The Irony of Making Materiality of Consequence

Introduction

The wonderful thing about focusing on materiality is that it allows us to revisit current approaches to how we think about organizations or strategy and potentially make them more useful for ourselves and useable by others. One could argue that materiality itself, whether our bodies, physical infrastructures that we are a part of or even the earth itself, is a ‘backstop’ where consequences accumulate so we can no longer ignore or avoid those consequences: poor health, inability to use technologies to get our daily work done or breakdowns in our communities and economies. I believe that identifying the consequences of the material world (Carlile et al., 2013; James, 1907) and where specifically they accumulate affords us the opportunity for greater care and precision in how we think about our lives and those we attempt to research.

Since the focus in this special issue is strategy and strategizing I will take strategy seriously in its everyday sense of intentional actions taken to improve one's situation. So, much like strategy is purposeful, the purpose of my essay is to use materiality to revisit how we think as management scholars and use the shared materiality of these words and their potential meaning to the reader to try to carry out that intention.

From INGness to consequences

Although the title for this special issue has a ring of novelty to it, by adding ‘ing’ to a word and then linking their relationship is a familiar refrain. For example, structuring and structure and practising and practice are recognizable wordplays that have been used over the last three or four decades to emphasize the dynamic nature of our lived experience. So while I am motivated by the title, I have two concerns about getting the most out of this purposeful conceptual wordplay. First, much like use of ‘INGness’ in the past, I question our willingness to make progress if we emphasize dynamics over durability and change over consequences. Second, by doubling up on the INGness with both material and strategy I worry that we will be doubly tripped up and by so doing will poorly take care of how materiality can help us better understand strategy and strategizing, let alone how materiality can help us when we invoke INGness to understand anything in our lives.

To bring these related concerns into focus, I will play with the originating image of ‘INGness’ described in Hereclitus' narrative of a flowing stream of water. This is generally brought up to emphasize the dynamic nature of the world and emphasizes a process view (Olsen, 2013). So while this reminder that you will not touch the same water twice is profound in a general sense, it is seldom, if ever, applied to additional questions that have consequence to a particular person at a specific place and time. It is our ability to ask questions such as these that allows us to develop a baseline(s) of consequences generated by materiality and how it impacts strategy in an everyday sense.

For example, if people are extremely thirsty and have hiked an area before, they probably know how to find the stream and quench their thirst. Even though it is not the same water they drank before, the location of the stream on the mountainside will probably not have changed since their last hike. What is of consequence is that people can use those embodied memories and experiences along with the durability of the mountain to find the stream to quench their thirst. However, in a typical year, if it is late August as opposed to June when they were there before, there probably will not be water in the stream to meet their needs. But if the snowpack was significant that year, then the durability of the stream could exist even into late August when the hikers are on the mountain. Of course what is typical or non-typical is only of concern to the hikers and their ability to strategize requires some knowledge of the circumstances on the mountain or the circumstances of similar mountains in order to find water to save their lives.

Accounting for layers of durability (of the past): strategizing material

In all of these scenarios what is durable and what is dynamic depends on one thing in relation to another: mountain to stream; stream to person; mountain to time of year; mountain to snowpack; a person's experience relative to another mountain with similar terrain and latitude. But even further: these things (mountain, time of year, snow, trees, stream bed, water and memories) are expressed as different layers of durability, layers not just in a spatial sedimentary image, but also that some layers change at different rates and so are more or less durable relative to another. For example, the mountain is more durable (less changing) than the stream or the season or the level of snowpack or the knowledge in the hiker's head. The fact that the hiker's grandfather could also locate the stream under dire circumstances when he was a young man attests to the relative durability of the mountain to stream. Even if you consider people who have never been there before but have hiked a lot in similar terrain, at a similar latitude, then they will have very good ideas about where to go to find water to quench their thirst because of their experiences and memories with these different layers of durability. Or even imagine a person who has drunk from the stream before but because of disorientation due to a lack of water or an injury that embodied durability of experience is no longer there to be used to address the thirst and save his/her life.

The materiality of the mountain, the location of the stream on the mountain, the time of year based on the current rotation of the earth and even the snowpack naturally accumulate and so generate layers of materiality and durability. What layers of durability imply is that some layers potentially change faster than others (Black, Carlile and Repenning, 2004); so, further, that some are harder to change than others. So, accounting for materiality, layers of materiality and their relative durability (temporal relations) is essential in developing more effective strategies by specific people, in different places and at different times. Framing this would help us explain why some hikers survive and others do not; why some strategies work and others do not.

