Abstract
Most transitions over the course of one’s life are embedded in organizations. Therefore, organizations can be understood as powerful actors in dealing with transitions. In organizations, subjects learn and practice requirements. And, if needed, the failure of an unsuccessful transition can be compensated for. But an organization can also be a shelter, a place for subjects to retreat from demands or to develop subversive practices. Accordingly, it would be insufficient to see organizations as merely institutionalized frameworks for transitions. Organizations are dynamic entities – sometimes more so, sometimes less so. And as such, they also undergo transitions. Using two empirical case studies, a relational perspective on the relationship between transitions and organizations is elaborated upon. After a brief introduction to an understanding of organizations as collective subjects, in a first approach we refer to transitions of organizations in their institutional environments. In the second approach, we focus on the interior and examine from different perspectives how transitions are produced and shaped in organizations. In a final synopsis, we discuss the key insights of a relational perspective on organizations for transition research.
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Keywords
- Transitions
- Transitions in the life course
- Organization
- Immigrant organizations
- Market-oriented organizations
The connection between transitions, organizations, and education is evident. Transitions during the course of life take place largely in and through organizations. Transitions are reasons for educational action (Hof et al., 2014). Organizations are thus decisively involved in structuring the curriculum vitae. The life phase of childhood is largely determined by kindergarten, youth by school and the youth club, adulthood by associations, political organizations and institutions and companies for gainful employment, and in old age by nursing homes. Transitions take place both in the joining of an organization and by leaving it. The dominant organizations of each phase of life will prepare people for the transition to the next phase of life and organization. A typical example is preparation for school enrollment (Andresen et al., 2014). But organizations can also be identified throughout the course of life: for example, institutions of faith into which one enters and leaves through ritual practices. Both research projects were also able to show that the transitions in the organizations with their norms and requirements of normality (such as integration) must always be considered in relation to other areas of life.
Some organizations have rigid boundaries and explicit memberships (such as companies or schools) and there are organizations whose boundaries and memberships are fluid (such as migrant organizations and youth centers). Even these boundaries and memberships however are not natural, but the result of organizational action. Organizations do not represent autonomous or neutral social structures. They must, just like subjects, always be produced through practices. Thus, organizations can be defined as “goal-directed, boundary-maintaining, and socially constructed systems of human activity” (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006, p. 4). These systems depend on recognition and acceptance from within and without to secure their legitimacy. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, this is achieved, among other means, by organizations taking up normative requirements of their environment and anchoring them in their internal structures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) or at least trying to create this appearance (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). According to DiMaggio and Powell (1983), the resulting structural similarity of organizations - also referred to as isomorphism – is constituted by three mechanisms: (1) “Coercive isomorphism” refers to changes forced, for example, by legal requirements; (2) “Mimetic isomorphism,” on the other hand, emphasizes orientation toward other, highly successful organizations and their structures, which are imitated; (3) and finally, “normative isomorphism” emphasizes the influence of normative expectations from society or social subsystems on organizations. The latter in particular also seems to be of central importance in the two empirical studies described in this chapter.
Research on the life course highlights the constitutive importance of organizations for the institutionalization of that life course (Kohli, 1985, 2003). Looking at transitions during the course of life, it is striking that a large portion of these transitions is organized in and through organizations: organizations themselves produce transitions, e.g., by people joining or leaving an organization; they are also supposed to help manage transitions successfully, such as the transition from kindergarten to elementary school, but they are also supposed to compensate for the failure of transitions, e.g., when the transition from school to work is unsuccessful. At the same time, it would be short-sighted to understand organizations merely as entities that organize individual and collective transitions. They also represent entities that carry out transitions. Looking at organizations from this perspective as well shows that they are required by their institutional environment to make organizational changes. They are expected to make transitions in order to be recognized socially as (transition-)relevant organizations. Modern societies depend on organizations, so organizations can be understood as agents of transition.
