Horrible but harmless?

Basbøll writes:

In re your recent post: Can you make sense of this?

My reply: This is not the kind of thing that I like at all. But for some reason it doesn’t bother me enough for me to want to mock it. Perhaps because I sense that the people who write this sort of thing have very little power or influence.

Then again, a check of Wikipedia reveals that the author of the above article is “currently Professor and Bill Daniels Ethics Fellow, a past endowed Bank of America professor of management at New Mexico State University.” The connection between “Ethics Fellow” and “Bank of America professor of management,” that’s a bit creepy.

12 thoughts on “Horrible but harmless?

    • My thought exactly!

      I have a rule-of-thumb that says any advert with the term “quantum” in it is immediately assumed to be a scam.

  1. Given your take on Karl Weick, that he’s a dip and sense-making is a silly explanation for social action. It’s hardly surprising that you see David Boje’s storytelling as nonsense on stilts (especially the piece in question). I don’t disagree with your priors; they might well be correct. But, it is also the case that I have never made any effort to understand what Boje is talking about. Clearly. if one didn’t believe in what one does, one would do something else. Your training, professional experience, and commitments justify your priors. But, that’s certainly also true of Boje, an acquaintance of 30 years. Without further analysis, wouldn’t it be better to reserve judgement? It’s not at all obvious what his subtext is? This is a guy who teaches “barefoot as a protest against sweatshops of multinational corporations in developing countries.” Would you take that protest at face value? Might it not be equally naive to read “Reflections: What Does Quantum Physics of Storytelling Mean for Change Management?” that way?

    • I’m not quite sure I understand the suggestion. Surely, the point of a scholarly contribution like this is for other scholars to arrive at a judgement of its merits after reading it. I guess I’m not sure what “further analysis” is here supposed to mean. Even someone who’s known him for thirty years, and even someone who liked his early work on storytelling organizations, might come to the conclusion that this piece is a misfire.

      I don’t see why anyone should reserve judgment about these things, and find it odd to suggest that one should not take the paper at “face value”. It’s a joke? And odder still that one one should read this paper through the prism of a factoid about his classroom demeanor provided by Wikipedia.

      That said, what confused me about the piece is how on-the-face-it of strange it is. And I think both Andrew and I have said precisely that we’re so baffled by it, and so in the dark about what it’s intentions might be, that we’re going to think on it a bit more, analyze it further, if you will, and reserve final judgment until that’s done.

      I think being openly puzzled in an email or a blog post about strange-sounding rhetoric in a scholarly journal is perfectly in order. It does not mean one is rushing to judgment.

    • This sounds like a plea for some intellectual tolerance, but in its way it is as pointed about Boje’s work as any of the other comments here. If Boje’s work has seemed incomprehensible to someone in the same or a related field for 30 years, what is going on? If he is doing tremendous work, but can’t explain himself, there’s at a minimum a big communication problem of some kind. Other possibilities have been hinted at strongly enough not to need further emphasis.

  2. I’d hope that this was a Sokal-like spoof, but fear not.

    Social sciences are useful in their own right without trying to be physics by repeatedly invoking:
    a) Quantum mechanics and entanglement
    b) Over-interpretation of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which has a specific micro-scale meaning) into an over-general Observer Effect.

    Real Change Management is of course something many organizations have done in practice for a long time before it became much of an academic topic. It was certainly part of most jobs I had at Bell Labs and various Silicon Valley companies.

  3. It may be misleading to excerpt unrelated sentences from this paper, but this really did read like Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, with the former offering phrases like:

    ‘The paradigm shift to quantum physics will mean new approaches to change management and storytelling.’

    ‘In this reflection, I submit quantum physics, because everything from living beings to living things is entangled at the subatomic particle/wave indeterminacy, this quantum-field-ness necessitates two new [ontological] theories: ante (anteriority) the primordial-future [in-being] ahead of itself beckoning the present, and ante (antecedent) the predicate (or a priori) Being-of-possibilities of authentic care, a calling to Now-ness potentialities.’

    ‘Our notions of not only ‘time,’ but also ‘space’ and ‘matter’ are being challenged by the paradigm shift to quantum physics. This opens up new antenarrative-possibilities of how spacetimemattering is conceived.’

    ‘My task at present is to define two quantum-oriented concepts of antenarrative and make them relevant to change management: antecedent and anteriority. Change management has the task of sorting what sort of antenarratives will realign with the narrative past-nows,…’

    ‘The first problematic for change management is, for me, what is time, space and matter?’

    ‘The third problematic, is that Bergson, Bakhtin, Kitarō, Deleuze and Heidegger were each influenced by the change form mechanistic (Newtonian) physics to relativity (Einsteinium) physics, but now that we in change management are faced with the implications of recent changes to quantum physics, it is time to look at what is meant by Being.’

