Deviant matter

In a Norwegian folk tale: Askeladden and his good helpers the king announces that he will give the princess and half the kingdom to the one who can build a ship that is able to sail on water and land, and in the air too. Askeladden 1 makes the ship in a mysterious interaction with a witch, by being trustful and sharing both his intentions and food with the witch. The witch tells him to take everybody he meets aboard the ship, and as he is told, he does. All those he meet turn out to be very deviant people, deviant in such a way that others frown and turn their back to them upon meeting them. However, with his quick wit and the aid of his new friends he manages to turn their deviances into positive contributions in the quest for the princess and he does indeed win the princess and half the kingdom.

Background Ghoshal (2005) suggests organizations that rely too much on management theories might lag behind because these theories disregard the responsibility of organizations towards their workers, community and society as a whole, instead unilaterally focussing on their responsibility of profit maximizing for their shareholders. In such management theories organizations are regularly seen as separate from the complexity of society as a whole. Organizations are treated as separate entities, controllable in the same manner as science experiments. In such a world of control, deviances are only noticed as negative. Ghoshal (ibid) perceives a solution for management theory in empirical research of positive outcomes, and what happens where things work exceptionally well, as purported within Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS). The POS tradition does not only bring people and their energy, affects and emotions into research, but also the researcher as a person in need to connect with positive energies in their own work (Dutton, 2003). Ideas 2 are not be discerned from the people willing to advocate them and organizations that enable people to find a purpose at work and thereby experiencing work as meaningful might therefore be the ones producing the best ideas. Idea work produces deviance. When successful this deviance is always positive. In some ways a successful idea is akin to art. In a cultural sense, art may be understood as a process of making something special, both critical to, reflecting on, and set aside from ordinary life (Dissanayake, 1995). Dissanayakes definition is a development of Batesons (1979) point that information is a difference that makes a difference. Indeed Bateson defines art and metaphor as more communicative than ordinary language, because it resonates with emotions on a more primary level. But emotions towards deviances are not only positive. Deviance is also matter out of place (Douglas, 1966). Such matter is difficult matter, and not only management theoreticians have wanted to make categories that orders life. Douglas (ibid.) sees these tendencies in many cultures. What cannot be categorized easily is seen as dirty and something to be avoided, exactly because it has the power to make the categories obsolete and change them. Deviances are often seen as so potent and detrimental that they are explained out of existence. In deed, change is often painful and also changes power relations, and in producing the best ideas, not all ideas imply incremental changes that blend themselves nicely into the setting of the work place. In my PhD I want to explore the relationship between people that are recognised as positively deviant and the organizational frames (Goffman, 1974) in
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His name alludes to him being an unlikely candidate, that he sits at home digging in the ashes. Introducing ideas it is pertinent to highlight that ideas in the respect used here is akin to the concept of ideas in the Idea Work

project, stemming from a tradition of practice based theories, embedding the material, the social and the conceptual in reciprocally becoming dependency.

Kristianne V. L. Ervik: Deviant Matter

which they work. In particular I want to search for insight into trajectories of interaction that contributes to the making sense of (particular) deviances as positive. Approach to the topic: My interest in the field derives from my experience working for several municipality-owned organizations doing competency based business development. A set of municipalities have gone into a partnership with SINTEF to bring research based competencies into the business development of their regions. Together the municipalities and SINTEF have established Virtuous circles, organizations owned by the municipality run by SINTEF, The success criteria for the work of Virtues Circles are simply more activity and change. These are extreme cases of the ambiguous goals typical of knowledge work (Alvesson, 2004). In order to guide the fuzzy work of these municipality organizations a set of values and guidelines for conduct are created. These values are Close on, Co-generative and humble, and cool. Close on implies the need to get a deep involvement with local life and getting under the skin of actors and relations, inspired by practise-based theories (Schatsky, 2001). Co-generative and humble (Elder and Levin, 1991) emphasise that it is the municipalities and the people living in them that have the competency to create and the ability to sustain change and more activity. The last value cool, is suggested in the sense of being brave enough to provide and test fresh approaches that haven't been tried out in the communities before (Finne et al, 2008). These are values that will also guide my conduct in the field during my PhD. In Virtues Circles we have been working closely with locals to create projects that could lead to change and we have worked with local businesses and artists to explore collaboration between them. During this work, three projects in particularly, are the source of my interests in idea work and positive deviance. The first project example is a project starting with a grand creative processes and it gained national attention for the ideas created. Later it stagnated and turned into marathon meetings of endless bureaucratic planning. In the second project example plans were written but never carried but the project(plan)s are nevertheless kept alive in the collective memory, referred to in awe for its originality. Finally, a project of business and artist collaboration, where workers in the collaborating organisations reports on increased belonging to the company and to the local community it is situated in (Gjerde and Hoel, 2008) All three projects were deviant in the sense of original. In advance it was impossible to say which of them would succeed. In retrospect it is easy. It is however not easy to say why, what happened, why these. Somehow the ability of the project organisation to communicate the ideas to someone who have the ability to spin them further is important, but it is difficult to say how this could be done. As already stated, my research interest lays in exploring the relationship between people that are recognised as positively deviant and the different organizational frames in which they operate. In particular I want to search for insight into trajectories of interaction that contributes to framing the deviances as positive. To understand such projects I want to use some extreme cases of positive deviance as a starting point. I believe with Starbuck (1993) that prominent features in the exceptional are also to be found in typical, maybe in a more subtle version. My examples are people whom Ive met who simultaneously use and preach aesthetic knowledge in organisations. They are obviously different, also because they actively separate themselves from a perceived norm. Even though I might start with these, I dont want to limit my research to these examples. I believe that they also may give some indicators as to how to identify deviances within other organisations.

