Relational Construction of Meaning in Emerging Organization Contexts

This article documents a social constructionist perspective on organizational change. Change, innovation, learning, conflict, and similar dynamic organizational contexts can be approached more adequately when we give attention to the relational qualities of the ongoing interaction processes among the parties involved. The individual and the organization—the focus of this special issue—are not conceptualized separately and then related to each other. We take the relationship as the focus of analysis and intervention. We illustrate that by focusing on the relational quality, new possibilities for conversations among the parties can be created and new ways of intervening can be invented. We point out the basic principles of such a relational and social constructionist approach. Language plays an important role; parties negotiate and reconstruct their mutual relationships through language. Research and intervention, following this relational perspective, acknowledge the ongoing conversations by pointing out what parties are doing to each other. Through interrupting and joining these conversations, new possibilities for organising can be enacted. A concrete case study of a change context is used to describe the core processes of meaning construction: dialoguing among communities of practice, generating and communicating knowledge from within, attending the quality of relationships, creating new metaphors and language forms, accepting and enhancing multivoiced communication. These processes constitute the ongoing change and the emergence of new organizational contexts.