Seductive Atmospheres: Using Tools to Effectuate Spaces for Leadership Development

Abstract

This study applies an affordance lens to understand the use of management tools and how atmospheres for change and development are created and exploited. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a consultant-facilitated change intervention among a group of research leaders at a Danish Public Hospital, this study investigates how a business game is used as a tool to effectuate episodic spaces for leadership development. The study reveals three tool affordances and discusses how they enable and constrain episodic spaces for development and further develops the notion of seductive atmospheres as an important mechanism. The article suggests that a broader understanding of the use of tools and the role of atmospheres is essential for understanding how episodic spaces for development come to work in relation to organizational change and development.

Producing liminal spaces for change interventions: the case of LEGO serious play workshops

“…I started the data analysis by carefully reading the empirical materials and systematically searching for points in which the materials deviated from what would be expected, given the Elmholdt et al, 2018;Howard-Grenville et al, 2011;Johnson et al, 2010;Kempster et al, 2015).…”

“…The consultant facilitating the intervention acts as a liminal guide (Czarniawska and Mazza, 2003;Hawkins and Edwards, 2015), leading the somewhat passive participants first away from the everyday space into the liminal space and then back to the everyday space. She utilizes both conversational and material tools in order to create and maintain the liminal space (Elmholdt et al, 2018;Kempster et al, 2015), which is carefully planned to guide the participants to work together on a specific, pre-identified organizational issue. Once the everyday space is restored in the end of the intervention, the participants should have experienced an organizationally meaningful change.…”

“…Through Second, the study advances management and organization research on artificially created liminal spaces. Following others (Elmholdt et al, 2018;Howard-Grenville et al, 2011;Johnson et al, 2010;Kempster et al, 2015), here the conceived intervention space is seen as a liminal space that is created and maintained to manage organizational change processes. However, looking at this space as a perceived space reminds us that liminal spaces cannot be managed in the way everyday spaces of an organization are managed.…”

Counting sleep: Ambiguity, aspirational control and the politics of digital self-tracking at work

“…2 Gibson (2015) advanced the affordances concept in psychology, and it seeks to explain ‘how people and other animals orient to the objects in their world in terms of the possibilities the objects afford for action’ (Zammuto et al, 2007: 752). Within organisation studies, the importance of organisational arrangements or social ‘conditions’ (Davis and Chouinard, 2016) and relational aspects of affordances have been highlighted; affordances realise according to the ‘reciprocal relation’ between users, their roles, abilities, social relationships and the ‘material/functional bundle of the artifact’ (Faraj and Azad, 2012: 254; Elmholdt et al, 2018). Paring et al (2017) show how an office whiteboard affords options for connecting a group of employees around a visual artifact that guides work processes and bodily performances.…”

Making room for change: Spatial tactics and the micropolitics of inhabiting organisational space

“…Generally, the role of space, architecture and materiality has however remained under theorised in the change management literature (Leonardi andBarley 2008: Lancione andClegg 2013). The emphasis has been on conversational perspectives and prescriptive models in the mainstream literature (Elmholdt, Clausen and Madsen 2018). Yet, a number of studies do point at the role of architecture and space in facilitating changes in organisational identity, strategy and legitimacy (Lancione and Clegg 2013;Holloway Cripps 2013;Van Marrewijk 2009;Våland and Georg 2018;de Vaujany and Vaast 2013).…”