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“MOVING ON” OR “STUCK IN THE PAST”:

ABANDONING OR EMBRACING HISTORY IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGEMANAGEMENTKoll, Henrik; Jensen Schleiter, Astridur

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Citation for pulished version (APA):Koll, H., & Jensen Schleiter, A. (2018). “MOVING ON” OR “STUCK IN THE PAST”: ABANDONING OREMBRACING HISTORY IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT. Paper presented at TenthInternational Symposium on Process Organization Studies, Halkidiki, Greece.

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Paper Code: PROS-028

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“MOVING ON” OR “STUCK IN THE PAST”:

ABANDONING OR EMBRACING HISTORY

IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Henrik Koll Ph.D.- Fellow

Centre for Organizational Practice and Communication University of Southern Denmark

E-mail: hkoll@sdu.dk

Astrid Jensen Associate Professor and Centre Director

Centre for Organizational Practice and Communication University of Southern Denmark

E-mail: astrid@sdu.dk

Submitted to: Thematic Track

Keywords: History, Organizational Change Management, Performance Management,

Privatization

Abstract

This paper offers an empirical and theoretical analysis of time and history as constituent elements of

organizational change by outlining a Bourdieusian practice-based perspective on change

management, combined with a narrative perspective. The study is based on ethnographic

investigations into implementation of performance management in a Scandinavian

telecommunications service provider, 25 years after the privatization of the company. By interlinking

the historicization of the organization (field), and the historicization of the managers (habitus), we

2

examine how practices integrate past, present and future, in the context of changing field conditions,

embedded in the wider societal forces of the global economic field, characterized by neoliberalism.

The paper uncovers how profit- and competition- oriented managerial practices were mediated by

historically transmitted enduring dispositions shaped by the socio-historical trajectory of managers

through their extensive tenure with the former monopolized, public, institution. We argue that time

becomes a product of the practice of change management as we uncover how multiple temporalities

unfold and emerge in the narratives of managers as their socio-cultural practices are triggered by the

external determinants of the organizational present.

1. Introduction

The aim of this paper is to further our understandings of the constituent role of time and history in

organizational change by studying change management through a Bourdieusian practice-based

perspective (Bourdieu, 1977a). The study is based on an investigation into the implementation of

performance management (Aguinis, 2009)1 in a Scandinavian telecommunications service provider,

25 years after the privatization of the company. The company was sold in an IPO2 by the state shortly

before the wide-spread liberalization of infrastructural European markets, followed by privatization

of former state-owned monopolies (Greve, 2002), in areas such as telecommunications (e.g. Chabrak,

Craig, & Daidj, 2016; Greve & Andersen, 2001; Henten & Falch, 2014; Jordfald & Murhem, 2003;

Waters, 2014), railroad operations (e.g.Strangleman, 2004), and water supply (e.g. Dore, Kushner, &

Zumer, 2004). Privatization is a major part of policy and public sector reforms in many European

countries (Greve, 2002; Greve & Andersen, 2001; Parker, 1995) and telecommunications is a key

area in which privatization has occurred (Greve & Andersen, 2001). The core argument for

1 We understand performance management as: “a continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning performance with the strategic goals of the organization” (Aguinis, 2009, p. 2). 2 IPO stands for Initial Public Offering of common stock (Dewenter & Malatesta, 1997).

3

privatization is rooted in the ideology of competition as advocates suggest that companies will be

driven more efficiently under the ownership of private investors because of the incentive structures

introduced by capital markets (Bourdieu, 1998; Dore et al., 2004; Greve, 2002; Parker, 1995).

The paper applies Bourdieu’s (1990) relational framework based on the theoretical triad

of field, habitus and capital. We emphasize the inherent historical nature of the concepts as we

interpret them as forms of embodied history (Steinmetz, 2011). Thus, the framework allows us to

analyze change management as a practice embedded in a wider socio-historical context, insisting on

the inseparability of subjectivity and structure (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). We combine this with

a narrative perspective, as the narrative dimension of practices is always tied to the material practices

of the field (Tatli, 2011) and function as an important way for participants to express and legitimize

their vision of the world and sustain the preferred logic of practice (Bourdieu, 2000; Ernst & Jensen

Schleiter, 2018; Tatli, 2011).

Despite an emerging attention among organization scholars to address time, temporality

and history (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence, & Tushman, 2001; Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2014; Langley,

Smallman, Tsoukas, & Van de Ven, 2013; Schultz & Hernes, 2013) and increased efforts to adopt a

“historical consciousness” (Suddaby, 2016), we believe that time (Huy, 2001), temporality (Schultz

& Hernes, 2013; Wiebe, 2010) and history (Burrell, 1997; Jacques, 1995; Kieser, 1994; Zald, 1996)

still remain under-studied and under-theorized in organization studies.

To Bourdieu (1986), “the social world is accumulated history”. Hence, the genesis of

this paper is the notion that all behavior is historical, as it takes place over time and in particular

contexts (Zald, 1996). Consequently, in order to study change, one must understand how it unfolds

over time, and how it is affected by time and history (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005); this makes

accounting for organizational history essential to understanding organizational change (Gioia, Corley,

& Fabbri, 2002).

