Applied tensional analysis: Engaging practitioners and the constitutive shift

Abstract

This article introduces applied tensional analysis as a methodological framework that integrates constitutive ontologies (that depict organizations as processes in constant states of emerging or becoming) with the applied need for practitioners to understand and navigate the everyday exigencies of their organizational experiences. Applied tensional analysis centers analysis on tensions as the key to understanding organizational becoming in contrast to approaches that assume organizations are stable entities and consequently focus on patterns, themes, or laws. The applied tensional analysis framework offers four analytical foci (context, tensions, enacted responses, and repertoires) organized into two loops (analytical and change) as guides for data collection and analysis. While the analytical loop orients scholars to the current and past configurations of an organization’s emergence, the change loop emphasizes the multitude of available responses to a particular tension and the constitutive implications of those responses for organizational becoming. As a new methodological approach, applied tensional analysis suggests that organizational knowledge requires more than awareness of what an organization is and includes awareness of organizational potential and what an organization might become.

“For Everyone” Means “For No One:”: Membership Tensions in Community Collaboration

“…Although the concept of tension as opportunity has existed for some time (see Poole & Van de Ven, 1989), recent research has highlighted this view. For example, Mease (2019) suggested that tensions represent turning points. Specifically, tensions represent critical moments in which organizations are in flux and “organizational actors make choices that ultimately have constitutive implications for the organization” (Mease, 2019, p. 416).…”

“…For example, Mease (2019) suggested that tensions represent turning points. Specifically, tensions represent critical moments in which organizations are in flux and “organizational actors make choices that ultimately have constitutive implications for the organization” (Mease, 2019, p. 416). This view suggests tensions are not merely stressful circumstances that organizational actors must navigate, but decision points that may give rise to a new organization or alter an existing organization in a fundamental way.…”

“…Because this study is rooted in a constitutive approach (Putnam et al, 2016) that depicts tensions as turning points for organizations in flux (Mease, 2019), this study provides the opportunity to explore how tension responses alter the collaboration itself:…”

“…This study draws upon tensions as discussed in nonprofit and collaboration literature, and applies a constitutive approach (Putnam et al, 2016) to membership tensions as they arise through interaction. A relatively new methodological approach, applied tensional analysis (Mease, 2019), highlights the relationship between the tensions and responses enacted by organizational partners, as well as their constitutive impact on the collaboration itself.…”

(Re)moving blinders: Communication-as-constitutive theorizing as provocation to practice-based organization scholarship

“…A recognition of ontological multiplicity also offers a theory of change. It paints a picture of assemblages’ radical indeterminacy, one in which the assemblages constituted by flows of communication make them “ precariously open to disruption ” (Mease, 2019: 412, emphasis in original). Radical indeterminacy resonates with the notion of aleatory materialism (Althusser, 1994): contingency and chance in the assemblage’s potential to become something altogether unexpected.…”