    ‘Consider that time is not only relative to space, but with virtuality, and global internet connections, we can be in touch with colleagues in ways that are quite quantum. With the Heisenberg ‘observer effect’ we are cultivating opportunities to be involved, to participate, to not be the innocuous bystander, because even that can send off ‘butterfly effects’ and change unfolding processes, in ways quantum physics could not imagine.’

    ‘This affirms what I am calling quantumness of spacetimemattering, where we are connected to living things and living beings in some particle/wave ways.’

    ‘Now we are in the midst of the paradigm shift to quantum physics where observers, including storytellers, change quantum waves, collapsing them into particles, and as a result a new balance of materialism and social constructivism is being established. Materialism is making an ontological-comeback, and this time it wants a new alliance with caring, familiarity, and involvement [in-Being].’

    ‘Ontological-storytelling is at the life edge of changing timespacemattering. Simply paying attention, in the ‘observer effect,’ is making subtle paths for motion, makes waves by simply by being present, being caring, being involved, and in quantum physics of storytelling, moving the world by our ontological-storytelling-standpoint in-Being, in relation to the standpoint of other living things and lots of things we care for.’

    ‘Action science and socioeconomic intervention, as my colleagues in France Savall, Zardet and Bonnet (2008) prefer it, can be an ontological inquiry that is all about changes in spacetimemattering, and that means it is part of embodiment, caring-agency in relation to doing and being something, not just in relation to mindfulness or to the ontic-corporeal (or not). And that means it can be inspired by quantum physics of storytelling.’

    ‘While there is strong resistance to turning quantum physics, its experiments, and mathematics, into a metaphysics, when it comes to storytelling, there is a way in which storytelling not only shapes the future, but in anteriority-antenarrative processes the future is teleological in its determination of change and movement of the Now. And this is but one of many chronotopes, which are dialogical with other sorts of causation approaches as the linear, the cyclical, the spiral, and assemblage-antenarratives play in-Being-with Being-in-the-world.’

    • Yes, like I say, peculiar stuff. Leaving aside the strange mashup of quantum physics and Heidegger, I was struck by those weirdly folksy expressions like “we are connected to living things and living beings in some particle/wave ways” and “with virtuality, and global internet connections, we can be in touch with colleagues in ways that are quite quantum”. It’s not just difficult to understand, it is difficult to believe that Boje has anything in particular in mind when he says we can be in touch in “quite quantum” or “particle/wave” ways. One almost hears Sarah Palin’s voice: “How’s that wavey, particalley, quantum stuff goin’ for ya?”

      Like you say, and Fred also seems to suggest, maybe we really are supposed to take this a joke. But what, then, is it making fun of? As satire, this doesn’t really work for me. Sokal’s hoax derived much of its force by being accepted for publication and then being immediately disavowed by its author on publication. Rightly or wrongly, it provided an occasion to ridicule the editors who accepted it (and the readers they represent). Boje hasn’t played it that way. I think he’s sincere in thinking that quantum mechanics “necessitates” theory development in organization studies, that it implies “new approaches to change management and storytelling”.

      I say this as someone who has written a decidedly insincere paper of comparable obscurity.

      • I was impressed by the use of both quantum mechanics and Heidegger. You would really have to do a lot of work to try to understand that paper.

      • I didn’t mean to imply that Boje meant this as a joke or that he is insincere. However, I am inclined to assume that his purpose is subversive. Without the hard work of actually reading and trying to make sense of what he wrote, I have no idea what he is trying to subvert. Moreover, plain, simple fellow that I am, I am not confident that making an effort to read this paper would be rewarded with understanding. Nevertheless, that I have good and sufficient reasons for ignoring it isn’t sufficient reason for disdaining it, let alone deriding it.

        Some of my papers have math in them. I doubt that Boje would make the effort needed to read or make sense of those papers (or almost anyone else, for that matter). Despite my best efforts to make my arguments as transparent and straightforward as I can (those are my values and I suspect those of most folks who read this blog), he would probably find them lacking in clarity, possibly even obscure. Even so, I would be somewhat cheesed if he subjected them to ridicule (reasoned criticism is another matter entirely; reasoned criticism is even more valuable than agreement, although not as gratifying).

        By the way, because Andrew knows something about both quantum mechanics and social science, asking his opinion about the merits of the paper in question seems like a reasonable strategy of inquiry. It also seems perfectly reasonable that Andrew wouldn’t choose to spend his valuable time seriously evaluating its putative merits. Even so, one might want to consider the relationship between creepy and subversive and the possibility that Boje enacts what he writes.

Comments are closed.