Part 1 of 6, Boje interviews David Trafimow's on his ban on P value significance testing:13:21 Part 1 of 6 part series Boje and colleagues interview David Trafimow about his COPERNICAN REVOLUTION of how statistical validity is done, moving away from p-value .05 significance tests and null hypotheses to a new frontier of construct validity. Study Guide at https://davidboje.com/655

 

Part 2 of 6 Copernican Revolution causal modelling, Boje interviews Trafimow alternative to p-value test. David M. Boje interviews David Trafimow on his better alternative to the absurd .05 p-value test for significance that he has banned in his own journal. The new test is called a priori test and can be used to estimate beforehand size of sample needed. This is part of Organizational Research Methods series, see study guides at https://davidboje.com/655

 

Part 37:50 minutes

Part 3 of 6, Trafimow talks about the lag between knowing p value no use and changing the teaching and publishing habits. Organizational statistics taught to grad students in errant p-value way, though a better way of construct validity is here and now (see Part 2). Study guides at https://davidboje.com/655

 

Part 519:05 minutes

 

Part 5 of 6, Boje interviews Trafimow on Revolution of Science Method and Boje concludes with Deleuze project to reverse the negative dialectic of Plato and Hegel with Multiplicity, spirals and rhizomes study guides at https://davidboje.com/655

 

Changing CONSTRUCT VALIDITY (p <. 05) & null hypothesis testing in causal modeling (e.g. structural equation modeling) changes all the other validities:

• CONSTRUCT VALIDITY: Does (little x->y) measure adequately tap (Big X->Y) deductive theory? The Copernican Revolution in Construct Validity changes all remaining kinds of validity, and gives science a new storytelling of the empirical world.
• FACE VALIDITY (1st Wave Grounded Theory): Does test/experiment/observation (little x->y) ‘resemble’ (inductive inference) of the real world ‘actual’ phenomenon in its spacetimemattering? (This is the epistemic [inductive] fallacy of assuming theory of Idea subsumes the ontological without actually doing falsification of a1 and a2 auxiliary assumption set).
• CONTENT VALIDITY: Does (little x->y) measure adequately accomplish inquiry into (Big X->Y) deductive theory? (Without committing epistemic fallacy)
• DISCRIMINANT VA:IDITY: Does (little x->y) measure diverge from measures of other groups that (Big X->Y theory) does not predict?
• 2nd & 3rd Waves of Grounded Theory (aka Nomological) Validity): Does the prior theory and research on (Big X->Y theory) match the abductive inference (little x->y) program & observations?
• CONVERGENT VALIDITY: Do 2 or more (little x->y) measures both purporting to measure (Big X->Y) theory have high empirical correlation?
• CONCURRENT VALIDITY: Do (little x->y) test results, at the same time, match results of an accepted measure of (Big X->Y) theory?
• PREDICTIVE VALIDITY: Does past (little x->y) result predict future repetitions of performance?
• CRITERION VALIDITY (combines concurrent  & predictive validities): Does measure (little x-y) measure relate to an outcome?

--- © David M. Boje https://davidboje.com/655

 

Gilles Deleuze (1991) adds 'difference and repetition', spiralling as a move we can utilize in informing our organizational systems thinking, and its a spiralling move away from Hegel/Marx/Follett historical dialectic to a Nietzechean reversal of Platonic dialectic into the Eternal Return (will to power) that incorporates Freudian & Lacanian psychoanalysis. Deleuze (1994: 6), says, "What I most detested was Hegelianism and dialectics." Deleuze adds he was stuck in a "kind of dialectics" in his early writing and had to work out of it (1994: 18).

Deleuze & Guattari (1991/1994 What is Philosophy) develop the plane of immanence (in blue in next figure).

Figure 3: Diagrammatic of How Multiple Planes of Immanence (#7 green) curves and Spiral through Three Ideas (#9), Universal concepts (2), and so on (original drawing © D. Boje 2017).

In the Plane of Immanence figure (based on p. 56, Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994: 56 What is Philosophy?), which I annotated, there is a multiplicity of planes folding into one another, rather than a dialectical method which Deleuze finds too negative, and keep in mind, his project was to reverse the negation he saw in Plato's, Kant's, and Hegel's dialectical method. In thi,s multiplicity, modes of existence in space (5) shallow streams of time in social, psychological or physical deterritorializations (4) the passive self in wheels of schemata (6) and synthesis of judgements (7, 7, 7) is not in a dialectic, rather the Self aspires to universal concepts in the consciousness of the Descartes Cartesian-cogito (IBID., p. 52) 'I' where 'Self=Self' reaching or cut off from the Skull Head of three Ideas of the transcendental (God, Soul, & World) in a Nietzechean "will to truth" (IBID., p. 54). Planes of immanence take from the physics of chaos sections (following Nietzsche), its infinite movement and there is a "multiplicity of planes" (IBID., p. 50). Each plane, in a multiplicity of planes, has its way of constructing immanence, its concepts, and bridging between different concepts on different planes. The Plane of Immanence (8) curves (or spirals) through and toward "the celestial vertical settle in the horizontal plane of thought in accordance with a spiral" in "variations of curvature" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994: 39, 76, 89). This diagrammatic figure invites an "empirical conversation" (IBID., p. 75) as we have been having with David Trafimow. In the multiplicity of planes, every plane is a "One-All" (Ibid., p. 50). In the multiple planes, personae such as Plato, Descartes, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenborg, Hegel distributes the planes differently (IBID.). And every great philosopher attempts a new plane with its own mode of immanence, and its concepts cutting across other planes.

My own meager attempt is a plane of antenarrative with throws of the dice in slice of chaos with transcendental faith in spiritual fore-sight and prospective sense to prepare in advance processes of fore-having, fore-structuring, and fore-concept (bridging to a Heideggerian plane of care for the future in its arrival).

How to depict Deleuzian Double Spiral See Part 5 YouTube: Deleuze and Guattari (1987 & 1991/1994: 89) create a language and theory of spirals and rhizomes that forms the basis for antenarrative systems theory. In this example, I am working out the kinds of deterritorializations and reterritorializations taking place in business schools around the world.

Figure 4: Antenarrative Processes of Double Spiral Forces of Signification happening in Business Schools around the World (Original Drawing © D. Boje, 2017)

Key:

Those spiral loops are called 'whorls.' The upward spiral has to keep producing more whorls to avert entropy. The downward spiral has its whorls and must create move of them to create its own entropy. The double spiral has upward and downward forces (down to abyss in death spiral, and upwards to uplift). The orange dotted lines are storytelling interpretative development in both up and down spiral directions, telling interpretations between whorls, linking whorls. Blue dotted lines connect signs referring to other signs within and between spiral whorls. One can take a line of flight out of a university (jump to another university, or retire). Sometimes that line of flight is scapegoating, and the sins of the university leave with the designated, signified goat.

 

 

What is the 'New' Copernican Revolution in P-values and Null Hypothesis testing, Dialectical Implications?

A long-standing accepted inferential procedure is being problematized and declared invalid. It is the equivalent of a Copernican Revolution, because knowledge claims of prior and current research, are being called into question.

