEO: ‘I totally agree with you. But this is a change in....’

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 Bed linen manager: ‘But if we have to do every year one, we cannot
finance this. We are too small.’

CEO: ‘Yes, so I think it is an important change in strategy. At

the time, it was decided “every year we do one to two
new stores”. Now it’s Munich, now it’s Dusseldorf,
now whatever... We can’t... Basel has taught us that we
are not retail experts. And it’s just too difficult.’

Bed linen manager: ‘Too risky for our situation.’

[…]

CEO: ‘Yes...So I note “change in strategy”. We....How did

you say that?’

Product manager: ‘We will open shops as…’

CEO: ‘...as the opportunity arises.’

Product manager: ‘And with thorough market research. Something like

that. We are not just popping into it.’

The management justifies its current actions of opening, keeping, and closing shops on
the basis of a specific interpretation of the case of Basel: while the basic approach is
seen as promising, failures are identified as being caused by the wrong location and by
the lack of retail experience, and thus evaluated as having only slight implications for
the overall approach with new stores and showrooms. However, there must be a
slower pace and the approach is rather opportunistic than strictly planned. The
reflection of how the negative experience evolved and what reasons there have been,
was intensive and in depth. Such a mechanism is not obvious as quite a number of
reasons for the negative experiences might be attributed to the management. The
mechanism shows that the management critically reflects its own actions and decisions
and not only tries to appear successful.

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Mobilizing the future in managerial justification
While judgment is equally mobilizing the past and the future, justification is
systematically biased towards the past. The study thus only reveals one mechanism of
justification by mobilizing the future as the following table shows (see table 7):

Future
Mechanism Citation
It is a rent for three years. In other words, it’s a lease of which we
could exit after three years.
Estimating future We hope to generate another 3 to 400,’000 Swiss Francs of revenue,
Justification
risks if we launch a better and more founded program with nicer
products. If not, we do not risk a lot, as everything is produced on
demand.
Table 7: Mechanisms of mobilizing the future in managerial justification

The management justifies issues or courses of action by estimating future risks. Two
issues exemplify how such a justification process occurs. First, the investment into the
showroom in London (issue no. 4) is not only justified by emphasizing the promising
perspectives, which are expected, but also by referring to the fact that the contract can
be withdrawn from within three years:

CEO: ‘It is a rent for three years. Stated differently, it’s a lease of which we could exit
after three years.’

In other words, the management transforms the strategy of opening new stores into an
experimentation approach, which situationally explores whether a new location works
or not. The possibility to exit in the near future is mobilized to diminish the pressure
on the current investment decision. In a similar line of argumentation, diversifying into
a new carpet collection (issue no. 9) is justified as involving low risks mobilizing the
future of producing on demand:

CEO: ‘We hope to generate another 3 to 400,000 Swiss Francs of revenue, if we launch
a better and more founded program with nicer products. If not, we do not risk a lot, as
everything is produced on demand.’

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As the carpet producer is a well-known partner, which is reliable and the production
will only be done on demand, the risk is estimated very low. The decision of
improving the carpet collection is being justified. Overall, the strategy of disciplined
long-term investments into promising opportunities, based on a systematic
organizational reference system, is currently replaced by an approach, which
essentially focuses on situated experimentation and risk reduction. The future is
mobilized by pointing out certain risks of decisions, opportunities and actions, which
must be diminished in the actual situation, if these decisions, opportunities, and actions
should have a chance to gain full support within the organization. The future is thus
translated into the present by creating a fearless picture of how the future will occur.

4.3.2. Transcending the Present through Potentializing the Actual Situation

Looking at the multiple mechanisms of judgment and justification explored in the last
section, I am now able to identify several important modes of transcending the present
by mobilizing the past and the future to potentialize the actual situation. This means
that the actual situation and its enactments not only advance the particular issue or
decision at hand, but also creates potentials for future situations and enactments, in
terms of emerging other issues and decisions, but ever more by re-arranging the
organization-specific repertoire of the practices mobilizing the past and the future, for
judgment and justification. The following illustration gives an overview of the
identified modes of judgment and justification, which are explored and illustrated in
further detail in this section (see figure 7):

continuity discontinuity
Judgment
closing down opening up

necessity possibility

Justification
within managerial outside managerial
action space action space

Figure 7: Modes of potentializing the actual situation (source author)

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Potentializing by Judgment
I observe that managerial judgment is potentializing the actual situation in two
particular modes. First, judgment refers to the question whether a particular situation,
event, incidence, or issue is seen as confirming continuity, or rather indicating
discontinuity (see for a related argument on path dependence and path creation: Garud
& Karnoe, 2001). In a process perspective, it is always possible to interpret and enact
the present as continuous or discontinuous, in relation to the past as well as to the
future. By emphasizing continuity, managerial judgment is establishing the foundation
for comparing and relating current issues to past issues, to use present insights to
extrapolate into future possibilities, to narrate a close relationship between present and
past experiences. The actual situation is potentialized by supporting similar enactments
of issues in the future. By, for example, mobilizing the success story of the showroom
in Munich (issue no. 5), future enactments will support the existing idea of opening
showrooms and targeting contracts with architects. By emphasizing discontinuity,
managerial judgment is introducing the possibility for allowing for new references, for
blocking certain comparisons, for devaluing past experiences as sources for identifying
potential opportunities in the future. The actual situation is potentialized by supporting
different enactments in the future. By mobilizing bad experiences from the shop in
Basel (issue no. 7), the potential to open two retail shops a year is limited. Enactments
in the future will not support the idea of retail shops with the same energy as they did
before mobilizing the bad experience of Basel.

The second mode of judgment refers to the question whether it is important to ensure
the closing down of a controversy or an issue in a particular situation, or rather an
opening up towards new possibilities and perspectives (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005).
By closing down an issue, a (temporal) decision is reached on how to proceed in the
respective manner. The example of the common IT system shows that for the time
being, it is decided to introduce such a system; however, the urgency is judged as
being low, and thus, there will be no hurry in contrast to the mobilized extreme case of
Japan (issue no. 2). The actual situation is potentialized by sensitizing organizational
members for the issue to be more important in the future; however, there is no urgency
to speed up the respective enactments in the future. By opening-up towards new
possibilities and perspectives, the management creates room for new ideas,

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exploration, and experimentation. When conducting a role play on how customers and
sales persons may enact a new accessories line in the future, new enactment spaces are
opened. The actual situation is potentialized as such a mental experimentation explores
the future in a way that sensitizes organizational members for new opportunities as
well as possible risks. These distinctions indicate how the management enacts present
situations, while at the same time embedding them in the broader contexts of time
relations (to the future and to the past), as well as organizational references (which are
mobilized in multiple, organization-related situations).

Potenzializing by Justification
In parallel to managerial judgment, I observe that managerial justification is
potentializing the actual situation in two particular modes. First, justification refers to
the question whether a current or future development, event, or decision is seen as a
necessity or rather as a possibility. It is evident that this implies different
interpretations of a present situation or current issue, meaning different conceptual
perspectives on how a particular situation or issue relates to past and future situations
and issues. One possible way of emphasizing necessity is relating to causal
relationships, which indicate that a particular development is highly probably. When,
for example, discussing about the new accessories collection (issue no. 6), the
management often mentioned that the textile shops are on the way to change from
curtain producers to retailers of accessories, which seems to be more interesting
commercially. By emphasizing the necessity for a new accessories collection, the
actual situation is potentialized by sensitizing organizational members, and it increases
the support for developing the new line. In parallel, emphasizing possibilities indicates
the contingency of a particular event or its interpretation, and thus introduces potential
alternatives into the situation (Jullien, 2006). The same example shows also an
emphasis on possibilities. It is necessary to create an accessories line, however, the
possibilities of accessories is very broad. The actual situation is potentialized by
creating room for experiments and new ideas concerning the accessories line, which
influences future enactments.

The second mode of justification refers to the question whether a particular decision or
view, event or opportunity is identified as being within managerial action space or as

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being outside (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007). Instead of mobilizing concepts, it is by
mobilizing organizational identities or certain values that it can be justified whether
something should be done by the management or in the name of the organization, or
not. When being identified as within the managerial action space, the actual situation
is potentialized as future enactments will also rather concentrate on being within the
managerial action space and not within what lies outside such space.

In addition to these qualifications, it is important to recognize that the particular

situation which is enacted by the management makes a difference: managerial
decisions and actions in formal meetings require more explicit justification than in
informal workshops or even in personal conversations. Furthermore, judgment and
justification are more focused and compact in more ‘public’ settings, while exploring
possibilities, potentialities, options and opportunities, as well as experimenting with
alternative perspectives, theories, views and concepts, is much easier in informal
encounters or personal conversations. It is important to recognize that these differences
relate to the different modes in which managerial action is enacting organizational
development. While more formal and explicit justification allows systematically
mobilizing specific past and future references, and official judgment emphasizes
certain priorities and valuations, and thus shape the actual development of the
organization, informal and open encounters particularly contribute to the creation,
actualization, exploration, and introduction of potential developments into the
reasoning and into the activities in the organization.

4.3.3. Transcending the Present through Generalizing beyond Present Situations

In the previous part, I displayed modes of judgment and justification that enact actual
situations in a way that potentializes for future enactments. We saw that potentializing
creates or limits the room within which future enactments most probably will occur. In
this section, I show how the present is transcended by generalizing beyond the actual
situation. In essence, generalization creates, alters, and confirms guiding principles for
future enactments. I identify three main modes of generalizing, out of which each
contains two sub-modes. The following illustration gives an overview of the modes
identified (see figure 8):

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Generalizing internally externally
by comparing

Generalizing failure-driven success-driven

by theorizing

Generalizing past-oriented future-oriented

by unifying

Figure 8: Modes of generalizing from the actual situation (source: author)

Generalizing by comparing
By comparing different situations and aspects, contrasts or similarities are created that
valuate an issues or aspects of an issue. Issues and their aspects may be evaluated as
‘good’ or ‘bad’ compared to each other or, less extremely, as ‘better’ or ‘less good’. It
can be distinguished between internal comparing and external comparing. The losses
in the sewing factory in Thailand were for example compared internally to the losses
in the showroom in New York. Even though both losses were similar in the amount,
the loss in Thailand was judged as being unnecessary and severe, while the loss in
New York was judged as being an important investment in a promising market.
However, I could not only identify rather strict evaluations between ‘good’ or ‘bad’
but also rankings of issues and aspects of issues. The introduction of a new accessories
line was compared to the introduction of a common IT system. Both introductions are
judged as being important and good, however the accessories line is perceived to be
more important and more urgent than is the common IT system. The evaluation and
prioritization translates previous experiences with different losses and creates an
organizational understanding of which issues should be coped with in what order.
With respect to external comparing, the management for example compared its own
company with a well-known fashion brand such as Gucci. They figured out if Gucci
could enter the market of interior textiles or bed linen, what differences exist between
both organizations and what this would mean for GARN. One of the differences is the
market power so that if Gucci entered the market, it would be possible to harm GARN.
The damage would be considerable. However, the markets within which GARN is

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active are most probably not interesting enough for Gucci to enter. So, the probability
of such an entering is judged as being rather low.

Comparing generalizes the actual situation beyond the present by creating judgments
and evaluations that guide for future enactments of similar cases. If other losses would
occur in the future, they most probably would be compared to the one in Thailand and
the one in New York. And on the basis of the existing judgments, new issues will be
judged similarly. On the basis of the different importance and urgency of the new
accessories line and the introduction of the IT system, future enactments will be
influenced by the current judgment and generalization about how much time should be
spent on either of the two issues and in what order. Most probably, there will be more
time spent on developing the accessories line than on introducing the common IT
system. The comparison with Gucci generalizes for future enactments in that the
differences show which enactments in the future rather strengthen and which
enactments rather weaken the market position compared to Gucci. Furthermore, the
way how to relate oneself to and prepare for possible market entrants’ guides as a
principle for future enactments concerning competition in general.

Generalizing by theorizing
The second mode of generalizing is described by the notion of theorizing. Judgments
and justifications translate experiences from the past into organization specific ways of
acting for the future. Organizing includes specific experiences of what will work and
what will not work. It can be distinguished between success-driven theorizing and
failure-driven theorizing. The success story of the important contract won by the
recently built showroom in Munich is theorized in the way that showrooms are
important investments into the promising contract business. The success is translated
into a general theory of showroom-investments that confirms previous estimations and
plans, thus altering the controversial impression of past investment decisions, which is
a generalizing function that suits as a guideline for future enactments. When
discussing about investments for showrooms in the future, there will be stronger
support within the organization because of linking it with the success story.
Simultaneously, the investments in London and New York are implicitly activated by
interpreting them as being worthwhile to further support, because they are evaluated as

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comparable and coherent, and thus are interpreted in the same logic as the German
case. Showroom managers of New York and London will know about the possibilities
that have been proved by the success story in Munich. These possibilities also may
serve as an implicit or explicit aim. By creating this coherence between different past
and present issues, the previously negative aspects of the investments in New York
and London become altered into promising potential opportunities for the future based
on success-driven theorizing.

On the other hand, there is failure-driven theorizing. The failure and loss of the
recently opened and soon after closed bed linen shop in Basel is theorized in the way
that GARN is lacking retail experience that the location and visitor frequency is
crucial for retail shops and that the previously intended pace of opening shops must be
slowed down. The discussion about the negative experiences is directly extrapolated
into the interpretation of current issues and future actions. The negative judgment of
Basel simultaneously activates the positive experience of the first retail shop that has
opened some years ago in Zurich. Most probably, the positive experience in Zurich has
lead to the idea of opening two or three retail shops a year, while the theorizing goes
on and is altered by the negative experience of Basel. Even though the management is
still open to further experimentation with direct sales channels, the negative experience
limits and channels the space of experimentation. In addition, experimenting and
learning from positive and negative experiences is identified as a promising strategic
perspective for establishing new stores. It suits as a generalization for future
enactments in that experimentation is allowed and fostered, however, deep reflection
and fast learning are required, and future investments will incorporate the lack of retail
experience, the importance of the location and a more realistic pace for opening new
shops. Interestingly, why one issue is judged as success and another issue is judged as
failure is not always obvious and depends on interpretation. The losses of New York
and London are turned into promising investments in the light of the success of
Munich while the loss of Basel is turned into a negative experience in the light of the
more successful retail shop in Zurich.

