Entangled Organizations: Intra-active ways of reworking the organizational scenography for the processes of becoming of the changed relationalities of (dis)ability

The paper accounts for the process of becoming of a changed practice within the area of disability care in the Municipality of Aalborg in Denmark.

Across a period of a few months in the fall of 2015 a group of employees across the organization and an action researcher from Aalborg University (the author) met and formed a research group and across this period a revised model for cooperation emerged that – upon realization – would reconfigure the intra-play of all relevant areas of the organization involved in disability care. The model included the grasping of disability as dis/ability and thereby the model opened the possibility for reworking the binary.

The offset of the becoming of the revised model for cooperation was taken from a quantum approach to organizational development and change coined as ‘Organizational scenography’ as part of the methodology of Material Storytelling (Strand 2012). Here Organizational practices of any kind are understood as material-discursive practices (Barad 2007). A take that widens the range of complexity to be handled but also includes the tools for this handling.

A conceptual apparatus of the various significant constituent ‘voices’ of the organizational scenography of dis/ability care were developed over the course of the project and as a result a renewed material-discursive practice emerged as the recommended ‘modus operandi’ of dis/ability care. A recommendation entailing a ‘village-based-community of practice’ which would extend the organizational borders to embrace other dis/ability care facilities and dis/ability care workers/professionals nearby as well as the neighborhood of the village of citizens surrounding these facilities. Thus reworking previously upheld cuts between areas of responsibility of the Municipality/relatives and of Municipality/citizens in general and widening the area – or field of possibility of becoming dis/able. Thus a change of previously upheld relationalities that were no longer beneficial, substantial or sustainable neither economically nor pedagogically. The conclusion was: Dis/ability is to become with many. It is to reconfigure the organizational scenography as one that supports entangled becomings rather than singular, separate beings of citizens and organizational silos with clear cut boundaries.

Related to this conclusion another equally recommended practice was the continuation of the material-discursive practice of ‘lighthouse dialogues’ that had grown out of the project. With the extension that they should be materially supported by a community-based in-house laboratory or ‘light-house’ closely linked to Aalborg University. A recommendation that in turn – upon realization - would manifest the of relationalities of Municipality and University and of dis/ability care practices and research practices which had emerged during the project. A recommendation that widened the range of possibility for handling the complexity of dis/ability in a competent and relevant manner.

Both recommendations were founded on empowerment and dreams as drivers for the process of becoming (dis)able.

These recommendations are outcomes which - upon their realization - will change the organizational scenography and in doing so reconfigure ‘the field of possible becoming’ for not only the disabled citizens in the Municipality of Aalborg but also for the employees and thereby support the bringing about of a cultural transformation. A changed relationality indeed brought about though reworking the binary dis/able.

From the standpoint of a diffractive methodology (Barad 2007) the paper accounts for this project by being organized in four parts that together depicts the background and methods for the project, its findings and the conclusions and recommendations in greater detail. The four parts are brought about as gatherings (Haraway, 2008) through fragments grasped from the workgroup sessions, the final report on the project, the writing process and from the body of research on a quantum approach to storytelling coined as Material Storytelling (Strand, 2012). Fragments that are then read through one-another and thereby themselves becoming entangled becomings with no independent existence. Co-shapes as part of the intra-activity of the process.