The p-value (probability value) is the level of marginal significance within a statistical hypothesis test representing the probability of the occurrence of a given event. P-value is used to reject points of the smallest level of significance at which the null hypothesis would be rejected.

The smaller the p-value, the larger the significance because it tells the investigator that the hypothesis under consideration may not adequately explain the observation” (Wikipedia, P-value).

The uses of p-values dates back to 1770s, when first calculated by Pierre-Simon Laplace. It was formally introduced by Karl Pearson in chi-squared distribution test (Pearson, 1914: xxxi-xxxiii, 26-28, Table XII). The p-value was popularized by Ronald Fisher (1925) who proposed the level p=0.05.

Professor David Trafimow (2003, 2009, 2014) has declared both p-value and null hypothesis to be invalid. “As the standard null-hypothesis significance-testing procedure does just that, it is logically invalid” (Trafimow, 2003” 526). One reason, in “Bayes’ theorem yields p(Ho
F), but in practice, researchers rarely know the correct values for 2 of the variables in the theorem” (IBID.). In their editorial, Trafimow and Marks (2015: 1) banned authors from submitting null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP), decline it invalid, and therefore authors would no longer be required to perform the test. Articles performing p-value tests would not be automatically desk rejected, “but prior to publication authors will have to remove all vestiges of the NHSTP (p-values, t-values, F-values, statements about ‘significant’ differences or lack therefor, and so on” (p. 1). In additions NHSTP, since it fails to provide the probability of the null hypothesis, confidence intervals cannot be used to accept or sect the case for samples are capturing population parameters.

In statistical hypothesis testing, the p-value for a given statistical model, when the null hypothesis is true (p(F
Ho), the statistical summary between the sample mean and compared groups would be same or greater magnitude than actual observed results. The p-value is uses in statistical hypothesis testing in fields of organizational research such as management, marketing, economics, finance, psychology, and sociology.

Trafimow challenges the use of null hypothesis testing as a reduce ad absurdum argument adapted to statistics, its claim improbable. Null hypothesis is a dualism, since it assumes rejection of a null hypothesis implies a single correct alternative, which is questionable since as Trafimow put it, there may be many auxiliary hypotheses to eliminate.

Further, Trafimow brings into question the notion of statistical significance that is naively quantities by conditional probability Pr (X|H), the likelihood the observation of continuous random variables to be zero, or Pr(X=x|H)=0.

What is being widely critiqued is accepting alternative hypotheses to the null hypothesis, for any p-value less that .05 without other supporting evidence. Trafimow (2003, 2009) takes this skepticism a step further, actually banning p-value and the null hypothesis, as an indexical of the strength of evidence for a theory.

Trafimow and Rice (2009: 261), have to respond to challenges, such as supporters of null hypothesis procedures, who “… argue that the procedure is good enough because they believe that the probability of the data if given the null hypothesis correlates with the probability of the null hypothesis if given the data.” Trafimow and Rice reject the correlation method as unimpressive and failing to give compelling justification for computing p values in dichotomized process, to reject or retain null hypothesis.

Trafimow (2014: 15) says, “quantitative and qualitative researchers use different methods and have different goals. At the level of methods, quantitative researchers criticise qualitative researchers for not performing null hypothesis significance tests.” However, Trafimow rejects the null hypothesis and the p-value test finds this argument invalid, because the qualitative goal is not to find causal mechanisms, it it to describe personal or subjective experience.

The interpretation of p-value statistic has indeed taken the form of asking whether it is valid, and as Giles Deleuze (1968/1994: 176), might put it, more fictive than real.

The fictiveness of the p-value is tied to matters of representation and interpretation of statical procedures and techniques. My storytelling point is that the p-value statistic has lost its claim to validity, and is becoming fiction, or worse, we can discuss the metaphysics of the p-value and the null hypothesis testing of a theory.

David Trafimow has appeared to give testimony to statistical associations in Canada, Netherlands, and in the US, since these groups mist give guidance to statisticians on what to be about the p-value and null hypothesis controversy, and issue some kind of statement or proclamation, for or against. Could it be that Pearson (1914) and Fisher (1925) have committed some kind of historical error.

By invoking the ‘problem of p-values and null hypotheses; Trafimow opens inferential statistics to the challenge of metaphysics, a path being taken beyond the empirical statistical equation domain of significance to being confident in the validity of a particular concept, or entirely theory. In other words, the immanence of p-value to transcend its statistical solution in relation to claiming the validity of the theory, is an inference of synthesis, the fictive or erroneous knowledge being legitimated, or not.

What is being revealed in this synthesis is the movement from a statistical result to a declared knowledge solution to a theory problem in fields as diverse as medicine, psychology, sociology, management, accounting, and finance. The null hypothesis p-value (NHSTP) crisis of synthesis is also a problem of dialectics, the antinomy between statistical procedure and nominal representation of valid theory claims by authors of research articles, and editorial policies of research journals.

We should speak of a dialectics of p-value (& null hypothesis), as “any know of circulation of opposing representations which would make them coincide in the identity of a concept, but the problem element in so far as this may be distinguished from the properly mathematical element of solutions” (Deleuze, 1994: 178).

P-value statistic is a weak solution to transcendence of a circulation of representations of calculations to a theory concept (or propositions, or hypothesis). The Idea connections constituted as valid in relation to p-value is dialectical to the theory Idea, its inference of ‘real’ and ‘valid’ relations Being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1962). The ideal continuity between statistical technique and testable theory, efficacy is engendered in a Platonic dialectic relation to mathematics itself. This is a problem, already and “always dialectical” to uphold, or not, the association between p-values and hypothesis of a given theory, in a “dialectical order” (Deleuze, 1994: 179). The dialectical problem is duplicated in the synthesis between the mathematically order and the Idea order, and inferences about Nature.

In organizational research methods, there are ethnostatistics implications (Gephart, 1988, 2006). Ethnostatistics is the study of how people and organizations use statistics. The use of p-value and null hypothesis testing by researchers using statistics in organizational research is a matter for ethnostatistical investigation of inferential sensemaking.

“The synthesis of the problem and its condition: the p-value has lost its groundedness, and can no long lay claim to significance, or characterise proof of objectivity of research method, in order to give “sufficient reason” verify theory (Deleuze, 1994: 180).

Both mathematical theory and the social science theory have a problem in being able to fulfil all the dialectical requirements of the inferential circle of number and existential domain inter relationality between statistics, Idea, and Nature having the requisite continuity to be valid connection.

The dialectical Idea is a system of connections across domains (p-value statistical elements) and genetic elements of the order of Ideas, presupposed in propositions under scientific considers as “fields of solution in which dialectical Ideas of the their order are incarnated” in other scientific domains (Deleuze, 1994: 181).

Therefore, p-value poses a [statistical] dialectical problem of the first order to statistical solutions in relations to dialectical Ideas which it incarnates.

Figure 5: Triadic Multiplicities and Antenarrative Connections of Mathematico-Biological Systems of differT/Ciation (© D. M. Boje 2017).