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Generalizing by unifying
The third mode of generalizing is described by the notion of unifying. Organizing
involves temporarily reaching a common understanding of issues and its aspects. In
this case, future enactments are guided based on such understanding processes.
Reaching a common understanding is regarded as a continuous and collective process.
And there is of course disagreement and heterogeneity involved, which also may guide
for future enactments. However, unifying common understandings helps to bundle the
energy of different organizational agents which support each other to act based on
commonly accepted understandings if organizing is regarded to be ‘a process of
reducing differences among interacting actors’ (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010: 4). It can
be distinguished between past-oriented unifying and future-oriented unifying. Past-
oriented unifying involves a reflection of the past that leads to a unified interpretation
of the past. Reflecting on the past urges the agents to stand back to be able to identify
mechanisms, regularities and irregularities. To reach a common understanding of the
organization-wide IT system, the extreme case of the recently implemented IT system
in Japan was mobilized and reflected upon. It was judged as being an extreme case,
because the only person still knowing how to run the old system was close to
retirement. The case showed that it would be possible to implement a new IT system in
a very short time. Such a past-oriented unifying generalizes for future enactments by
judging the example as an extreme case and identifying mechanisms for extreme
cases. There was, for example, only one person still able to run the Japanese system,
while the other systems are known by several specialists within and outside the
organization. Implicitly, the organization-wide IT system is judged as being much
risky and urgent than the one in Japan, which guides future enactments. It fosters, for
example, country managers to watch for similar risks and analyze their specific
situation on their own.

Future-oriented unifying, on the other hand, involves a process of temporarily reaching

a common understanding of the future. One of the examples of such a process was the
drawing of a very concrete picture of a potential future state based on the current
extension of the product portfolio (e.g. new carpet collection, new accessories
collection). It was supported by a role play in direct speech between future customers
and future sales persons. By drawing an as concrete as possible mental picture

93
concerning possible futures, organizational members are forced to reflect their own
expectations and to experiment with the mental picture of the future. It is some sort of
a dry run to explore the possibilities as well as the risks of the extension of the product
portfolio. Drawing concrete mental pictures shapes and alters how the organization
perceives controversial issues and current decisions and it gives particular meaning to
future actions and enables to judge which actions support the plan within the picture
drawn and which actions do not. A clarified and generalized image of the future serves
as a guideline for future actions.

The following figure shows in a simplified visual display how potentializing and
generalizing can be seen as transcending the enactment of current issues towards
future potentialities and enactments. While generalizations create guiding principles or
implicit theories for future enactments, pontentializing creates and contextualizes an
action space within which future action may occur. Both modes of transcending open
up for continued and / or new ways of organizing (see figure 9):

Present Future

Collective
Enactment of Guiding Principles Action Space
Current Issues based on Generalization based on Potenzialization

Figure 9: Modes of transcending towards the future (source: author)

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4.4. Discussion and Conclusion
The aim of this study is to contribute to a theory of managing that transcends the
micro- and the macro-aspects to better understand how the management at the same
time is confronted with current challenges and decisions situated in an ongoing present
(Mintzberg, 1973; Tengblad, 2006) as well as with influencing and securing the long
term development of an organization (Prahalad & Hamel, 1996; Tsoukas & Shepherd,
2004b). The theoretical framework is based on the strong process view (Chia, 1999;
Hernes, 2008; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002), in which the present becomes the focus of
observation and study to understand the flux and dynamics of managing in the context
of organizations that are continuously ‘becoming’ and ‘in the making’ (Hernes &
Weik, 2007). On the basis of this, I observed how the management collectively enacts
present issues. While according to the strong process view, the past and the future are
immanent in current actions (Chia, 1999), I made it explicit and observed how specific
pasts and specific futures are mobilized by the management. It is the act of
mobilization, which could point us to their agency that can likewise be defined as a
‘practical-evaluative capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within
the contingency of the moment’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998: 962). As the
mobilization of pasts and futures is not done without value, the management
continuously judges and justifies issues, opinions, actions and decisions (Giddens,
1984). During processes of judgment and justification of actual and concrete issues,
management potentializes the actual and generalizes the concrete (Hernes, 2008),
which influences other enactments. On the basis of these theoretical reflections, I tried
to find answers to the following research question: how and why does management
chose specific pasts and futures in order to influence future organizing?

On the basis of an ethnography of a family-owned and internationally renowned Swiss

textile company, I have found several mechanisms that show how managing consists
of mobilizing the past and the future to judge and justify current issues. The
management, for example, judged the loss in the sewing factory of Thailand by
mobilizing the past in a way that the loss seemed to be inacceptable and mainly
stemming from the factory manager. In contrast to this, other losses were judged as
important investments by mobilizing the promising future in the respective markets.

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The first-order findings support the conceptual idea that managing involves mobilizing
specific pasts and specific futures to enact current issues. It further shows that similar
issues as the losses in Thailand and New York may be quite differently judged and
justified, depending on what pasts or futures are mobilized and how they are
mobilized. Furthermore, by judging and justifying an issue, the management indirectly
mobilizes other issues that may be judged also through comparisons. When discussing
the success story of the showroom in Munich, other showrooms and their situations are
activated without having to talk about them explicitly. Furthermore, I could identify
that judgment is rather characterized by intuition and discretion, based on the
observation and interpretation of specific mechanisms, the exploration of assertions,
and valuations based on fundamental, taken-for-granted references, for example,
related to organization-specific, but also personal values. On the other hand,
justification is rather characterized by explanation and legitimation, identifying
different mechanisms and driving forces and conceptual perspectives, which allow to
approaching a situation or an issue. This also explains the pre-occupation with
referencing to the past in justification, while judgment more or less equally involved
mobilization of the past and the future.

On the second-order level, I have found several modes of how judgment and
justification transcends the present by potentializing for future enactments. Judgment
can rather confirm continuity or indicate discontinuity. Accordingly, the actual
situation is potentialized by supporting similar enactments in the future for continuity
or supporting different enactments in the future for discontinuity. Similarly, when
judgment is opening-up or closing-down possibilities and perspectives, the actual
situation is potentialized by creating a sensitivity for where, when and how certain
issues should be enacted. On the basis of opening up, there might be a lot of open
questions to be answered and people will rather act in different directions and ways for
the time being until more clarity and unity is reached. If judgment rather consists of
closing-down, a temporal agreement is reached and future enactment consist of finding
out how to support the agreement rather than questioning it further on. Justification, on
the other hand, enacts issues in a necessary or possible manner and within or outside a
managerial action space. Necessity sensitizes organizational members for the
importance and urgency of certain issues, which will lead to prioritization of future

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enactments in favour of the necessity. Possibility rather creates room for
experimentation and exploration which will lead to new ideas and new ways of
enacting future issues in a rather broad way depending on how organizational
members interpret the possibilities. The demarcation of the managerial action space
similarly rather influences future enactments by prioritizing certain issues and ways of
enacting. Judgment and justification potentialize actual situations in a way that an
action space for future enactments is continuously negotiated: Where are the
imaginary borders we enact in? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What are
we not doing? What issues are risky and why are they risky? What issues are
opportunities and why are they opportunities? Is it allowed to experiment? Is it
important to ask questions? Which questions are allowed? What answers can we give?

Additionally, I identified three modes of how judgment and justification transcend the
present by generalizing for future enactments. Generalizing can occur by comparing
internal as well as external issues such as different losses within the organization or
differences to potential competitors. Generalizing can also occur by creating everyday
theories that are organization specific and developed through everyday enactments.
They may stem from rather success-driven or failure-driven enacting. Finally,
generalization can occur by unifying the organizational attitude by temporarily
reaching a common understanding of how to interpret the past and how to interpret the
future. Generalizing suits as a temporary guiding function for future enactments, in
that it provides assistance to judge an issue to be good or bad by conducting ongoing
comparisons. It furthermore provides assistance to know what works and what does
not work based on organization specific everyday theories. And the unifying aspect of
generalizing allows supporting each other for similar intentions and similarly imagined
futures. In essence, generalizing shows ways of enacting that are organizationally
supported and worthwhile, while others are denied or at least less supported. In
contrast to potentializing, generalizing suits as a guideline how to enact rather than
where and what to enact.

The first empirical focus contributes to theory in several ways. It provides an in depth
empirical study on how management enacts actual situations beyond descriptions of
activities such as “telephone calls” or “meetings” (see e.g. Tengblad, 2006) that could

97
be argued to be part of non-managerial action as well. I have developed a
conceptualization of managing that involves value-laden activities such as judgment
and justification that differentiate between managers and non-managers. Furthermore,
I addressed the gap of better understanding the interplay between micro-activities and
organizational development. The introduced conceptualization of managing as
transcending allowed showing how management enacts specific situations and at the
same time transcends the actual situation to other enactments. It illustrates that
managing can be conceptualized as a collective process of judgment and justification
that potentializes and generalizes for future enactments in an ongoing way. It thus
indicates how the traditional divide between macro and a micro aspects of managing
(Tsoukas, 1994) might be transcended from the point of view of the strong process
perspective (Chia, 1999; Hernes, 2008; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). By focusing on the
present only, while revealing how the macro aspects of organising are activated in the
form of experiences and knowing from the past and expectations about the future, it is
possible to study micro-activities and macro development at the same time. This said, I
also contribute to studies drawing on the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984). A
focus on present enactments would allow regarding the recursivity of the micro and
macro aspects in organizing to occur simultaneously rather than influencing each other
iteratively or oscillating over time. A simultaneous view on structuration would
probably help minimizing the difficulties with empirical studies in this theoretical
stream (Pozzebon, 2004), as it allows observing action in the present. Furthermore, the
findings contribute to the strong process view by making the logic of immanence
(Chia, 1999) explicit in showing how specific pasts and futures are mobilized to judge
and justify actual issues. It also shows how enactments experienced in the present may
be observed in order to better understand how the actual and the potential as well as
the concrete and the general relate to each other (Hernes, 2008). Alongside some
exceptions (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010), the strong process view is until now rather
philosophical in nature. The conceptual framework might serve as a possible basis for
further empirical studies in a strong process view. In addition, the chapter indicates
how existing research on managerial action can benefit from an in depth study of
managing in the present, by exploring how it at the same time enacts actual issues and
interactions, while opening up towards potential other issues and interactions, as well
as possible future developments (Willmott, 1987). It thereby confirms the

98
dispersedness (Tsoukas, 1996) of managerial action specifically and organizational
action in general. Furthermore, I confirm that managerial action is highly situated in
general, which implies that management does influence organizational development
less in traditional perspectives of being managers overseeing the company,
communicating the new ideas for the future and steering the company into a successful
future. Managing rather influences organizing in small and limited interactions by an
ongoing enactment of current issues and thereby shaping and altering priorities,
questions, ideas, and finally further enactments. This implies that stable and coherent
mechanisms in organizational development might, but do not necessarily emerge from
managerial action (Tsoukas, 1996; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). The study examines how
and when the management translates different situations to make sense of the issues at
hand. The management thereby creates potentialities for future action. Even though it
is likely that other members of the organization translate related issues in a similar
way, each translation requires reinterpretation and will be unique. There is however
still no other possibility for managerial action to enact and shape organizational
development than through the multitude of situated actions and interactions, in which
the management is involved. This is important to notice in order to understand the
complexity in the relation between managerial action and organizational development.
Having explored the situated nature of managerial work, I can identify several
practical implications based on the findings: First, the enactment of specific issues in
present situations may have more influence on organizational development than
communicating plans and strategies, which will not come to life before being enacted
within specific situations. Due to the fact that the management can only enact
situations, its power and influence is limited. Being aware of this, may alter the way
how the management is seen and treated. Second, by regularly reflecting on its unique
way of judging and justifying, management would learn more about how certain issues
are enacted. Is extrapolation from the past for example useful when judging the risk of
new competitors entering the market? Why can we assume, they will not enter the
market just because they did not do it previously? Third, reflecting on the modes of
judgment and justification would reveal if there is rather a tendency, for example,
towards opening-up and possibilities or rather a tendency towards closing down and
necessities. Furthermore, the transparency of organizational everyday theories would
reveal on which assumptions enactments are based upon and how such assumptions

99
are being developed, confirmed, and denied. Finally, having identified the most
important mechanisms of judgment and justification, they could be incorporated
officially as necessary components of a discussion or a meeting. This would
potentially lead to a more encompassing discussion, because a wider range of
mechanisms would lead to new insights.

The study could benefit from further research: on the basis of the current analysis of
the empirical material, I was able to identify situated mechanisms of managerial
judgment and justification. I am aware that a family-owned company shows
differences to other forms of owner-structures. Most probably, the influence of a CEO
stemming from the owner family is higher and different than the influence from an
outsider. On the other hand, the observations showed that GARN benefits from and
accepts new ideas and experimentations of the country managers. They are treated like
entrepreneurs and for example define together, how the textile collections will look
like and what colours should be offered. Further research could also systematically
explore how the enactments of and in particular the mobilizations of the past and the
future in different situations relate and thereby impact on the possibility of specific
mechanisms of organizational development to emerge. In other words, further
investigations could compare interpretations of potentializing and generalizing and
actual enactments that might have been influenced by earlier potentializing and
generalizing. Furthermore, the analysis is based on a single case; it would be
interesting to learn how similar activities take place in other organizations. Finally, a
more detailed conceptualization of managerial judgment and justification, in relation
to current organizational theorizing, would be important. Despite these limitations, the
study is among the few attempts to provide empirical insights into managerial action
based on a radical focus on the present and it suits as a basis for further empirical work
in the strong process view. The different limitations of the study indicate promising
areas for future research.

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5. Empirical Focus 2: Entrepreneuring as Continuous
Opportunity Forming

The argumentation and findings in chapter 4 have shown that a focus on how change
emerges out of the present can be conceptualized as referring to the past and the future.
The theoretical explorations of chapter 2 have been applied to further develop the
theory on management. This chapter keeps close to the focus on the present in enacted
situations, while extending the temporal view with a creational perspective to
contribute to the theory of entrepreneurship. Drawing on design theory, data from the
same in depth case study is used to examine how opportunities are continuously being
formed by situationally exploring and matching problem and solutions spaces.

