Special issue on a Chinese perspective on change

Citation

(2011), "Special issue on a Chinese perspective on change", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 24 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2011.02324baa.001

Special issue on a Chinese perspective on change

Special issue on a Chinese perspective on change

Article Type: Call for papers From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 24, Issue 2

Guest Editors: Ken Baskin, Rodolphe Ocler and Check-Teck Foo

Motto

Of "all the high cultures, [the Chinese] is most different from ours in its ways of thinking. Every culture is based on assumption so taken for granted that they are barely conscious, and it is only when we study highly different culture and language that we become aware of them." (Watts, 1975)

Rationale

In spite of the emphasis on changing the very model with which we conceptualize organizations (see, for example, Bennis, 2009) in management literature since the mid-1960s, efforts to do so have almost universally disappointed. Why? Jullien (2004, p. viii), nearly30 years after Watts, suggests one answer. We need, he explains,"to attempt a shift . . . away from our normal thinking habits, a move from one framework to another – from [the West] to China and back again – which will undermine our representations and get our thoughts moving . . . shifting the impediment that is preventing us from perceiving what we have always blocked out of our thinking . . ."

Focus

When Chinese and Western philosophies began to take the forms in which we now know them, about 2,500 years ago, they diverged radically. Western philosophy embraced the logic and sense of stability found in Plato and Aristotle, rejecting the emphasis on change of Heraclitus, for example. For Chinese philosophy beginning some 5,000 years ago with Fu-Xi, on the other hand, constant change was the essence of life, rejecting the "proto-logic'' of the Later Mohists (Graham, 1989). This divergence apparently reflects the two cultures' radically different origins – China as a geographically isolated yet vast country of farmers and the West as a constantly evolving mixture of hunter-invaders with a long tradition of commerce (see, for example, Feng, 1976; Fei, 1992). To survive, the Chinese farmer had to learn to adapt to constant change in Nature's cycle – day (bright) transforming to night (dark), the seasons, growth of plants, the periodic floods and droughts. The Westerner, on the other hand, lived in a culture that emerged from the commercial tradition of Rome and access to the sea, so that survival depended on the ability to make distinctions between things to be exchanged. This different world view was translated, as A.C. Graham (1989) noted, into philosophy, where "the crucial question for [Chinese philosophers] is not the Western philosopher's `What is the truth?' but `Where is the way?', the way to order the state and the proper conduct of one's life.''

Chinese culture and philosophy, then, emphasize the importance of understanding the nature of change and the importance of dealing with it effectively. Not surprisingly, two of the best-known works of Chinese philosophy, the Book of Changes (I Ching) and the classic of The Way and Power (Tao Te Ching), are extensive meditations on change and how to live with it to one's advantage. In the introduction to his 1923 translation of The I Ching, Wilhelm explains that, underlying the book, "is the idea of change. . . . He who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his attention no longer on the transitory, individual things but on the immutable, eternal law at work in all change. This law is the Tao of Lao-tse, the course of things, the principle of the one in the many" (Wilhelm and Baynes, 1967).

Rather than the mechanical, linearly oriented freeze-unfreeze-freeze model of so much organizational change literature, the Chinese model is organic, often circular, emphasizing polarities (Yin-Yang). It is much more an ineluctable process to which one may adapt and less of "managing'' sequentially. In this special issue, we are encouraging thinkers to explore this model, examine possible analogies in other work being done today, and apply it to specific examples in organizations. For an example of the empirically grounded work on forecastability, chaos and foresight (Foo and Foo, 2003), resulting in cultural insights of contrasting differences, see Figure 1.

Figure 1

Source: Foo and Foo (2003)

Call for papers

While we remain open to various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches, we expect to focus on three general types of paper:

1. Theoretical examinations of the Chinese conception of change

2. Comparisons of this conception of change with Western analogies (see, for example, Baskin, 2007; or Latour, 2007, with his concept of actor-network-theory and organization as evolving networks of both human and non-human elements, much like the Tao)

3. Practical applications of this conception of change in organizations.

We are especially interested in practical examples of the Chinese concept of change and case histories where they are applied in existing organizations.

Proposed papers should be submitted to:E-mail: baskinman47@yahoo.com by 1 October 2011.