4

We propose the praxeology of Bourdieu as a viable pathway to bring a historical

perspective (Gorski, 2013; Maclean, Harvey, & Clegg, 2017; Steinmetz, 2011; Wacquant, 2016b),

which responds to calls for “greater reflexivity regarding the epistemological problem of representing

the past” (Rowlinson, Hassard, & Decker, 2014). By investigating the relation between the

historicization of the field and that of the agents (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Wacquant, 2016a),

we interlink social past and social present (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008) and establish a perspective

on time which breaks with traditional notions of time and history as objective realities separated from

practice (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

By returning to the socio-historical embeddedness of change management practice, and

analyzing practice as an act of inherent temporalization, we view time as a product of practice, which

unfolds multiple temporalities, as agents “transcends the immediate present via practical

mobilization of the past and practical anticipation of the future inscribed in the present” (Bourdieu

& Wacquant, 1992, p. 138). In doing so, we respond to calls for multidirectional non-linear temporal

flows in studies of organizational change (Dawson & Sykes, 2016; Hernes & Maitlis, 2010).

By combining the Bourdieusian framework with a narrative perspective (Barry &

Elmes, 1997; A. L. Cunliffe, Luhman, & Boje, 2004; Dunford & Jones, 2000; Gabriel, 2000) where

“narratives can be seen as stories of our experience in time, grounded in events linked together in a

temporal way” (A. L. Cunliffe et al., 2004, p. 272), we are able to capture how diverging conceptions

of time emerge in the narratives of actors, through their struggles of ongoing positions-taking in the

organizational field of change, i.e. how nostalgic stories of an idealized past, critically countering the

practices of the present, become a part of the organization’s narrative ecology, whereby they become

incorporated into the stories of the present as well as resources for the future. This provides a temporal

orientation and awareness, which enables us to explore the constituent nature of time and history in

5

organizational change in a conceptual and theoretical manner that moves beyond the traditional

notions of time and history (Dawson, 2014).

In sum, the paper addresses the following research question: How can the praxeology

of Bourdieu, linked to narratives of participants, advance our understanding of history and time as

constituent of organizational change?

2. Theoretical Framework

In the following section, we commence with a review of the change management literature with

emphasis on the role of managers and the theorization of time and history. From the review, we

deduce two dominant philosophies of time, defined by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 138) as the

metaphysical vision and the philosophy of consciousness. We present the argument that both

viewpoints on time can be exceeded by our Bourdieusian framework. Then, we expand on the

framework and the way in which it enables us to advance new understandings of time and history as

constitutive of organizational change.

2.1 Organizational change and time: a literature review

Traditional approaches to organizational change has predominantly been informed by assumptions

privileging stability and treating change as the occasional exception in organizational life.

Subsequently, change has been perceived as an exceptional event, to be produced and managed under

specific circumstances by the deliberate actions of organizational change agents (Tsoukas & Chia,

2002). Following, a crucial role has traditionally been assigned to managers in directing the change,

shaping the course of events, and bringing about the desired organizational future state (MacKay &

Chia, 2013). A long established dominant approach has been that of planned change stemming from

the notion that to bring about change, an organization must go through the three stages of unfreezing

6

the current state, moving to the next state and refreezing the new state (originally developed by Lewin,

1947). A recognized prerequisite for moving through the three stages is the ability to discard old

behavior, structures, practices and culture, before adopting new approaches (Burnes, 1996; Todnem

By, 2005). The model has laid the grounds for numerous developments of managerial stage-models

(e.g. Bullock & Batten, 1985; Cummings & Huse, 1989; Lippitt, 1958) working under the

assumptions that organizations can move from one stable state to another in a pre-planned fashion

(Borum, 1995; Burnes, 1996; Todnem By, 2005). By attributing success or failure of change

implementations to the intentional doings and plans of individual managers (MacKay & Chia, 2013),

traditional accounts of change imply a philosophy of consciousness that is characterized by

assumptions of rationality and a strong emphasis on agency (MacKay & Chia, 2013; Tsoukas & Chia,

2002).

Bourdieu explains the metaphysical vision of time as a perspective, which treats time

as a reality, independent of- and external to the agent, i.e. like the successive flow of a river (Bourdieu

& Wacquant, 1992). The perception of time as absolute and external to agents, often leads to the

notion of time as a manageable resource which adds to the emphasis on agency by implying that time

can be controlled, saved, spent and wasted by practitioners (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010). The

metaphysical vision of time becomes evident in the common notion of time as the context in which

change unfolds (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010), or, in the words of Van de Ven and Poole (2005, p. 1394):

the “background to assess when change occur, the rate of change, and the extent of change, as well

as to establish the opposite of change – stability”. The notion of moving from one state of stability

to another, against a backdrop of objective succession of time, makes change a-temporal, as time

becomes nothing more than a tool of measurement (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010), as change occur in the

present with a view to overcoming or disrupting with the past (Suddaby & Foster, 2017).

Correspondingly, the dominant view in management research is the perception that organizational

7

history is a constraining influence, which is objective and oppressive towards change (Suddaby &

Foster, 2017). This can be linked to assumptions rooted in the pervasive capitalism (Bourdieu, 1998)

of the organizational environment, where linear notions of clock time, in shape of a quantitative

temporality, have become embedded into organizational practices as the ultimate tool for

measurement and planning (Dawson & Sykes, 2016; McGrath & Rotchford, 1983). The association

between time and money has given rise to an organizational time-orientation in which clock-time has

become an ineluctable measuring stick for success and a subsequent tool for production of new work

structures and practices (Dawson & Sykes, 2016; Hernes & Maitlis, 2010).

In this way, we argue that these dominant conceptions lack a temporal awareness and

leave little room for the notion of subjective time, i.e. time as experienced (McGrath & Rotchford,

1983). In this sense, clock-time keeps us from seeing the temporal dimensions of practices (Hernes

& Maitlis, 2010).