Opportunities are recognized as one of the central concepts in entrepreneurship studies

(Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Short, Ketchen, Shook, & Ireland, 2010), be it in new
ventures or in established organizations (Ireland & Webb, 2007). While the scholarly
interest in opportunities has risen (Short, et al., 2010), there is disagreement on the
definition and nature of opportunities in general (Hansen, Shrader, & Monllor, 2011),
and particularly on how opportunities come into existence (Short, et al., 2010).
Opportunities have traditionally been regarded to be identified by the alert
entrepreneur, who must be more insightful than others in recognizing and exploiting
opportunities (Alvarez & Barney, 2007a). Recent work additionally stresses that
opportunities may, to a certain degree, not exist independently of entrepreneurial
action in that it needs entrepreneurs to create an opportunity (e.g. Alvarez & Barney,
2007a; Sarasvathy, 2001; Zahra, 2008). The differing viewpoints usually have been
demarcated by the notions of ‘discovery’ and ‘creation’. Admitting that discovery and
creation co-exist, some authors claim that future research should further integrate both
aspects (Sarasvathy, Dew, Velamuri, & Venkataraman, 2003; Zahra, 2008). However,
most of the authors still regard it as an either-or concept, depending on different
contexts in which either discovery or creation opportunities are more useful (e.g.
Alvarez & Barney, 2007a; Short, et al., 2010) or depending on the timing if creation
processes are regarded to precede discovery processes (e.g. Sarasvathy, et al., 2003).
But how can entrepreneurs know ex ante based on the context if they should act in a
mode of discovery or creation? And why should creation precede discovery, when it

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could be argued that there might be an intuition or a vision at first and creative action
that follows? These questions represent some of the concerns in this chapter that I
would like to contribute to. The distinction between discovery and creation has been
very fruitful and has helped to further develop our understanding of opportunities as a
central concept of entrepreneurship. However, I claim that we still do not understand
well enough how opportunities come into existence, which is one of the core questions
in entrepreneurship research (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Admitting that
opportunity forming is inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable when experienced
in real time (Morris, Kuratko, Schindehutte, & Spivack, 2012), the goal is to
conceptualize opportunity forming as a continuous and incomplete process in the
making. I suggest regarding discovery and creation as an integral part of opportunity
forming. And I claim to further integrate them, acknowledging that opportunities are
neither created without any pre-existing idea nor are they ‘out there’ and can be
grasped and exploited without further development through entrepreneurial action. To
do this, I draw on design theory (Cross, 2006; Simon, 1996), which allows to develop
a conceptualization of opportunity forming as a process in which neither means nor
ends are given (Steyaert, 2007). Accordingly, opportunity forming is conceptualized as
a continuous and incomplete process (Garud, et al., 2009) of exploring and matching
problem and solution spaces (Cross, 2011).

Design theory and the topic of opportunity forming extend and complement the
theoretical basis and findings of the first empirical focus (chapter 4). While the strong
process view provides the basis to develop a specific view on the role of time in
studying change and management with a radical focus on the present and its
experience, design theory examines how opportunities are continuously being formed.
Whereas in the first empirical focus, the past and future are referred to in the present to
cope with managerial issues, the interrelation between problem- and solution-spaces of
opportunity-related issues is examined in this section. In line with the strong process
view, design theory as well adopts a strict focus on how such processes occur in the
present.

The developed conceptualization is elaborated through an empirical study. I use data

based on the company introduced in chapter 3. The case was chosen to explore entre-

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preneurial activities in an established company, which usually is referred to as corpo-
rate entrepreneurship (e.g. Birkinshaw, 1997; Burgelman, 1983; Fueglistaller, Müller,
Müller, & Volery, 2012; Sharma & Chrisman, 1999) or strategic entrepreneurship (e.g.
Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2001; Ireland, Hitt, & Sirmon, 2003; Schendel & Hitt,
2007). Focusing on entrepreneurial activities in an established organization allows
exploring opportunity-related processes in an open and non-entitative way (Steyaert,
2007). Usually, new ventures already have a rather clear idea about what the opportu-
nity is, which already leads to a rather entified way of examining opportunities, while
in established organizations, opportunity-related topics are more open and continu-
ously enacted, out of which opportunities are in the forming. I chose the topic of inter-
net technology and its influence on producing, organizing and selling to illustrate and
explain the identified mechanisms. Internet technology is not regarded as the opportu-
nity itself, but as a topic that involves and triggers opportunity related processes. Dur-
ing the empirical observations, internet technology steadily evolved as a suitable
theme and focal point to explore, analyse and better understand opportunity forming as
an ongoing and open process. Drawing on this topic allows examining several ele-
ments that have been regarded to be part of conceptual definitions of entrepreneurial
opportunity such as environmental conditions, new business forms or market needs
and demands (Hansen, et al., 2011).

In the rest of this chapter, I give a brief overview of the theories on entrepreneurial
opportunities. Furthermore, the conceptualization of opportunity forming will be
developed, which attempts to integrate the perspectives of opportunity discovery and
opportunity creation. Following this, I describe the mechanisms that emerge from the
empirical data. I use these mechanisms and activities to further develop a model of
opportunity forming in the making. The chapter concludes by discussing the
differences between the mechanisms and by examining the implications for
entrepreneurial theories and the possibilities for further studies.

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5.1. Existing Perspectives on Entrepreneurial Opportunity
Opportunities and opportunity-related processes have become one of the main foci for
researchers in entrepreneurship studies (Eckhardt & Shane, 2003; Hansen, et al., 2011;
Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Short, et al., 2010; Zahra, 2008). Opportunities can be
regarded one of the reasons for which new institutions are being built (Alvarez &
Barney, 2007b). However, opportunity formation does not necessarily occur in new
ventures only; it also occurs in established organizations (Ireland & Webb, 2007;
Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). In this chapter, I will empirically study how
opportunity formation occurs in an established company. Opportunities can be
regarded as one of the reasons for success in existing organizations (Kuratko, Ireland,
& Hornsby, 2001). The idea of opportunities as a source of success is based on
Schumpeter’s ([1934] 2000) conceptualization that new products, services and markets
serve as the motor for wealth creation. This view on opportunities is supported by
several authors (Ireland, et al., 2003; Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). It is therefore
worthwhile understanding how opportunities come into existence (Shane &
Venkataraman, 2000). However, there is quite a dispersed idea about what
opportunities are (Hansen, et al., 2011), and we still know relatively little about how
they are formed in a continuous real-time process beyond entitative and teleological
views (Steyaert, 2007), and acknowledging the process of opportunity forming is
experienced as being inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable (Morris, et al.,
2012).

Existing theories mainly distinguish between two perspectives on opportunity

formation. Traditionally, opportunities have been regarded to exist independently of
the entrepreneur in the form of market inefficiencies (Barney, 1986; Cohen & Winn,
2007; Luksha, 2008). Following this argumentation, opportunities arise exogenously
from technological, political, regulatory, social, or demographic changes (Alvarez &
Barney, 2007a; Shane, 2003). In this view, entrepreneurs differ from non-
entrepreneurs by being more alert and insightful to discover opportunities and exploit
them afterwards (Alvarez & Barney, 2007a). According to the view of opportunity
discovery, entrepreneurs bring agency to the already existing opportunity by exploiting
it (Shane, 2003). To do this, they must foresee future market characteristics and
identify unmet customer needs (Fust, Grand, & Fueglistaller, 2011) to determine ex

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ante the potential value of an opportunity. However, the proponents of this view admit
that such predictions are not possible to be conducted with certainty, as not all
information does exist yet at the time of discovery (Eckhardt & Shane, 2003).

Criticizing the idea that opportunities exist independently of the action of

entrepreneurs, several authors suggest complementing the theory of opportunity
discovery with a theory of opportunity creation (Alvarez & Barney, 2007a; Baker &
Nelson, 2005; Miller, 2007; Sarasvathy, et al., 2003). This implies a shift from
exogenous market inefficiencies as the source for opportunity existence to
entrepreneurial action that endogenously explores possibilities to create new products
or services (Alvarez & Barney, 2007a). Most of the contributions, which point out the
difference between discovery and creation, assume that one or the other is more
suitable depending on different circumstances. Miller (2007) and Sarasvathy et al.
(2001; 2003), for example, draw on Knight’s (1921) distinction between differences in
information availabilities, uncertainties, and risk. Depending on these distinctions,
either the discovery or the creation of opportunities is argued to be more suitable. If
the future is at least partially known, opportunities seem to exist ‘out there’ and may
be discovered by gathering the information needed (see e.g. Sarasvathy, et al., 2003:
144-146) and by minimizing the risks of failure through the partial prediction and
foreseeing of the future (Miller, 2007: 62). On the other hand, if the future is not only
unknown but also unknowable, opportunities must be created (Sarasvathy, et al., 2003:
144). Depending on these differences in information availability, Sarasvathy (2001)
identifies that opportunity discovery focuses on the ‘predictable aspects of an
uncertain future’ (p. 251), whereas opportunity creation focuses on the ‘controllable
aspects of an unpredictable future’ (p. 251). Consequently, opportunity discovery
implies the logic of prediction which says that to the extent to which the future is
predictable, it is also controllable. On the other hand, opportunity creation implies a
logic of control in that to the extent to which the future is controllable, it does not
require to be predicted (Sarasvathy, 2001: 251). Several authors stress that depending
on the context, either opportunity discovery or opportunity creation processes are more
effective (Alvarez & Barney, 2007a; Sarasvathy, 2001; Sarasvathy, et al., 2003; Zahra,
2008). Furthermore, the nature of these processes is argued to differ as well. The
discovery process is regarded to be analytically driven and information-driven,

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whereas the creation process is explained using notions such as experimentation
(Alvarez & Barney, 2007a: 573), improvisation, or bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005;
Sarasvathy, 2001: 256), which indicate the inherently open-ended and creative nature
of opportunity forming.

Entrepreneurship and opportunity research have benefited from the distinction

between discovery and creation by identifying that there are different forms of
opportunity-related processes and that there are different circumstances influencing
how the opportunity comes into existence. The discovery view teaches us that there
may be an initial belief, an initial vision, or an intention about how future products or
services should look like. Following this view, it is possible and most probably
worthwhile to analyze existing markets, products, or services to identify unmet
demands or latent market niches. On the other hand, the creation view points out the
open-endedness and the creative nature of opportunity-related processes. It shows that
opportunities do not exist as something to be grasped ‘out there’ but something that
has to be enacted in order to become reality (Fletcher, 2004, 2006). I argue in this
chapter for a re-integration of opportunity discovery and opportunity creation into a
process of opportunity forming. I believe that we still do not know enough about how
opportunities are formed in the making, when entrepreneurs are not aware of what they
are striving for and if their actions ultimately will result in the form of a successful
opportunity. Entrepreneurs cannot be sure if they are acting in a context with less or
more uncertainty; they cannot know exactly if what they are working on has a market
potential, even though they probably must believe so to a certain degree beforehand.
We know relatively little about opportunity forming as a collective process which is
experienced in real time (Morris, et al., 2012).

Several authors who distinguish between opportunity discovery and creation are aware
of the difficulties that the differentiation brings with it and often, they regard it as a
conceptual aid to better understand the process of opportunity formation. Alvarez and
Barney (2007a), for example, reveal that when opportunities are created, some
information is available ex ante and that opportunity creation includes acting upon
initial beliefs, which are socially constructed and re-constructed during opportunity-
related processes. Sarasvathy (2001) explicates that the distinction suits as a construct

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for better exemplifying theoretical ideas. Together with her colleagues (2003) she
makes suggestions about how to integrate the different views for practice, education,
and further research. One suggestion to integrate the views involves the timing of both
processes. The authors conjecture that creating processes most probably precede
discovery processes because something to be discoverable must be created beforehand.
However, this would speak against Alvarez and Barney’s (2007a) suggestion to
integrate the views by claiming that initial beliefs may be discovered at first and would
dynamically guide through the creation process. Also, Zahra (2008) suggests to
integrate both views with the help of temporal distinctions. He introduces opportunity
discovery and creation to influence each other in the form of a virtuous cycle, where
discovery promotes creation and vice versa. Alongside such a sequential integration,
Sarasvathy and her colleagues (2003) further suggest integrating both views by
recognizing their context dependency and finding out which ‘circumstances, problem
spaces and decision parameters’ (p. 158) influence the process of opportunity
formation in what way. Miller (2007) identifies that the processes overlap and that
creation processes must include opportunity discovery at some point in time, whereas
opportunity discovery may presumably occur without creation processes. Also,
Sarasvathy (2001) is aware that both processes are ‘integral parts of human reasoning
that can occur simultaneously, overlapping and intertwining over different contexts of
decisions and actions’ (p. 245).

The overview of existing contributions on opportunity discovery and creation shows

that the authors are aware of the importance to better understand how opportunity-
related processes occur in real time integrating the discovery and creation views. This
would help to examine opportunity forming as a simultaneously overlapping and
intertwined process (Sarasvathy, 2001), acknowledging its unpredictable and
uncontrollable nature (Morris, et al., 2012). To integrate the existing views on
opportunity and to find out more about how opportunity forming occurs as an open-
ended, unpredictable, and uncontrollable process in real time represents the research
gap of this chapter. To contribute to this gap, I suggest drawing on the design theory
(Cross, 2006; Simon, 1996) as a conceptual grounding to better understand
opportunity forming as an open, ambiguous, and complex process. I develop one such
possibility and then elaborate it by referring to an empirical study in an internationally

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renowned Swiss textile company. I regard this perspective as complementing and
integrating the existing theories that distinguish between discovery and creation.

5.2. A Design Perspective on Opportunity Forming

There is not a single comprehensive theoretical basis to further develop processual
theory for entrepreneurship and opportunity formation (Steyaert, 2007). Steyaert
(2007) compares the different theoretical concepts, based on which the inherently
processual character of entrepreneurship and opportunity forming can be studied. The
theory of opportunity creation (Sarasvathy, 2001; Sarasvathy, et al., 2003) is one of
several different theoretical grounds and also the overarching starting point and
inspiration for a ‘so-called creative process view’ (Steyaert, 2007: 454), which is
compared against entitative, equilibrium-based, and teleological views (Steyaert,
2007). I follow this argumentation and try to further explore how opportunity forming
occurs as a creative process. However, instead of comparing opportunity creation
against the concept of opportunity discovery, as it has been done in the original
contributions of opportunity creation (Sarasvathy, 2001; Sarasvathy, et al., 2003), I try
to integrate both by drawing on design theory (Cross, 2006; Simon, 1996).

Interestingly, the contributions regarding opportunity discovery as well as the

contributions regarding opportunity creation already imply a theory of design,
although not interpreted explicitly as an exploration of new means-ends relationships
as I do in this chapter. Steyaert (2007), for example, identifies that the creation theory
is itself considered ‘at heart a theory of design’ (Sarasvathy, 2004: 524). Steyaert
(2007) explicates that one of the most important aspects of the creation view is its non-
teleological way of exploring entrepreneurial action. The entrepreneur does not choose
between pre-existing alternatives but constructs or designs aspects of the world he is
concerned with. And he praises the creation theory to ‘give weight to those features of
a processual understanding that focus on its context of uncertainty where neither
means nor ends are predetermined; instead, they are constructed in an incremental
way, i.e. in the process of the making’ (p. 466). The proponents of opportunity
discovery similarly define entrepreneurial opportunities as a process of discovering
new means-ends-frameworks, in contrast to a larger set of opportunities that involves

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optimizing within existing means-ends-frameworks (Eckhardt & Shane, 2003; Shane
& Venkataraman, 2000).