Deleuze (1994: 221) theorizes a dialectical half of differenTiation (action or process of differentiating) and the French "la différentiation" aesthetic spatio-temporal actualization, differenTiation, which he combines as 'differT/Ciation': "The entire idea is caught up in the mathematico-biological system of different/ciation. I have added my theory of antenarrative process of pre-qualitative and pre-quantitative dramatizations into the diffCiation and diffenTiation of a potentization spiral, 'differT/Ciation.'

Deleuze's project is to reverse the negative dialectic of Plato and Hegel, and transform it into a diffCiation dialectical of differential relations and process of positivity and an aesthetic actualization in spacetime, diffenTiation.

How does Gilles Deleuze Reverse Platonic and Hegelian dialectics? What are the implications of null hypothesis, and p-values?

I submit that the null hypothesis, and p-value have become what Deleuze calls phantasms. There are three types (Deleuze, 1990: 275).

1. Theological Phantasm - Null hypothesis, and p-value are mode of simulacra and result in waves of copying, conforming, and complying with a belief in these tests. What David Trafimow is doing is a demystification of the worship of null hypothesis and p-value. If he is correct, then waves of doctoral students are trained to believe in a statistical mythology that is a phantasm that is quite "subtle and agile" (Deleuze, 1990: 276).

2. Oneric Phantasm - Oneirism (one and the whole relations) and Deleuze, instead of such dialectical relation, prefers to believe in the multiplicity. We are multiplicities, not oneness, not whole separate from ecology. Oneirism is a phantasm that comes from the depth of simulations, a dreamlike illusion, like in the Wizard of Oz, in some foundation of a system, where null hypothesis and p-value are an illusion of significance of one and the whole. There is an awakening from the null and p-value dream state, to a paradigm shift in statistics, well underway. Someone has pulled back the curtain and Wizards Pearson and Fisher, are not as powerful, as we we taught to believe in every statistical course, around the world, save one, that of David Trafimow.

3. Erotic Phantasm - Does a null hypothesis or p-value issue from erotic phantasm? Have these become love objects to give a mirage signal of significance of facts, events, and inductive/deductive hypotheses (major premisses), and theories? Deleuze (1990: 213) says Freud remained attached to a Hegelian dialectical method, to the belief in the phantasm, the negative. For Trafimow, there are many auxiliary hypotheses, and the null hypothesis and p-value are not that helpful in narrowing them down (see abduction of Peirce in Brier study guide.

What does Trafimow propose we do instead of the iconic p-value? Trafimow tells us, "it is possible to calculate the probability of replication, even prior to data collection, and without dependence on the population effect size, provided that the researcher has specified the degree of sampling precision desired" (in review).

References

Deleuze. Gilles. (1990). Logic of Sense. NY: Columbia University Press. French 1969 (Les Editions de Minuit).

Deleuze, Gilles.(1994). Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. NY: Columbia University Press. 1968 French (Press Universsitaires de France).

Fisher, Ronald. (1925). pp. 78–79, 98, Chapter IV. Tests of Goodness of Fit, Independence and Homogeneity; with Table of χ2, Table III. Table of χ2.

Gephart, R. P. (1988). Ethnostatistics. CA: Sage.

Gephart Jr, R. P. (2006). Ethnostatistics and organizational research methodologies: An introduction. Organizational Research Methods, 9(4), 417-431.

Minahen, Charles D. (1992). Vortex/t: The Poetics of Turbulence. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Pearson, Karl. (1914).

Trafimow, David. (2003). Hypothesis testing and theory evaluation at the boundaries: surprising insights from Bayes's theorem. Psychological review, 110(3), 526. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Trafimow/publication/10641210_Hypothesis_Testing_and_Theory_Evaluation_at_the_Boundaries_Surprising_Insights_from_Bayes%27s_Theorem/links/0c960535c04070840c000000/Hypothesis-Testing-and-Theory-Evaluation-at-the-Boundaries-Surprising-Insights-from-Bayess-Theorem.pdf

Trafimow, D., & Rice, S. (2009). A test of the null hypothesis significance testing procedure correlation argument. The Journal of general psychology, 136(3), 261-270. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Trafimow/publication/26712874_A_Test_of_the_Null_Hypothesis_Significance_Testing_Procedure_Correlation_Argument/links/00b7d535c0427575e1000000.pdf

Trafimow, David. (2014). Considering quantitative and qualitative issues together. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 15-24.

Trafimow, David. (in review). An A Priori Solution to the Replication Crisis.

Trafimow, David; Marks, Michael. (2015). Editorial. Basic and Applied Social Psychology  Volume 37, 2015 - Issue 1: 1-2.

Dear colleagues, while there are many free pdf's of Deleuze on line, the first two are not available, and they are most important to what I want to attempt in our class facilitation and video. As I need your help, please order a copy from library ASAP. Thank you

SOURCE 1 for your homework: Deleuze (1994) Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. NY: Columbia University Press. 1968 French (Press Universsitaires de France).

SOURCE 2: Deleuze. Gilles. (1990). Logic of Sense. NY: Columbia University Press. French 1969 (Les Editions de Minuit).

SOURCE 3: Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translation & foreword Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, is on line. On line free pdf.

SOURCE 4: Deleuze (1983a) Nietzsche and Philosophy, On line free pdf.

SOURCE 5: Deleuze, Gilles; F. Guattari (1983b). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane Preface by Michel Foucault. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press On line free pdf.

SOURCE 6: Deleuze, G. & Claire Parnet. (1987). Dialogues. Columbia University Press. On line free pdf.

SOURCE 7: Deleuze, Gilles. (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990. Translated by Martin. Joughin. NY: Columbia University Press. On line free pdf.

SOURCE 8: Deleuze, Gilles. (1984). Kant‘s Critical Philosophy The Doctrine of the Faculties. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam London: The Athlone Press. On line free pdf.

 

Gilles Deleuze (1990) works out 34 series the converge and diverge in the 'logic of sense.' He is decidedly anti-dialectic and its our job to figure out how.

At the center of Deleuze's (1990) 'sense logic' is how 'sense' forms the 4th dimension of denotation, manifestation, and signification. There are 3 kinds of ways logic of sense and its is the fourth sense that can retheorize Weickian (1995) sensemaking in organizational studies. Weick's sensemaking oscillates between 'Empirical Sensemaking' of the five senses, and Social Constructivism of event actualism (between the 1st and 2nd in the figure below). For Deleuze (1990) sense is not empiric logic nor collective actualized event, it arises as phantasm from the abyss of groundlessness to play on the surface in fragile sense.

Figure 6: Deleuze Relational Process Ontology (figure © D. M. Boje 2017)

 

There are four signifying semiotic regimes (presignifying, countersignifying, signifying, and postsignifying). Antenarratives are presignifying semiotic regimes in acts of forecaring that both deterritorialize and territorialize and reterritorialize in advance preparations. Narratively (and counternarratives) are signifying semiotic regimes of the State (by defunding much of it), its Governor, and University Regents, and media in a deterritorialization of higher education. There are countersignifying semantic regimes of how hummers are used as enunciation expression by War Machine to effect actual destruction and abolition of university disciplines and functions, in that manner of deterritorialization. There is a postsignifying semiotic regime of redundancy of consciousness, a kind of subjectification of storytelling enunciation (narrative) in passional lines of organization of power, a deterritorialization to absolute negation.

 

What does Deleuze see that Follett's Hegelian dialectics has not anticipated?

Let's work through one of Deleuze's (1990) 34 series, the 21st Series of the Event using the CIW eventhood. There is a part of event realized in CIW accomplishment, as well as, a part of event that cannot realize in its accomplishment. Modern-day slavery is everyone's wound by the hegemonic oppressive order of global capitalism. From the personal wounds come vital speculative antidotes, the fourth mode of sense, missed by Weick (1995) and by Follett (1918, 1941).

“Individualism and concentrated authority have been struggling for supremacy with us since the beginning of our government. From the beginning of our government we have been seeking the synthesis of the two. That synthesis is to be found in the recognition of organized groups, but not, I believe, by taking away power from the state and giving to the group” (Follett, 1918: 322).

This is a sense from the wound, deep within the body of the eternal. The wound of slavery gives insight into the pure event actualized, the wound's signal in us, actualized in us as consumers, is also a sense of counter-actualization (Deleuze, 1990: 150), what remains to be liberated from dominant forms of global capitalism. The bookish sensemaking of Mary Parker Follett, its logic of the abstract dialectic of sensemaking, has to reconcile with the wound of modern-day slavery, that defies the harmonizing of differences, the dialectical synthesis of power-with.

From a Deleuzian non-dialectic, heterogenous series, Modern-day slavery events (beatings, sexual abuse, wage theft) are events that signal in all of us the becoming of the quasi-event, situated in the collectivity of sensemaking, in its actualization of consumption. At the same time we as actors are becoming a counter-actualization, ignorant of modern-day slavery, its wounds. Deep in the body is an eternal truth, the event liberated from Weickian individual retrospective sensemaking and from the sensemaking of collective persons in their social constructivism of slavery-free consumption practices. The counter-actualization liberated sense on the line of Aion temporality (Deleuze's 23rd series), to glimpse the bottomless groundlessness of the abyss. The difference between Aion and Chronos is important here. Chronos is the duration, the durations of the now, the now past, the now not-yet, the now-present. "Chronos is the regulated movement of vast and profound presents" (Deleuze, 1990: 163). Aion is all about the future and the past, the eternal primordial time. Aion, "instead of a present which absorbs the past and future, a future and past divide the present at every instant and subdivide it ad infinitum into past and future, in both directions at once" (IBID, p. 164). You must see how different Weickian retrospective narrative time is from Aion. Chronos is the domain of Weickian temporal duration and retrospective sensemaking.

"It is not the present of subversion or actualization, but that of the counter-actualization, which keeps the former from overturning the latter, and the latter from being confused with the former, and which comes to duplicate the lining redoubler la doublure)" (Deleuze, 1990: 168).

October 2nd 2017 - Thousands join CIW for launch of #FairFoodSisters Campaign in San José, Phoenix during Together Live Tour! gives us a glimpse of counter-actualization: California and Arizona give CIW’s Lupe Gonzalo standing ovation following moving on-stage interview with U.S. Women’s Soccer gold-medalist Abby Wambach.

"CIW’s Lupe Gonzalo took to the stage at two of the country’s historic theaters alongside an impressive lineup of New York Times bestselling authors, Olympic athletes, and other human rights heroes in San José, CA and Phoenix, AZ during the second annual Together Live Tour! ... Following a video made by the CIW Women’s Group, inviting the audience to join farmworker women in combating sexual violence, Abby walked on stage to introduce an unexpected guest for the audience: representing the farmworker women of Immokalee, ready to share her own story in person with the Together Live audience, CIW’s Lupe Gonzalo!  In both San José and Phoenix, the surprised audiences broke into enthusiastic applause and took to their feet to welcome Lupe and Natali Rodriguez, her Alliance for Fair Food interpreter, with a standing ovation" (http://www.ciw-online.org/, October 2nd, 2017).

Figure 7: Picture of Lupe Gonzalo at the Fair Food Sisters Campaign on Tour (Source)

In this transcript (http://www.ciw-online.org/, October 2nd, 2017), we get a glimpse of fourth Sense of counter-actualization that is Deleuzian, and not dialectical:

"Abby: My goodness, where do I begin. Lupe, what is your story?

Lupe: My name is Lupe Gonzalo, and I am an immigrant. But I am also a woman, I am a mother, I am a farmworker. And more than anything, I am a human being.

Like 80% of women working in the fields, I have experienced the sexual violence. When I would come home from work, I carried the weight of my anger. I did not have space in my heart to embrace my children, and much less to love them in the way they so desperately wanted.

Abby: What did you do to change those circumstances?

Lupe: We decided to put an end to the abuses that oppressed us day after day. We decided to no longer be victims, and instead demand the right as women to work free of sexual harassment and violence.

Today, thanks to the Fair Food Program, we’ve eliminated the most extreme abuses in the fields, from violence against women to modern-day slavery.

And the world has taken note. We’ve received the Presidential Medal from President Obama, and we were recognized as “Heroes in the Fight against Modern-day Slavery” by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. These are just two of the moments when the world opened its eyes to the work of our small but strong town of Immokalee.

Today, we do not need to carry the weight of violence on our backs into our homes. We are able to embrace our children with love, without remorse."

Lupe Gonzalo accepts her wounds, and transcends and transmutes her 'ressentiment' (Deleuze, French word), of eternal truth, her living story a testimonio, to being on the cutting edge, grasping the future, not stuck in the past trauma of her wounds. Actor (Weickian) sensemaking is narrow, the retrospective past. Lupe Gonzalo acts out something antenarratively, anticipating, hopeful for, a sense of liberation by the sense of other roles she has, not just the wounded, but also immigrant, mother, farmworker, "and more than anything", "human being" that is pre-sensemaking, actualizing and counter-actualizing the event of modern-day slavery differently, in the depth of things (quantum), arising to the surface, counter-actualization of corporate-branding and corporate-brands, the physical mixture at the level of the whole system. There are many wounds, terrors, still happening to farmworkers, but Lupe's Being-ness before bitterness, assigns tyrannies and tyrants, the possibility of liberating, sharing her living story, her testimonio with the Living Together live tour audiences in California and Arizona. CIW farmworkers decided to no longer be victims, to be free of sexual abuse and violence, sidestepping the present limitation in the state of affairs of global capitalism, opting for an antenarrative 'bet on the future', the mortal wound still grounded in CIW, incorporeal, yet what is still unaccomplished in the great accomplishment of CIQ, the counter-actualization, the as-yet, unrealized. What is it? It is the Abyss of groundlessness, but bottomlessness, the splendor of the they (Fourth Person, as Deleuze calls it), both individual and collective, particular and universal, neither modern-day slavery not de-actualized, no yet, since this situation concerns everybody, and most of everybody is still ignorant of the extent of modern-day slavery, the wounding, the terror, the violence, and the exploitation, for the tyrant still has ignorant allies.

"All forms of violence and oppression gather together in this single event which denounces all by denouncing one (the nearest or final state of the question" of modern-day slavery in "one and the same event" of actualization and counter-actualization (Deleuze, 1990: 152-153). "Only by spreading ressentiment the tyrant forms allies, namely slaves and servants. The revolutionary alone is free from the ressentiment, by means of which one always participates in, and profits by, an oppressive order" (Deleuze, 1990: 152). It is the consumer that participates in and profits from an oppressive order. It is Lupe whose antenarrative removes the power of ressentiment to be the revolutionary, in the midst of the spectacle. Ressentiment (French), is deep-seated resentment, frustration, and hostility accompanied by a sense of being powerless to express these feelings directly.

The spectacle of the Together Live Tour, as Lupe, denounces all the denouncing, the blows received by workers in the agricultural fields, did not happen at this spectacle. For modern-day slavery:

"It is at this mobile and precise point, where all events gather together in one that transmutation happens: this is the point at which death turns against death; where dying is the negation of death, and the impersonality of dying no longer indicates only the moment when I disappear outside of myself, but rather the moment when death loses itself in itself, and also the figure which the most singular life takes on in order to substitute itself for me" (Deleuze, 1990: 153).

To the dialectic of Plato and Hegel, Deleuze, proposes the movement of difference and repetition, the variable curve of the spiral.

Figure 8: Aesthetic spiral fractal

Deleuze (1990, Appendix A) gives us a way to develop a spiralling understanding of the reversal of Platonic dialectic of Same and Similarity into Nietzechean eternal return. The implication for methods of studying organizational systems is the affirmative role of chaos in spiralling relational processes.

Figure 9: Spiralling Repetition that Differs in Rising of Critical Modernity as it Reverses Platonism Dialectic in Rise of Phantasm (figure © D. M. Boje 2017)

Cycles are part of spirals because the repetition of sameness alternates with repetitions of difference (Deleuze, 1994). "Spirals whose principle is a variable curve and the trajectory of which has dissymmetrical aspects as though it had a right and a left" (Deleuze, 1994: 21). The direct implication is that cycles in organization systems, repeat in difference, becoming spirals of difference and repetition.

"Deleuze makes the point that cyclical repetitions of same stages, with same events is countered by repetitions of difference, and it is the differences that turn most every cyclical process into a spiralling one. What defines a spiral, is how the twirls of repetition amplify the differences, or counter-act them, in ways that makes cyclic, reoccurrence of sameness quite unlikely in socioeconomic systems" (Boje, 2012: 81, An online book download in Word).

Deleuze spiralling is vibratory movement.

"Their names do not designate persons, but rather the intensive variations of a 'vibratory spiralling movement,' inclusive disjunctions, necessarily twin states through which a subject passes on the cosmic egg. Everything must be interpreted in intensity. The egg and the placenta itself, swept by an unconscious life energy "susceptible to augmentation and diminution" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983b: 158, On line free pdf).

"The primitive territorial myth of the beginning expressed the divergence of a characteristically intense energy—what Marcel Griaule called 'the metaphysical part of mythology,' the vibratory spiral—in relation to the social system in extension that it conditioned, passing back and forth between alliance and filiation. But the imperial myth of the origin expresses something else: the divergence of this beginning from the origin itself, the divergence of the extension from the idea, of the genesis from the order and the power (the new alliance), and also what repasses from filiation to alliance, what is taken up again by filiation"(Deleuze & Guattari, 1983b: 219, On line free pdf).

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) Dionysian Eternal Return (eternal recurrence)
poses what I call an antenarrative bet, globalization devoid of spirituality (Boje, 2007: 505-506):

"Cyclical Globalization antenarratives pose a different bet, a plot of eternal recurrence (to use Nietzsche’s phrase). Globalization is not a line, not a succession of progressive evolution, where Enlightenment and reason, science and technology, are able to bring about world peace and harmony. Linear Globalization to the cyclical theorists is just illusion, entangled error, not even a persuasive narrative. The cycle of Dionysus and Apollo, Dionysian instincts and Apollonian reason explain the cyclically repetitive metamorphosis of 2 Globalization where the weak dominate the strong, again and again. Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morals XII: 209) 'everything that exists, no matter what its origin, is periodically reinterpreted by those in power in terms of fresh intentions' and 'all processes in the organic world are processes of outstripping and overcoming, and that in turn means all outstripping and overcoming means reinterpretation, rearrangement, in the course of which the earlier meaning and purpose are necessarily either obscured or lost.' Cyclical Globalization focuses on its perennial degeneration, its cyclic rise, then collapse into decadence. Social Darwinism’s linear evolution antenarrative was for Nietzsche, utterly devoid of spirituality" (Boje, 2007: 505-506,  Click here for older version of this chapter. here is better formatted pdf version).

Figure 10: Nietzsche Relational Process Ontology (figure © D. M. Boje 2017)

"The secret of eternal return is that is does not express an order opposed to the chaos engulfing it" (Deleuze, 1990: 264, Appendix A). Deleuze's reading of Nietzche's eternal return is that it is nothing other than chaos, and Deleuze is affirming the power of chaos as the Being of the world through the "function of the simulacrum (will to power)" that reverses Platonism representation by destroying icons by the power of affirming diversity and divergence (Deleuze, 1990: 265).

Nietzsche was anti-dialectical, seeking to reverse Platoism privileging of the moral good, and to reverse in Hegel, the progress of history, by invoking eternal return:

"Life struggles with another kind of life. Pluralism sometimes appears to be dialectical - but it is its most ferocious enemy, its only profound enemy. This is why we must take seriously the resolutely anti-dialectical character of Nietzsche's philosophy. It has been said that Nietzsche did not know his Hegel. In the sense that one does not know one's opponent well. On the other hand we believe that the Hegelian movement, the different Hegelian factions were familiar to him ...Anti-Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche's work as its cutting edge" (Deleuze,1983: 8-9, Nietzsche and Philosophy, On line free pdf).

"Moreover the relation of master and slave is not, in itself, dialectical. Who is the dialectician, who dialectizes the relationship? It is the slave, the slave's perspective, the way of thinking belonging to the slave's perspective" (Deleuze,1983: 10, Nietzsche and Philosophy, On line free pdf).

Nietzsche (The Will To Power, published by his sister in year of his death 1900, # 1067 (notebook entry dated 1885):

"And do you know what ‘the world’ is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by ‘nothingness’ as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self -contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self -creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my ‘beyond good and evil,’ without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself--do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?-- This world is the will to power— and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power— and nothing besides!"

Nietzsche (The Will To Power)on Beyond Good and Evil (#428, 1888):

"… they let it be known that every morality can be dialectically justified; i. e., they divine that all attempts to give reasons for morality are necessarily sophistical--a proposition later proved on the grand scale by the ancient philosophers, from Plato onwards (down to Kant ); --they postulate the first truth that a ‘morality-in-itself ‘ a ‘good-in-itself ‘ do not exist, that it is a swindle to talk of ‘truth’ in this field."

Nietzsche (The Will To Power)(#55 1887):

"So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal" also compels a faith in the ‘eternal recurrence.’ Question: does morality make impossible is pantheistic affirmation of all things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god ‘beyond good and evil’? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? Can we remove the idea of a goal from the process and then affirm the process in spite of this?-This would be the case if something were attained at every moment within this process — and always the same. Spinoza reached such an affirmative position in so far as every moment has a logical necessity, and with his basic instinct, which was logical, he felt a sense of triumph that the world should be constituted that way."

The implication of Spiralling repetition of will to power that differs is the rising up out of modernity of 'critical modernity'. This critical modernity recenters systems that have been decentered by Platonism dialectic of Same and Similar. Modernity is defined by the "power of the simulacrum: (Deleuze, 1990: 265). Deleuze's advice is 'don't be modern' instead extract an edge of critical modernity, out of modernity, which is the future "attained by the phantasm of the eternal return as belief in the future" (Deleuze, 1990: 265)! The artificial needs to be rooted out. The artificial and the simulacrum are opposed. Destroying the artificial pretenders is the reversal and change into simulacrum. The artifice and simulacrum are are opposed nihilisms. Deleuze finds Hegelian dialectic focused on the negation of negation, and what Deleuze proposes to to affirm chaos, and the rising up of the phantasm out of the heart of modernity into critical modernity. "The most innocent of all destruction, the destruction of Platonism" (Deleuze, 1990: 266).

In sum, Deleuze seeks to reverse Platonism-dialectic, and oppose Hegelism-dialectic, with the affirmation of chaos, diversity, the power of eternal return in the phantasm in its most Dionysian sources, no longer mired in representationalism. The relevance to system theory is multifold. "All physical systems are signals"; "All qualities are signs" in those systems; the systems have been centering in modernity, to monovocal, monological point of view in hierarchy, but in Eternal Return, pulling the phantasm out of the heart of modernity, decentering organizational systems, and recentering them in an affirmative chaos into "signal-sign-systems" of differences "between two communicating series" and these are "heterogeneous series" (Deleuze, 1990: 261). The false pretenders (copies of copies) as the simulacra rises to the surface form the subterranean depths, and there is a reversal of icons, a destruction of representationalism, an unmasking to that the power of the false phantasm is revealed. "Each surface a subterranean world" and "under every ground, a subsoil" (Deleuze, 1990: 263). I agree with Deleuze, the world is becoming-mad (IBID.), but realizing the monocentric spiralling is decentering, perhaps there is a future moving beyond Hegelian representation, into simulacrum rising, as the pretenders (copies & icons) are destroyed, and power of false phantasm is revealed.

This history is what Deleuze (1990) asserts as the movement from moral existence to aesthetic existence, and it has five dualities

Table 1: Five Dualities in move from Moral to Aesthetic Existence © D. M. Boje, 2017

	MORAL EXISTENCE	AESTHETIC EXISTENCE
1	Essence (Justice & Spiritual)	Appearance
2	Intelligible	Sensible
3	Idea	Image
4	Original	Copy
5	Model of Truth	Simulacrum

 

The moral existence, in Platonic dialectic, "has to do with selecting among the pretenders, distinguishing good and bad copies or, rather copies (always well-founded) and simulacra (always engulfed in dissimilarity). It is a question of assuring the triumph of the copies of the simulacra, of repressing simulacra, keeping them completely submerged, preventing them from climbing to the surface, and 'insinuating themselves' everywhere" (Deleuze, 1990: 257). As we enter modernity, and aesthetic existence supplants and surpasses moral Platonic dialectic. In he reversal of Platonic dialectic, the simulation (copy of a copy) displaces model of truth. The copy displaces original, as in simulacrum there is no beginning original. The image displaces idea, and some new kind of sensible sense displaces intelligible reason. Appearance on the surface has a spacetime of subsoil, a subterranean, with caves worth exploring, and this dance on the surface displaces the essence, Platonic virtues of justice and working of spiritual are displaced by the aesthetics of appearance. "We have become simulacrum" (Deleuze, 1990: 257).

I want to extend the work a group of us did to get a spiral theory of organizational systems into print (we did two full R&R's at AMR, then got bounced, unable to satisfy an errant reviewer, and so we put the piece in JOCM (and its one disk 1 I gave to seminar participants):  

David M. Boje (NMSU); Heather Baca-Greif (Denmark), Melissa Intindola (graduate NMSU Management Department named Melissa Cast till she left; Steven Elias (Left NMSU Management Department for Fort Lewis College School of Business Administration to be new dean of business college). The Episodic Spiral Model: A New Approach to Organizational Processes. Accepted April 9 2017 for publication in Journal of Organizational Change Management.  

Purpose: This article seeks to develop a new model for depicting organizational processes: the Episodic Spiral Model (ESM). 

Design/methodology/approach: Based on a strong process view as the orienting paradigm, we demonstrate the need for the ESM by discussing the shortcomings of two specific spiral types in the organizational literature-the knowledge creation spiral and the efficacy spiral. 

Findings: A review of each spiral type through the lens of nonlinear assumptions reveals the treatment to date of organizational spirals as unidirectional and insufficient for understanding organizations. We propose that managers must undertake a paradigm shift in order to gain a greater awareness of both the environment in which they operate, as well as their process actions. To facilitate this shift, the ESM depicts choice points, chosen and rejected trajectories, and upward and downward environmental-drafts, as well as a multi-dimensional environment, as a way of re-conceptualizing approaches to space, time, and change in organization studies. 

Originality/value: We propose that our model provides a way for scholars to enhance the study of organizations by 1) Understanding that organizations exist in a more dynamic environment than previously studied, 2) Recognizing that the organization has a wider range of choices available, and acknowledging the long-lasting ramifications of both choices made and choices discarded,  and 3) Obtaining a more comprehensive look at the way the organization moves through space and time at any given moment. Taken together, we hope that these contributions allow organizational scholars a new approach to theorizing, exploring, and writing about the organizations they study.

Colebrook pp 17-18 chapter in Queering the non/human (2008): 311-338, online Academia.edu."Perhaps the clearest critique of this notion of theoria comes from Martin Heidegger, who argues that the original experience of the world as unfolding and disclosing itself through a time of presencing becomes covered over with the idea of ‘a’ logic which it is, eventually, the task of man to arbitrate (Heidegger 1998, 240). Rather than pursuing Heidegger’s own way beyond this QUEERING THE NON/HUMAN 18 forgetting of the unfolding of Being, I wish to pursue Gilles Deleuze’s reversal of Platonism. This is not because Deleuze manages to move further beyond Plato than Heidegger – rejecting Heidegger’s calls to dwelling, caring and attending to the four-fold – but because Deleuze returns to a higher Platonism (Deleuze 1994, 265)"

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MULTIFRACTAL: (work by Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) develop a rhizomatics ontology that is quite different from the prior four. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have a chapter on spatiality, in which they relate Benoit Mandelbrot's multi-fractal theory to their own rhizomatic ontology. Deleuze would reject Substantialism. The book is downloadable for free.(D&G) Deleuze, G.; Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translation & foreword Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press.