Although, we increasingly find that scholars are addressing the role of time, and the need

for taking time into account, when conducting organization research (Goodman, Ancona, Lawrence,

& Tushman, 2001; Langley et al., 2013; Schultz & Hernes, 2013), implications of time and history

as dimensions of organizational change have received scarce attention (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010; Van

de Ven & Poole, 2005); often assumed to be self-evident, and mainly featured as implicit, rarely

explained or theorized, elements of understanding change (Dawson & Sykes, 2016). Schultz and

Hernes (2013) find that organization and management studies have displayed an asymmetry in their

treatment of past and future, in which the former represents inertia, extinction and closure and the

latter represents change, hope and possibility. This, they argue, has brought about a divide in the field,

leaving historians on one side studying dead facts, opposed to strategy- change management- and

innovation scholars on the other side, spreading good news about exciting futures, deliberating

organizations from the restraints of the past. It is the aim of this paper to overcome this divide by

8

elucidating time and history (Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2014) as more than an implicit backdrop of

events (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005), and by bringing to the fore the unconscious temporal dynamics

of practices as a source of organizational change (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010).

2.2 Bourdieusian theory: Advancing a new understanding of time

In the following, we expand on our analytical framework, and advance our argument that by viewing

time as a product of practice, and turning to the relation between habitus and field, as two forms of

embodied history, we can analyze change management as a socio-historically embedded practice

functioning as an act of temporalization. This, we argue, will unite past, present and future and

provide new understandings of time and history as constitutive of organizational change.

The essence of our analytical framework is the relationship between the historicization

of social structures, i.e. fields, the historicization of the individual agents, i.e. habitus, and practice

(Steinmetz, 2011; Wacquant, 2016a). For Bourdieu, agents and organizations are subordinate to and

constituted from practices, and organizational phenomena must therefore be understood as effects of

a texture of interconnected practices (Chia & MacKay, 2007). We understand practice as the doing

by social agents which takes meaning and value in a particular field; reflected in the socio-historical

trajectory of agents through their position in the field, the capital possessed and their habitus (Gomez,

2010).

The field concepts is what ties phenomenal analysis to the larger societal structures in

which practices are embedded (Ernst & Jensen Schleiter, 2018). To Bourdieu, the social world is

made up of relational fields, which can be understood as social microcosms carved out of larger social

structures, governed by distinct logics, which define the rules and resources that are legitimate in that

particular field (Tatli, 2011). In this sense, fields are inherently historical as they form separate spaces,

with its own stakes and its own agreed-upon logics, which did not exist before (Steinmetz, 2011).

9

Thus, to Bourdieu, any social inquiry should start by defining the field in which the investigated

phenomenon is situated (Tatli, 2011) by returning to- or reconstructing- the historical genesis of the

field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Fourcade, 2007; Steinmetz, 2011). Worth noting, the organizing

principles of a field is always rooted both in the history of the field itself and in the history of its

relations to the larger fields in which it is embedded (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008). However, given

the historical differentiation of a field, its boundaries are always in a flux of contestation, meaning

that they can only be uncovered empirically (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

Fields are always occupied by a dominant and a dominated group of actors seeking to

achieve personal advantage, and control of the mechanisms of the field, through on-going position-

takings, guided by the field-specific capital (Everett, 2002). The distribution of capital across the field

represents the structure within it, at a given point in time, and governs the field dynamics by

determining the chances of success for practices (Bourdieu, 1986). A field generates a tacit

recognition of the value of the stakes of the game and a practical mastering of its rules. However,

agent’s participation in the game are distinct as the players occupy different positions in the current

field, have different amount of capital in their possession, and have different socio-historical

trajectories leading them to their current position (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

Subsequently, the field concept establishes the notion that individual action is informed

by external structuring principles that delimit the here-and-now-observable (Bourdieu & Chartier,

2015; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). In this study, examples of such structuring principles are state-

level reform policies, institutionalized tradition in the field, and the professional socialization of

agents precipitated in bodies as common dispositions or habitus.

The habitus of agents can be understood as the active presence of past socialization in

a body (Bourdieu, 1990). It is the product of the milieu in which socialization takes place and where

humans become culturally knowledgeable through their engagement in a particular environment

10

(Ernst & Jensen Schleiter, 2018). As such, the habitus provides agents with a form of knowing-in-

practice which unreflectively shape daily responses and dispositions for action (Chia & MacKay,

2007). It generates the ‘practical sense’ of what to do in specific situations, within the conditions that

apply to a field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; D. Swartz, 1997), and provides agents with a ‘feel for

the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990). The relationship between field and habitus is dialectical (Wacquant,

2016a), as habitus is structured by the agents socio-historical trajectory through fields, and, at the

same time, contributes to structuring the field as a meaningful world (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

In this sense, practice becomes a product of a ‘practical sense’ or a socially constituted ‘sense of the

game’ as the habitus surpasses both the notion of objective determinism and subjectivism, understood

as the emphasis on deliberate, conscious intention of action (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The

inherently historical nature of habitus is captured in this definition: It is a, (Bourdieu, 1977b, p. 82):

“system of dispositions - a past which survives in the present and tends to perpetuate itself into the

future by making itself present in practices”. In other words, the habitus is a system of layers of

enduring and transposable dispositions integrating all past experiences. Consequently, the

dispositions acquired in the past are at every moment part of present actions and perceptions, because

the habitus is constantly subjected to experience, and, by the same token, transformed by these

experiences (Bourdieu & Chartier, 2015). Therefore, habitus always produces history on the basis of

history (Wacquant, 2016b).

3. Research Methodology

The theoretical contributions of the paper are underpinned by a 5-month multi-sited ethnographic

field study, conducted by first author. The research presented is part of a larger study concerned with

implications for work and practitioners of organizational change in the operations department in the

wake of privatization of the former public, monopolized organization.