I suggest that the idea of exploring new means-ends relationships provide the
conceptual attractor for studying opportunity forming. While Sarasvathy (2004),
regards the creation theory to be a theory of design, she uses the means-ends
relationship to differentiate between discovery and creation theory. Drawing on March
(1982), Sarasvathy (2001) identifies that research often ignores phenomena involving
ambiguous and changing goals and values. Creation theory is seen as choosing
between possible ends that can be created with given means, whereas discovery theory
is regarded as choosing between different means to achieve a given or predefined end.
I claim that opportunity forming is an even more ambiguous, uncertain, and complex
process (Morris, et al., 2012) during which neither means nor ends are given.
Consistent with Steyaert’s (2007) understanding of entrepreneuring, I suggest
regarding opportunity forming as occurring in a context of high uncertainty, where
neither means nor ends are clear but evolving and being formed in the making in an
incremental way.

The design perspective provides a promising basis for better understanding the
relationship between means and ends in the contexts of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Sarasvathy and her colleagues (2003) have already drawn on seminal contributions in
design theory of authors such as Herbert Simon (1996) or Hans Joas (1996). While
these contributions have been used to differentiate opportunity creation from
opportunity discovery, I claim that design theory allows for integrating the different
views into a processual theory of opportunity forming. Recent empirical research on
design usually is concerned with the conception and realization of new things (Cross,
2006) and traditionally has included the study of professional designers and how they
create artefacts (Cross, 1984; Cross, Dorst, & Roozenburg, 1992). In contrast to this, I
do not focus on artefacts, even though opportunities may lead to the creation of new
products. I try to stay as processual and non-entitative as possible (Steyaert, 2007).
Similarly, the notion of design in this chapter is not regarded as a process of creating
organizations or organizational structures as has been discussed in a recent special
issue on organizations and design (Jelinek, et al., 2008). Opportunity forming is rather

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regarded as an open and incomplete design process in which opportunities are
continuously enacted. This is in line with a recent claim for an incomplete view on
design. Garud and his colleagues (2009) regard design as being both the medium as
well as the outcome. Following the authors, ‘completeness allows for the pre-
specification of a problem, the identification of pre-existing alternatives and the choice
of the most optimal solution’ (p. 351). When forming opportunities, problems are
neither specifiable in advance nor are alternatives readily available nor is it possible to
find out the most optimal solution. Garud and his colleagues (2009) base their thoughts
on Simon’s (1996: 162) subchapter ‘Designing without final goals’, in which he
identifies a paradoxical view on design goals, which motivate action, which in turn
will generate new goals. Garud and his colleagues (2009) further explicate that ‘as
actors try to complete what has been left incomplete, they generate new problems as
well as new possibilities that continually drive design’ (p. 352). In other words, on the
way of opportunity forming, problems as well as solutions are continually being
changed and matched.

If opportunity formation and designing are regarded to be processes that do not reach
completeness because means and ends, or in other words, goals, problems, and
solutions, continuously change, a closer look at these dynamics offers a new way of
studying opportunity forming as an open process in the making. Design theory serves
as a promising basis because it aims at explaining how ill-defined problems in
particular as well as unrealized and unknowable solutions are enacted (Cross, 2006).
This represents important aspects of opportunity-related processes (Morris, et al.,
2012). Nigel Cross and other design researchers (Cross, 1992, 2006; Dorst & Cross,
2001) have identified in several empirical studies of professional designers that
problems and solutions co-evolve during design processes. The studies show that
designing involves exploring problems and solutions together and the understanding of
both gradually develop (Cross, 1992: 4-6; 2006: 80). Problems and solutions are
regarded as being part of solution and problem spaces that are explored, which create
tensions, and which influence each other and have to be matched continuously (Dorst
& Cross, 2001). Cross and Dorst (1998: in Cross, 2006), for example, have found such
a co-evolution in the protocol studies of experienced industrial designers:

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 The designer start by exploring the [problem space], and find, discover, or recognize a
partial structure. That partial structure is then used to provide them also with a partial
structure of the [solution space]. […] They transfer the developed partial structure back
into the [problem space], and again consider implications and extend the structuring of
the [problem space]. Their goal […] is to create a matching problem-solution pair.
(Cross & Dorst, 1998: in Cross, 2006: 2080)

While the understanding of the problem and solution spaces gradually develops in a
reciprocal way (Cross, 2006), designers use solution conjectures and additional
information to develop their understanding of the problem (Cross, 1992). The problem
and solution spaces influence each other as the problem and solution criteria may
create conflicts and tensions, which have to be resolved by matching the problem and
solution spaces (Cross, 2006: 74).

Tensions and conflicts between problems and solutions arise in situations. According
to Schön (1984), designing occurs as ‘a reflective conversation with the situation’ (p.
295), an interactive process of exploring the situations and problem frames at hand and
of creating possible solutions (Cross, 2011). The situational nature of designing or the
conversation with the situation (Schön, 1984) is also supported by Joas (1996) who
proposes a theory of creative action as opposed to rational or normative concepts of
social actions. Following his theory, action is inherently creative as we are
continuously confronted with tensions or problems that arise between historically
grown expectations and the reality perceived within situations. There is an ongoing
dialogue between means, ends, and the situational context (Grand & MacLean, 2007).

In this study, design is regarded as a general way of coping with ill-defined problems
and ill-defined solutions (Dorst & Cross, 2001), rather than a process of professional
designers, as it is usually focused on in design theory (Cross, 1984; Cross, et al.,
1992). It is meant as a theoretical and conceptual basis for creational action (Joas,
1996), rather than a theory of how creative professionals act. It assumes that everyone
is a designer who aims at ‘changing existing situations into preferred ones’ (Simon,
1996: 111), however, without knowing preferred situations or the goals in advance.

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On the basis of the idea that designing involves exploring problems and solutions
together and that the understanding of both gradually develops (Cross, 1992: 4-6;
2006: 80), opportunity formation can be conceptualized as the continuous exploring
and matching of problem and solution spaces for a specific opportunity-related topic.
Such a conceptualization adopts the generally accepted definition of entrepreneurial
opportunity as a new means-end-framework or -relationship (Eckhardt & Shane, 2003;
Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). The suggested conceptualization allows neither
regarding ends/problems as given (as is done in the discovery view) nor regarding
means/solutions as given (as is done in the creation view). Some aspects of both,
means and ends are known as well as some aspects of both, means and ends are
unknown and have to be explored. The provided conceptualization does regard the
reciprocal influence of problems and solutions and its explorative process as a
possibility to integrate the discovery and the creation view. Furthermore, the
conceptualization is in line with an incomplete view on design in which goals and
solutions create new problems and goals (Garud, et al., 2009; Simon, 1996). Such a
conceptualization enables to empirically studying opportunity forming as a process in
the making (see figure 10):
Exploring

Exploring

Matching

Figure 10: Opportunity forming in the making based on design theory

The conceptualization allows to integrate opportunity discovery and opportunity

creation as neither means nor ends are pre-defined in advance nor are they invented
from scratch without previous knowledge, ideas, visions, or intuitions. It allows further
examining the nature and source of opportunities (McMullen, Plummer, & Acs, 2007)
while following an non-entitative, processual approach (Steyaert, 2007).

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In the research study below, I explore opportunity forming on the basis of the case
study introduced in chapter 3. The empirical insights suggest several mechanisms and
activities that are conducted when exploring and matching the solution and problem
spaces.

5.3. Mechanisms of Opportunity Forming at GARN

Throughout the data analysis I identified a repertoire of mechanisms that the
management team of GARN engaged in to explore and match problem and solutions
spaces, and by doing so, comprise a continuous process of opportunity forming. The
mechanisms have been identified several times during the observations and they are
not regarded as appearing in any chronological order or sequence. They represent
practices of how the problem space and the solution space were explored and matched
(see figure 11 for an overview of these mechanisms).

I Targeting the
A Making sense of the solution space
problem space E Learning by experiencing

B Making the problem F (Mental) implementing

space more concrete
C Valuing the problem space
D Exploring the borders
of the problem space
G Valuing the solution space
H Developing guidance for
future procedure
J Limiting the
problem space

Figure 11: Mechanisms of opportunity forming at GARN

The problem-oriented mechanisms observed consist of making sense of the problem

space, making the problem space more concrete, valuing the problem space, and
exploring the borders of the problem space. While these mechanisms mainly help to
better understand what the problem actually is and what sub-problems are associated
with it, the solution-oriented mechanisms are rather concerned with exploring if and
how possible solutions and sub-solutions could be implemented. The solution-oriented

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mechanisms consist of learning by experiencing, (mental) implementing, valuing the
solution space, and developing guidance for future procedure. The problem-oriented
mechanisms may potentially and implicitly influence the solution space, while the
solution-oriented mechanisms might in turn potentially and implicitly influence the
problem space. However, there are two mechanisms that explicitly influence the other
space: the mechanism of targeting explicitly influences the solution space by setting
certain goals that not yet available solutions and sub-solutions should meet. Similarly,
the mechanism of limiting explicitly influences the problem space by having identified
if and how certain solutions and sub-solutions might be executed.

As the management of GARN draws on and uses this repertoire of mechanisms over
time and across situations, opportunities are continuously in formation. The ten
mechanisms are discussed below in further detail. They should be seen as neither
exhaustive nor exclusive. They cannot be regarded to occur independently of each
other; on the contrary, they overlap and interact at the same time and over time.
Accordingly, the codings have shown that several situations could be attributed to
different and sometimes overlapping activities and mechanisms of exploration and
matching. Each mechanism comprises two different activities. But even though a
situation may involve more than one activity or mechanisms, I discuss mechanisms
and activities below as standalone and separate for analytical reasons.

5.3.1. Mechanism A: Making Sense of the Problem Space

A consistent challenge experienced in opportunity forming processes is that there is no
clear problem that needs to be solved. If the problem was clear beforehand, the
solution would emerge more easily. This is one of the main arguments developed in
the theoretical part based on design theory: problems are ill-defined in opportunity-
related processes. One could argue that when observing professional designers, there is
the design brief as an initial written statement that defines the problem (Cross, 2008).
This is not the case when forming opportunities. Following this, the problems in
opportunity-related processes will be even less defined than professional design tasks.
Additionally, design theorists found that design briefs are also most often challenged
and changed during the process of designing (Kokotovich, 2008). The observation of
GARN shows that there is by far no clarity in what the problems are when tackling an

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opportunity-related topic such as the internet technology. This is not only the case in
the beginning of such processes. New problems and sub-problems are detected on an
ongoing basis. GARN members deal with this challenge by actively and recurrently
making sense of the problem space (Table 8 provides additional data on these
activities). They do not take the problem space as given but try to better understand it.

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Making sense of the Identifying the most ‘One point that I hadn’t thought of until
problem space important questions you asked the question is how do we
organize it in our group?‘

Interpreting ‘I think the strategy [of competitor

competitors’ moves ALPHA] is they eventually will go retail.’

Table 8: Mechanisms A ‘Making sense of the problem space’

Making sense of the problem space is conducted by continuously asking questions and
prioritizing them by identifying the most important questions. Questions are regarded
as being highly valuable and important. The management at GARN does not generally
favour solutions instead of questions or problems. The French manager was asked to
do a presentation on the topic of the internet technology in front of all international
directors and it consisted almost of questions only, while the CEO of the group
complimented him for bringing up these questions. The prioritization of the questions
was particularly important, as a few important questions helped to lead the exploration
of the problem space and also of the solution space to reach into a more clear
direction. One of the managers respectively stated

One point that I hadn’t thought of until you asked the question is how do we organize it
in our group? We’d have to do something that we normally don’t do. It would have to
be one e-commerce shop for all of us. We can’t do one in France and one in
Switzerland. So that would have to be kind of a separate company almost. Relatively
easy to do with bed linen, because bed linen is centralized. But not so easy to do with
the other departments. So, for us and our mentality it would be a challenge to start with
e-commerce.

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The excerpt shows that one of the most important questions is how the group would
handle for example orders or logistics, while the entities in each country are
independently led and are responsible for its own profit. It was identified that e-
commerce would be challenged by the independence-based group culture. It is not
obvious that this kind of questions is identified at all and that they are judged to be
very important.

Another way of making sense of the problem space was shown by interpreting
competitors’ moves. While opportunity forming may of course involve new ways of
dealing with certain issues such as the internet technology, it is helpful to thoroughly
examine what is already there and what are the possibilities that are already benefited
from by competitors or other organizations. The following excerpt of a discussion
shows, how the members of GARN tried to interpret how one of the biggest
competitors called ALPHA uses the internet for his business:

German manager: ‘ALPHA is doing this [selling over the internet].’

CEO of the group:
Creative director:
German manager:
CEO of the group:
German manager:
Head of sales, Switzerland:
Creative director:
German manager:
Creative director:
President of the board:
German manager:
Creative director:
‘Ah, yeah?’
‘Yeah, ALPHA sells accessories.’
‘There is a small online shop with accessories.’
‘But, they are testing?’
‘No, they are promoting their brand.’
‘I think the strategy of ALPHA is they eventually will
go retail.’
‘Absolutely’
‘They will go retail.’
‘They have the House of ALPHA. They are forcing the
smaller clients to become only ALPHA shops and
eventually, they are gonna buy them.’
‘And then? So they have to do the whole service.
Selling fabric isn’t a business.
‘Kind of a franchise thing.’
‘They are doing it franchise, ALPHA is going for that.
You can see it, with the whole House of ALPHA
concept, it’s like...it’s not like any other brand. It’s not
a shop in shop thing. They are going for that. Whether

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CEO of the group:
Creative director:
CEO of the group:
Creative director:
it’s our strategy or not, it’s something else, but that is
that you can see.’
‘That’s where they are going. The service.
‘Yeah, they are doing the full thing. And they can offer
it. They got carpets, they got curtain rods, they got
curtains. They have got everything. And now, they
even have a pyjamas or something like that. It’s on
their web shop. They’re doing everything.’
‘Yeah, they are going into nightwear. And they will do
bed linen, sooner or later.’
‘Of course.’

The group seems to be rather astonished that ALPHA already directly sells some of its
collection on the internet. Most probably, ALPHA must have made similar thoughts as
GARN has: establishing a direct channel may upset the existing clients in the business-
to-business market. In essence, the existing use of the internet technology by ALPHA
is interpreted as a first step to enter the retail market and thus to sell directly not only
on the internet but also in own stores. To identify and interpret the way others deal
with certain issues helps better understanding the problem space. The consequences of
selling directly in a business-to-business market have to be further analyzed and
discussed. Using the possibilities of the internet while not undermining the good
relationships with the existing clients plays an important role in the problem space.
GARN has identified this and is aware that it could be a risk to lose good clients for
making only a small portion of the revenues just to sell directly.

5.3.2. Mechanism B: Making the Problem Space More Concrete

While making sense of the problem space helps to better understand ill-defined
problems and identify respective sub-problems, it still represents some sort of a pre-
structured way of analyzing opportunity-related topics, which does not reveal all the
hidden questions. When forming opportunities around the topic of internet technology,
GARN may, for example, miss certain question, which might emerge too late in the
process or not at all. In order to further deepen the process of problem exploration,

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managers of GARN dealt with this challenge by making the problem space to become
more concrete (Table 9 provides additional data on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Making the problem Being confronted with a ‘I’ve got someone right now from Japan,
space more concrete concrete need or who has an architect on Hawaii, who
problem asked: I wanna see the carpets, I wanna
buy it, don’t you have it online?’

Deriving customers’ ‘[Looking at a website of a competitor]

behaviour from own It’s pretty expensive. I wouldn’t buy a
behaviour cushion for 140 Euros if I can’t see it.’

Table 9: Mechanism B ‘Making the problem space to be more concrete’

One way of making the problem space more concrete was to confront the group of
managers with existing needs or problems, with which the organization is currently
confronted with and which are related to the topic of internet technology. The creative
director of the company, for example, brought in a recent request from an architect of
Hawaii who was interested in the interior textiles of GARN. Unfortunately, there is no
shop or sales agent on Hawaii selling the products of GARN, and it is not possible to
browse the entire collection of textiles on the actual website of GARN. The following
excerpt shows the confrontation with the existing need of this architect:

Creative director:
President of the board:
CEO of the group:
I’ve got someone right now from Japan, who has an
architect on Hawaii, who asked me, I wanna see the
carpets, I wanna buy it, don’t you have it online? I
don’t even know how to help this person. I’m
like...They wanna see the whole colours, they wanna
pick it online and they wanna order.
You have to send them a sample at least. He is not
gonna buy it unseen.
You can have the program online without e-commerce.

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The example shows that not providing at least an online catalogue of the existing
textile collections could hinder the potential client of Hawaii from buying at GARN.
According to the creative director, this person would be ready to order online. Being
confronted with such a concrete request and with possibly losing it, the colleagues are
activated to react and to further explore the problem space. The president of the board,
for example, is sure that the client would not buy it directly off the website but still
would want to see samples to touch and feel the textile and its colour and texture in
reality. This does however not mean that an online shop would not work. But it shows
another problem that samples would have to be provided directly as well. Triggered by
the concrete request, the CEO of the group realized that there should be a
comprehensive catalogue of the collections without having to necessarily sell the
textiles directly. The confrontation with concrete needs and requests altered the
discussion and forced to further deepen the exploration of the problem space.

The management members of GARN showed a second way of making the problem
space to become more concrete. They derived the behaviour of customers from their
own behaviour by imagining how the GARN members would react on existing or
potential products or services. The following example shows how GARN derived the
behaviour of customers on the basis of their own reactions to an existing website of a
competitor selling expensive interior accessories online:

All: [looking at the website of a competitor]

CEO of the group:
President of the board:
CEO of the group:
Italian designer:
President of the board:
Italian designer:
German manager:
Technically well done.
I sure wouldn’t buy a curtain of them.
But maybe we look at the cushions... That’s the
worst…
That’s not cheap.
It’s pretty expensive. I wouldn’t buy a cushion for 140
Euros if I can’t see it.
Can you see if it’s silk or which material? Can you
click on it? Polyester? It’s expensive, ah yeah.
It’s quite expensive.

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The managers of GARN identify with an example of an existing competitor that it is
not easy to adequately show textile products on pictures such as cushions. And it
seems that the higher the price of a product is, the better the product should appear on
the internet.

The discussion exemplifies that GARN derives customer behaviour from its own
behaviour. The consultation of an existing website helped to create subjective
reactions of the managers as if they would be the clients. A sentence such as ‘I
wouldn’t buy it’ is a subjective statement of their own reactions, playing the role of a
potential client of the website analyzed. The subjective behaviour makes the problem
space more concrete and allows to identify further problems and sub-problems and to
extrapolate from subjective behaviour to general behaviour and aspects of the problem
space.

5.3.3. Mechanism C: Valuing the Problem Space

When exploring the problem space, GARN could not attend to all problems equally
and deepen the exploration to find further sub-problems. GARN had to judge the
problem spaces as being more or less valuable. By valuing the problem space, GARN
could develop the hierarchies of problems and sub-problems, which allowed to
identify if it is worthwhile further exploring and to decide which problems and sub-
problems will play an important role when exploring the solution space (Table 10
provides additional data on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Valuing the problem Identifying the ‘But probably, a lot of our customers will
space importance and urgency start their own web shop. And some are
of problems just awful.’

Exploring the potential ‘They [a high-end fashion web shop] have

of problems bags for 10’000 Dollar on the internet.
And they sold it right away, because they
sell it to Dubai. I mean, there is a trend
going in that direction.’

Table 10: Mechanism C ‘Valuing the problem space’

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One of the ways of how people at GARN valued the problem space was by identifying
the importance and the urgency of problems and sub-problems. They realized, for
example, that existing clients already start their own web shop to sell the products of
GARN as the following statement of the Dutch manager illustrates

In Holland, we are confronted with a customer, whose son is going to open a web shop
on his own, and he asked us for permission. And I said: ‘If I don’t give you the
permission?’ ‘Well, then I continue.’ So it is done already by somebody and it will be
followed by many more. I don’t think it is our business to go into web shop on our own,
because we are annoying our customers. And I don’t think we sell more in this case
because we are losing customers. And if somebody from outside does this, it’s not my
business; it’s just a client of GARN.

The CEO of the group similarly stated:

But probably, a lot of our customers will start their own web shop. And some are just
awful. Some of them you go on it and....aaww... Who is this? GARN? This is terrible!

The examples show that the internet technology is already used by the existing clients
of GARN, and they do it not always in a beautiful way. Image- and branding-wise
such appearances will harm the high-end positioning of the brand. In any case, GARN
has to act in order to influence any online appearance of its brand, be it directly or
indirectly by its customers. GARN cannot just wait because certain aspects of the
problem space become suddenly very important for securing the brand positioning and
for keeping and supporting existing customers. The problem space is valued by
identifying such importance and urgency.

Another way of valuing the problem space was indicated by exploring the potential of
problems. On several occasions, the management members of GARN, for example,
tried to imagine how much revenue could be made by selling directly on the internet.
The CEO of the group imagined a certain turnover but questioned if this was
worthwhile:

If we did it directly and got the whole margin? But for a few hundred thousand?

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While the president of the board estimated lower figures and contrasted it to the
downturns of getting into problems with existing clients:

You won’t get a few hundred thousands, ten thousand, or twenty thousand Francs and
annoy your customers? That’s not worth it.

On the other hand and at another occasion, the product manager of bed linen brought
in an example of a well-established website that successfully sells luxury fashion. It
was meant to show that people also start buying online in the luxury segment:

And they have only the high... they have bags for 10’000 Dollar over the internet. And
they sold it right away, because they sell it to Dubai. I mean, there is a trend going in
that direction.

Even though there was no agreement on how much turnover could be expected by
selling on the internet directly, it was important to getting an idea of the potential of
the problem space. There is not only a financial potential but also potential for other
aspects of organizing such as satisfaction of employees and customers or the image of
the company. Exploring the potential helps getting an idea of how much positive or
negative influence a possible solution might have.

5.3.4. Mechanism D: Exploring Borders of the Problem Space

One of the difficulties with ill-defined problems such as organizational opportunities is
to identify the problems that have to be considered in any case and to know where to
stop exploring the problem space. Certain problems and sub-problems cannot be
discussed away, altered, or answered with intelligent solutions. They are just there and
have to be accepted. They represent some sort of the minimal problem space that
exists and to which answers must be found. On the other hand, how can one know if
all the important issues of the problem space have been considered? And how can one
know if certain problems should be considered while others would better be left aside?
Such questions were answered by GARN in processes of exploring the imaginary
borders of the problem space (Table 11 provides further details on these activities).

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Mechanism Activities Data from GARN
Exploring the borders Identifying the general ‘[Based on a new EU legislation] An e-
of the problem space constraints shop must deliver in the entire Europe
and provide sales contract in several
languages: English, German, French,
Italian and so on.’

Identifying goal ‘This is our client in Bonn [showing a

conflicts website]. He is making 80’000 Euros with
bed linen. With a horrible web shop.’
‘What do we do with this guy?’

Table 11: Mechanism D ‘Exploring the borders of the problem space’

Within GARN, such an exploration of the problem space is accomplished by

identifying the general constraints such as legal rules, available data, or technical
possibilities. The following discussion shows how a new legislation of the European
Union would impact the e-commerce of GARN:

French manager: Yes, the new legislation, I have spoken yesterday, it’s
active on March, but the final decision will be done by
the ministers at the end of May. 14 days to cancel your
order, it’s very long. And 14 days to return your
product. It’s one month! If you do a special program
with bed linen and so on, it’s finished for you. Free
return of the shipment. An e-shop must deliver in the
entire Europe and provide sales contract in several
languages. English, German, French, Italian, and so on.
CEO of the group: All languages?
French Manager: Yes.
CEO of the group: Bulgarian and Rumanian?
French Manager: Yes, if this legislation will be accepted, if a Roman
person wants to buy something from us, we must sell
and give the information.

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The legislation would have a considerable impact on e-commerce in the EU in general.
If a customer can cancel an order within 14 days after having placed the order and if a
customer can return a product without reason and at the expense of the seller, it is
impossible to sell products-to-measure such as interior textiles or special sizes of bed
linen. Furthermore, providing all languages of the European Union would be very
costly. Constraints such as this legislation have a considerable impact on what further
problems and sub-problems will be explored. These constraints act as a minimal
problem space that cannot be neglected nor changed to one’s advantage. It represents
the minimal ‘borders’ of the problem space.

While certain problems cannot be talked away, it is necessary to decide if other

problems or sub-problems will be considered or not. GARN explored these borders by
identifying goal conflicts which usually are difficult to be resolved. The following
example illustrates how people at GARN identify that there are existing web shops of
clients, which on the one hand provide an interesting revenue stream and on the other
hand are badly executed and will potentially harm the image of high-end brand:

All: [watching an online shop that appears first when

German manager:
CEO of the group:
President of the board:
French manager:
Bed linen manager:
CEO of the group:
Bed linen manager:
President of the board:
Creative director:
President of the board:
searching for GARN in the internet]
‘This is our client in Bonn... He is making 80,000
Euros with bed linen. With a horrible web shop.’
[…]
‘What do we do with this guy?’
‘He sends us nice orders?’
‘100,000 Euro, no problem, good photos.’
‘It seems to work, though it’s not really pretty, but...’
‘I mean, there is not much you can do about it, right?
Basically?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Why not letting him sell our product, if it’s shown
nicely?’
‘Well, I think it is not showing it nicely.’
‘Yeah? That’s... I think it’s pretty good. It’s good
enough to sell anyway.’

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 CEO of the group:
Head of sales, Switzerland:
German manager:
Creative director:
‘Well, it’s this shop that presents, so it’s not us
presenting ourselves.’
‘You could think, that’s our shop.’
‘Almost.’
‘Absolutely.’

The discussion shows that there is a goal conflict between having a client that already
benefits of online sales and contributes with 80,000 Euros of revenues, while on the
other hand the appearance does not meet the standards of a luxury brand such as
GARN. The management team of GARN explores the problem space by challenging
which problems and sub-problems need to be considered. Are current web shops
helpful or harmful? Is it important to tell existing clients how to handle their own web
shop? Does GARN provide the right photos and tools for other web shops to appear in
line with the brand guidelines of GARN? Can clients represent several brands and
meet the different guidelines? The goal conflict between revenue and appearance helps
to find the important problems and sub-problems; although not all of them can be
treated equally, decisions will have to be taken. These discussions help clarify the
borders of the problem space.

5.3.5. Mechanism E: Targeting for the Solution Space

The exploration of the problem space in general influences the solution space.
Identifying constraints, for example, will implicitly have an impact on how solutions
are explored and which solutions can be realized. Deriving customers’ behaviour from
own behaviour will develop insights about customer needs that implicitly influence the
solution space. Alongside such implicit influences, GARN showed an explicit
mechanism of how the exploration of the problem space influences the solution space.
Members of the management team at GARN showed processes of targeting for the
solution space. In other words, requirements for the solution space were explicitly
developed, discussed and defined (Table 12 provides additional data on these
activities).

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Mechanism Activities Data from GARN
Targeting the solution Exploring the value to ‘We need to have a benefit for our
space be delivered customers.’
‘And if you have that [web shop in the
customer’s country], they trust more.’

Defining criteria for the ‘See? That’s also a danger. You have a
solution space website and I have a bad impression.’

Table 12: Mechanism E ‘Targeting the solution space’

GARN targeted the solution space by exploring the value that could or had to be
delivered within opportunity-related topics such as internet technology. Value can be
equalized with the benefits customers get by using a product or a service. Although he
did not yet have an answer to this question, the French manager clearly stated the need
for identifying a clear value or benefit for the customers to provide and not just add
another sales and communication channel without purpose:

What will our customer benefit from? In the internet, I think, it’s the first question.
What is our plus? Price? Delivery? We need to have a benefit for our customers.

At another occasion the bed linen manger got more concrete and suggested to provide
a direct sales channel with clear and fixed prices, in contrast to other web shops in
Europe that are not capable of providing a clear statement about the total prices
because of differing and complex customs charges. And she even anticipated a
possible solution that would deliver a hassle-free purchase, namely, having a different
web shop for each country which would avoid customs charges for the clients:

They have to pay for the custom. And this is a hassle in Europe. Because that’s what
people don’t like. They don’t know how much they are gonna pay for customs. It’s not
clear in the pricing. That’s what it is in Europe. That’s why e-commerce hasn’t taken off
as it has in the United States. Because there are no borders. And if you have that, they
trust more. Because they are afraid to purchase from another country because of other
things. So that would be much easier. They click on France, and they shop from France.

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 But in the background, you can centralize everything. That’s something we can do. And
most companies do it that way. So you are always in your country.

Identifying and stating explicit values that should be provided to customers, act as
targets for the solutions-space. When exploring the solution space, these targets need
to be taken into account.

Similarly, GARN showed processes of developing and setting criteria that solutions
should meet when exploring the solution space. The following scene illustrates how
design criteria are being developed while collectively watching a badly designed
website of a competitor who sells high-end accessories such as cushions on the
internet:

All: [looking at cushions on a badly designed website of

Dutch Manager:
CEO of the group:
President of the board:
CEO of the group:
a competitor]
But in real, they [the cushions] look very, very nice.
Oh, really…? See? That’s also a danger. You have a
website and I have a bad impression. Right now, I’m
having a bad impression I think. They [the competitor]
are not what they used to be. Because it looks bad.
You wouldn’t suspect looking at it like this. The only
thing you do see is that they are expensive.
But of course, you can do it well.

The website of the competitor that was consulted by the group of managers served as
an anti-example to develop the design criteria for a potential web shop of GARN.
Even though there is not a statement about for example the colours or the size of
photos, but in general, the criteria to require an adequate design is made explicit. There
will only be solutions accepted that incorporate design aspects and enable a design that
supports the image of GARN as a luxury brand. Furthermore, when exploring the
solution space, design and appearance is key when having to show textiles that are not
possible to be touched or felt on the internet. This process shows how the definition of
criteria serves to target for the solution space.

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5.3.6. Mechanism F: Learning by Experiencing
When exploring the solution space, it is difficult to deal with potential solutions and
sub-solutions that do not exist yet. At the time of this study, there was no prototype of
an internet solution available nor was a software developer in charge. It was an
imaginary exploration of the solution space, which cannot cover all the aspects of the
solution space. The management of GARN addressed this challenge by fostering the
learning processes through a mechanism of experiencing what already exists instead.
The mechanism of learning by experiencing allows trying out an existing solution to
find ideas for its own solutions or sub-solutions (Table 13 provides further information
on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Learning by Using others as an ‘So with the company BETA, that’s kind
experiencing ongoing case study of a case study for us, to see how it goes.’

Trying out existing ‘[Trying out a web-application of a well-

solutions of others known furniture chain] That’s the world
we need to go in. Look! Turn the carpet,
place it...!’

Table 13: Mechanism F ‘Learning by experiencing’

One of the ways GARN showed to learn out of existing solutions was to use other
companies as ongoing and living case studies. The bed linen manager, for example,
identified a large mail-order company for fashion and interior accessories as an
example to study how an internet solution of the bed linen collection of GARN could
develop in the future:

And also the mail-order, like company BETA, I don’t know if you are familiar with it,
is based in Stuttgart, it’s a mail-order company, and they send out catalogues. Those
companies are going into e-commerce as well and that’s something we have to look at
as well. Which ones we already have in our customer list, which ones we don’t have.
Because they are investing a lot in the e-commerce and in higher-end brands. So with
the company BETA, that’s kind of a case study for us, to see how it goes. And they are
planning to go e-commerce as well. They have the catalogues by now. They have about

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 3 million catalogues. They started with our bed linen collection. And when they see that
our product is turning fast, they came out every month with a new catalogue and they
just re-arranged the pictures. And they are going into e-commerce as well. So that’s
another group, that’s very important for bed linen.

As the mail-order company already sells the bed linen collection of GARN and is now
heavily investing in their own e-commerce, it is possible to observe how they execute
their e-commerce activities and how the revenues out of this business will develop. To
use such a company as an ongoing case study allows experiencing how existing
solutions work and why they work or why they fail. It is possible to learn out of the
real world, without having to invest already in its own solutions.

Another way of learning by experiencing can be observed at GARN in the process of

trying out the existing solutions of others. GAMMA represents a traditional and large
chain of middle- to upper-level home furniture and accessories shops in Switzerland.
They recently have introduced a collection of design furniture, created by upcoming
young Swiss designers. As a support for this collection, GAMMA has developed a
specific mobile phone application that allows taking a picture of the room you would
like to furnish, while the furniture of GAMMA can be placed and adjusted on the
picture. The management team of GARN tried out this online innovation by
experimenting with it collectively on the screen of the beamer:

Creative director:
Bed linen manager:
Creative director:
Creative director:
Head of sales, Italy:
[To the assistant] Could you show us something else on
the screen? It’s called Atelier GAMMA, which is
actually more important. Because GAMMA has a
phenomenal tool, where you can basically play and put
your curtains on the wall, fabric on the couch and it’s
interactive. It’s...
There is an app. If you scroll down? Yes. Please? I
think it’s that one. I can’t read it from here.
This is kind of blowing your mind.
[Music and video plays]
That’s the world we need to go in. Look! Turn the
carpet, place it...!
Bello! Bellissimo!

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Collectively trying out the existing mobile phone application of the furniture and
accessories shop GAMMA allows the management team to experience one of the
cutting edge possibilities at this time that have already been developed to improve
internet technology. The idea of taking a picture of a room and being able to decorate
it immediately creates an enhanced buying experience for customers. The management
team could experience this in real and themselves, which will create a common
understanding for where the solution space could be further explored.

5.3.7. Mechanism G: (Mental) Implementing

Experiencing and experimenting with already existing solutions allows learning and
exploring the solution space to get new ideas and find further solutions and sub-
solutions. On the other hand, it is also important to learn about self-developed
solutions and sub-solutions. People at GARN dealt with this challenge by mentally
implementing and executing solutions and sub-solutions. During the study, it was not
yet possible to observe how the opportunity-related topic of e-commerce would have
been executed. There was no a software developer yet that could have been studied in
real time. However, GARN already tried to implement certain solutions mentally
(Table 14 provides additional data on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

(Mental) Simulating the ‘I have two examples [of online
Implementing implementation agreements] from other companies, which
are in English and German. So we may
use that and work it out for our company.
And maybe sit together with the German
manager…’
Testing feasibility [Discussing the possibility of using the IP
address to identify the country of the
customer] ‘Maybe 95% of the time, it’s
right. But you can always cheat. You can
go through an anonymous server.’

Table 14: Mechanism G ‘(Mental) Implementing’

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The first approach of GARN was a simulation of the implementation. By verbally
expressing the process and procedure of implementing a solution, it was possible to
make explicit a potential implementation of the future. The introduction of an online
agreement with customers, selling products of GARN on the internet, was identified as
a possible solution for dealing with external web shops. As such websites are
identified as being rather badly executed, it was discussed that GARN needs to oversee
them and help them with meeting the branding guidelines that are important for a
luxury brand such as GARN. The bed linen manager showed how the development
and introduction of an online agreement could possibly occur by expressing it verbally
and explicitly:

I would do an online agreement. Like say, if you wanna carry GARN on your website,
because they gonna develop their website on their own, as I said, because they gonna
carry different brands. So I don’t think it would be our business. And then, we should
make an online agreement and make two, three pages, where it’s regulated how they are
gonna use our logo, what kind of picture we gonna provide. So at least we can control
the image, the brand, everything, just roughly on two, three pages. I have two examples
from other companies, which are in English and German. So we may use that and work
it out for our company. And maybe sit together with the German manager and three four
people with which we do a lot of business. And then, every time we acquire or the sales
reps acquire, we have to inform our sales reps, what we wanna do and if they gonna
identify those retailers, and then we give them the online agreement. So they have a
guideline. Because right now, they have no guideline. They don’t know exactly, if we
are allowed to do it, the credit check and how we gonna do the payment terms.

The verbal expression helps to identify and detect potentially hidden chances and
threats that might otherwise only appear during the real integration of a solution. The
bed linen manager, for example, identified the possibility to support the customers as
they did not have any guidance yet. Furthermore, she made the first guess about the
scope of the agreement. Finally, she realized that the sales representatives were needed
to be involved from the start, as they knew the ideas and problems of the clients, and
they should have the same information as the headquarter does. The simulation of the
implementation helps to further explore the solution space by making a potential future
implementation as explicit and concrete as possible.

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Another way of mentally implementing solutions and sub-solutions GARN showed
was to test the feasibility of those solutions. In the case of e-commerce it is important
to know the technological possibilities and limits. One of the difficulties identified was
the different prices that are charged by GARN within the different European countries.
If there was a central web shop, the prices either had to be altered depending on the
country where customers come from or the prices had to be unified. The solution of
providing different prices for each country had to be tested by discussing and testing
the technical feasibility of identifying the origin of the customers’ IP addresses:

French manager: But we have the solution by IP of the country, by the IP

of the customer to give a price list of the country. You
know, to change the price.
German manager: Yes, depending on the IP address.
French manager: If the French guy wants to buy something, you have a
French page with the prices of France.
[…]
Marketing manager: It’s also, if you are going for the IP address and if you
work in Switzerland and live in France and you want to
order something at your work, you can order from
France you get Swiss prices. And a lot of companies
have IP addresses which are... They are all over the
world and the IP address is in Switzerland. So that
could be a problem, because you can’t order.
[…]
IT manager: The IP address, just to mention, the IP address, you
cannot trust 100%. Maybe 95% of the time, it’s right.
But you can always cheat. You can go through an
anonymous server. Or some companies, they have...
You are working in Switzerland but you go out through
the internet in France, because your head quarter is in
France. So you have a French IP address. Usually, it’s
right, this way of thinking, but sometimes it just doesn’t
work.

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The test of the technical feasibility using the IP-address to identify the customers’
origin showed that there are cases which do not allow conducting the right
identification. Customers could cheat or have no other possibility than being wrongly
identified. Testing the feasibility of solutions and sub-solutions helps to foresee if an
implementation is possible and with what hidden details and difficulties one would
potentially be confronted with.

5.3.8. Mechanism H: Valuing the Solution Space

In line with the valuation of the problem space, not all solutions and sub-solutions can
be explored and followed equally and with the same intensity. GARN showed that it is
necessary to judge parts of the solution space as being more or less valuable. These
distinctions helped GARN to develop hierarchies of solutions and sub-solutions, which
in turn allowed allocating further exploring activities and resources in a prioritized
way (Table 15 provides further information on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Valuing the solution Revealing ‘I had to stop the direct sales from our
space consequences of showroom. There are so many
solutions oppositions from our little shops or our
department stores, complaints.’

Identifying common ‘And most companies do it that way.’

and uncommon ‘So that’s how they do it in other
behaviour companies.’

Table 15: Mechanism H ‘Valuing the solution space’

GARN addressed the challenge of valuation by revealing the consequences of

solutions. There might be solutions that appear to be uninteresting, while there could
be interesting consequences stemming from that solutions. On the other hand, there
can be solutions that appear highly valuable at first, while there could be certain side
effects that need to be considered and detected as well. The management of GARN
identified the difficulty of entering the retail market directly with e-commerce, which
would annoy and harm the existing clients. To illustrate how this consequence was

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revealed, the following excerpt shows how the Japanese managers talks of how he
already annoyed customers by trying out to sell directly in one of his showrooms:

Japanese manager: [Talking about his experiences with direct sales]

CEO of the group:
Japanese manager:
CEO of the group:
Japanese manager:
‘So, when we moved it into our showroom, I had to
stop the direct sales from our showroom. There are so
many oppositions from our little shops or our
department stores, complaints.’
‘Just because of the little selling from the showroom?’
‘Yes, and we had little sales.’
‘And that was bed linen, by the way.’
‘Bed linen only, no fabrics. But even bed linen, some
department stores and retail shops made complaints.
So, right now, we suspend it to sell directly.’

In contrast to e-commerce, the Japanese manager did only sell bed linen directly in his
showroom which already caused trouble with his existing clients. He had to stop the
direct sales. Having revealed a potentially negative consequence valuates the solution
of creating and selling directly through a web shop. Even though it is not yet decided
against this possibility, it valuates it in a way that fosters further exploring other
solutions and sub-solutions.

In addition to consequences, people at GARN also tried to find orientation from how
others deal with potential solutions. By identifying common and uncommon
behaviour, ideas and solutions may be evaluated on the basis on existing experience of
and with others. The solution of providing country-specific shop portals was valuated
as being positive because most companies seem to do it this way, as the following
comment of the bed linen manager shows:

So that would be much easier. They [the customers] click on France, and they shop
from France. But in the background, you can centralize everything. That’s something
we can do. And most companies do it that way.

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The solution was further developed with the idea of providing to pick up the internet
orders at the closest store of an existing client, which was again valuated by the bed
linen manager as being the usual way of doing it:

The option is, as I presented the last time, that if the customers places the order, they
can pick it up at the retail store nearby. So, that’s ... if they are in Zurich, they can pick
it up in the large department store. So, that’s how you usually get around with those
kind of issues that....It’s absolutely right, they are coming and say, you are tacking us
the business away. So that’s how they do it in other companies.

Identifying others who already use a potential idea or those who do it in another way
helps to evaluate solutions and sub-solutions. Sometimes it is important to do it
different than the others on purpose, while in some cases, the preparation and
advancements of others helps to navigate through the solutions-space and to identify
valuable and less valuable solutions.

5.3.9. Mechanism I: Developing Guidance for the Solution Space

The valuation of the problem space helps to prioritize solutions and sub-solutions.
Depending on the priorities, some solutions will be further developed while others will
not be considered anymore. The prioritization already serves implicitly as a guide for
further explorations within the solution space. In addition, there is a mechanism of
developing explicit guidance for the solution space (Table 16 provides additional data
on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Developing guidance Setting required quality ‘Let’s make it not such a good product [a
for the solution space levels web catalogue or a web shop]. Let’s say
just more a visual thing.’

Defining role models ‘You wanna see a good homepage? Look

at IKEA. They sell cheap stuff, but it
looks good.’

Table 16: Mechanism I ‘Developing guidance for the solution space‘

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Guidance for the solution space was developed at GARN by setting the required
quality levels, which solutions and sub-solutions need to meet. The levels of quality
must not always involve the maximal level for a solution. When discussing if a real
web shop is required or if an online catalogue of the collections would do it as well,
the CEO of the group rather decreased the quality level to be aspired:

Let’s make it not such a good product. Let’s say just more a visual thing. Something
that ensures that our customer sells our products. Sort of the equivalent of a real live
shop in shop, that it looks nice, the way they present it. And gives them some functions,
so they don’t have to redo it.

By talking of a ‘visual thing’, the CEO tries to decrease the expectations of the
management. He tries to avoid the tendency that only the best and the most complex
solution will be successful. He introduces a new perspective on the idea of internet
technology by setting the quality level to a middle way in technical terms, while the
appearance and experience aspects are again stressed as being very important.

Another way of guiding for the solution space was shown by role models within or
outside the textile industry. The president of the board promoted IKEA to be one of the
role models when talking about internet technology in the interior decoration industry:

IKEA does well. IKEA is professional. You wanna see a good homepage? Look at
IKEA. They sell cheap stuff, but it looks good.

Role models help to have an idea about where to head within the solution space. They
guide the exploration activities in a way that is aspiring and motivating. When talking
of role models, people have a clear image and experience. Even though, it may be
heterogeneous, the image and experience creates a more lively guidance than a
theoretical one.

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5.3.10. Mechanism J: Limiting the Problem Space
The mechanisms of exploring the solution space may implicitly have an impact on the
problem space. By trying out existing solutions, new problems and sub-problems may
emerge. By revealing consequences of a solution, new problems and sub-problems
may be identified. However, GARN showed a mechanism that explicitly influences the
problem space. By limiting the problem space, its borders are either further opened up
or rather closed (Table 17 provides further information on these activities).

Mechanism Activities Data from GARN

Limiting the problem Identifying limits of ‘That means we can only sell […]
space sub-solutions standardized finished products.’

