Conference Agenda

Over nearly two decades, the field of organizational education has emerged (Göhlich et al 2018) and international debates on organizational learning have been widened and discussed from an educational perspective. Organizational education perspectives are interested in learning in, of, and between organizations (Weber 2020). Within these debates, critical research perspectives have established (Weber & Wieners 2018). Following a poststructuralist Foucauldian perspective, organizations are not neutral or simply functional. Instead, they act according to sets of knowledge, which are related to power. From a discourse-analytic organizational-education perspective, organizations (and their representatives) are seen as epistemic terrains through which discursive bodies of knowledge ‘flow’. Understood as discursive practices, business, social science, and organizational education rationalizations of change are practices “that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1981, p. 74). Organizations in this sense are constantly actualizing discourses in their discursive practice (Marshak & Grant 2008). Institutional knowledge orders are to be understood as orders of collective seeing, sensing, and thinking. Historical and spatially situated epistemic practices imply specific “visibilities and speakabilities” of and within organizing.

The present multiple crisis like Covid, the climate crisis, the Ukraine War and the global inequality crisis lead to question the ‘normal’ ways of organizing. Taking a closer look, present critiques of modern institutions like the school address not only its main goal of individualization (Collet-Sabé & Ball 2022:12). They challenge its´ existing inherent epistemes of education, still belonging to an ‘industrial age’ and claim to move ‘beyond’ such dysfunctional rationalities. Against an individualistic onto-epistemology, against enclosed education in an institutionalized setting and against disciplinary and hierarchical points of depart schools are criticized as non-place education, as decontextualized education which is oriented towards normalization and follows market-bureaucracy logics.

In an alternative episteme for education, Diversity becomes a tenet and commoning education not only a different type of education, but a potential for organizational education, too. The symposium discusses the dimensions of an onto-epistemological shift, which is needed to transform our given institutions (like schools) towards the Common Good. Commoning then connects to self-formation and to the tenet of diversity in alternative patterns of organizing.

The symposium addresses the challenge and the potential of “co-producing and commoning a different episteme” (Collet-Sabé & Ball 2022) not only for education in general, but for organizational education. It discusses the framework of three alternative horizons (Sharpe & Hodgson 2019) and its´ institutional realization within a university and a program on transformation and inclusion (Koenig 2022). It refers to heterotopic organizing in discursive counter-imaginaries against given normative orders. As an alternative imaginary that encompasses societal, democratic, and economic notions, Commoning and Commoning Education can be seen as a “heterotopia” (Foucault 2005), which suspends, neutralizes, and inverts the given onto-epistemology. Through heterotopic imaginaries, strategies, and practices, organizing can contribute to transforming collective images and practices.

In the communication we both argue against the current episteme of modern mass schools and its organization, and for a new episteme oriented from and for the common good and diversity. In the first part, from a Foucauldian perspective, we reject the modern episteme for education and education organization (Ball and Collet, 2021), and we propose to open up to alternative education organization using his concepts of positive and productive power and heterotopia. In the second part, we propose to join the Foucauldian proposal of an ethical and political education (organization) based on the care of the self, others and environment with an approach to education as a commoning activity (Collet and Ball, 2022). Both the critical and the proposal parts could help education organizations to question its current truth, forms of government and what kind of subjectivities and relationship they produce and to be engaged with alternative proposals based on diversity and oriented from and for the common good.

Ball, S. (2017): Foucault as educator. Cham. Springer. Ball, S.; Collet- Sabé, J. (2021): Against school: an epistemological critique. Discourse. 10.1080/01596306.2021.1947780 Collet-Sabé, J. & Ball, S. J. (2022): Beyond School. The challenge of co-producing and commoning a different episteme for education. In: Journal of Education Policy.

