Chapter 7: Grammatical Models of Organizational Processes - Organizing Business Knowledge The Mit Process Handbook [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 7: Grammatical Models of Organizational Processes

Brian T. Pentland

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as B. T. Pentland (1995), Grammatical models of organizational processes, Organization Science 6(5): 541-56. 1995 The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), 901 Elkridge Landing Road, Suite 400, Linthicum, MD 21090-2909 USA. Reprinted by permission.

7.1 Introduction

Process thinking has been attracting more interest lately from both theorists and practitioners. Some sociologists are beginning to adopt the view that ''social reality happens in sequences of actions located within constraining and enabling structures''(Abbott 1992, p. 428). Organization theorists argue that process models provide a unique perspective on innovation (Van de Ven and Poole 1990), strategic change (Van de Ven 1992), and organizational behavior in general (Mohr 1982). Practitioners believe that a process-centered view of organizational design can yield dramatic improvements in organizational performance (Hammer 1990; Davenport 1993). Whether one regards this wave of interest in processes as a case of theory leading practice, or practice leading theory (Barley, Meyer, and Gash 1988), it seems clear that there is a need for more understanding of this domain.

Recent studies of innovation (Pelz 1985; Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole 1989), group processes (Gersick 1989; Poole and Roth 1989; Olson, Herbsleb, and Rueter 1994), software development (Sabherwal and Robey 1993), and careers (Abbott and Hrycak 1990) have begun to introduce sequential concepts and methods to a wider audience of organizational scholars. But more than ten years after Mohr's (1982) rallying cry for research that takes process seriously, organizational theorists are still generally content to study the variable properties of static objects using traditional variance models (Van de Ven 1992). Processes, if mentioned at all, are often used as ''just-so stories''that describe the causal chain that relates independent and dependent variables (Abbott 1992, p. 429). Empirical studies of actual sequences of events (e.g., Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole 1989; Sabherwal and Robey 1993) are still quite rare. We are accumulating an increasingly powerful set of tools for describing and comparing sequences of events (Hewes 1980; Holmes and Poole 1991; Abbott 1990), but these methods lack the capability to express the nested, layered quality that characterizes many kinds of organizational processes. As interest in process research grows, we will need increasingly sophisticated ways of representing and reasoning about complex sequences of events.

In this chapter, I argue that a special class of process models based on the metaphor of grammar can provide unique insights into the sequential structure of organizational processes. In recent years, the metaphor of grammar has been used more frequently in connection with organizational processes. One of the first instances was Weick (1979, p. 3) who defined ''organizing''as a ''consensually validated grammar for reducing equivocality by means of sensible interlocked behaviors,''and went on to argue that ''organizing resembles a grammar, a code, or a set of recipes.''More recently Drazin and Sandelands (1992, p. 230) argue that the ''deep structure''of organizing consists of a ''generative grammar.''By describing organizations and interactions in grammatical terms, these scholars and a host of others (Skvoretz and Farraro 1980; Barley 1986; Abell 1987; Sandelands 1987; Salancik and Leblebici 1988; Coulter 1989; White 1992) are implicitly suggesting that, like human language, human organization has syntax. A syntax of organizational processes is an exciting possibility because it provides a new paradigm for organizational science. In the same way that ecological concepts (e.g., population, niche, and density) provide new ways to theorize about organizational forms, grammatical concepts (e.g., lexicon and syntactic structure) provide new ways to theorize about organizational processes. The most convenient starting point in this effort would be simple ''business processes''(Davenport 1993): goal-oriented sequences of actions that repeat over time, such as customer service (Ventola 1987). Eventually it may be possible to create grammatical models for other kinds of processes that embody change over time, such as organizational life cycles, innovation (Van de Ven and Poole 1990), and strategy formation (Van de Ven 1992).

In this chapter, I define the basic terms of grammatical models of organizational processes, and attempt to clarify the limits and possibilities of a research agenda based on such models. The question is, What might we learn if we took Weick's (1979) metaphor seriously and applied it in empirical research? To answer this question, we need a method for rigorously mapping concepts from the domain of grammar to the domain of organizing. Organization theory is filled with metaphors (Morgan 1986), but with the notable exception of the ecological metaphor, very few of them have been systematically developed. Tsoukas (1991) describes a way to develop metaphorical language into rigorous theoretical language by progressively mapping ideas from one domain to another until one arrives at a language that is isomorphic between domains. Another way of framing this line of inquiry would be to ask: What can we learn about organizational processes by thinking of them as products of a language? The argument here is that the grammatical metaphor opens up new ways of modeling and analyzing process. These models are not substitutes for variance models, or other kinds of sequential models. Rather, they add to the stock of analytical tools that organization theorists can bring to bear on this important class of phenomena.

In typical metaphors the source domain is quite familiar to the audience, so it helps them form interpretations or insights about the less familiar target domain (Tsoukas 1991). For this Process Handbook audience, the source domain (grammar) is less familiar than the target (organizations). Therefore I begin by defining the concept of grammar and explaining some of its key features. Given this introduction, I will examine some ways that these concepts can be exploited to construct grammatical models of organizational processes. The analysis indicates that basic grammatical concepts can be used to create rigorous, disconfirmable models of organizational processes. In the final sections of the chapter, I discuss some methodological aspects of developing and testing such models, and suggest what we might learn from a grammatical research agenda.