TD THEORY & ASSUMPTIONS - Ó David M. Boje September, 1999

1. To define shared fate in the natural world share stories: responses to external sanctions, including the history of the problem and their context --- This creates collective definitions and shared values.

 

2. Organizing contexts are fluid, open and dynamic as new problems become more salient and old issues recede. Then TD happens in two ways.

 

3. Emery & Trist's work tells us: When many systems operating, their interdependencies constitute a richly interactive field of causation -- change in one system sets off effects in other systems that set off more effects, etc.

• Place is important. In TD2 but no longer so in TD1

1. The power structure of a network can be modified by changing "strategic couplings" and there are relationships which if removed or instituted can change the balance of power in a TD system. (Boje & Wolfe, 1986: 744).

• 1. Network participants collectively define and negotiate the issues around which a TD action is organized. Some do environmental scanning, others future search.
• 2. Domains or divisions of labor are created as stakeholders identify their special interests in these issues. Natural tendency is to create bureaucratic hierarchy.
• 3. Resource exchanges link participants together in interdependent relations. The collective interests define the relationships and the ongoing relationships reflect those issues.
• 4. Both TD1 and TD2 processes interpenetrate the same systems. This is not a choice or some kind of transformative function (See Boje & Dennehy, 1999, Chap 2 for more on Mary Parker Follett's work on "interpenetration" as a way around duality. I do not mean TD1/TD2 as a duality.