For individuals and collectives alike, the task to fully embrace an alternative episteme in which Diversity becomes truly a tenet and communing education a vehicle for the how and where of organizational education has to be seen as demanding in various ways. Currently, still, both the mainstream (university-based) education and (educational) practices in organizations are happening within dominant neoliberal, individualistic, ableist, extractivist, and meritocratic frames, which are deeply interwoven not only in the fabric and make up of our societal institutions but also embodied by its social actors whose legitimate peripheral participation (Giddens, 1984; Wenger, 1998;) serve to reify the conditions and structures under which this participation occurs. How people learn and behave in the present moment is likely to be a projection of how people will learn and behave in the Future. This paper argues that both organizational as well as higher education can profit from a framework and process that is theoretically grounded and practically applicable and which has the potential to support the development of Future Consciousness among (groups of) people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews – Future Consciousness understood here as a heightened awareness of the future potential of the present moment (Sharpe, 2013). The practice of Three Horizons (Sharpe et al., 2016) and its accompanying theoretical concept of the Anticipatory Present Moment (Sharpe & Hodgson, 2019) can be used to both guide people into such a new onto-epistemological terrain and understand how people make sense and act towards maintaining or transforming the Future in the present moment. The presentation will introduce the aforementioned practice and theoretical concept and portray how it has been used in the design of a new Master Program on Inclusion and Transformation in Organizations and how it is being used as a cohering didactical principle to support educational practitioners from diverse fields and organizational contexts to anticipate and co-create new ways of organizing for more diverse and inclusive futures (Koenig, 2022).

Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Wiley. Koenig, O. (2022). Inklusion und Transformation in Organisationen. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Sharpe, B. (2013). Three horizons: patterning of hope. Triarchy Press. Sharpe, B., Hodgson, A., Leicester, G., Lyon, A. & Fazey, I. (2016). Three horizons: a pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society 21(2), 47. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08388-210247 Sharpe, B. & Hodgson, A. (2019). Anticipation in Three Horizons. In R. Poli (Ed.). Handbook of anticipation: Theoretical and applied aspects of the use of future in decision making (pp. 1071-1088). Springer.

Helfrich and Bollier (2020) argued that autonomy and democracy are learned in relationships because they can be experienced and lived. According to the architect Christopher Alexander, patterns can be understood as tools that promote life. They can be used in many ways and are needed to shape a free, fair, and sustainable world. Since patterns contain proven experiential knowledge, they describe the essence of successful solutions to problems that may occur in comparable contexts. The complex interplay between context, problem, and solution is critical; thus, these three elements are never isolated from each other and are found in all 33 patterns that comprise PLC. The PLC card deck condensed the experiences of more than 400 interviewees from SMOs into 33 patterns, which aim to support sociality, cooperation, and co-production. PLC aims to transform collective imaginaries and support a prosocial, cooperative and democratic praxis in and of organizing. The card deck aims to re-imagine and support individual and collective reflexivity. It addresses the social, political, and economic life from an ontological perspective and based on an integral understanding of sustainability and inclusion. This deck of 33 reflection and orientation cards (Helfrich & Bollier 2020) encompasses illustrations, problem questions, short descriptions, examples, and connection patterns based on visual-linguistic illustrations of success-critical “process patterns” in the fields of Social togetherness, Self-organization through peers and Caring and self-determined management. As an aesthetic artifact, PLC promotes a new frame of reference “among people and between people and the world” (Helfrich & Bollier, 2020, 78). It targets sustainability innovation, collective understanding, and developing an ethical attitude of the common good (cf. Helfrich & Petzold 2021). It aims to facilitate patterns of problem solving (cf. Leitner 2015, 33) to promote ethical and process- and relationship-oriented attitudes and stances. As the patterns suggest a “best practice” to use, the patterns have a hypothetical character (cf. Alexander & Ishikawa 1995). This hypothetical character supports their empirical and (research) methodical application. As a new praxis of organizing, PLC may support transformational strategies toward the integral inclusion of the social, political, and economic spheres. As an organizing pattern, it may transform the quality of conversations and self-organization. It may not only ‘re-invent’ existing organizations (Laloux 2015). From a Foucauldian perspective, it may be understood as an ‘epistemic boundary object’ towards not only the tenet of diversity, but towards the onto-epistemological shift toward commoning education – and toward a commoning organizational education (Weber 2022).

Alexander, C.; Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksfahl-King, I.; Angel, S. (1995): Eine Muster-Sprache. A Pattern Language. Städte, Gebäude, Konstruktion. Wien: Löcker Verlag. Helfrich, S. &. Bollier, D. (2020): Frei, Fair & Lebendig. Bielefeld: transcript. Helfrich, S. &. Petzold, J. (2021): Commoning oder wie Transformation gelingt. Auftakt einer Mustersprache. Neudenau/Eberswalde. Koenig, O. (2022) (Hrsg.). Inklusion und Transformation in Organisationen. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Laloux, F. (2015): Reinventing Organizations. München: Vahlen Verlag. Marshak, Robert J.; Grant, David (2008): Organizational Discourse and New Organization Development Practices. In: British Journal of Management 19, 7–19. Leitner, H. (2015): Mit Mustern arbeiten. In: S. