Chapter 2: Fractal Organizing Processes‑ An Operating Definition

Our operating definition of fractal organizing process is that its an ensemble extension to sociomateriality. Sociomateriality is defined as the intermingling of the SOCIAL with the MATERIALITY. The problem is how to entangle the two, in terms of fractal organizing. Here we will focus on the paradigm conflicts in sociomateriality.

SOCIOMATERIALITY theory is going through a paradigm shift. Until the last two decades, the SEPARATION MODEL dominated: social and material were seen as separated in the subjective and objective Cartesian cut. Then with Bruno Latour’s work, an ASSEMBLAGE MODEL of social structures (& structurations) combining with materiality became popular. In one strand of this work, Karen Barad (2003, 2007) developed the INTRA-ACTIVITY (Agential Realism) MODEL where materiality intra-acts with discourse (the social storytelling & ideas). One strand of this is MUTUALLY CONSTITUTIVE MODEL - as things are social they are also material, and vice versa. However, very recently, new SOCIOMATERIALITY MODELS are challenging all three earlier models(Assemblage, Intra-activity, Mutually Constitutive as too simplistic.

The Paradigm Shifts in Sociomateriality Models

There are three paradigm shifts: from seperation, symmetry and shaping to Dourish's re-con-figuation model, and an ensemble model I am doing iwth Rosile and Nez.

SEPARATION MODEL

The problem with the older models (Intra-Activity & Mutually Consititutive) is they presume symmetry: social and material are two aspects of contemporary social systems that mirror each other in ways they push on the world, or constitute the world, both bring the world into particular arrangements, in LOCKSTEP both making things the way they are. BUT it does not work well in his data either. One would think a SEPARATION MODEL would work well, that there is a SOCIO and a MATERIAL. But Cohn and Dourish (2014) do not find that SEPARATION works in the empirical findings. Rather, there are a myriad of stories. The notion of looking for points of SEPARATION of world that is purely SOCIAL here, and a world that is purely MATERIAL there that have some kind of INTRA-ACTIVE link does not seem to work out well. There is a much more complicated entanglement at work in SOCIOMATERIALITY.

The SYMMETRY MODEL

It says SOCIAL and MATERIAL are two aspects of contemporary Complex Adaptive Systems (or open systems) that mirror each other on the ways they push on world, and they both MUTUALLY CONSTITUTE the world, and both bring world in particular kind of arrangements, in roughly equal symmetric ways, in lockstep ways. But, this does not work well in the data either. The SYMMETRY/MUTUALLY CONSTITUTIVE MODEL locates agency equally and continually in both the SOCIAL and MATERIAL domains.

SHAPING MODEL

Its argument harkens back to the social constructivist social science theories — the idea human social systems are the primary force in shaping material realities (Aristotle’s material, efficient, form and final fourfold causality. The human social systems shape the materiality of tools (technologies) that still places the human at the center. The Posthumanist challenges of Barad, Bennett, Haraway, Hird, and other feminist sociomaterialists assert that humans have no primacy over other species. And empirically Cohn and Dourish (2014) do not find this sort of unidirectionality of human causal agents and agency.

NEW MODEL CANDIDATES

RE-CON-FIGURING MODEL there is a rocking back and forth, where sometimes, stuff on the ground matters, the materiality of the products, market sectors, and so on. And sometimes there are interventions from the degrading technologies forces a reorganization of both SOCIAL and MATERIAL practices. Its more like sailing, a tacking back and forth that seems to work. The figural practices of re-con-figuration, by which certain models of reality are produced, done again, and again, always partial, and never complete. Looks at social aspects of materiality, and the materiality aspects of the social — seen as projections, rather than simpler SHAPING, SYMMETRY, or SHAPING kind of model. Cohn and Dourish (2014) pay attention to the representationalist practices that the materialism of technologies provide the social with. Things that do material-stuff, by social control of them in the world, and at the same time craft a representation of the world to us, that makes certain kinds of opportunities for action manifest. Boje (2008, 2014) calls this the difference between a whole, coherent, finalized and totalized ‘system’ and what he calls, ‘systemicity’ — the ongoing, unfinished, never finalized, asymmetric, fragmented, overlapping, and shifting dynamic of relationships that is the underlying nature of sociomateriality.

ENSEMBLE MODEL derived by Rosile, Boje, and Nez (2014) from Pre-Hispanic archaeological, historical, and anthological work. We assume the at the naïve linear stage-by-stage models follow from unexamined structural-functionalist and outdated complex adaptive system schemata frameworks. Grand narratives of systems theory and organic evolution ignores the interplay of the lives and living stories of people, their material conditions, practices, and meanings. Poststructuralism (Foucault, 1977; Giddens, 1979; Latour, 2005; Sewell, 1992; Bourdieu, 1977; Butler, 1993), on the other hand, address the fragmented, contingent, fractured, and contested actions of people. Grand narrative is focused on issues of chronology and normative ideas.The Ensemble Leadership focus is on recursively of social life, where systems are in a state of becoming, rather than coherence and wholeness. Systemicity, is an alternative to whole systems thinking, where systems and structures are always in a state of becoming. Systems theory assumes a static, synchronic mode of ontology and analysis. Ancient Oaxaca is an example of how a web of fragmented affiliations of men, women, children, elders, farmers, merchants, potters, weavers, priests, soldiers, rulers, scribes, architects, and many other social personae—changed dramatically through the prehispanic period (para, Joyce, 2009: p. 288). From a poststructural view, so-called ‘whole systems’ functionalist theory is inherently problematic. In poststructural view all people have potential for agency and power, not just social elites. Evolutionary, ecological systems, and organic systems theories are abstract approaches tend to obscure the distinctive history and practices of past peoples by situating grand narratives of unfolding universal laws of history. Social norms involves communities of practice, what people did in the past in their everyday activities. The assumption is that social norms are more empirically grounded than systems theory approaches which make neo-evolutionism assumptions, and view human activity as caused by abstract high-level forces such as functioning of ecological systems or unfolding universal laws of history (p. 288). Systems theory privileges integrated and coherent cultural and social evolution.

The ENSEMBLE MODEL is derived from Pre Hispanic Ensemble Leadership. The early work in Pre-Hispanic Mexico used theory models, such as Structural-Functionalism, Neo-Evolutinoary History Stages, Open Systems Theory, and Complex Adaptive Systems theory that were popular social science models of World War II up to two decades ago. The problem is these models are far too abstract, general, and universalizing. The result is they miss the nuances of complexity and contextual perturbations. Our alternative is to do Fractal Analysis. We start with a challenge to the Western systems and Neo-Evolutionary models: There are two Mexicos: Indigenous Mexico descended from Pre-Hispanic peoples with norms of sustainable conservation practices that met the needs of future generations, and Colonial Mexico, the dominant society structure around norms of Western civilization that compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development provides biological safeguards for future generations, whereas globalization prioritizes the needs of the present generation for natural resources and biodiversity protection (Gómez-Pompa & Kaus, 1999).Joyce and Winter (1996) challenge systems theory that take an organic-materialist approach. They cite studies of population, cultures, and ecosystems that did not find them to exist empirically or factually. Rather goal-driven actors and conflicts of class, ethnic, and racial — use ideologies to initiate socio-cultural change in a political way that Boje, Rosile, and Nez are calling the ENSEMBLE LEADERSHIP MODEL. Joyce (2009) says “Rather than assuming that social systems are integrated and coherent, a hallmark of functionalist theory, I view societies as fragmented and contested to varying genres such that there is never complete closure to any system of social relations” (p. 284). Joyce (2009) traces the communal leadership in the Valley of Oaxaca before the centralized leadership took root (p. 209, 22), and after with local communities and/or barrios were largely excluded (p. 197). Norms grow out of social practices and material conditions, from “negotiations among differently positioned actors— individuals and groups — distinguished by varying identities, interests, emotions, knowledge, outlooks, and dispositions” (Joyce, 2009: p. 284). Functionalist systems theory and its organic and neo-evolutionary perspectives have been popular and influential. However they have obscured genealogies of practices that constitute particular histories (Joyce, 2009: p. 287). In sum, ENSEMBLE LEADERSHIP MODEL challenges the idea that history is predetermined, “involving a sequence of episodic transitions from one stable system to another, which minimizes historical transformation and contingency” (Joyce, 2009: 32). Poststructural theory therefore rejects the dualism between materialism and idealism’ instead material resources and cultural principles are seen as mutually constituting, which is what we refer to as materiality” (Joyce, 2009: p. 22).

Fractals are not just topological. There can also be temporal fractals. The fractal curve can manifest in-time, at various speeds, and our observation of time fractals needs to have a measurement method that is attuned to the fractal curve's temporality.

All work organizations are already constituted by fractal-sociomateriality: (1) bodies in pattern arrangements; (2) documents flowing between actors physically and electronically; (3) ways buildings are constructed, changed, retrofitted, demolished to make new ones; (4) time grams changing for writing, publishing, referencing beyond single disciplines; (5) how local and global distances are dissevered by Internet communications so that niches of interest are not among neighbors, rather they are between people in similar niches who can be continents apart, and so on.

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in chapter 14 develop the mathematics of fractal-spatiality (smooth-striated interactions), but seem to miss the embodiment ontology of fractal-sociomateriality.
The difficulty in having fractal-awareness is that social science tends to operate out of an ontology of separation of fractality from sociomateriality. In that separation, fractality either determines sociomateriality, or sociomateriality determines fractality. In Wanda Orlikowski, the focus is on the mutuality of social and materiality —>sociomateriality. Applying that premise, fractality is mutually constitutive with sociomateriality. Rather than privileging either fractality or sociomateriality, we need them mutually constitutive —>fractal-sociomateriality.

Following Latour (2004), to dualize ‘fractality’ and ‘sociomaterialtiy’ seeing how they are an assemblage misses the embodied nature of fractal-sociomateriality.
Following Barad (2003, 2007) the relation of enacted observation apparatuses are in agency relation with fractal-sociomateriality, in their intra-activity. This would take seriously their mutually constitutive entanglement.

Scale Transformations: How are scale transformations happening in organizations? We assume that people in organizaitons become scale-dependent, and therefore attuned to different fractal-resolution patterns. The classic view is those at the top of the hierachy of an organization have a wider field of vision, but are not sensitive to the finer-structures, as are those in the technological core, or on the ground, in the bottom of the hierarchy. Managers, then, are in-between, making out both the wider and narrow resolutions of fractal structures

RELEVANCE TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurs fill in the free moments and free spaces of fractal-sociomatierality, while others are not aware of these free-niches because they are focused and habituated to ordinary fractal-sociomateriality practices of their work organization and/or consumption practices. Once embedded and habituated into a fractal-sociomateriality, it is difficult to see through an alternative observational apparatus to some other fractal-socimateriality horizon of space-time-mattering. In Schumpeter terms, the entrepreneur is creatively-producing new fractal-sociomateriality awareness horizon, while creative-destructing the old fractal-sociomateriality habitude of their era. E.g. What Internet, cell phone, iPads, iPhones, and so on did to redefine fractal-sociomateriality to some new horizon of awareness. Entrepreneurship occurs in a socioeconomic context, in the Situation of a waveform of business cycles (with amplitude and frequency that is measurable). However to measure it, requires we look at an appropriate ‘observational apparatus.’ It is not something we can see with our eyes alone. The observational apparatus I have in mind is called fractals. Schumpeter takes the ‘long wave’ view and does not want to interfere with the amplitudes of the wave, betting that the entrepreneurs will flourish in both creative production and creative destruction (boom and bust cycles of the waveform).

Fractal-sociomateriality is present in multiplicity of fractal-observation-apparatuses, that we choose to be absorbed in, rather than alternative ones.

Multiple-fractal-sociomaterialtiy entanglements occur in work organizations so that there are multiple and contending scalabilities that enact contradictory dynamics. Control and and production, for example, may inhabit different scalabilities. Engagements of workers and managers can extend/escalate involvements according to different sociomateraility-scalabilities. Scalabilities of increasing/decreasing flexibility/control can interact. Different spatial parameters and temporality horizons can be brought about by preferences for different observational apparatuses. The top may telescope spacetime, while the producers microscope on a different spacetime, and marketers have yet another spacetime: the transaction of product for cash to a customer. Each stakeholder can be specialized and embodied in a different fractal-sociomateriality horizon.
IMPLICATIONS: 1. Moving beyond the duality of fractal and sociomateriality. 2. Engaging with multi-fractal-sociomateriality of work practices and also consumption practices, so we recognize we are not all in the same fractal-sociomateriality spacetime because we have adapted or adopted different observational apparatuses, and therefore embody differently. 3. Reciprocity of multiplicity of fractal-sociomaterialities with local-global communication practices. 4. Entanglements of multiple spacetime fractal-sociomateriality work and consumption practices. 5. We are changing skills and identities in universities to accommodate new fractal-sociomateriality career paths.

The systemicies of an organizaiton are fractal-scales that do co-exist, wthout one being reducible to the others. Actual systemicities can co-exist at the different scalabilities. The fractal patterns coexist in a single space-time, and are entangled, interconnected, and embedded. The fractal patterns and their reoslutions coexist in what Nottale (2011) calls a common 'scale space.' This scale space is alos the transitions the particular fractal-scales are making in space-time.