Kristianne V. L. Ervik: Deviant Matter

The humorous farmer: On the back of his not entirely flattering blue fleece jacket is a large sign reading Encouragement Administration, making him stand out from the crowd. When I met him he explained that he is travelling to inspect humour deviances. His name is Geir Styve and he calls himself the humorous farmer: his registered trade mark. He explains that this is because he wanted to set himself apart from a national stereotype of farmers as whiners. Instead of living from milking cows, which his forefathers did, he has changed to milking people. He makes his living from a business repertoire ranging from letting canoes, packaged with maps as safaris, to inspirational talks that he travels around the country to hold. One of the inspirational talks is the Killing of rural animal, the rural animal being a slang for local gossip and social control against change or immoral conduct that might make new ventures difficult in organisations. The insights he delivers are researched at the humorous farmerology institute: illustrated by a picture of him sitting at a stone on his farm. In his talk he does not mention that he has a broad business background and is currently studying for a master's degree in innovation. He claims that an antiauthoritarian style and use of funny elements aids his vision: Give people reflections. The percussionist: Ole Hamre is a well known jazz musician and manages the public programme of the Bergen International Festival. He is a well known original character in the city landscape, and has made several new instruments like the Peoplophone, where he plays on recordings of people singing a tone or laughing. Hamre wants to convey that there is music in everything, and therefore he uses the world around him as instrument. He also makes music out of businesses, for example he has collaborated with a renovation company. Pictures of and sounds of people and production are merged to turn the collection of garbage into beautiful music rather than a dirty, ubiquitous process. The composition was first played at a company anniversary. Later he turned the composition into a 4-minute film to present the company, and was asked to make an advertising film for movie theatres and a 30 second jingle for radio. Even though his products proceedingly resemble advertising, he is eager to stress that this is not art and business collaboration for the sake of money. Rather he says that he is making art out of business, showing a hidden beauty within. He enjoys working with a trade, renovation, that doesnt have a high status. He claims that he can elevate the workers self esteem both for themselves and for others. The Norwegian Fiasco Museum of Hemne: A small Norwegian municipality had a humour festival and an organisation called Humour and Madness. Their last idea for national and international grandeur might at the same time contribute to community where new businesses may be born and encouraged. The fiasco museum is supposed to collect, document, communicate and exhibit fiascos of all kinds. Marriages gone awry, companies gone bust, meaningless products, unaccepted PhDapplications may all be left behind at the museum. The best fiascos will be exhibited along with materialisations of popular idioms of failure. At the moment the museum is going into a pilot study to understand whether it is useful for the society and for people to focus on the fiasco as a recipe for success. They want people to laugh at earlier mistakes, but also to dare delve into the unpleasant feeling of failure. The museum seeks to harness the power of failure and use the fiasco to learn and make changes. The goal is to give people the spirit to try again. The fiasco museum has a broad support base, but also here there is a fiery soul advocating the concept: the fiasco general. He is a charismatic speaker, and maybe the concept is so contagious