Identifying ‘Because if we would build e-commerce

requirements for now, a real e-shop, we would have to
implementing sub- integrate it into our existing [IT] system.’
solutions

Table 17: Mechanism J ‘Limiting the problem space‘

GARN influences the problem space by identifying limits of sub-solutions that in turn
help find out if the limits of the problem space have to be further narrowed or opened-
up. It was mentioned several times, that it is impossible to sell customized products,
because of the constraining EU legislation but also because of the difficulty to the
process of intensive customer counselling on the internet. One of the limits of the
solution space was therefore identified by only being able to sell standardized finished
products on the internet, as the following comment of the CEO of the group illustrates

[Discussing the EU legislation that requires 14 days of cancelling and 14 days of

returning without shipping costs] That means we can only sell... If we wanted to do it
anyway, but basically, standardized finished products. Because you can’t take an order
for example a custom made bed linen or curtain and then a week later or two weeks
later the customer changes his mind and cancels it. Impossible. You can really only sell
standardized goods that you have in stock.

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If only standardized products can be sold online, this has a direct impact on the
problem space. Most of the current products of GARN are made-to-measure. They
have only a small part of standardized products which would not be interesting enough
to be sold online. In other words, it would be necessary to either start building up a
stock of for example the most common bed linen measures, which is difficult due to
differing measures among the countries. Or it would be necessary to develop product
lines consisting of standardized products which do not exist yet. The limitation of the
solution space thus influences explicitly how the problem space is being explored.

In a similar way, GARN identified aspects that are required to implement certain
solutions or sub-solutions. The independency-oriented structure and process of the
group members would make it necessary to have clear responsibilities and procedures
when selling online from a central website. As a consequence, this procedure would
have to be modelled in the ERP system. However, there is not yet a central and
common ERP system which would allow a centralized modelling of the procedure.
However, there is a project that plans to develop and implement such a system in the
near future. The IT manager insisted on these consequences as the following comment
illustrates:

Maybe just one pragmatic approach. If we talk about e-commerce. I think about
process. It’s not just the website. It’s integrated into our ERP System […]. You need to
have the prices. You need to have the stock. You need to give an answer about when
you can deliver. So it’s really highly integrated into our ERP system. Why don’t we just
continue this discussion when we know about the new system, what it can offer us.
Because if we would build e-commerce now, a real e-shop, we would have to integrate
it into our existing system.

Having identified requirements for implementing a centralized web shop, the problem
space is directly influenced and affected. New questions and problems arise: Is the
current ERP system capable of modelling the necessary processes of a centralized web
shop? Does a potential web shop influence the project of the new ERP system? Has a
potential web shop to be considered in the new ERP system in any case, even if there
is a negative decision on selling directly? The questions indicate that the problem
space has to be further explored.

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5.4. Discussion and Conclusion
The gap addressed in this study was to integrate theories of opportunity discovery and
opportunity creation and thereby acknowledging that creation and discovery processes
are simultaneous, overlapping, and intertwined (Sarasvathy, 2001) and that
opportunity-related processes are experienced as inherently unpredictable and
uncontrollable in real time (Morris, et al., 2012). The aim was to conceptualize
opportunity forming as an open process in the making, in which neither means nor
ends are given (Steyaert, 2007). I have drawn on design theory (Cross, 2006; Simon,
1996) to conceptualize opportunity forming as continuous exploring and matching of
problem and solution spaces (Cross, 1992: 4-6; 2006: 80).

The findings of this study suggest that opportunity forming can be meaningfully
described in terms of exploration mechanisms. The topic of internet technology was
suitable to illustrate the different mechanisms observed at GARN. The observations
show that there is not a clear opportunity to be discovered within the field of internet
technology that can be exploited afterwards. The findings also show that there is still
information or intention about the possibilities in the field of internet technology
before creating an opportunity. In other words, the results support the argumentation
for further combining the discovery and the creation view.

The repertoire of mechanism identified is not to be understood as exclusive. In

contrast, mechanisms will overlap and intersect through the specific activities engaged
in by individuals. The distinction between the mechanisms simplifies complex
organizational processes in favour of conceptual clarity. The repertoire is also not
exhaustive, as new mechanisms might be added or existing ones might be modified
over time. While the repertoire should be regarded as being open-ended, the particular
mechanisms identified at GARN offer interesting insights into why these mechanisms
should be relevant. I argue that the value of these mechanisms lies in their capacity to
show opportunity forming as a continuous and incomplete process (Garud, et al.,
2009) without focusing too early on potentially misleading problems or solutions.
Keeping up the ambiguity is important for groups, such as the management team of
GARN, to continuously reach for a stronger agreement of difficulties and of goals
(Leonardi, 2011). Obviously, at a certain point in time, there will be a new website or

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web shop that can be regarded as the result of the opportunity forming process studied
here. However, even at this time, the opportunity formation goes on and the website
will be re-shaped by the usage of the customers and by new ideas and further
refinements of GARN. In this sense, the identified mechanisms show how opportunity
forming on the one hand occurs as an opening up for new possibilities and ideas, while
on the other hand, certain decisions or prioritizations lead into a more focused and
more stable direction of the formation.

The mechanisms of exploring the problem space help to better understand what
problems and sub-problems are important when opportunities are being formed around
a certain topic such as the possibilities and the risks of the internet technology. On the
one hand, another sales channel in the form of a web shop allows end customers to buy
products of GARN without temporal and geographical limits. From this perspective,
the internet technology promises to potentially increase revenues. On the other hand,
existing customer, who own, for example interior, decoration shops, would be
threatened by direct selling engagements of GARN. The mechanisms of making sense
and making the problem space more concrete mainly help to find the important
questions and aspects that have to be considered when exploring the solution space.
The mechanisms of valuing and exploring the borders set limits and priorities within
the problem space. While the first two mechanisms thus rather open-up the space and
further deepen the exploration, the third and fourth mechanisms rather try to define
what is important and where further explorations should be stopped or re-focused.

The mechanisms of exploring the solution space help to find and experiment with
solutions and sub-solutions that can answer some of the questions within the problem
space. GARN showed a more applied way of exploring the solution space than when
exploring the problem space. The mechanisms of experiencing and implementing
reveal some sort of a cognitive prototyping. Because of a missing real prototype (e.g. a
web shop), other examples and existing solutions have been collectively tried out to
experience potential solutions and sub-solutions as concrete as possible. The
mechanisms of valuing and developing guidance also showed rather applied elements,
as the activities are based on existing experiences (e.g. of direct sales in Japan) or of
existing solutions and companies (e.g. IKEA or the innovative application of

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GAMMA). The first two solution-oriented mechanisms rather open up the solution
space as experiencing and mental implementing solutions foster creativity and new
possibilities. In contrast to this, the mechanisms of valuing and developing guidance
rather set priorities and limit the solution space.

The results found in this study reveal several mechanisms and activities that open up,
set priorities, and limit the means-ends relationships. Neither the problem space nor
the solution space is evident, and they both have to be explored and created while
opportunities are being formed. Certain aspects of the problem and solution spaces
will be more evident and able to be ‘discovered’, while other aspects are hidden or
more difficult to be invented. Processes of opening up and closing appear to stem from
problem- and solution-oriented mechanisms. In this sense, the open-ended way of
conceptualizing opportunity forming acknowledges the unpredictable and
uncontrollable nature of experiencing opportunity-related processes (Morris, et al.,
2012). It furthermore acknowledges the incompleteness, with which design and
opportunities can be characterized (Garud, et al., 2009). Therefore, the
conceptualization and the findings show a possible way of integrating opportunity
discovery and creation without depending on contextual or temporal differences
(Sarasvathy, et al., 2003). The study further contributes to a creative process view of
entrepreneuring (Steyaert, 2007), by developing and applying a conceptualization of
opportunity forming in the making.

Future studies on opportunity forming based on a design perspective could benefit

from conducting further empirical work in other contexts such as different industries
or less established companies such as start-up organizations. It is evident that the
generalizability of this study is limited based on the data of an in depth ethnographic
case study. It would be interesting to see how the results of other empirical contexts
would complement, question or affirm the results of this study. Furthermore, the
timing of observations of this study has not allowed observing how artefacts in the
form of prototypes or products are enacted in opportunity-related processes. It would
for example be worthwhile to study if and how first drafts of an internet solution
would influence how the problem- and the solution spaces are explored and matched.
Further theories, which adopt a relational understanding between human agents and

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technological artefacts could help to shed more light on how prototypes are enacted
within processes of opportunity forming (see e.g. Latour, 2005; Orr, 1996).

Despite these limitations, I believe that the suggested conceptualization and its
empirical findings provide a valuable starting point for developing and discussing
more open-ended, more processual, and less entitative studies of entrepreneuring that
has recently been claimed for (Steyaert, 2007). It thereby acknowledges the inherently
creational and creative nature of entrepreneurs and human agents in general (Joas,
1996) to study how the new, which can be regarded as source of success and wealth
creation (Schumpeter, [1934] 2000), comes into existence in a continuous way.

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PART IV: SYNTHESIS

6. Overall Discussion and Conclusion

The aim of this chapter is to discuss and draw conclusions from the theoretical and
empirical explorations within the perspective of the overarching focus and research
gap explicated in the introduction of the dissertation. To start with, I provide a short
summary of the main findings and I discuss contributions for several research fields. In
the second section, I develop implications for practice, followed by the limitations of
the dissertation, possible directions for future research and a final conclusion.

6.1. Summary and Theoretical Contributions

The overarching topic of organizational change was identified to be of central
relevance for practitioners and theorists. The theoretical exploration has shown that
there exists disagreement on how to study organizational change because of different
ontological basic assumptions (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). To further develop the
theory of organizational change, I have mainly focused on the strong process view as a
theoretical basis that suggests a radical shift from an ontology of being to an ontology
of becoming (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). In the theoretical part, I developed a
conceptualization of organizational change in the making. The argumentation was
based on process philosophy, which suggests that reality only exists in the present and
that change can only be experienced in situations (Mead, [1932] 2002). To
conceptualize organizational change beyond the mere situation, temporality was
integrated by the act of referencing to the past and the future and by integrating the
processes of abstraction and potentialization, which influence future situations, and
thus, the organizational. On the basis of this conceptualization, I was able to
empirically study in chapter 4, how the management justifies and judges current issues
within situations by mobilizing specific pasts and specific futures. The management
thereby transcended the situational to potential future situations. In chapter 5, I drew
on design theory to develop a conceptualization of opportunity forming by integrating
the distinction between opportunity discovery and opportunity creation. The focus on
situational enactments and on the processual nature of opportunities being in a

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continuous and never-to-be-completed formation process (Garud, et al., 2009) is in
line with the radical requirements of the strong process view, while these requirements
have been argued on the basis of design theory. According to scholars of design
theory, new means and ends, or in other words, problems and solutions develop
reciprocally and continuously (Cross, 2006; Joas, 1996). Following this and arguing
that opportunities may be defined as new means-ends relationships, I could identify
several mechanisms of how problem and solution spaces are explored and matched
within situational enactments.

The theoretical and empirical explorations contribute in several ways to the

organization studies. I will explicate on the most important contributions that connect
the theoretical and the empirical exploration. The contributions can be clustered by the
notions of time, situational emergence of change, and the micro-macro distinction.

6.1.1. Contributions to the Subject of Time in Organization Studies

Several authors have contributed important work on time within organization studies
(e.g. Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Hassard, 1996; McGrath & Rotchford, 1983).
Although particularly the concept of change relies on temporality, time has not yet
received substantial attention in the theories of organizational change yet (Burrell,
1992; Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). Implicitly most studies on organizational change
assume time as an unquestioned basic assumption, on the basis of which change is
conceptualized as unfolding over time (Langley, 2009). In Chapter 2 and 4, time is
considered to be an important aspect for theorizing organizational change. On the basis
of the strong process view, time is regarded as being experienced within the dynamics
of an ongoing life and by relating the situation to the past and the future in ‘real time’
as opposed to assuming a physical clock-time or a subjective interpretation of a linear
clock-time. Change is experienced in situations by relating it to different experiences
from the past and to different expectations about the future. Such a radical shift helps
to differentiate between various studies on time and organizing. It furthermore helps to
clarify what kind of time assumptions existing contributions regarding change and
processes such as path dependency and path creation (David, 1985; Garud & Karnoe,
2001) or organizational foresight (Tsoukas, 2005c; Tsoukas & Shepherd, 2004b) are
based on. The classification of the existing theories of organizational change from the

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perspective of referencing to the past and the future in Chapter 2, for example, has
revealed that most of the theories show a bias towards either the past or the future. The
concept of path dependency, for example, is based on a major influence from the past,
whereas the concept of path creation alters the past by deviating from it mindfully
(Garud & Karnoe, 2001). In contrast to this, the future is in the focus of the concept of
organizational foresight, as the knowledge about possible futures influences current
actions.

Even though existing theories show a clear influence of either the past or the future,
several authors mention that organizing is a concept that occurs in relation to the past,
the present and the future (see e.g. Cunha, 2004; Garud & Karnoe, 2001). By
incorporating and making explicit that the past, present, and future equally influence
organizing, this dissertation therefore contributes towards a more comprehensive
theory of organizational change. However, it is an empirical question of how the past,
present, and future interrelate. Chapter 4 represents one of the attempts to empirically
study this question. Its findings show how management mobilizes specific pasts and
futures to judge and justify enactments of current situations. Similar managerial issues
such as past losses of a showroom and past losses of a sewing factory were used
differently to either show continuity (for further investments in showrooms) or
discontinuity (for critically analyzing the future of the sewing factory). Therefore, the
management influenced future enactments by preparing other organizational members
for further investments in the showrooms or for potential cost cutting measures in the
sewing factory. Furthermore, the findings revealed that justification is rather past
oriented, as previous actions, decisions, and historical tendencies are used to prove a
certain way of organizing. The empirical findings thus contribute the subject of time in
organization studies by showing in depth how organizational change in the making
occurs in the form of its temporal relation in present situations.

6.1.2. Contributions to the Situational Emergence of Change in Organization

Studies
The strict focus on situations in the present additionally contributes to the theories
around the notion of emergence. For several decades, authors have been interested in
how change emerges out of situational actions as opposed to how change is identified

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as a phenomenon post-hoc from the outside (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). The authors can
be regarded as some of the predecessors of the strong process view. Mintzberg (1978),
for example, introduced his famous distinction between emergent and deliberately
planned strategies. Orlikowski (1996) suggested to regard organizational change as
being improvised over time based on situated practices. These authors emphasized that
the everyday actions comprise and contribute to what we perceive of retrospectively as
having changed. While not always explicitly mentioning it, the situational present is
regarded as the ongoing source of change, which emerges out of collective actions
within situations.