11

The analysis is based on more than 30 days of combined participant observation and

shadowing of managers and technicians as they carried out their everyday social practices across time

and multiple spaces (A. Cunliffe, 2015).

The observed practices included management meetings, team meetings and events, e-

meetings, phone calls, smoke- and lunch breaks etc., during which the author took field notes

(Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011; Spradley, 1980). Depending on the observed activity and setting,

condensed field notes would be scribbled on a note pad or written on a laptop. Field notes would later

be expanded, filed and categorized according to the guidelines of Spradley (1980). Additionally, 15

managers were interviewed individually, some of them more than once, adding up to a total of 20

individual interviews; all of which were recorded and transcribed. The interviews were conducted in

Danish and elected citations translated into English upon the writing of this paper. Locations of the

interviews were any given departmental location, fitting in with the schedule of the managers.

These data are supplemented by a significant amount of archival data related to the

transformation, e.g. KPI-reports, performance-scorecards, e-mail correspondences, union newsletters

and publications, and reports on the development within the telecommunications sector and

associated unions in Scandinavia (e.g. Falch, Henten, Skouby, & Tadayoni, 2008; Jordfald &

Murhem, 2003).

3.1 Data coding and analysis

Data were coded in cycles in an inductive deductive combinational approach following the

recommendations developed by Miles and Huberman (1994) and Saldaña (2015). In the first cycle,

the major theme organizational transformation emerged under which the category of history arose.

A final detailed sub-coding, conducted by second author, identified the stories used by managers, in

relations to history, and the temporal dimensions of the transformation, which emerged into a more

12

coherent dominant narrative of a new profit-oriented logic, which was countered by narratives of the

past, which by managers is perceived as something the workers must move on from, and, by workers;

reminisced upon as the ‘good old days’. This dichotomy of perceptions presented severe tension

between the two groups; because management views the employees as being stuck in the past, they

abandon the past by approaching history as something which change happens despite of, rather than

something change is based on. Subsequently, the data were linked to Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts

and the history of organizational practices and the way they unfold, and are shaped, and shape, how

organizational actors live and experience time through their experiences of organizational change.

3.2 Narratives

Bourdieu considers the system of production-, and the mode of consumption-, of language,

categorizations and labels as essential to both change and reproduction of organizational practices

(Tatli, 2011), and emphasizes the importance of considering the relations of these symbolic structures

to both the cognitive structures of organizational agents and to the social structures of society (Everett,

2002). Subsequently, in our efforts to link macro-level phenomena of organizational change to micro-

level practices (D. L. Swartz, 2008), i.e. the position of the organization in the structure of the field

of production to its internal structure, understood as a product of its past history still orienting its

present (Bourdieu, 2005), we are lead to attend to the ways in which the narratives of actors contribute

to the reproduction and transformation of the structures of domination by legitimizing and de-

legitimizing certain practices and associated amounts of capital (Everett, 2002).

A. L. Cunliffe et al. (2004) propose a dynamic notion, where narratives are a way of

linking objective and subjective perspectives of time, meaning that time can be seen as both objective

and subjective, which means that “we can construct the measurement of time in seconds, days, years,

thereby accepting a degree of objectivity, whereas it is through our consciousness and experience of

13

time that we live, narrate and make sense of our lives” (2004, p. 271). Accordingly, stories are not

seen as retrospective reflections of past events, but as situated, responsive performance, where we

interpret the past through the present, as the past and the future only exist in our experience of the

present.

In the following, we adopt a broad definition of narratives, as we incorporate different

kinds of stories and counter stories in our analysis. Some of the stories will be in the form of full

blown narratives with a beginning, a middle and an end, whereas others will be fragmented stories,

or antenarratives (Boje, 2001). The analytical process is inspired by Czarniawska’s (1997), and

Riessman’s (2008) analyses, focusing on stories and themes shared by the managers during the

interviews.

4. Findings

In the following, we will present the stories told by the director and six of the managers working in

the operations department, as we explore how the transformation and the introduction of a new profit-

oriented logic brought about a dichotomy in perceptions of the past between two distinct logics,

identified in two conflicting narratives (Gabriel, 2016; Jensen, Maagaard, & Rasmussen, 2016), the

one of the public regime and the one of the private regime. But also, how several stories became a

part of the organizations’ narrative ecology’, as they were incorporated into stories of a ‘special

culture’, where history was seen as an obstacle for change, and where the old values were

delegitimized in the face of the ‘new’ values, while at the same time, the history of union power was

acknowledged by management as a resource for the future, as the union representatives were included

in the organizational change process as key facilitators.

As habitus can be regarded as socially mounted dispositions or history made nature

(Wacquant, 2016a), the profiling of the managers becomes essential to understanding the mediating

14

role of history in the practice of change management. Our ethnographic inquiries were performed in

2016 and the following graphic illustrates the socialization of the managers, emphasizing the duration

of their tenure and their working experience within the company. Summing up the graphic, we see:

- An average duration of company tenure between the managers of more than 22 years

- Four of the managers are former technicians and one have worked various technical jobs in

the company before being promoted to manager

- Four of the managers have more than 30 years of tenure

Role Initials Tenure Biography Director DA 30+ Started his working career with the company and has worked his way

up the latter towards director status in multiple departments since 1993, and director in Operations since 2010.

Manager MA 12 Started his working career with the company at age 16 and has worked as technician in operations for 11 years before being

promoted to manager in 2016. Manager MB 38 Has been with the company for 38 years starting as a technician

before being promoted to manager in 1994. Manager MC 30 Has been with the company for 30 years starting with various

technical jobs before being promoted to manager in 2004. Manager MD 36 Has been with the company for 36 years starting as a technician

before being promoted to manager in 1997. Manager MF 7 Has been with the company since 2009 when he was hired as

manager in the operations department. He came into the company with a background in management since 1996.