This superficial look at the connection between transitions and organizations makes it clear that the question of transitions in the course of life always also address questions of organizational learning and learning in organizations. On the one hand, transitions are occasions for pedagogical action within organizations, and on the other hand, it is pedagogical organizations themselves that produce and shape transitions and must themselves cope with transitions. Thus, the formal and informal learning processes of individuals in organizations should be considered (see Chap. 3), as well as the learning processes of organizations in their institutional environments (see Chap. 2). Organizations cannot only be considered as conditions of and contexts for learning, but also as learning entities with a status as actors (see Göhlich et al., 2018). Based on the idea of learning organizations (Senge, 1990), organizations as collective subjects can be observed in their idiosyncratic development and as thus going through processes of transition themselves.
Based on this perspective on learning and organizations, we explore the question of how these two perspectives on organizations can be theoretically conceptualized and empirically researched within the production and design of transitions in the course of life. Moreover, we then want to ask what insights can be obtained from the interaction of these two dimensions. To this end, we draw on two empirical works. By combining them, we want to work out how, on the one hand, transitions are organized within organizations and, on the other hand, how organizations are asked to organize transitions from the outside.
Organizations as social structures that pursue a permanent goal and have a formal structure, and with the help of which the activities of the members should be aligned with the goal pursued (Miebach, 2012, p. 11), can be seen as entities with their own patterns and dynamics, governing their members in turn. Other definitions of an organization put more emphasis on the role of individuals inside the organization, understanding organizations as a system of coordinated action between subjects with their own interests, dispositions, and knowledge. From this point of view, organizations present a way to arrange cooperation, mobilize resources, and coordinate efforts for their own survival and the benefit of their members (March & Simon, 1993, p. 2). This view of organizations puts the individual subjects to the front and stresses their coordinated interaction. ‘Organization’ here is not so much an entity in and of itself but a construct to describe coordinated actions, and therefore could be rather dynamic and volatile. The former idea of an organization stresses the continuity of structures and goals, and takes them to be a rather stable system of conventions quite independent from its members. Both perspectives are equally reasonable yet (somewhat) deficient in their different views of organizations. Some authors describe the identity-building dynamics of organizations in which individuals act and feel as a ‘we’ (Holmberg, 2017) and so can be seen as a collective subject. This feeling of ‘we’ is what Mathiesen (2005, p. 241) describes as collective consciousness. Collective subjects in his philosophical approach require three features:
(1) Plurality, i.e., the collective is constituted by a number of separate conscious subjects; (2) Awareness, i.e., the individual members of the collective are aware of the contents of their genuine intentional states; and (3) Collectivity, i.e., collective subjectivity is distinguishable from individual subjectivity—it binds people together in a social group.
Following this idea, organizations become collective subjects when they not only investigate discursive practices of confession in the sense of Foucault (1998) but members are aware of and committed to their collective goals. Even if this awareness in some instances always exists only in a limited sense and single individuals might not be aware of all goals and activities of an organization, they are probably aware of at least some of these aims and tasks and have a feeling of belonging to this organization. In this sense, we see organizations in the following cases as collective subjects.
Collective subjects interact with each other by political and discursive practices, which are also confessional practices in the sense of Foucault (Olsson et al., 2014, p. 95). Following Holmberg (2017, p. 39), confessional practices of collective subjects include the dimensions ‘truth’ and ‘government’, understood as “those ‘acts of truth’ that the confessional practice demands as well as the securing of permanent obedience by and through the subjectification process of the individual.” Confessional practices are relevant inside an organization to form the identity of its members, but also the organization itself is formed by confessional practices from other actors and thus develops its organizational self-conception. The balance of internal and external confessional practices can be observed in very different types of organizations. We have selected two examples of organizations with very different goals (political participation vs. profit maximization), levels of obligation (voluntary membership vs. employment contract), and tasks (engaging for migrant interests vs. management consulting). Moreover, we look at organizations from different perspectives. Asking how collectives become transition-relevant organizations in a society, we probe in the first part the external confessional practices and transitions of migrant organizations. In the second part we focus on the internal confessional practices and transitions within an organization, exploring how the transition from parental leave back to employment is made (as a transformative process) within a relational framework.
