Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon.
The article is available as open access. To complement the structured abstract required by the jounrnal, here’s an outline of the sections.
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Post-pandemic labour movements set a scene for metatheoretical development
- 2.1 In 2021, increased job-to-job mobility was labelled as the Great Resignation
- 2.2 In 2022, workplace disengagement has been labelled as quiet quitting
- 2.3 Beyond earning money, theories of work are focused primarily on job satisfaction
- 2.4 Pandemic disruptions cumulatively encouraged reflecting on theories of life, and of work
- 3. World hypotheses is metatheory preceding 1960s systems theories
- 3.1 Four world hypotheses were proposed by Pepper, each with a root metaphor
- 3.2 A schema for hypotheses arranges ways for evidence to be recognized and interpreted
- 3.3 Socio-technical is part-whole organicism; socio-ecological is whole-whole contextualism
- 3.4 (Con)textural dyadic thinking modifies contextualism with yin qi + yang qi
- 4. A (con)textural-dyadic world hypothesis gains adequacy to become a theory
- 4.1 Slowing in rhythmic pacing might entail late spring or permanent climate change
- 4.2 Dyadic imbalance might entail recuperation from acute injury, or chronic illness
- 4.3 Delayed transformative reifying might entail stunted or delayed life transitions
- 4.4 (Con)textural-dyadicism joins the four historic world hypothesis as theory-building
- 5. Conclusions: inquiry into changes in the world of work opens a fresh perspective on systemic changes
This publication was accepted into the IJOTB classification of “Conceptual paper. Focuses on developing hypotheses and is usually discursive. Covers philosophical discussions and comparative studies of other authors’ work and thinking”.
The call for the special journal issue on “Rethinking Behavior in Organizations: Reflections on Disruption and Change” surfaced for me in fall 2022. The topic seemed close to the research that the Systems Changes Learning Circle has been pursuing since 2019. I asked Susu Nousala to coauthor, anticipating she would serve as an interpreter of review comments for a more traditional management journal. The manuscript met the January 2023 deadline. I later discovered that the special issue had been proposed in 2020 for a workshop in fall 2021 at the Nordic Academy of Management (NFF), related to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As reviews and revisions went back and forth, the editors declared the article was worth publishing, but wanted to release the other articles in the issue that is now Volume 27, Issue 3 (2024). This manuscript finally cleared the “accept with revisions” gate by editor Ryan Armstrong in December 2024. Copy editing took another few weeks, so inclusion into a 2025 issue is likely.
I’m accustomed to requests to review manuscripts in the systems sciences. As a management journal, IJOTB seems to have only a few reviewers comfortable with providing commments on philosophical works. I’ve now been recruited as a reviewer on works in the philosophy of organizational science.
Abstract
Purpose: As economies have reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic, resumption of pre-pandemic normalcy in work has not been uniform. For each worker and leader, an essential question is whether the world of work has changed irreversibly, or if prior careers and business models can be resumed. A philosophical inquiry into theories of the world of work provides a framing that separates everyday changes from systems changes.
Design/methodology/approach: A metatheoretical approach to world theories from 1942 is revisited. Attention is drawn to systems of knowledge along the dimensions of analytic-deductive treatments, and dispersive-integrative treatments. Socio-Technical Systems relate to Organicism, and Socio-Ecological Systems relate to Contextualism. Reworking a processual philosophy, an alternative World Hypothesis is proposed.
Findings: (Con)texturalism-dyadicism reframes causal texture theory as (1) rhythmic pacing; (2) dyadic diachrony; and (3) transformative reifying. New insights into the effects with the onset and passing of the pandemic disruption are gained.
Research limitations/implications: Updating systems theories of socio-technical and socio-ecological perspectives invokes a post-colonial constructivist philosophy that appreciates roots in American pragmatism, ecological anthropology, and Chinese philosophy of science. The emphasis of systems rhythms prioritizes a processual orientation, compatible with a yinyang material-immaterial onto-epistemology.
Practical implications: As the world recovers from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the changed nature of work is only one of many aspects that been altered. Systems perspectives both of parts inside an organization (i.e. socio-technical individuals in groups) and wholes alongside other wholes (i.e. socio-ecological groups co-responding with their (con)textures) are not independent, but interrelated. Disruption of work systems may result in only incremental adaptation for some, with transformative shifts in world theory for others. Recognizing that organizations change from within, persistent pathologies may be diagnosed.
Originality/value: Systems theories of work from the 1960s were based on pragmatism from the 1940s. The metatheoretical contextualism of Stephen C. Pepper is complemented by a 21st century constructivist philosophy that is post-colonial and non-anthropocentric. Reifying organizational systems theories for audiences founded on a Western philosophy of science requires extended explanations bridging over to a non-Western (i.e. Classical Chinese) lineage.
Keywords: World hypotheses, Systems theory, Action learning, Contextualism, Yinyang, Propensity
