International Scientific
Journal of Methods and Models of Complexity
VOLUME 5, ISSSUE 1
JUNE 2002
SPECIAL ON
CHAOS THEORY
The Dolphin Attractor
Dialogue for Emergent New
Order in a Dutch Manufacturing Firm
Frans M. van Eijnatten & Maarten C. van Galen
Abstract
This paper documents a series of
complex responsive processes, observed in a Dutch capital-equip-ment
manufacturing firm in the South of The Netherlands, which are focused on the
development of the organisational mind, seen through the Chaos lens. The organisational goal is to facilitate
self-organisation by using Dialogue as a main mode of communication. The research is covering a period of two
years (September 1999 - August 2001).
The project was
executed in a firm which is specialised in developing and producing tailor-made
processing systems for the food industry.
Its rich history of organisational development dates back to 1988. Up until 1999 the company evolved into a
fully team-based organisation, using Socio-Technical Systems Design as the main
re-design approach. However, an evaluation
study carried out in 1999 revealed, that – although numerous projects have been
successful both in implementing new team structures in production, sales,
R&D, and service, and in increasing productivity – individual attitudes did
not show much development. Management
complains that taking initiatives by employees still runs below
expectation. Medio 1999 management,
researchers and consultants collaborated to explore some possibilities how to
furnish the renewal process with new impulses.
The diagnosis that
came out of that process showed that the interior aspects – the actual thinking
of individuals and groups – were less well developed than the exterior aspects
– tasks, structures, processes, and systems.
A remedy to repair this incompleteness constitutes of introducing
Dialogue as the main mode of communication in the manufacturing firm, in order
to develop the thinking process (intentional and cultural domains) to the same
degree as the tasks, structures, processes, and systems did (behavioural and
social domains), in the past ten years.
The goal of practising Dialogue is to develop employees’ individual
competencies, and to boost the holonic potential of the organisation in order
to enable it to re-design and transform itself from within, and to jump to a
next level of coherence, while making use of emergent processes of self-organisation
and self-reference to their full extend.
The introduction of
the new concepts, and the consecutive change trajectory was planned and
executed by an external consultant, applying the theory and practice of
Chaos. Over a period of two years a
great number of sessions were held for different groups: Introductions in Chaos
concepts, and consecutive workshops in small groups to let management actually
experience Dialogue and Emergent Leadership, and to develop the basic
competences for using it. The
Emergent-Leadership session became known as ‘Dolphin Training’.
The project, which is
partly reported in this paper, was set up as an action research initiative, in
which the external consultant, company managers and the authors / researchers
collaborated. This paper is documenting
and evaluating the actual ‘cultural interventions’, seen from a researcher’s
point of view. Some effects of these
‘interventions’ have been reported elsewhere (Van Eijnatten et al., 2001).