Andreas Metzner-Szigeth (ed.), Zukunftsfähige Entwicklung und generative Organisationskulturen: Wie wir Systeme anders wahrnehmen und Veränderung gestalten können, Oekom, 2018
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17436
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Cornelius Schubert
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Andreas Metzner-Szigeth (ed.), Sustainable development and generative organisational cultures: How we may perceive systems differently and design change, Oekom, 2018
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Book Reviews
2019-07-16
2023-06-26
2019-07-16
2023-10-05
144-148
TS
Cornelius Schubert
2019/07/16
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17436
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2038-3460
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148
Andreas Metzner-Szigeth (ed.), Sustainable development and generative organisational cultures: How we may perceive systems differently and design change, Oekom, 2018
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       Work, in S. U. Noble and B. M., Tynes B. M. (eds.) The Intersectional In-
       ternet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online, New York, NY, Peter Lang,
       pp. 147-59
Romano, A. (2018) A New Law Intended to Curb Sex Trafficking Threatens the
     Future of the Internet as We Know It, in “Vox”, July 02, 2018, in
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     230-internet-freedom (retrieved February 13, 2019).
Star, S. L. (1999) The ethnography of infrastructure, in “American behavioural
        scientist”, 43 (3), pp. 377-391.
Woolgar, S. (1990) Configuring the user: the case of usability trials, in “The Soci-
      ological Review”, 38 (1), pp. 58-99.




                                       ***

Andreas Metzner-Szigeth (ed.)
Zukunftsfähige Entwicklung und generative Organisationskulturen: – Wie
wir Systeme anders wahrnehmen und Veränderung gestalten können,
[Sustainable development and generative organisational cultures: How
we may perceive systems differently and design change], Munich,
Oekom, 2018, pp. 256

Cornelius Schubert Universität Siegen

    This edited volume situates itself in the large, if not immense, domain
of sustainability research and asks how change might be initiated, espe-
cially with respect to artistic interventions in organisational/entrepreneur-
rial settings. It also focuses on a specific aspect of sustainability, namely
creating novel and durable arrangements for addressing the pressing chal-
lenges of our times, by dividing the term sustainability into two compo-
nents: renewability in terms of conserving resources (“Nachhaltigkeit”)
and future viability in terms of creating enduring solutions (“Zukun-
ftsfähigkeit”). In a nutshell, the book traces the possibilities of artistic in-
terventions in order to create durable organisational changes with respect
to sustainability goals such as health, equality or energy. It does so by
zooming into this subject area through 15 chapters from 17 contributors.
The first part of the book outlines the future viability of current societies
on a broader scale. The second part questions in how far “generative or-
ganisational cultures” hold promising futures. The third part then collects
examples where interventions from art or psychology have initiated dura-


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Book Review                                                              145
ble changes in organisational cultures.
    The narrative that frames the whole volume is that we currently live in
a time of great challenges and necessary transformations, under pressing
conditions of complexity and uncertainty for which established organisa-
tional solutions from management and consulting do not yield the desired
results. Therefore, interventions from alternative domains are needed and
organisational cultures that may cope with such conditions need to be
developed. While this is certainly true, it is also a fairly standard exposi-
tion of problem and solution that we find in organisation, management or
sustainability studies. The main thrust of the book subsequently lies in
the practical application of artistic and other interventions and a manage-
rial perspective on organisational culture. I point this out so prospective
readers know what to expect and because the volume does not position
itself specifically by drawing on or contributing to STS. Nevertheless,
there are several connections that may be made and I will go through
some of them while discussing the chapters in more detail.
    As the editor of the volume, Andreas Metzner-Szigeth structured the
book through a series of iterations that guide the reading of the book.
The first iteration (chapter 1) figures as the introduction to the entire
volume by sketching out how sustainable developments, generative or-
ganisational cultures and artistic interventions come together in the grand
challenges and transformations of our time. According to Metzner-
Szigeth, a key element to accomplish this task is to switch from reflective
thinking to experimental action. This insight sits well with STS critiques
of rationalistic modes of planning and an emphasis for situated modes of
engagement. It also resonates with general pragmatist and praxeological
perspectives on the need to focus on practice and practices rather than
plans and principles.
    The second iteration (chapter 2) unpacks the term sustainable devel-
opment in order to distinguish the different interpretations it affords.
Metzner-Szigeth argues for a move away from a simple understanding of
renewable resource conservation towards a more complex issue of creat-
ing enduring solutions that are viable for future developments. In short,
such an understanding requires a systemic understanding, creative solu-
tions for complex problems, an openness to the unknown, an awareness
for change, an orientation to serve life and not profit, the willingness to
break up patterns, to change regulative ideas, and to create sensibilities
for engaging in conflicts. The three chapters that follow take up this im-
pulse in different ways. Armin Grundwald reflects on the difficulties of
providing strategic knowledge for sustainable developments at the inter-
section of science and society (chapter 3). He points out that this kind of
strategic knowledge is necessarily partial, preliminary, and subject to con-
flicting valuations. The chapter offers a systematic review of the multiple
elements of the strategic knowledge for sustainable development and
sketches out an integrative framework that acknowledges the narrow lim-