Organizational Transitions
Organizations must fulfill a variety of conditions to recognize themselves as transition-relevant organizations and to be recognized as such organizations by the institutional environment. In doing so, these organizations sometimes manage transitions themselves. When the expectations of the institutional environment change, the organization has to learn to meet these new expectations. This is because the organization has to meet expectations in order to be recognized as relevant in making and managing transitions. The organization learns.
In this first empirical case study, we want to look at civil society organizations as learning organizations. We want to show how organizations try to meet the conditions. For this purpose, we look at organizations whose primary goal is to strengthen political participation, whose commitment is characterized by voluntary membership, and whose goal is to improve the (living) situation of (post-)migrants in the country of arrival. Organizations that are referred to as those representing migrants (migrant organizations, sometimes also called immigrant organizations) fulfill these characteristics. These organizations are of interest for the analysis of the changed conditions under which they are recognized by the institutional environment because we can through them observe a shift in the external confessional practice of politics and administration, as well as in the organizational structure.
Migration has always existed. But especially in the context of the recruitment of foreign workers in Germany in the late 1950s and 1960s, both formal and informal groups of these migrants emerged. Migrants organized themselves to help each other in everyday life and to be politically active in both their country of origin and country of arrival (on the migrant organizing process see Vermeulen, 2006). Since the beginning and especially in the 1980s, migrant organizations in Germany were classified as one of the reasons why the existence of parallel societies increased. The assumption was that migrant organizations led to social and cultural isolation, preventing the opportunity for social advancement (e.g., Esser, 1986). Integration, as the transition from one society to another, could not succeed as a result. What exactly was and is meant by the term “integration” remains unclear. However, we can locate a break in this understanding in the 1990s when migrant organizations started to be addressed as essential actors in integration. The political and scientific communities considered them to be indispensable for integration (Schrover & Vermeulen, 2005; Vermeulen, 2006, p. 11). The promise was that migrant organizations helped migrants to integrate into the host country. They therefore supported a transition from “non-integrated” to “integrated” subjects. In addition to these effects at the individual level, there are implications for society. Migrant organizations are considered central actors for an integrative society. Accordingly, they are encouraged to offer integration courses or seminars for parents. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that migrant organizations also draw attention to migration-based transitions. Migrant organizations have been fighting for more political power since the beginning. On the one hand, they have pointed out the difficult conditions under which migrants live in Germany. On the other hand, they have fought for the recognition of their potential for integration.
This change in the assessment of migrant organizations in their contribution to managing the transition (so-called “integration”), exemplifies that the expectations of organizations are by no means constant and unchanging. Rather, they are an expression of sociopolitical and organizational contestations. Whereas the organizational identity of migrant organizations - what constitutes the organization - used to inhibit the transition of migrants, a discourse can now be discerned in which they are assigned an integration-promoting function. Migrant organizations have consequently had to align themselves with other norms and discourses since the 1990s in order to be recognized and seen by state actors. As a result, they themselves are making a transition. Based on this description, we now want to answer the question of how migrant organizations become recognized organizations in establishing and shaping transitions in the life course. Therefore, we try to reconstruct how migrant organizations are currently treated by public administration (for a detailed discussion see, Klevermann, 2022). To reconstruct these practices, we adopt a perspective on the development of organizations inspired by the theory of subjection (Butler, 1997b). For the empirical operationalization, we therefore consider the analysis of addresses/interpellations. By “addressing” we mean “interpellations”. The practice and manner with and by which subjects, and collective subjects are addressed directly or indirectly. These can be oral or written forms of address, such as in speeches: addresses that directly address concrete subjects and collectives. Addresses can also have no specific addressee, such as legal texts. We want to examine the concrete conditions that state actors put forward under which organizations become important in managing transitions.
In addition, we look at an empirical example in a second step.
Addressing Theory Considerations for the Analysis of Expectations from the Institutional Environment
To gain an analytical understanding of the development of organizations under current integration policy, the interdisciplinary theory of subjection is helpful. According to Foucault, subjection means to be subjected by someone and to subject one to oneself. Foucault explicated this research intention to create a history of how “human beings are made subjects” in our culture (Foucault, 1982, p. 208).