Manager MG 7 Has been with the company since 2009 when he was hired as manager in the operations department. He came into the company

with a background in management since 1996. Table 1: Duration of Managers’ working experience within the company

4.1 Narratives and counter narratives in relation to the implementation of performance

management

As we investigate change management practices in the operations department 25 years post

privatization, we look at organizational history and the differences in values and incentives between

past and present, We view the organization as a field and commence our analysis under the

15

Bourdieusian presumption that “any understanding of the form under which a particular field

presents itself, or the forces that lie behind its current dynamics, and of the stakes that will shape its

future must begin with a return toward history – and more specifically with a study of that field’s

conditions of emergence (or its genesis)” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992 as cited by; Fourcade, 2007,

p. 1015). Hence, we commence our analysis with a positioning of the organization as a field in the

wider societal forces, or the field of power (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), that is, the global economic

field (Bourdieu, 2001).

1: Privatizing the telecommunications sector – the wider societal forces

In 1993, the EU launched a new strategy that would change the international economy by merging

national economic fields or expanding them into global fields (Bourdieu, 2001; O. K. Pedersen,

2011). The strategy was founded on neoliberal notions of global competition and free markets

(Bourdieu, 2001) and involved a restructuring of national welfare states towards competition states

(O. K. Pedersen, 2011). Neoliberalism has become the dominant paradigm in financial politics of

most western economies (O. K. f. Pedersen, 2017) as a political ideology with the aim of gaining

influence and power both financially and politically. It represents an economic world order which has

been identified as the financialization of capital markets (Cushen, 2013; O. K. Pedersen, 2011) or

finance capitalism. Financialization refers to “the increasingly significant role of financial markets,

financial actors, and financial motives in daily life” (Cushen, 2013, p. 314). In the new economy,

institutional reforms have become the primary means of competition, as nations reform their welfare

states, and create new markets through liberalization and price regulations, removal of trade barriers,

and a general withdrawal of states from the economy. The latter is achieved through deregulation,

privatization, outsourcing, and by opening up national markets to investments of multinational

enterprises (Bourdieu, 2001; O. K. Pedersen, 2011).

16

In Scandinavia, all telecoms have gone from status of national monopoly to full- or part-

privatization (Jordfald & Murhem, 2003); and thus transformed from national non-business

organizations into global business organizations competing in a free market. The shift from the former

to the latter has been defined as corporatization (Forssell & Jansson, 1996) and has been

acknowledged as a transformation which requires change in both organization and management in

order to meet the competitive demands of the private capital market (Parker, 1995).

In a Scandinavian corporatization context, it is important to elucidate the so-called

Nordic model which is a distinct model of work and welfare that separates the societies of the Nordic

countries in comparison to the rest of Europe and the OECD region (Aspholm Hole, Larsen, &

Osmundsen, 2007; Christiansen, 2006; Ervasti & Ervasti, 2008; Klausen, 2001). Based on common

values, the Nordic welfare system is described as general, public, and equal (Aspholm Hole et al.,

2007). A cornerstone of the model is a long tradition of political democracy (Ervasti & Ervasti, 2008)

based on a high degree of popular participation, respect for human rights and the rule of law

(Christiansen, 2006). The welfare state, labor market politics, and work relations, are other founding

pillars of the model (Ervasti & Ervasti, 2008). The countries are characterized by strong public sectors

which have traditionally been the dominant welfare providers (Aspholm Hole et al., 2007). The

attitudes and values permeating the political cultures are characterized by a motivation to resolve

social and political conflicts peacefully. This is illustrated by the exceptionally powerful position of

unions and employers’ associations (Christiansen, 2006), which have manifested itself as principles

of centralized bargaining based on values of wage solidarity, security from unemployment and

generous state unemployment schemes (Ervasti & Ervasti, 2008).

2: The narratives of the field

In our data, we traced how the narratives and stories told about performance and efficiency were

countered by nostalgic stories of days when the organization was a public organization with a strong

17

monopoly and powerful unions. Based on the coding of data, we identified four stories, 1) the

dominant managerial narrative of performance, 2) the counter narrative of the past, 3) ‘a special

culture’ delegitimizing the past, and 4) acknowledging the history of union power.

The dominant managerial narrative of performance

”The workplace of the future is dependent on present performance” (DA)

Our case company was sold in an IPO by the state around 1993 shortly before the liberalization of

the European market for telecommunication (Greve, 2002). The transformation to global competitor

carried with it the external imperatives of a financialized global economy (Kaspersen & Nørgaard,

2015) in which companies have to adjust continuously to the demands of the market in order to keep

the backing of shareholders and the confidence of the market (Bourdieu, 1998). In response to these

external imperatives, company strategies are to some extent shaped by the objective of pleasing

shareholders motivated by short-term profitability (Bourdieu, 1998). As for all private companies,

the overarching goal of the telecom, post privatization, became profitability (Greve, 1997); a change

of goals which initiated a profit-oriented strategy driven by financialized performance management

systems (Aguinis, 2009).

At the time of our ethnographic inquiries, performance management systems had been

operational in the department close to a quarter century and a setup including an estimated 30 key

performance metrics had long been implemented. However, it was not until recently, the company

presented a so-called ‘in-house business case’ to the operations department. Under the pressures of

the competitive market, the company was actively investigating the possibility of outsourcing the

department to increase profits. The terms of the case included a revalidation of key performance

indicators and measurements. Pressure was added on the technicians to reach specific performance

target demands, which would be meticulously measured and controlled daily. The case was given a

18

four-year time frame to estimate performance fulfilment and reevaluate the financial benefits of

keeping the department in-house or outsourcing the services to an international competitor. By

presenting outsourcing as a viable strategic option, the company figuratively ignited a burning

platform under the department, which among other initiatives included a plan for increased

performance of 10-15 per cent, as well as a need for a more flexible approach to work, such as for

instance working overtime and developing new competencies.