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its within which it can be used for managing transformations. He con-
cludes that this constellation provides strategic scientific knowledge only
for experimental political action in which the societal and sustainable ef-
fects must be continuously monitored and evaluated. The following chap-
ter by Michael Schwarz and Jürgen Howaldt discusses the potential of
social innovation for sustainable developments. They emphasise that so-
cial innovations are indispensable for sustainable transformations and,
similar to Grunwald, highlight the experimental, yet directed nature of
social innovations. Unlike processes of undirected social change, social
innovations require in depth praxeological social scientific knowledge of
social practices to be more successful. Chapter 3 and 4 thus carefully take
stock of the problems and promises of scientific knowledge for initiating
and maintaining sustainable developments in more or less experimental
forms of engagement. The last chapter in this section argues from a dif-
ferent angle. Michael Nippa and Dodo zu Knyphausen-Aufseß lay out the
possible contributions form strategic management to sustainable devel-
opments. Their focus is on strategic, hence long term, management and
adaptable organisational cultures as a combination of intentional and
emergent decision processes. They critically engage mainstream econom-
ics as being too narrowly focused on profit from a micro perspective,
while disregarding far-reaching problems such as climate change. I feel
this chapter is somehow misplaced in this section, since it targets the issue
of organisational culture in the next section much more than overarching
societal issues. Chapters 3 and 4 are suited much better to serve as an ex-
position to the intricate problems of achieving sustainable societies.
    The second part of the book on generative organisational cultures is
again headed by an iteration from Andreas Metzner-Szigeth (chapter 6,
3rd iteration). In very brief terms, this section shifts the emphasis from
experimental and emergent modes of engagement to questions how or-
ganisations might accommodate such changes. It focuses on issues of
communication, coordination and cooperation within organisations. In
my reading, it is also an attempt to push the concept of “generative or-
ganisational cultures” within the academic debate on sustainability as well
as in applied domains. It builds on the distinction between pathological,
bureaucratic and generative organisational cultures in organisational safe-
ty research and emphasises the need for open and flexible interaction
within organisations to cope with dynamic environments. In chapter 7,
Sonja A. Sackmann thus calls upon the executive personnel to lead the
way in creating generative organisational cultures. Interestingly, this call
is countered in the following chapter by Thomas Behrends, who argues
that organisational cultures are too often conceived in terms of executive
management. Rather, culture is ever-present in all parts of an organisation
and innovative (or generative) organisational cultures emerge from the
interaction of a sensibility for external and internal tensions, a sufficient
amount of organisational slack and loosely coupled organisational struc-


