Majoring on the Minor Gesture in Collaborative Partnerships

Abstract

This chapter brings to life the radical edge of knowledge development in organisational work, through the auspices of marginal coalitions of knowledge development like ours: a partnership between a small, regional business school and a specialist consultancy in organisational change. Although I don’t claim that such coalitions necessarily provide learning most fitting for our age, I assert that our liminality puts us in a better position to do so, compared with the behemoths of the Academy and established high-profile consultancies. I aim to show how we have exploited this possibility, especially in our work in the UK Civil Service and beyond.

I am proposing here a re-configuring of how we go about change through a relational practice that gives difference, pragmatism, locality and artfulness their due, an aesthetic of practice that catches what Erin Manning calls ‘the minor gesture’ out of the corner of our eye and brings it front and centre, for the benefit of our relations, our psychic and emotional health and the effectiveness of how we learn, what we think knowledge is and how we can go about change with greater attention to the harmony of the human and more-than-human world (Manning, The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press, 2016).