Following Foucault, as Alkemeyer and Bröckling (2018) already mentioned, collective subjects, like migrant organizations, can also be analyzed as effects of practices of subjection. The key aspect of their praxeological approach is the rejection of any essentializing assumptions about collectives. If we follow this tradition of research, the constitution of collective subjects as being historically and culturally determined comes into view. Collective subjects do not simply exist, do not have and are not given an essence. Instead, the performative production of collective subjects in social practices is considered. As an effect of performative practices, organizations can be understood as a specific and permanently based regime of practices. From this point of view, the question described above about the emergence or learning of organizations arises: what modes or methods make migrant organizations transitional organizations, and how are they subjected?
The power effects of practices of subjection are characterized as a paradox double effect (Butler, 1997b, pp. 1–2). Subjection does not only mean restrictive subjugation; it also simultaneously means shaping and activating. The (collective) subject must submit to power in order to be recognized as a subject. These are not separate acts. In line with this research tradition, the status as a (collective) subject and agency depends on subjection (Rose & Ricken, 2018b, p. 65).
To illustrate this paradoxical process of subjection, Butler discusses Althusser’s concept of invocation or interpellation (Butler, 1997b, pp. 106–131). It offers a theoretical possibility to explain how the collective subject is created in the context of discourse and thereby maintains its social existence. A dominant order materializes in these interpellations so that how the collective subject is produced along hegemonic social norms can be explained:
To be hailed or addressed by a social interpellation is to be constituted discursively and socially at once. This interpellation need not take on an explicit or official form in order to be socially efficacious and formative in the formation of the subject. Considered in this way, the interpellation as performative establishes the discursive constitution of the subject as inextricably bound to the social constitution of the subject. (Butler, 1997a, pp. 153–154)
Rather, the norms expressed by the invocation are the condition for being recognized by the politics and government authorities as a collective subject. Typical interpellations, for example “Brückenbauer” (bridge builder) is an intelligible subject position; as it offers a status of viable subjecthood and also marks which organizational characteristics are not recognized. Organizations are challenged to follow a powerful interpellation such as this. This interpellation brings forth the claim that migrant organizations should see themselves as organizational actors that should assist in the integration of so-called migrants. But we cannot understand these requirements in a causally or even deterministic way in which collective subjects are passively and inevitably shaped. Migrant organizations must respond to these appeals and relate to them. As is evident both historically and currently, organizations could, as in the past, resist or follow these imperatives only strategically.
To operationalize the process of becoming an organization for empirical analysis, we would like to draw on some aspects of the addressing analysis elaborated by Rose and Ricken (2018a). These methodological considerations provide an approach to exploring the emergence of subject positions. The question format allows an analytical approach to the process of subjection of organizations. With this perspective, it is possible to work out which norms are invoked in interpellations, and in this way, it is possible to work out the conditions to which not only subjects but also collectives have to submit in order to be recognized by the interpellants.
Following the elaborated addressing analytics, we ask how an organization is addressed or spoken to under specific circumstances (by whom and in front of whom), and how this organization deals with and reacts to this (Rose & Ricken, 2018a, p. 160).
An interpellation calls upon the addressed collective subject to follow the norms that materialize in the concrete address and to inscribe them into its self-concept. For example, with the frequent interpellation “Brückenbauer” (bridge builder), organizations are called upon and situated to interact between policy or public administration and “migrant communities” and to transfer and translate information and expectations from one side to the other. Therefore, addressing means re-articulating orders of recognition. These orders define the norms under which collective subjects must submit in order to become visible and recognized as subjects at all. This means that expectations of recognition to become an intelligible subject are articulated through interpellations. The perspective of critical migration research makes it necessary, as Castro Varela and Mecheril (2010) mention, to reflect critically on this order. If we think about recognition, there is always the risk of establishing and accepting existing circumstances. Because recognition is always the recognition of existing differences and identity, it is necessary to understand and deconstruct identity and differences as a product of performative practices. When organizations are addressed as migrant organizations, they are always addressed as the ‘others.’ Thus, they are not part of the majority society. Rather, they are made a minority by these addresses. This leads to a repeated distinction between migrant and non-migrant organizations (in the sense of unmarked organizations), regardless of whether this is meant in a positive or a negative and potentially discriminatory way.