 

Figure 11: Spiral of Difference and Repetition in Landscape, Timescape, and Materialscape Ontology

In the figure above, there is a turning point (blue to pink) where the are changes in the system that are not brining production, quality, and so on. Dysfunctions and conflicts intensify as participants change their understanding of future turnings. This is a spiralling ontological existence. There's more than one dialectical process, and non-dialectical ones. There is the conceptual dialectic (Plato, Hegel) and a dialectical existence (the acting and actions in spacetimemattering, to use Barad,s 2003, 2007 term). Spiralling is for Deleuze (1993: 13) a "repetitive milieux) of real and conceptual oppositions, some conceptual, and some existential. Rather than a smooth upward or downward spiralling, there can be ups and downs in the sociomateriality of an organizational system, movements in spacetimemattering. Spiralling repetition and difference has system animations as the shape and form of the spiralling becomes sociomaterial. Whorl-after-whorl is an opposition of repetition and remembrance. Repetition and difference include forming habits of action, and habits of system thinking. TQM, for example, is the repetition of sameness in habits of production, while experimenting with quality changes (continuous improvement) in the moments of action. Systems grounded in petrification of formal identity will have a difficult time detecting whorl changes. The death spiral can remain unseen, masked or repressed, repeating the dysfunctions that wound a system spiralling downward in the first place. There can be what I call fore-caring (antenarrative preparation) for whorl awareness, and whorl intervention. It is possible to change systems.

 

"Quantum Storytelling - the collective enterprise is adaptive to its environment, which is also changing. That environment is comprised of at least three dimensions: landscapes, timescapes, & materialscapes). Storytelling Organizations are intra-active and intra-penetrated with those three environmental dimensions. As Deleuze (1994) argues, the spiral moves to the left and to the right, in its trajectory" (Boje, 2012: 96).

Boje, D. M. (2011). Reflections: What does Quantum Physics of Storytelling Mean for Change Management?Journal of Change Management, accepted 7/22/2011, Vol. 12 (3): 253-271. Click here for pre-press pdf.

Figure 12: MODEL 3 - Quantum Double Spiral with Strategic Movements from A to B location in Performance, Timescape, and Landscape (Boje, 2012: 35); see another version with spacetimemattering dimensions

This is an ontology different from Follett, Heidegger, Barad, and Dewey. Get started with the online book and begin with chapter on SPACE, where they talk of Mandelbrot fractal systems, and other kinds spatializing. You will also need to learn about Rhizomatics ontology.

3:17 Three Minute Theory: What is the Rhizome?

39,210 views

presents a primer on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of "the rhizome.

Rhizome systems move in all directions in multiplicities. A branching fractal of branches into sky, and roots into the ground presents a beginning (bottom), trunk (middle), and upper management (top). Rhizome is an entirely different fractal, that is an immanent process that allows us to question the branching fractal of traditional systems thinking. Rhizomes are always in the middles, always and, and, and and, rather than this or that (branching). The fractal implications for systems thinking is explored in Henderson and Boje (2015) Organizational Development and Change Theory: Managing Fractal Organizing Processes and in Boje (2015) Organizational Change and Global Standardization: Solutions to Standards and Norms Overwhelming Organizations.

 

Figure 13: DOUBLE SPIRAL MODEL 1: Using Triple DPIE Accelerated Growth Spiral interventions to get out of Client Organization's Death Spiral (copyright D. M. Boje, Aug.. 5, 2017)

The single (upward or downward) spiral models don't cut it. In the Plato version (above) the upward (just) and the downward (unjust) spiral whorls are entangled. Move one one way the other turns the other way.

In nature, there are many examples of double spiralling, in both/and relationships rather than either/or (either upward or downward). The meaning and matter of the double spiralling process are held together through communicative practices. For example in this YouTube two Australian black snakes are spiralling themselves together in a "deadly snake dance" that is part of their dominance and mating ritual communicative practices.

Figure 14: Two Red-bellied Australian black snakes spiralling together in a sort of tango dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5r5YGBwwGE

(See also "Snake Dance At Forest" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koJVdc8HNmc and

"18 MAY 2017 Real Naag Nagin Dance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_338bV5BrgI)

Figure 15: 350 Swainson's Hawks flocking in Spiralling flight formation over the mesquite dunes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsMUhkXAdic

I witnessed a pair of Swainson's Hawks doing a parallel spiralling flight, the two spirals looping together as the pair moved upwards and downwards in co-constituting their flight together, while moving across the East Mesa of Las Cruces, where I live. They moved their double spiral vortex across the mesa, and finally, to the pond which only fills after a few good rains, where I was jogging. The double spiral Swainson's Hawk formation remained at the poind for a few minutes, most likely, in search of prey.

I observed a spiralling upward and downward mating and feasting event of about 150 dragon flies at this pond a week earlier (July, 2017). The double spiralling, upward and downward, flight paths, were over a muddy bank on the pond where food source (mosquito larvae) was plentiful. The females were attracted to the spiral, where the males attempted to entice them to mate. The inward and outward flight took the females to locations throughout the pond that is about 100 feet across. Their tails would pat the water, then fly upwards and, sometimes, back into the double spiralling vortex, then back out again. There are other examples of spiralling flight formations in nature.

Figure 16: Spiralling flight of 1,000 to 500,000 Carlsbad Cavern Bats emerge from cave opening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yjIvgTvtGs

DOUBLE SPIRALLING IN AND BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS

The double spiralling of the forces of opposition movements are ontologically inseparable practices of sociomateriality. Organization theorists, Wanda Orlikowski (2007: 1437) notes, "There is no social that is not also material and no material that is not also social." The meaning and matter of the double spiralling process in and between organizations are held together through communicative practices in spacetimemattering (see spacetimemattering definition).

 

Now, in my current work, its about the double spiral system of dialectic wonderment moving in spacetimemattering (Barad, 2007) and finding a superior sociomaterial location in the market and industry. For example, can higher education move to a better strategic position, by doing a both/and (upward and downward spiralling processes in their dialectic relational processes) moving to new terrain. For example, in UK, there is an Open University movement, with free online courses for everyone wanting higher education. Perhaps this is the negation of negation of the knowledge society thesis and of the knowledge economy antithesis. My point is to look at how the double spiral systemic moves in its landscape, timescape, materialscape (in other words, in the inseparability of spacetimemattering).

Figure 17: The Strategy Path of a double spiral with upward (green) and downward (red) death whorling action

The single (up or down) spiral models don't cut it. There has to be force and counterforce, an opposition. Besides, what I call double spirals do not sit still, their upward and downward spiralling force exist in a context where there is movement across spacetimemattering. For more on this, see Pittz, Thomas G; Boje, David M.; Intindola, Melissa; & Nicholson, Stephanie. (2016). “COPE”ing with Institutional Pressures: A Reintroduction of Pragmatism to the Study of Organizations. Accepted on Nov 5, 2016 at Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy. Click here for PDF pre-press version. or this one

Figure 18: DOUBLE SPIRAL MODEL 2- the Upward Spiral (Blue) is separated from Downward Spiral (Red) (source, Gary Davis).