Kristianne V. L. Ervik: Deviant Matter

that he might also charge money for his talk on fiascos long before the physical museum is in place. The examples may be seen as metaphors of something that is recognisable as challenges within organisation in general, but at the same time they point towards questions of how to deal with deviant matters. I now want to sketch out some of the most striking similarities between these examples in terms of interaction trajectories. These similarities are paths I am interested to pursue in the PhD study. There are of course several entrances to a grand topic like this. Based on the experience I have today, I find these similarities to be intriguing ways of questioning the theme at hand. These are questions that undoubtedly will be redeveloped through the PhD and especially, if I get the opportunity, through collaboration with researchers and projects within Idea Work. 1) They are succeeding in explicitly challenging ways of knowing, perceiving and behaving in organizations. Somehow all the deviants manage to show new patterns of how to understand the role of people and the relations between them in a short time. Hamre most explicitly states that he uses the organisation for art and thereby changing how people in the organisation view themselves. The music he makes is easily understood and resonates with people in a different way than say a report on values in the organisation. Whilst rational language is useful to differentiate between phenomena, Bateson (1979:19) claims that aesthetics is the pattern that connects. An aesthetic understanding of sensible knowledge targets the multidimensional experience of being in an organisation (Strati, 2007). In hydrocarbon exploration for example, drilling a sequence of dry holes may be painful and shameful. Can negative emotions be relieved with an understanding that what one finds is both hydrocarbons and knowledge? Do the perspectives of the deviants actually change the feel of the organisation? Do they produce different ideas? 2) All have been in situation where they are not recognised as positive deviations, but are now respected for the novelty of their ideas. The humourous farmer ran a business for eleven years before the first customer was a local. Now his local community has decided to call itself the humorous village, creating several new ideas on the basis of the farmers ideas. Some norms have changed to facilitate the recipients of the ideas. If creativity simply were a faculty of an individual, how are such chain reactions possible? Csikszentmihalyi (2000) advocates the right environment for the individual as creative. I find it just as interesting to study what kind of organisation are able to both facilitate and further ideas. How may a creative collective become better at recognising deviances? How can the deviances become positive? 3) They show real interested in the people and matters of the organisations they work with. All of them offer their ideas to businesses and want their ideas to be used creatively. Artists have been seen to possess skills that are important in a future oriented business community, where reflective tools and different modes of representation may help businesses staying competitive (Adler, 2006) both in developing products and services and in recruiting and maintaining personnel. The examples mentioned here might be better as inspiration to businesses than artists. They play on stereotypes and actively pursue doing something different from what people within the organisation do, but they do so in a language that the recipients

Kristianne V. L. Ervik: Deviant Matter

understand. However, when communicating difference, is it possible for the organisation to learn to cultivate their own ideas? The fiasco museum has an ambition to aid local business development to give courage to gamble on new business ideas. I also wonder whether it is possible to find people and collectives that also are deviant by following the interaction trajectories of their ideas into businesses? Is it possible to find artists within the organisation? The previous musings may be summed up into three questions: 1. How may aesthetic knowing provide organisational frames suited to ideas? 2. How can a collective recognise and make sense of a deviance as positive? 3. How do people create positive deviant ideas in an organisational context? Research approach: Methodically, researching energies and emotions connected to ideas might prove a challenge. Interviews will serve to get a narrative of the trajectories of interactions leading to positive deviance. Participant observation is the grounds for thick description (Geertz, 1973). I want to use an abductive process to interpret the observations (Alvesson and Krreman, 2007). Abduction is neither induction nor deduction, but a middle way in which one grasps reality through existing theories to forms the basis of a consolidated theoretical framework. I am in a position where I can be allowed into quite a few of the organisational frames the positive deviants operate. It will be important for me to follow deviances into these settings, but also further into the organisations with which they interact. Within idea work I hope to contribute to understandings of how the partners can become better at handling deviant matter. Together with the other researchers I also see the possibility of developing methods and tools both to create and handle deviant matter. References:
Adler, N. J. (2006) The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything, What Will We Do? Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2006, Vol. 5, No. 4, 486499. Alvesson M. (2004): Knowledge work and knowledge-intensive-firms. New York: Oxford University Press. Alvesson, M. and Krreman, D. (2007) Constructing Mystery: Empirical Matters in Theory Development in Academy of Management Review Vol. 32, 4 : 1265 - 1281 Bateson, Gregory (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York Csikszentmikahalyi, Mikaly (2000). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers. Elden, M. and M. Levin (1991). Co-generative learning: Bringing participation into action research. In F. Whyte (Ed) Participatory Action Research. Newbury Park, CA, Sage, 127-142 Dissanayake, E (1995): Homo Aestheticus, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Ghoshal, S. (2005): Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices, Academy of management and learning & education, Vol. 4. No 1, 75-91 Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York, Basic Books Dutton, J.E. (2003). Breathing life into organisational studies. Journal of management Inquiry 12(1): 5-19 Finne, H., K. V. L. Ervik, L. Fjell and S. Kvernes (2008) Close on, co-generative and cool? Social innovation in the joint development of place, community, school and industry, Conference on Regional Development and Innovation Processes, March 5th-7th, Porvoo - Borg, Finland Gjerde, T. G. and R. Hoel (2008): KAISESS P LIASKJRET ET EVENTYR? - Et unikt samarbeid mellom nringsliv, kunst og kultur, Hgskolen i Sr-Trndelag,, Master of Science Schatzki, T. R. (2001) Introduction; Practice Theory, in The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, Eds; Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike Von Savigny Starbuck, W.H. (1993), 'Watch where you step!' or Indiana Starbuck amid the perils of Academe (Rated PG) , pp. 63-110 in A. Bedeian (ed.), Management Laureates, Volume 3; JAI Press Douglas, M. (1966, 2002 edition) Purity and Danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge. Strati, A. (2007). Sensible Knowledge and Practice-based Learning. Management Learning 38 (1):61-77.

Kristianne V. L. Ervik: Deviant Matter