With these insights, we turn to an empirical example: a concrete interpellation in the context of a city’s current integration policy. We ask how the addressed organizations are constructed and positioned in front of a symbolic horizon to answer the question of which categories offer recognition and thereby the status of the “collective subject.”
The Organizational Development of the Collective Subject as a Commitment to Integration Work
The following text is an excerpt from a speech given by the mayor of the city of Bielefeld in 2017 at a symposium on the topic of possible networking and cooperation of migrant organizations with other municipal institutions. It concisely illustrates the conditions under which migrant organizations are supported by local government: “In addition, the city of Bielefeld supports migrant organizations and initiatives that sustainably pursue the goal of improving the integration of migrant people in Bielefeld.” (Stadt Bielefeld, 2017).
This quote is an example of the positive characteristics with which migrant organizations are addressed. Accordingly, migrant organizations are considered worthy of support and assistance if they support the integration of migrants. Migrant organizations are thus called upon to position themselves as promoting integration. Consequently, they are under pressure to identify and legitimize themselves through sustainable integration. These addresses lead to a shift in responsibility for the integration of a group of people into the organizations. At the same time, it becomes clear for which group of people the integration is necessary. By differentiating between migrants and other persons, the need for integration is exclusively coupled to the migrants. It is they who are framed as the problematic (disintegrated) group. Through this binary opposition, a social order is created in which the two social groups are placed in an asymmetrical relationship, which devalues the group of migrant people as needing of integration.
As this example illustrates, the organization’s intelligible subject status depends on the commitment to integrate so-called migrants. If the organizations fail to credibly demonstrate their integration-promoting effect, they lose their subject status. In practical terms, this means that they cannot apply for public funding, are not allowed to offer (educational) measures and are not invited to participate in local decision-making and decision-making processes.
The example demonstrates a further aspect in the consideration of organizational addresses. It shows that the organization is understood as a relay station of power. First the organization must be subjected to integrate the single subject in turn. By addressing the migrant organization as responsible for the integration of migrants, the organization can address the individual subject as in need of integration. To be recognized by politics and administration, organizational practices must be geared towards integration. The imperative of integration should determine the organizational life of the migrant organization. If the organizations fail in this, they risk losing their status.
As can be seen in these examples, current interpellations address migrant organizations, while differentiating between migrant organizations and non-migrant organizations/normal German organizations and also by differentiating between the ‘integrated’ and the ‘non-integrated’ parts of the society to promote these organizations in integration policy. Migrant organizations are addressed as important organizations to govern in a political and administrative manner. They are addressed as organizations, which promote, tend to, and guide migrants. Under the imperative “Be an integration-promoting organization”, certain organizational practices are encouraged, while others are inhibited or sanctioned. Migrant organizations must therefore permanently identify themselves in their integration-promoting potential. Other subject positions are not granted to them. Recognition as a migrant organization can only be achieved by referring to its integration-promoting effect. The reputation as social intelligibility is tied to the submission to the recognition order of the integration regime.
In summary, this first section has shown that collective subjects are fundamentally dependent on an outside of which they are comprised. In this non-ontological approach, the forms of collective subjects are “profoundly socially conditioned” (Rose & Ricken, 2018b, p. 64). They are produced by heterogeneous norms and discourses that are in constant conflict. However, because of this constant conflict of norms, other subject formations are in principle possible. In addition, it must be noted that the institutional environment of organizations is characterized by different actors (state, economic and civil society actors). By looking at the conditions of the institutional environment, it how organizations participate in the institutionalization of transitions can be shown. With them and through them, transitions are institutionalized.