The contribution of the dissertation to the concept of situational emergence within

organization studies is twofold. First, it takes the focus on the present as source for
change serious and consequently avoids conceptualizing change as a phenomenon
evolving over time. By integrating temporal dimensions and by integrating the
difference between the concrete and the abstract as well as the actual and the potential
(Hernes, 2008), it is possible to conceptualize change beyond the situational only. In
other words, the dissertation contributes to the emergence literature by not showing the
influence between the situation and the organizational on a time line according to a
weak process view but by identifying situational mechanisms and how they potentially
influence the organizational. For example, empirical findings in chapter 4 have shown
that the management creates, confirms, alters, or denies organization-specific theories
within situations, thereby potentially influencing future organizing. In chapter 5,
empirical findings have revealed different mechanisms of how opportunities
continuously emerge as an exploration and matching of problem and solution spaces
never to be fully completed.

Second, by combining the temporal aspects of emergence in chapter 2 and 4 and the
creational design dimension in chapter 5, the conceptualizations and findings of this
dissertation would allow for theorizing towards a more comprehensive model of
emergence (see figure 12):

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 Problem (Ends)

Influencing
Present
Past Future Future
Situation Organizing

Solution (Means)
Figure 12: Towards a more comprehensive model of emergence

The model is based on the argument that change emerges out of coping with tension
within situations. While in chapter 3, tensions are argued to arise out of temporal
relations between the past, present, and future, in chapter 5, tensions are argued to
stem from the exploration and matching of problem and solution spaces. Both
dimensions seem to have an important influence on how organizational members cope
with situations at hand, while making sense of the situation at the same time by
abstracting it and by creating potentialities thereby influencing future organizational
behaviour. However, the suggested model is only a first draft that integrates the two
empirical focuses and that should be further developed in the future.

6.1.3. Contributions to Transcending the Micro-Macro Distinction in

Organization Studies
One of the often discussed problems in organizational studies and also within social
sciences in general has been the problem of understanding the relation between micro
activities and macro structures (Jensen, 2007). The notions of micro and macro are
understood according to Gidden’s (1984) structuration theory. The macro aspects of
organizing such as codes, blueprints or any generalized way of collaboration
influences how individuals and collectives act in specific situation. Reciprocally, each
individual and collective micro-action creates, confirms, alters or denies generalized
ways of organizing (see figure 13):

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 Macro Micro

Codes, blueprints or Specific individual and

any generalization collective action
for action

Figure 13: The reciprocal influence between micro and macro aspects of organization
(adapted from Lewis & Suchan, 2003)

Usually, either the micro or the macro is overemphasized, while neglecting the other
and sustaining the dichotomy (Chia & MacKay, 2007). The focus on activities in the
present in this dissertation also risks a bias towards the micro aspects of organizing.
However, I tried to contribute to the theory of organizational change by integrating the
micro and macro aspects to a certain degree. Several concepts of the strong process
view have helped me to conceptualize the situational emergence of change beyond the
micro aspects of the situation only. I thereby acknowledge the spatially but also
temporally distributed nature of organizing (Tsoukas, 1996). The concept of
immanence (Chia, 1999) shows that the past and the future are immanent in situational
enactments. Distributed organizing of the past and distributed organizing of the future
relate to present situations. The differences between the concrete and the abstract as
well as those between the actual and the potential (Hernes, 2008) support the idea that
the macro aspects of organizing are immanent in current activities in the present. In
other words, when certain pasts and certain futures are mobilized, they represent
abstracted macro aspects of organizing, which are activated and made concrete in the
situation. At the same time and in turn, this activation potentially influences the macro
aspects of the organization by again creating temporary abstractions of the situation,
which potentially influences future organizing. By making the concept of immanence
explicit in the form of mobilizing pasts and futures, the transcendence between the
micro and macro should become more transparent, and this is possible to be
empirically studied. For example, the findings of chapter 4 have revealed that
managing generalizes concrete issues and situations by unifying a certain view on
historical or future developments or by comparing similar issues to create temporary
guidelines for future situations. The loss of the showroom in New York has been

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mobilized to interpret it as an important investment and to compare it with the
unnecessary loss of the sewing factory in Thailand. Unifying the interpretation of the
losses and comparing them potentially influences future organizing and thereby
transcends the micro aspects of the present situation and the macro aspects of past
developments and future behaviour. The theoretical developments and the empirical
findings contribute to transcend the micro-macro distinction by focusing on the
influence both have on each other in present situations.

6.2. Practical Implications

Alongside theoretical developments, the dissertation shows relevant contributions for
organizing, managing, and entrepreneuring in practice. As stated in the introduction,
following the strong process view requires to ‘truly learn to think in different terms
than our largely substance-based educations have prepared for us’ (Van de Ven &
Poole, 2005: 1390). Such a radical ontological shift bears consequences not only for
scholars but also for practitioners. Several practical implications can be drawn from
the dissertation.

First, the suggested conceptualization of organizational change in the making and its
empirical observability and existence should foster practitioners to rethink the
substance-based ontology that dominates the interpersonal communication within
organizing. We are trained to think and discuss about the organization, while it is still
difficult to better grasp what is meant by organizing in the verbal form (Weick, 1979).
On the one hand, this study promotes to further make use of processual terms in
organizing, while it also goes beyond the philosophical and helps to apply such
thinking in practice. For example, by being aware of the idea that specific pasts and
specific futures are mobilized to judge and justify certain behaviour or decision,
organizational members will rethink such mechanism, which may alter their mostly
linear clock-time and substance-based understanding of organizational change. If
process and change is not only regarded as a sequential order but as something that
occurs in every organizational action and interaction, this has an impact of how
organizational members understand their influence on organizing. For example, the
first empirical focus fosters the idea that management is most influential within

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everyday interactions rather than by developing for example strategic plans only. Of
course, management should have an idea of what is important for the organization and
what the possible future goals could be. However, only by continuously interacting
with others and by making abstract plans to become concrete, strategy comes to life.

Second, by not giving priority to substances and by focusing on the present experience
and present activities, the study is also closer to what practitioners perceive in
everyday organizing. If change is conceptualized and observed as the difference
between two static states in the past for theory building, it is difficult to make us of it
in situations while not being aware in which situation and with which circumstances
one is confronted with. A theory that is based on the inherent dynamics and
uncertainty that rests in situations of organizing represents more directly what
practitioners experience in their ongoing organizational reality (Morris, et al., 2012).
As such, practitioners benefit from a less artificial and less abstract theory, which is
easier to be transferred in their practical everyday life. The empirical findings of
chapter 5, for example, suggest that opportunity forming involves identifying the most
important questions concerning a specific topic or mentally implementing a suggested
solution. The findings represent concrete activities that can be rather easily fostered to
better explore problem and solution spaces. For example, the study revealed that
“identifying goal conflicts” is one of the problem-space-exploring activities.
Entrepreneurs could apply this finding directly by asking themselves: “What goal
conflicts do our potential customer needs show and how could they be resolved?”
However, to benefit further from the theory, organizational members need to reflect on
and in their actions (Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009) to be aware of their specific behaviour
and of how the findings could be transferred beneficially to their specific contexts.

Third, the study suggests that the past and the future are subjective constructions
which have an influence on organizing within situations and beyond these situations.
This implies that organizational members should be aware that even a jointly
experienced history as well as a jointly headed future can be interpreted quite
differently, which in turn influences organizing. For example, the plausibility of the
potential entrance of a competitor of the fashion industry represents a certain
expectation about the future. It is not evident that all organizational members act

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according to such an expectation and that this expectation is true. However, being
aware of the expectation and what this means for the organization has an impact on
how each person acts in relation the potential entrance of a competitor of the fashion
industry. It is in the situations that the different aspects of the past and the future are
actualized and made concrete. This involves continuous adjusting, negotiating, and
conforming of potentially different views on the past and the future. Being aware of
the differences and similarities helps to collectively cope with situations in the present
and thereby to jointly head for an at least temporary agreed upon future. In chapter 4,
findings suggest that organizational-specific theorizing occurs, which generalizes for
future organizing. It would be worthwhile as a practitioner to identify its own specific
organizational theories and to observe how they are collectively created and how they
influence future organizing.

Fourth, the study shows the importance of the situation and the present in general. If
management is regarded as situational practice that involves reflection (Rüegg-Stürm
& Grand, 2007), this study helps management practitioners to rethink their influence
on organizing. On the one hand, it suggests a framework for reflection on action
(Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009). On the other hand, chapter 4 particularly shows that
management can only influence organizing within situations. The influence is
conceptualized as continuously creating abstractions and potentialities within
situations, thereby transcending the situational towards future organizing. If the
management communicates a deliberately developed strategic plan, the
communicative act represents only a single situation, within which the concrete is
abstracted for future organizing. It requires many more situations, in which the
suggested abstraction in the form of the plan has to be made concrete, actualized, and
adjusted. The empirical findings in chapter 4, for example, have shown that the
positive interpretation of losses by the showroom in New York had to be re-activated
in several situations. From this perspective, the influence of managing is restricted
more or less to situations in which the management is able to communicate with other
people and thereby collectively transcends the situational. This may be a reason and
explanation as to why managers show rather situational activities in which face-to-face
communication plays an important role (Mintzberg, 1973). The dissertation

151
contributes to managerial practice by raising the awareness for being more or less
limited to situational interactions for influencing the organizational.

Finally, the ontological shift from a world of being to a world of becoming has
consequences for knowledge creation, communication and language use in practice.
Even though fixed categories such as a strategy or an opportunity are required to deal
with reality, practitioners adopting a strong process view should be aware that such
categories are themselves continuously becoming and are subjective constructions
depending on individual’s reflection and interpretation. Furthermore, those
practitioners would be aware that the organization does not exist as an entity with
given features but that the macro aspects of organizing represent a specific and
generalized way of collaborating. And these aspects are themselves subject to change
by applying, confirming, altering or denying them in a continuous manner. For
example, if a company mainly develops new products based on the interaction with its
clients and with potential clients, this could be regarded as a generalized and specific
way of innovating. However, each interaction with customers and each specific
influence on new product development influences and alters the generalized way of
innovating. Reflective practitioners would be aware of the specific way of innovating
as well as its reciprocal relation to concrete interactions with clients. Accordingly, the
language use of practitioners applying a strong process view would emphasize the
processual nature of organization by using verbs instead of nouns (Weick, 1979) and
by using nouns in an incomplete and ever to be completed way. A strategy would
always be regarded as a temporary focus, which has to be confirmed and re-confirmed
in a continuous manner.

6.3. Limitations and Directions for Future Research

This study has some limitations, and it could benefit from further research. First, the
degree whereby the results can be generalized is limited due to the focus on an in
depth single case that was observed and examined during a certain period of time. It is
possible that other organizations and companies would show different mechanisms of
referring to the past and the future and of exploring and matching the problem and
solution spaces. It would thus be interesting for future research to compare different

152
settings in order to either strengthen the results of this study or to expand and refine it.
For example, do organizations with tangible products such as the ones in the textile
industry show different mechanisms of opportunity forming than service companies
without tangible products or software development companies depending on
technology-based products do? Does it make a difference if the company is almost two
hundred years old or if it is a recently founded start-up company? Is there an influence
on managing if the company is owned by a family as was the case for this study or if
the company is held publicly? These are some questions which further studies in other
contexts could help to find answers to.

Second, the observations of meetings and interviews show a cognitivist (Huff & Huff,
2000) tendency to a certain degree. However, the mobilized pasts and futures as well
as the problem and solution spaces include empirical influences beyond mere mental
constructions. Experiences from the past (e.g. a routine) also involve an embodied
element (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1992) which is actualized and applied within
situations without being necessarily aware of it. Furthermore, the present interacts with
the past beyond the cognition in the form of artefacts. A textile sample of a competitor
may be used during a discussion, which potentially influences the situation as well as
future organizing. The findings have shown that there was not only cognition and
interpretation involved, when the existing internet solutions have been tried out and
experimented with (see chapter 5). However, a more explicit concentration on for
example how the past and the future influence the situation and vice versa in the form
of artefacts or by involving bodily elements would help to further develop theory by
making non-cognitivist influences more transparent. Existing theories such as the
actor-network theory (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005) or the theories around the notion of
embodiment (Varela, et al., 1992) would help to reveal further insights in this
direction.

6.4. Conclusion
The aim of this study was to contribute to the theory of organizational change in
general and to those of managing and entrepreneurship more specifically. It is based
on the radical ontological shift of the strong process view that prioritizes process over

153
substance. Following this, I focused on the situational present, in which the inherent
dynamics of change are experienced and which potentially influences future
organizing by creating generalizations and potentialities. I suggested conceptualizing
organizational change in the making and managing as a situational coping with
tensions that arise by relating the past, present, and future. I furthermore suggested
conceptualizing opportunity forming as a continuous process of situational exploring
and matching of problem and solution spaces. These conceptualizations allowed me to
observe and identify several mechanisms of how change emerges out of the situational
and transcends with the institutional beyond the situation, on the basis of data from an
ethnographic single case study of a Swiss textile company.

The conceptualizations and findings of this dissertation promise to contribute to theory

by further developing the strong process view as an alternative theory for
organizational change. It goes beyond the predominantly philosophical contributions
in the strong process view by suggesting conceptualizations that allow for empirical
examinations and by proofing empirical applicability. Furthermore, the dissertation
promises to shed more light on the situational nature of organizing, managing, and
entrepreneuring as a starting point and as a source of change and the new. I thereby
hope that my dissertation helps to better understand our world being more processual
than our substance-based education has thought us (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). The
study tries to acknowledge the omnipresent ambiguity and complexity of
organizational life and life in general, without theorizing it away in a substance-based
manner. Chia (1999) stresses that “we are not good at thinking movement (emphasize
in the original)’ (p. 209). However, living and organizing involves movement and
making sense of movement (Poole & Van de Ven, 2004b). If we truly want to think in
processual and dynamical terms, new ways of thinking and acting are required, for
which we have to work against our human need to simplify and normalize (Weick &
Sutcliffe, 2007). I hope that this dissertation helps to further develop this kind of
processual theory and practice.

154
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 David Griesbach

Born on 23 August 1977 in Uster, Switzerland

Citizen of Switzerland

Professional Experience

2011– Griesbach Consulting, Switzerland

Managing Consultant and Owner

2008–2011 Strategic Knowledge Group (SKGROUP), Switzerland

Senior Consultant for Strategy and Organizational Development

2002–2005 Lowe Worldwide Advertising Agency, Switzerland

Account Director

1998–2002 GGK Basel Advertising Agency, Switzerland

Junior Account Director

Education

2008–2012 University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland

Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Studies and Cultural Theory

2005–2008 University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland

Master of Arts in Strategy and International Management

Teacher in Business Education

2000–2004 University of Applied Sciences (HWZ), Switzerland

Bachelor in Business Administration

1998–2000 SAWI, Switzerland

Marketing-Communications Planner

1992–1997 Kantonsschule Im Lee, Winterthur, Switzerland

Matura Typus L (Lehramt)

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