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Book Review                                                                147
tures. Thus, different configurations of organisational cultures may pro-
vide innovative or generative potential. Like in the first section, I feel that
the last chapter in this section does not follow suit with the previous
chapters. Christian Geßner, Verena Timmer, and Axel Kölle pose the
question how suitability certifications might affect the development of
organisations. They report on a certification standard they themselves de-
veloped and which has been applied in over 40 German organisations.
However, the question how standardisation relates with generative organ-
isational cultures is barely addressed. Out of the chapters in this section, I
find that Thomas Behrends provides the most analytical approach to the
relations of organisational cultures and sustainable developments, while
the other contributions focus more on implementation and application.
Personally, I favour the former, but this is matter of professional interest.
     The third part of the book then closes in on concrete examples of ini-
tiating organisational change by artistic or psychological interventions. In
the fourth iteration (chapter 10), Metzner-Szigeth calls for unconvention-
al interventions as alternatives to established modes of consulting. Espe-
cially artistic interventions have the potential to disrupt and stir up organ-
isational routines and to go beyond rationalisation and optimisation. Hil-
degard Kurt (chapter 11) develops a novel “muse of sustainability” based
on the work of Joseph Beuys. It seeks to overcome bureaucratic and hier-
archical structures by empowering all employees or team members to
contribute to a common endeavour. Ursula Bertram and Werner Preißing
(chapter 12) trace the desire of companies to tap into the creative poten-
tial of art by referring to a remarkable collaboration between a Swiss pes-
ticide manufacturer and two artists in the design of a fly trap, eventually
leading to an award winning product. A different angle is taken by Georg
Müller-Christ and Romy Gerhard (chapter 13), who use the psychological
concept of system constellation to uncover invisible organisational cul-
tures and to facilitate, for instance, the successful construction of a hotel
building or the (less successful) reorganisation of a regional bank. Ariane
Berthoin Antal comes back to artistic intervention in chapter 14. She re-
ports on an eight-year research program conducted at the WZB Berlin
Social Science Center. Interestingly, she points out that it is not only eco-
nomic enterprises who may have troubles with artistic interventions, but
that academic management studies also have strong reservations against
perceiving art as a fruitful intervention for executive management.
     The last chapter and fifth iteration by Andreas Metzner-Szigeth closes
the volume by revisiting the central arguments and providing some guid-
ing ideas for the future. He situates the book within a larger trend to-
wards more open organisational cultures and sees it as one element in the
quest for a sustainable future. His main claim remains the call to re-think
established routines of problem solving for being able to address the
grand challenges and transformations faced by current societies.
     In sum, I have mixed feelings towards this book. It resonates well


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with two central concerns of STS, namely the issues of experimentation
and cooperation. It also provides interesting insights into the manifold
intersections between society, science, art, management studies and the
economy. However, it does not relate any of these lines of thought explic-
itly to STS research, nor did it intend to do so. So STS readers who are
interested in similar issues will have to draw their own conclusions. And,
at least to my taste, the volume is biased towards an applied de-
sign/management/consulting perspective that falls short of a more analyt-
ic discussion and wider references to likeminded discourses in STS and
beyond. Again, I see that this was not the aim of the book and while I
acknowledge the need for such interventions, it is at the same time what
limits its potential insights for me.



                                    ***
   J. Swan, S. Newell and D. Nicolini, (eds.)
Mobilizing Knowledge in Healthcare. Challenges for Management and
Organization, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 288

Alberto Zanutto Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento
Enrico Maria Piras Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento

    The divide between knowing and doing is a central concern in organi-
zational and policymaking debate. In the healthcare sector, where formal-
ized clinical knowledge has become the cornerstone of the Evidence
Based Medicine, filling the gap between research evidences and mundane
practices is the object of several policy-led initiatives. From the perspec-
tive of organizational scholars this gap and the difficulties in addressing is
a fascinating matter of concern. The book edited by Swan, Newell and
Nicolini does not attempt to provide a conclusive answer to this issue.
Rather, editors acknowledge that aiming for a grand unified theory or a
recipe of knowledge translation would be pointless. Instead of attempting
at describing how knowledge translation should be done, the book pro-
poses several empirically-grounded analysis on how it is done in a domain
where several working practices and knowledge domains intersect and
overlap.
    The overarching theme of all essays is the rejection of the model of
linear transfer of knowledge in favour of its ‘mobilization’ which requires
a shift, to put it with the words of the editors, from “accumulation and
transfer of never-ending quantities of new evidence, [to] connections be-
tween people, ideas, and practices”. The analysis of mobilization requires
to be aware of the challenges of the overlapping of organizational, inter-

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