At the same time, it would be insufficient to explain organizations and their identities solely in terms of interactions with the institutional environment. Even within organizations, different norms and discourses are in conflict. Within them, the expectations of the institutional environment and the expectations of organizational members must be negotiated. Both dimensions must be understood as relational. Therefore, in the following, we want to focus on transitions within organizations. Thus, we will ask how transitions are produced and shaped within organizations. To do this, we will use a case study that makes it particularly clear that there are different expectations within organizations that need to be negotiated.
Transitions Within Organizations
There are several different transitions that take place within economic organizations, starting with the transition from outsider to organization member, followed by individual role development within the organization (e.g., from employee to manager), to a temporal leave (e.g., due to illness or parental leave), or even the transition from organization member to outsider. Although the transitions mentioned above always focus on their individual execution by a single subject, they are created and designed in the context of and in interaction with the organization. It is precisely this interplay of the individual as subject and the organization as collective subject that this chapter focuses on, using the transition from parental leave back to gainful employment as an example.
The study focuses on the question of how the transition from parental leave back to employment is produced, carried out, and shaped in a transformative process within the relational structure of different individuals within an organization. In the course of this, the transition is not understood as the starting point for questions about function and mode of action, but rather as a contingent phenomenon that needs to be researched in relation to its production and design. The focus is neither isolated to the perspective of the person in transition nor to that of the supervisor or the employer, but rather on their relational interaction, i.e., the multifaceted and presuppositional interconnectedness of relationships in the context of different modes of production of the transition. This asks how the transition is “shaped by different processes of constituting reality and thus first made a social fact” (Wanka et al., 2020, p. 19). The fact that different institutions take on a regulating and shaping function and highly normative notions of what is to be mastered when and how, but at the same time individual and collective formations of the transition show themselves in idiosyncratic practices, thus implies the aspect of production.
The project uses two central frames of reference for its research: firstly, transition research and, secondly, life domain research by focusing on the specific transition from parental leave back into employment. Both strands of research are driven from different disciplines against the background of different questions. There is often a specific focus on a particular level, such as the societal, the institutional, or the individual level. Within this diversity of perspectives, this paper locates itself within the discipline of pedagogy and looks through a practice-theoretical lens at an individual transition that is accomplished within and framed by an organizational framework. It is not the individual execution that is of interest, but rather the phenomenology of transition.
The basis for this example is a practical-theoretical study (Heinrich, 2021), which explicitly focuses on the execution of transition within the consulting industry. In the course of the empirical study, expert interviews were conducted with HR managers who bore the formal responsibility for accompanying the transition. Furthermore, consultants were questioned during and after parental leave about the transition through problem-centered interviews. In this context, the role of the direct manager was repeatedly made relevant. As a consequence, problem-centered interviews were also conducted with managers with experience in accompanying the transition. The practice-focused analysis made evident that the transition as a moment of “in-between” (Walther, 2015, p. 36) is highly organizationally framed and relationally performed. The practice of negotiating borders turned out to be the central, key category for creating the transition. In the course of this, the interaction between affected consultants as subject and the organization as collective subject became particularly evident.
Negotiating the Differentiation of Areas of Life: The Interplay of Collective Subjects and Individuals
Due to their business model and the specifics of the industry, management consultancies place special demands on their employees. The variable customer projects demand a high degree of time flexibility, spatial mobility, and engagement from the consultants (Lippold, 2016, p. 6). New employees commit themselves to this when entering the organization via an employment contract and dedicate themselves to the common tasks of the management consultancy in order to contribute to the collective goal of organizational profit maximization. This collective organizational goal can be considered on an individual level as part of the area of life of work. In contrast, the private area of life also addresses its requirements and obligations to the individual subject. Since the areas of life are connected by mechanisms such as spillover, compensation, segmentation, resource drain, congruence, and conflict (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000), they influence each other. It is conceivable, for example, that moods that have arisen within one area of life are transferred positively or negatively to the other area of life (Staw et al., 1994), or that resources (such as time or attention) that have been used up in one area of life are no longer available to another. As a result of this mutual connection, the individual subject is in a conflict of tension of different requirements, needs, and goals. These affect the individual subject, but not only on an individual level. Rather, they also affect the superordinate level of the collective subjects to which the individual subject belongs (e.g., management consulting, but possibly also other collective subjects such as the family or a voluntary organization). To ensure a minimum level of consideration (“good-enough approach,” Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2007, p. 4) the respective requirements, needs, and goals in the area of conflict between the different areas of life at the different levels, boundaries are negotiated between them (behavioral tactics for permeability at the interface of the life areas; Kreiner et al., 2009). It is precisely this negotiation of the differentiation of areas of life that takes place in the interaction between subject and collective subject and is particularly visible in the transition from parental leave back to gainful employment, as this represents a particularly sensitive moment of work-life balance.
