The dolphin attractor: Dialogue for emergent new order in a Dutch manufacturing firm

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)