Research Methods for Non-Representational Approaches to Organizational Complexity: The Dialogical Mediated Inquiry

This paper explores the methodological implications of non-representational approaches to organizational complexity. Representational theories focus on the syntactic complexity of systems, whereas organizing processes are predominantly characterized by semantic and pragmatic forms of complexity. After underlining the contribution of non-representational approaches to the study of organizations, the paper warns against the risk of confining the critique of representational frameworks to paradoxical dichotomies such as intuition versus reflexive thought, or theorizing versus experimenting. To counter this difficulty, we suggest the use of a triadic theory of interpretation, and more particularly the concepts of semiotic mediation, inquiry and dialogism. Semiotic mediation dynamically links situated experience and generic classes of meanings. Inquiry articulates logical thinking, narrative thinking and experimenting. Dialogism conceptualizes the production of meaning through the situated interactions of actors. A methodological approach based on these concepts, the ‘dialogical mediated inquiry’ (DMI), is proposed and tested with a case study about work safety in the construction industry. This interpretive view requires the researcher to complicate the inquiry process rather than the mirroring models of reality. In DMI, the inquiry process is complicated by establishing pluralist communities of inquiry in which different perspectives challenge each other. The paper ends with a discussion of the specific contribution of this approach compared with other qualitative methods, and its present limitations.