We need to increase efficiency by 10-15 per cent by running performance management

[….]. increase the productivity of the organization, both in the desire to work overtime

and to work on different tasks, and train and develop skills to work on a variety of tasks

to get a broader range (Director, DA)

Subsequently, as the terms of the case were negotiated between the company and the union, the

technicians not only agreed to the revised performance targets, they also agreed to work an additional

half hour each day by giving up their paid lunch break against a minor wage adjustment. On the other

hand, earlier negotiations had led to specifically favorable working conditions for the employees,

which for instance meant that their commute, from home to work and back to home, were included

in the working hours. The problems related to this was narrated by one of the managers (MF), in the

light of competition, when he addressed the challenges he experienced in relation to the ’in-house

business case’, as this deal forces the technicians to work significantly faster than those ‘outside the

fence’.

[…] [...] Here, they are allowed to start their working day from home. That means that

they are effective 5-6 hours a day, where all other technicians outside the fence, have 7.4

hours each day. That's the big difference. Therefore, they have to be faster all the time.

They must be a bit faster. They must be a bit smarter and provide a better service. That's

what we can live on (MF)

19

Albeit the terms were agreed to by both parties, our study tells the story about an implementation of

organizational change that did not move smoothly. This is reflected in the narratives of the managers,

as for instance in the story told by MA, a manager who was a former technician during the times of

the ‘lunch break’ negotiations:

…….. We said yes to sell our paid lunch to get allowed to stay ‘in house’, and just to

make a little bit of a story to it, then one can say that at the next meeting we had, I think,

we were 20 technicians I almost believe that 8 of them had taken black tape around the

arm as armbands symbolizing grief, now that the company had ripped them off and sold

their lunch break (MA).

The counter narratives of ‘past’ time

In the work culture of public organizations, industrial relations were regulated by agreements between

highly organized labor and capital, which oriented towards a symmetry between the parties of

employment relationship. In the Nordic countries, waged and salaried work became the predominant

social form of work as a subsequence of the features of the Nordic model, i.e. high rate of unionization

among employees, a national hierarchical system of collective bargaining, and the strong presence of

trade unions at the workplace level (Kettunen, 2012).

Organizational change often creates a ‘before and now’, and a selection of quotes from

field notes illustrates how narratives of the past emphasize a discontinuity, where the past is separated

from the present in the form of ‘nostalgic’ stories countering the narratives of the present.

20

• We come from a time of monopoly where if pace went up then we slowed it down. They had a

saying; to use the small hammer and put away the big one. […] It was a lot more fun back then.

(Interview DA)

• If you look at it from the time when we were a monopoly, we had, society was different back

then, I would say. It was not the same focus on the customers, as after privatization. The

customers could only go to one place. We had all the customers so you could relax a bit more

…. (Interview MB)

• We are dealing with a culture which previously offered opportunities for ... ample opportunities

for coordinating and plan my day, to go to the hairdresser and make breaks and take a nap or

take an hour or two breaks, and did I get an easy task, I took a break in the car, etc. (Interview

DA)

• They experienced the ’good old days’ as they say. Then, the technicians booked their tasks

themselves, and they drove around in the same area. You were proud about the developments in

your own area (field notes) (MG)

The examples show how the narratives of a more idealized past confronts the dominating narrative

of competitiveness, performance, and increased efficiency of the present. However, the past is very

distinct from an objective historical past, it is a subjective past constructed as ‘the good old days’, in

the light of the changes and new demands of the present, or in the words of Strangleman (1999, p.

742):“reflections on past events are interpreted through our current experiences and the future we

may be anticipating”. From a practice standpoint, this can be understood as the socialized bodies of

the managers figuratively take possession of time by creating a past and a future for a present

(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). We see how the habitus temporalizes itself in the act of its realization,

by implying a practical reference to the envisioned future, implied in the times of public monopoly

21

of which it is the product (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The counter narrative of the ‘good old days’

of the ‘old monopoly’ also points towards two conflicting master narratives of public and private

values, grounded in a shift from welfare to competition (O. K. f. Pedersen, 2017), where the purpose

of work has shifted from serving the common good, based on the ideals of society, to serving the

competitiveness of the company through means of efficiency and productivity (Bourdieu, 1998; O.

K. Pedersen, 2011).

The narrative of a special culture – delegitimizing the past

When a logic of economics entered the field, a clash between the values of past and present emerged

in the narratives of managers as they struggled for field hegemony. In the narratives of the managers,

company history was continuously accounted for or invoked by the term ‘a special culture’ that was

positioned as an opponent or an obstruction to the desired company future. The narratives of a ‘special

culture’ were dominated by frequent uses of ‘the old’ and ‘the young’, delegitimizing past values by

referring to it as for instance ‘ancient culture’, in the light of present performance thinking.

So we have a bit of a special culture, because it's an old state-owned business, at least

a state-owned business. We have many of the old people, who are dissatisfied with

many things, and quickly we have a discussion club going at the morning meetings.