In order to illustrate the interaction of the individual as subject with the organization as a collective subject, the negotiation of a spatial boundary is explained in the following using the case of Lena, a young mother and management consultant (Heinrich, 2021). While the focus in this case is on a negotiation of spatial boundaries typical of consulting, other cases focus on temporal boundaries and interpersonal boundaries as well as personal boundaries.
Lena has been working as a management consultant for several years and knows the requirements of the consulting business. Up to now she has been flexibly employed in national and international customer projects in Germany and abroad and has also seen this as an opportunity for rapid career development. Before she was able to take the next career step, however, her two sons were born in close succession. This changed her life situation immensely. This became particularly clear when she returned to her consulting work and asked her manager to assign her to a project close to home, which better reflected both her private and professional requirements. Through the communicated request, Lena tries to initiate the shift of the once spatially flexible border in favor of her private life situation. By understanding the request correctly and translating it into corresponding actions, i.e. by checking to what extent a project assignment close to home is possible, her manager shows a basic willingness to consider private concerns. Finally, by identifying a possibility from currently open projects that matches Lena’s expertise and level of activity, planning it for her and informing her accordingly, the manager effectively manifests the new, changed spatial boundary through her targeted assignment close to home. Due to a chain of unforeseen events, the start of Lena’s project was then delayed indefinitely, leaving her without project employment for several weeks. Since she was aware of her privately induced spatial restrictions and saw their conflicting relationship to an uncomplicated and career-promoting new project assignment, she toyed with the idea of terminating her employment with the management consultancy. In order to counteract this, her managers actively sought to talk to Lena and solicited her to take on a challenging foreign project, which would help her achieve her desired promotion. At the same time, an implicit competitive situation was created by her managers, as they pointed out that the willingness of other colleagues to take over the project would also be examined. On the other hand, it was repeatedly stressed that this extremely valuable foreign project was limited to a span of a few months. The transgression of the newly established spatial boundary of proximity to home was tried to be legitimized by the time limit of the project. By attempting to take over the foreign project, Lena herself crosses the newly established border close to home. With her final project approval and participation in the kick-off, she reproduces the previous valid spatially flexible border and manifests it in its very nature.
Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion
In negotiating the demarcation of areas of life, Lena can be seen in conflict between private and professional requirements. She makes individual decisions about minimum standards in respective areas of life and sets priorities, which she tries to manifest through the interactive negotiation of boundaries. The setting of such limits is always accompanied by differentiation. In the example described, this would be the differentiation of a spatially mobile and a spatially immobile consultant. Even though such differentiations may be more or less obvious, they are always accompanied by individual positioning in the direct environment, in this case the management consultancy as a collective subject. Thus, the willingness to be spatially mobile speaks to submission to the collectively-represented logic in order to fulfill the task of management consulting and the goal of profit maximization as unrestrictedly as possible. The enforcement of spatial restriction, on the other hand, could be seen as resistance to the collective goal. In the example described, this is also implicit in the promotion logic, in that career advancement seems to favor the taking on of a foreign project over a project close to home. The negotiation and enforcement of limits thus seem to be inevitably accompanied by dynamics of individual inclusion or exclusion in the superordinated collective subject. If the collective logic, task, and goal are fully adhered to, then complete inclusion in the collective subject is given. Resistance, on the other hand, leads to a certain degree of exclusion, possibly through a lower or more marginal position in the structure or even to complete exclusion from the collective. Although the collective subject subjugates and preconfigures the individual possibilities of action with a certain stability, it is precisely the individual subject in the execution of their actions (here the borderline negotiation) and their aggregation that offers the potential for changing the collective.
