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Different Perspectives on Organizational Culture
Published in Stian Antonsen, Safety Culture: Theory, Method and Improvement, 2017
With regard to the distinction between organizational culture as a variable and culture as a root metaphor for organizations, I take issue with both positions. The culture-as-variable position is untenable because culture is not something that can be moulded and manipulated by managers, and if it were, in turn, it would mean reducing complex social phenomena to an entity defined by a set of fixed properties. Such reification would involve a ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead 1929, in Almklov 2005), i.e. treating ideational phenomena as if they were concrete objects. Viewing culture as a root metaphor of organizations avoids this fallacy but the approach goes too far in the other direction. There are clearly many characteristics that separate organizations from what within anthropology were originally seen as cultural units, for instance the Masai people or the Yir Yoront tribe. This is particularly the case since organizational cultures will always be rooted in a larger regional and national culture and will not display the same degree of distinctiveness and uniqueness as national or tribal cultures. In my view these differences imply that organizational entities and nations or tribes cannot be seen as belonging to the same class or level of cultural phenomena. This indicates that the metaphor of organizations as cultures should not be exaggerated. This does not mean, of course, that organizations are not settings for cultural processes nor that they consequently cannot develop distinct cultural traits. All human activity produces cultural results and is influenced by cultural frames.
Human-Machine-Systems for Future Smart Factories
Published in Stefan Trzcieliński, Waldemar Karwowski, Advances in Ergonomics in Manufacturing, 2012
The Cameleon Reference Framework (Calvary, Coutaz, and Thevenin et al, 2003) describes a framework with different levels of abstraction (composed of different models) that serves as a reference for classifying user interfaces that support multiple targets, or multiple contexts of use on the basis of a model-based approach. Between these levels there are different relationships e.g., Reification covers the inference process from high-level abstract descriptions to runtime code. It is not needed to go through all steps: one could start at any level of abstraction and reify or abstract depending on the project.
Structural Stories
Published in Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Mobility in Daily Life, 2016
With this in mind, the argument is therefore that the concept of structural stories embraces the concept of discourse which, like other types of concepts within social science, describe rationality formation. Berger and Luckman (1966) deliver the concept of reification which, in many ways, entails some of the same aspects as the structural stories. Reification is ‘the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something other than human products’ (Berger and Luckman 1966, 106 [italics original]). What the concept encompasses is the idea that the individual is able to forget that they themselves are part of creating the world in which they live. The individual defines a world that they have no control over which is, instead, controlled by things out of their reach. ‘It must be emphasized that reification is a modality of consciousness, more precisely, a modality of man’s objectification of the human world. Even while apprehending the world in reified terms, man continues to produce it. That is, man is capable paradoxically of producing a reality that denies him’ (Berger and Luckman 1966, 107). Reification is an important Marxist concept termed ‘false consciousness’, which is closely connected to the concept of alienation. Reification is a particular form of consciousness and the institutional word as whole, or simply part of it, can be understood as reified. According to Berger and Luckman (1966), the world of institutions melts together with the world of nature. In the way in which things are connected, it becomes an ‘objective’ factor – and the individual has no possibility of or control over changing it. ‘The sector of self-consciousness that has been objectified in the role is then also apprehended as an inevitable fate, for which the individual may disclaim responsibility’ (Berger and Luckman 1966, 108). Structural stories are close to Berger and Luckman’s concept of reification. An essential difference is, however, that reification embraces the complete development of society and includes all institutions in society. In comparison, structural stories are more focused on the rationalities of the individuals in relation to articulating specific patterns of action while at the same time, through articulation, carrying the materialities of the hybermobile society within.
A functional view on language: a methodology for mathematics education to study shifts in prospective teachers’ discursive patterns
Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2023
This paper set out to contribute to mathematics education research on beliefs, knowledge and identity by illustrating a methodology evolving from a PhD study (Ebbelind, 2020) trying to understand, view and follow shifts in prospective teachers’ discursive patterns as teachers-to-be. The thesis aimed to contribute insights into how, or even if, experience from teacher education and other relevant past and present social practices and figured worlds matter for prospective generalist teachers’ imaginings of themselves as primary mathematics teachers-to-be. These discursive patterns evolve when participating in situations during their teacher education experience. In this paper, discursive relates to how persons transform their experience into the present situation and transform utterances from one situation to another (Fairclough, 2010). I foreground the prospective teacher in research by focusing on and describing the pre-reified processes (Skott, 2015). A reification process, in this case, can be described as how researchers consider or represent something abstract, like identity, knowledge and beliefs, as a concrete object, where researchers give definite content and form to the concept or idea. Like Skott (2015), I am interested in describing moments preceding this reification process by following shifts in discursive patterns in prospective teachers’ daily lives.
Cognitively demanding tasks and the associated learning opportunities within the MathTwitterBlogosphere
Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2022
Christopher W. Parrish, W. Gary Martin
Wenger (1998) identified a key aspect of practice as the ‘social production of meaning [emphasis added]’ (p. 49). This produced meaning is the product of a process Wenger (1998) identified as the negotiation of meaning, which includes the duality of two constituent processes, participation and reification. Wenger (1998) defined participation as the ‘process of taking part and also to the relations with others that reflect this process’ (p. 55); in other words, participation includes ‘both action and connection’ (p. 55). Reification was defined as ‘the process of giving form to our experience by producing objectives that congeal this experience into “thingness”’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 59); in turn, reification provides focal points ‘around which the negotiation of meaning becomes organized’ (p. 58).
Introducing the concept of angle to young children in a dynamic geometry environment
Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2020
In the construction of mathematical objects, Sfard also argues about the importance of phenomenon of objectification. Objectification is defined as ‘a process in which a noun begins to be used as if it signified an extradiscursive, self-sustained entity (object) independent of human agency’ (Sfard, 2008, p. 300). This process consists of two closely related sub-processes: reification and alienation. Reification consists of the replacement of talk about processes with talk about objects. Alienation refers to using discursive forms that present phenomena in an impersonal way, as if they were occurring of themselves, without the participation of human beings. It would be interesting to see in this study how students realize the notion of angles and how they make skilful transition from one realization to another during the angle-related activities. Sfard (2008) maintains that different interlocutors may use different forms of utterances for realizing a concept. The realizations can be processual and personal or structural and impersonal. According to Sfard (2008), processual utterance presents the concept as somebody’s action that requires a performer often making it personal and the structural utterance describes the structure of the concept. Since, ‘reification involves the replacement of talk about processes with talk about objects’ (Sfard, 2008, p. 171), so changes in one’s realizations over time may provide an evidence of their reified discourse.