Page 220 - The Resilient Organization

206 Part Four: Step 3. Rehearsing a Culture of Resilience

management actions, processes, and principles. Rather than a method, we
might benefit from thinking of inventive experimentation as an in vivo lab-
oratory, open to multiple methodological approaches. Much as chemists
and biologists have their research laboratories and physicians practice med-
icine in their private practices, management scholars ought to engage in a
diagnosis and treatment of management ills (see, for example, Howard,
1970) while allowing for the serendipitous discovery of new management
ideas and principles in the process. Such a practice laboratory would
consist of a cycle of invention and experimentation.
The antecedents for inventive experimentation can be found in action
research (Clark, 1976, 1980) in that the work takes place in the crux
between theory and practice. Here, however, the emphasis is less on partici-
pants’ reflection on their experiences (Argyris & Schon, 1974) in a sense
that the activity would seek to change or transform participant behavior
through their learning or becoming competent in taking action and learn-
ing from it (Argyris & Schon, 1974: 4; Chriss, 1995). The emphasis I argue
for is rather more on experimenting on practices that might work given the
participant behavior as it is or that change the organizational context in
such a way as to invite different responses. Hence it is the management
context that is to be changed, not participant consciousness or competence.
Another antecedent to inventive experimentation is clearly field experimen-
tation; yet field experimentation is generally understood to perform a role
of an assessor of the results of a particular program or activity (Weiss,
2000) rather than its inventor or shaper. It is thus a method for validation
(rather than invention and exploratory experimentation).

INVENTION: EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES

The spirit of inventive activity, as mentioned before, is constitutive of new
possibilities: to open up the opportunity for something new and potentially
surprising to emerge (rather than seek theoretical explanations or causal
linkages in something that has already happened). To the extent that this is
approached consciously as an inventive rather than an imitative challenge,
the act would require a search for original—perhaps on the fringe—
approaches rather than copying what other companies may be doing (see