(Interview MF)

There are some who have been here for 30, 33 and 34 years, and some who begin to

approach 10-year anniversary. Thus, I would like to say that young, new forces have

come in, who have a different worldview than those born in the ancient culture, which

22

helps to move some things. But there is still a culture in the older employees, if it's all

shit, you can say, now it's just a shit, without really having it. (Interview MC)

It is incredible how some of the employees just cannot get past that - it’s like tunnel

vision completely... they think they are the center of the world and that the whole world

should revolve around them - it’s not coming back (the areas and all that) … it’s not

going to be like that again - so MOVE ON now… (Interview MG)

Following, the narratives of the managers, we especially note that the ‘special culture’ re-configures

and reinterprets the past in the light of the ongoing present, where young and new employees are seen

as making things move a bit faster, and where historically bound work practices are devalued by a

more profit-oriented narrative, i.e. where ‘old people’ and ‘ancient cultures’ are positioned in

opposition to efficiency and performance.

This can for instance be seen in the story of MA, from when he was technician, where

he positions the union as unreasonably powerful, contributing to the notion of a ‘special culture’

including an ‘old culture’:

[…] it was said that a decision had been made because the company had made some

changes, which the technicians did not care about. And there had simply been made a

collective decision by the technicians that they would not work overtime; they would

not work overtime. I meet up before, because I had to throw out some garbage, and

suddenly I have done overtime. In less than 20 minutes, I have the union representative

on the line, saying that we should meet, because such and such, and this has something

to do with meeting here. I was completely told off, and if I wanted to have anything to

do with my colleagues in here, I should think about it. So, it's just a thought about the

23

culture we are in. It's the old culture of “hello, now just pull yourself together mate,

because otherwise we close off the blood line to the heart”. (Interview MA)

That the unions are still a powerful part of the present culture can be seen from the story of one of the

technicians:

Yes, I am a member. We have the company so integrated into the trade union because

we are simply one of the biggest players in that league, we actually have our own

department in the trade union. [...] but the trade union is, of course, one can say the

workers' representative in the company. They try to do the best for us as possible, but

at the same time they are also so much of the company's culture. (Interview TD)

From the narratives, we see how this ‘special culture’ views history as an ‘obstacle’ with no place in

the future, where management seeks to abandon collective bargaining, and devaluate the power of

trade unions (Bourdieu, 1998; Parker, 1995). However, we also see how the unions are still considered

an important part of the present.

Understanding history – the narrative of the union representatives as ‘helpers’

On the one hand management views the ‘special culture’ as an obstacle for change, where the past is

considered incompatible with the desired, envisioned future of the company. However, several of the

managers have been socialized into the organization for numerous years (re table 1), with a history

of more than 30 years of work experience in the organization. This is particularly reflected in the

story of MA, when he compares his experience in the light of a conversation he had with a new

unexperienced manager, coming from outside the organization:

It's the information I have, because I come with 11 years of experience, where I say, it

24

[the culture] is there, it is still alive and kicking, it exists out there, now.

Because he [a new manager] did not know how to navigate in a system as the one in here.

And that's what really matters. It is a place that is very hierarchical. There is a lot of

hierarchy. I told him: It's ok, you're babbling, but remember, it's a special culture that you

are operating in. (Interview MA)

This illustrates how the embodied socialization of MA has instilled him with a ‘feel for the game’,

whereas the outsider, who is not well adjusted to the ‘game’, struggles as his habitus is not attuned to

the organization and thus unable to produce a practice which conforms to this milieu (Wacquant,

2016a). In the narratives of MA and MD, below, we see how they enlist the powerful union

representatives as key actors in order to facilitate organizational changes – by creating personal

relations, involvement, and ensuring their support in the decision-making process.

They take up much space in general, but if you can manage to turn it around, to make

him feel better, not that he is to take on management, but at least to clear up the support

that you might have... things are much easier ... So, the cooperation between me and the

union representative, I would say, is a big part of making things work. (MA)

You can quickly see the places where it works well between the union repr. and the

service manager, and it is also much easier to get some good results. Often it is the

case that the union representative’s words weigh heavier than those of the service

leader in a group because they listen more to a union man and because they think they

can be protected by him. .... So, if only we have him along, I guess it's going to be ok.

(MD)

25

Thus, utilizing the historical power of the unions by collaborating with the union representative,

shows how the managers exhibit a socialized knowledge of the field enabling them to skillfully ‘play

the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990).

Culture as a socio-historical practice:

From the narratives of the managers, we see how the ‘special culture’ of the organization is positioned

as the opponent in reaching the desired, envisioned future. But, also, we see how the power of the

union is a significant part of that ‘special culture’, and how knowledge of- and experience within-

this ‘special culture’ enables the managers to play the union representatives as a key player in the

change process. We suggest, that this can be interpreted in terms of culture as a socio-historical

practice, where the narrative ecology of the organization integrates the past, present and future by

embedding the historicization of the managers (habitus) in the nexus between habitus, field and

capital (Ernst & Jensen Schleiter, 2018).

Several authors point to habitus as Bourdieu’s attempt to develop a theory of culture as

practice (Ernst & Jensen Schleiter, 2018), as the habitus captures the ways in which individuals

internalize the structures of the social world, and transforms them into patterned classifications,

lasting dispositions or propensities guiding their behavior, conduct, choices, and taste, and in reverse,

how these structures are themselves co-produced and reproduced by the habitus (Bourdieu &

Chartier, 2015; Wacquant, 2016a). In other words, culture, according to a Bourdieusian

conceptualization, emphasizes the common-sense duality between the individual and the social; as a

mediating construct, it connects the internal and the external, the subjective and the objective (Ernst

& Jensen Schleiter, 2018; Wacquant, 2016a), and connects the self to the world by providing agents

with a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990), which is reflected in the narratives of the managers.

However, seeing as habitus cannot be considered independently of the fields within which it operates,

26

accounting for the historically and culturally transmitted dispositions must be conducted in close

connection with analyses of the social structures of which they are the product (Wacquant, 2016a).