Accounting for relational dynamics (into the future): materializing strategy

The idea of a strategy is to have future orientation, intentionality about what to do next as opposed to random actions. This does not mean it always works out according to plan. The process of strategy needs to be adaptive given the complexity of the circumstances and what arises. Strategizing implies change, changing in relation to other people, teams, initiatives or companies; adapting to new technologies or developing a new one; or reacting to a new business model or creating a new one. This intentionality ups the bar of accounting for the relative durability of layers of materiality, and if some layers of materiality change at slower rates than others then the consequences of that must be taken into consideration when developing or materializing strategy.

The act of strategizing can require short or prolonged effort; it can be individual or collective. Strategizing could happen in a committee developing a new curriculum; it could be a new human resources strategy for a recovering financial firm, a new IT strategy for a hospital, a new product strategy for a large consumer product company, or a new business model strategy for an incumbent publishing firm.

If we think about a fairly general yet challenging change in many businesses, healthcare and even education today, we can think about the move from a product-based to a service-based business model. This movement is not only impacting many people and the organization they work in, but it also affords us the opportunity to account for the durability of layers of materiality and where we can then act to create change to potentially improve our current situation as we move from product to service.

To consider this movement to a service-based model, I will once again ask a series of questions that helps us see layers and their material consequences. What experiences are embodied in my new product development team members that I have to account for and address as I try to move from a product- to a service-based strategy? What financial and accounting methods are accumulated across departments that have to be altered to move from a product- to a service-based strategy? What other technologies (or products) that support the product strategy do I have to account for and potentially address to shift from a product- to a service-based business model? What customer standards or professional/training do I have to account for and augment to move from a product- to a service-based approach? What entrenched governmental or industry regulations would have to be accounted for and addressed to facilitate my move to a service-based strategy? How do my existing competitor's current products shape how I have structured my current product strategy that I have to account for and address to make this shift? How do new entrant organizations that lack a legacy-product approach shape how I try adapting and developing a service-based business model?

Each one of these questions is associated with accumulated layers of materiality (embodied memories; electronic forms and reports; routines and technologies; professional standards; regulatory requirement; existing products, warranties; new technologies etc.), each one ever more durable and expansive than the last. In the case of a new entrant already acting with a service-based approach, it presents new layers to me, but layers that have a coherence that I have to develop. Any new strategy, whether new technical skills in a team or a new business model, has to be developed and embodied in people and accumulated in a variety of process and technologies; these layers then not only develop at different rates but they are nested.

Nested layers and nested processes

The point I made at the beginning is that materiality affords us the opportunity to be more careful and precise in our thinking. How we think about the complicated, layered and nested worlds wherein strategic actions are attempted and carried out is essential. This reminds me of the distinction that Wittgenstein made between a picture of a steaming teapot and an actual steaming teapot (Wittgenstein, 1953). The picture of a steaming teapot is a focus on a particular aspect of the phenomena, a particular process. For Wittgenstein the problem of this focus is that it limits the types of follow-on questions that can be asked and that are of potential consequences depending on the circumstances. For example, with a picture of a steaming teapot I do not ask the question if there is enough water left in the teapot to make tea; if there is any tea in the cupboard; or if there is the kind of tea that I want to make.

Bigger questions are also impossible to ask with a picture of a steaming teapot. Is the stove wood or electric; do we have enough fuel (wood or electricity) to continue boiling the water; and what happens if the fuse blows or if there is a power failure? Each of these questions, and addressing their consequences, admits a different layer of materiality to address (water in the pot; tea in the cupboard; fuel to run the stove), with some more durable than others. The more durable the layer, the more effort is required to address the consequences associated with carrying out your intended strategy (to have peppermint tea with honey). So, Wittgenstein's thought puzzle of a steaming teapot helps us consider not only the layers of materiality and their relative nested durability that surround us, but – most importantly – that the origin is you, you the actor, you the person and what you intend to do.

Materializing INGness and materializing strategizing

Materiality helps us see durability and not just dynamics; accumulations and not just activities; outcomes and not just process; consequences and not just change; layers and not just context; relations between layers and not just environment; nested origins and not just strategizing; thinking about the world not just as a sociomaterial entanglement, but a nested socioarcheology (see Briggs and Carlile, 2015) where intentions and strategies take place. Materiality brings concreteness into view but also concreteness into our thinking; it allows us to ask so many more questions that were not possible before; and questions that must be asked if we are to account for and address the intended actions of people at particular times and places, whether they be those who we study or ourselves.