Figure 19: DOUBLE SPIRAL MODEL 2: 'Quantum' Double Spiral - Downward Spiral is within Upward Spiral creating vortex (source: David Boje, 2014, New Materialisms and Systemicity).

There has to be force and counterforce, an opposition in the double spiral vortex. Besides, what I call double spirals do not sit still, their upward and downward spiralling force exist in a context where there is movement across spacetimemattering.

 

For there to be a dialectical vortex, there must be force and counterforce. An upward spiral has counteracting forces. A downward spiral, such as a conflict spiral, has counteracting forces. I was a doctoral student in Louis R. Pondy's 'conflict and power' doctoral seminar. He taught us his classic 'episodic conflict model.' It is a process model and a relationality model, and I view it as ontological. When there is a lack of conflict management, then latent conflict from prior episodes emerges in manifest conflict relations at the next possible interaction event.

I would like to retheorize Pondy's (1967) classic episodic conflict model as a double spiral of dialectal oppositions. Many had erred in assuming Pondy's model is linear temporally.

See: Pondy, L. R. (1967). Organizational conflict: Concepts and models. Administrative science quarterly, 296-320.

In his doctoral seminar, his complaint was readers of his Administrative Science Quarterly article only read the first half, and missed his systems orientation. However, his systems model (conflict among lateral parties at same organizational level) is about material constraints (raw materials, workers, machines, & other resources at disposal of lateral units) and the pressures toward suboptimization (units have different preference orderings) for interdependent mattering conditions (common use of serve, sequence of work or information flow prescribed by task or hierarch, and rules of unanimity or consensus in effect for joint activity. Here is a linear list of stages.

Stage 1: Latent [lateral] Conflict (over scarce resources, drives for autonomy, divergence of subunit goals). As budgets tighten lateral units experience latent conflict. Latent conflict can be from environmental effects, for example, budget crises at state level that affect public universities, or the 2008 mortgage crisis that toppled entire governments, but was not something people were aware of instantly.

Stage 2: Perceived Conflict - can be present in relationship event when latent conflicts have not reached sensemaking awareness. Lateral units may debate and hassle over some interdependendence issues.

Stage 3 Felt Conflict - can be disagreement over interdependence, budgets, policy, but may or may not make parties tense or anxious. But it can also escalate to a personal level, and units as well going taking hard stands, and quarreling and feuding.

Stage 4 Manifest Conflict - This erupts when efforts to manage conflicts have been unsuccessful. The latent conflict from prior episodes, has escalated to perceived and felt levels, and now there is a variety of conflictful behaviors: open aggression, verbal violence, (often despite proscribed conviviality norms), sabotage of opponent's plans, formation of defensive coalitions, protests, riots, and a rigid adherence to rules as form of resistance. The availability of conflict resolution mechanisms and strategic considerations are both critical to keeping conflict from hitting the manifest stage.

CONFLICT AFTERMATH (often missing in those working with Pondy's conflict model. Its a 'relational process' model. Each conflict episode is one of a series of encounters among all participants, that has conflict partially settled, or suppressed. Many suppressed conflicts can lead to escalation and explosion, as people lose their cool, and become malevolent in the next crisis, unable or unwilling to exercise convivial norms of behavior.

In a Double Spiral retheorizing of Pondy's (1967) model, the episodic aspects become clearer and more dynamic, as well as dialectic. At each whorl there are oppositional forces (Green) keeping the conflict escalation spiral (Red) in some check.

 

Figure 20: DOUBLE SPIRAL MODEL 2 - Pondy's Episodic Conflict Model can be retheorized as a double spiral of entwined conflict management spiral and conflict escalation spiral

The conflict aftermath is from the residue of the upward spiralling conflict episodes, that are not managed or resolved to the satisfaction of all participants to the conflict and a cooperative relationship develops. Conflict merely suppressed will raise its head again at the next episode, the next meeting, the next crisis. Pondy is an open system theorist and makes the point that the organization systems are responding to their environment, to environments which themselves can be in crisis.

 

 

In this next version the double spiral vortex not only has up and down movement, it moves across a quantum field.

Figure 21: DOUBLE SPIRAL MODEL 3: The Strategy Path of a 'quantum double spiral' with upward (gold) and downward (purple) death spiral of whorling dysfunctions. Here intervention is strategic in space (landscape) and time (timescape) and Materiality (Materialscape) for bettering positioning for Performance Outcomes

This is a current day version of [Model 3] 'double twisted spiralling' movement, as inspired by my reading of Plato, and my experience over past 35 years working with Spiralic storytelling and recent work with relational process ontology dialectics that we will keep exploring.

In the realm of the 'real' space-time-materiality are inseparable, absolutely entangled (see Barad, 2007, notion of spacetimemattering). The dialectic is the relation between upward and downward spiralling forces in spacetimemattering.

 

References

Boje, D. M. (2007). Chapter 17: Globalization Antenarratives. Pp. 505-549 in Albert Mills, Jeannie C. Helms-Mills & Carolyn Forshaw (Eds). Organizational Behavior in a Global Context. Toronto: Garamond Press (accepted 2005). Click here for older version of this chapter. here is better formatted pdf version.

Boje, D. M. (2011). Reflections: What does Quantum Physics of Storytelling Mean for Change Management?Journal of Change Management, accepted 7/22/2011, Vol. 12 (3): 253-271. Click here for pre-press pdf.

Boje, D. M. (2012b). QUANTUM SPIRALS for Business Consulting. An online book download in Word. July 9..

Boje, D. M.; Hillon, Yue; Mele, Tara M. (2017). 21st Century University and the Failure of Business Process Reengineering. Accepted Jan 6 2017, will be published in Organization Development Journal, Spring 2017 – Volume 35, Number 1.  Click here for pre-press PDF.

Boje, D. M.; Hillon, Yue. 2017. “The Dialectical Development of “Storytelling” Learning Organizations: A Case Study of a Public Research University” accepted Feb 6 2017 for publication in The Learning Organization journal.  Click here for PDF

Boje, D. M.' Baca-Greif, H.;Intindola, M; Elias, Steve. (2017). The Episodic Spiral Model: A New Approach to Organizational Processes. Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Boje, D. M.; Rosile, Grace Ann. (2017). Storytelling Inquiry into Shamanic and Capitalistic Ways of Emotion and Attunements ACCEPTED Feb 10 2017to EGOS 2017, Copenhagen. 

Deleuze (1990) Logic of Sense. French 1969 (Les Editions de Minuit), Translated by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, Edited by Constantin V. Boundas. NY: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton from French, 1968 text, Difference et Repetition (Presses Universitaires de France). NY: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze & Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translation & foreword Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, is on line

Follett, M. P. (1918). The New State: Group organization the solution of popular government. University Park, PN: Penn State Press.

Follett, M. P. (1941). Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, edited by Metcalf, H. C., & Urwick, L. F. NY/London: Harper and Brothers.

Heidegger (1923/1988/1999) Ontology --- The Hermeneutics of Facticity translated by John van Buren. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. It is available online for download as pdf.