In the analysis, we see how history, understood as the unconscious fit between a habitus

and the field in which it operates (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) served as a mediator of change in

management practices and thus became constituent of the organizational change. We see how the

managers are products of individual-, as well as collective- history, associated with an organizational

environment (Tatli, Ozbilgin, & Karatas-Ozkan, 2015), “and that their systems of values, perceptions,

understandings, and beliefs, are the product of social structures” (Bourdieu & Chartier, 2015, p. 52).

Following, we see the habitus manifest itself as a system of durable dispositions which enables the

managers to see certain things in the given situation, and incite them to act in a certain way (Bourdieu

& Chartier, 2015), i.e. skillfully navigate in the system by generating certain practices of

organizational change management.

Hence, we ascribe the adjustment of change management practice to the deeply

socialized practical competency acquired by the managers in the unconscious fit between the field

and their habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The tacit ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990), we

argue, is the socio-historically and culturally transmitted dispositions, which is the product of the past

determinations of the organization as a field triggered by the immediate present (Chia & MacKay,

2007; Wacquant, 2016a).

27

Discussion

The clash between public and private work cultures and values has been accounted for e.g. in studies

of implementations of so-called private sector motivations and practices such as New-Public-

Management or public private partnerships (PPPs)3 in public entities (E.g. Brereton & Temple, 1999;

Gill-McLure, 2007; Hebson et al., 2003). The authors refer to a distinct public sector- or public

service- ethos based on the purpose of ‘serving the public good’ which implies a motivation beyond

the interests of the workers themselves and their organizations. Other accounts have used a

Bourdieusian lens to account for the struggles of workers to adjust their practices to a financialized

logic by ascribing such struggles to a public service habitus, i.e. their taken-for-granted ways of being

a good public servant (See McDonough, 2006; McDonough & Polzer, 2012).

In this study, we separate our contribution from the above by analyzing change

management as a practice embedded in a wider socio-historical context, thus, stressing an

inseparability of subjectivity and structure. Further, we advance an understanding of time as a product

of practice, as we illustrate how change management unfolds an array of temporalities, and elucidate

the constitutive role of history, by tracing the logic of practice to the historicization of the organization

(field), of the managers (habitus), and the social structures of the global economic field in which they

are embedded. Additionally, our study offers empirical insights into the context of a Scandinavian or

Nordic model of work and welfare (Aspholm Hole et al., 2007; Ervasti & Ervasti, 2008; Kettunen,

2012; Klausen, 2001). The model, we argue, is part of the differentiation and distinctiveness which

underpin our definition of the boundaries of our field, as we carve out the social realm of the

operations department and embed it into the larger fields of the globalized and financialized economy.

3 PPPs is the process of replacing long-term service agreements (or implicit contracts) between public sector organizations with performance-based legal-contracts as part of a general public sector restructuring (Hebson, Grimshaw, & Marchington, 2003).

28

The relation between habitus and field allows us to unfold an understanding of time as

a product of practice which exceeds the metaphysical representation of time and history, as realities

in themselves, as well as the philosophy of consciousness, which reinforces the overemphasis on

managerial agency, prevalent in traditional accounts of organizational change management. Because

practice is the product of a habitus that is itself the product of embodiment of the inherent structures

of the field, it contains within itself an anticipation of these structures, as a practical reference to a

future inscribed in the immediacy of the present (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Thus, practical doing

of managers, informed by a habitus, which is attuned to the immanent tendencies of the field, becomes

an act of temporalization as they bring into existence a past and a future for a present (Bourdieu &

Wacquant, 1992). In this sense, the habitus temporalizes itself in the very act through which it is

realized. Because it implies a practical reference to the future implied in the past of which it is the

product (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 138). Following, we see, in the narratives of managers, how

the habitus represents a past which survives in the present and tends to perpetuate itself into the future

by making itself present in practices” (Bourdieu, 1977b, p. 82). In other words, by bringing the

inherent temporality of practice to the fore, we transcend traditional approaches to change

management by elucidating that the managers are not rational subjects oriented towards a unified

objective. They are guided in their choices by their position in the structure of the organization as a

field of production, and by their culturally and historically transmitted dispositions which, “as a

product of all their earlier history, still orients their present” (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 69).

29

Conclusion

In this article, we have examined implementation of performance management in a privatized

Scandinavian telecom with the aim of advancing new perspectives on change management by

elucidating time and history as constituent dimensions of organizational change.

By applying a Bourdieusian relational framework based on the theoretical concepts of habitus, field

and capital, combined with a narrative perspective, we have been able to study change management

as a practice embedded in a wider socio-historical context, insisting on the inseparability of

subjectivity and structure. 25 years after the privatization of the company, our empirical inquiries in

the form of participant observation studies and interviews, have enabled us to interlink the social past,

i.e. the historicization of the organization (field), and the historicization of the managers (habitus), to

the social present, and demonstrate how practices unite past, present and future, in the context of

changing field conditions, structured by financialized neoliberal imperatives.

Where traditional accounts of organizational change represents a metaphysical view of time, as

external or anterior to practices, and imply a philosophy of consciousness, characterized by

assumptions of rationality, and a strong emphasis on managerial agency, our analysis uncovered how

profit- and competition- oriented managerial practices were mediated by historically transmitted

enduring dispositions, shaped by the socio-historical trajectory of managers through their extensive

tenure with the company. In other words, we exposed how multiple temporalities unfolded and

emerged in the narratives of managers as their socio-cultural practices were triggered by the external

determinants of the organizational present. This enabled us to advance an understanding of time as a

product of change management practice which exceeds traditional notions of time and history in

organizational change.

30

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