In summary, for this second section, collective subjects rely not only on the previously described constitution from the outside, they also constitute themselves from the inside via individual subjects and their interactions in continuously reproduced or performatively transformed practices.
Conclusion
Both the research examples presented in this contribution underline the meaning of collective subjects in processes of transition. From inside and outside, collective subjects address their members respective to other collective subjects and are addressed by them as well. Organizations play a key role between individuals, collectives and communities, and larger institutions like umbrella organizations, the state, economic and other sectors. In this sense, collective subjects are formed by their members and the way they address them as well as by actors from outside who express their desires, expectations, and attributions to the collective subject. In the last case presented above this means that a company as a collective subject is developing its identity by reacting to and dealing with the expectations and attributions of its employees, which becomes visible when these employees return from parental leave with a more or less fundamental change in balancing their different areas of life. Interacting with discourses and other collective subjects (e.g., government, quality agencies or trade unions) the new needs of members can also start a transitional process of a collective subject, as we have seen in our first case in particular. Migrant organizations change their self-conception by dealing with the invocations of other organizations and their public image on the one side, as well as with the changing needs and expectations of their members and clientele on the other side. This transition process includes an ongoing negotiation with other actors regarding the roles, competencies, responsibilities, aims, and functions of these migrant organizations. At the same time migrant organizations provide an institutional surrounding for individual transitions in the life courses of their members.
To approach the organizational learning process analytically, it is helpful to refer to the concept of organizational legitimacy (not just for voluntary organizations) (Gnes & Vermeulen, 2018). Organizational legitimacy “fulfills its most vital function for organizations as a mediated resource, providing access to other resources such as funds or labor” (Gnes & Vermeulen, 2018, p. 205, emphasis in original). This became particularly clear in the first case: migrant organizations are supposed to produce and shape the transition of migrants according to the expectations of politics and administration, so that migrant organizations can only legitimize themselves before politics and administration by doing so. It became clear that organizations have to legitimize themselves before their environment or relevant audiences on the one hand and before their members or employees on the other: „it is about how the normative assumptions of specific organizations are justified – or not – within a particular normative context and in relation to the expectations of particular audiences “(Gnes & Vermeulen, 2018, p. 206). However, these normative requirements may differ depending on the audience and also with those of the members, perhaps even contradicting them. In the second project, on the other hand, the focus is not on organizational legitimization externally, but internally: in the course of negotiating individual boundaries, it is not determined (situationally and thus changeably) which access to individual resources of the subject is permissible by the organization as a collective subject. Organizations are then permanently faced with the challenge of negotiating heterogeneous expectations. Organizations and organizational development must always be considered in the context of different audiences.
Depending on the respective research focus, different powerful relationships of collective subjects, their members, other actors, and discourses in the field become visible. The question of who is addressing whom in a powerful manner is answered differently from different points of view. However, the focus on doing transitions determines the research perspective insofar as a transition of an individual subject or a collective subject has taken center stage. Looking at organizations as collective subjects then opens new insights as organizational activities are seen as collective practices of its members, which form the identity of the respective organization and thus its interaction with its members and other collective subjects. Both research approaches can thus make it clear that the respective organizational identity does not determine action but results from organizational practices. Finally, it becomes understandable that collective organizations are dynamic entities. In this way the research focus changes from the explicit strategies and aims of organizations, from what Argyris and Schön (1978) called the shift from “espoused theories” to “theories in use.” These “theories in use” are understood as “the theory that actually governs […] action” (p. 11) and thus can be found in practices that build those collective subjects. Social practices in this sense might be framed by espoused theories and other forms of discourses – but cannot be determined by them (Reckwitz, 2002).
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Heinrich, E., Klevermann, N., Schmidt-Hertha, B. (2022). Organizations as Collective Subjects in the Formation of Transitions Over the Life Course. In: Stauber, B., Walther, A., Settersten, Jr., R.A. (eds) Doing Transitions in the Life Course. Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13512-5_6
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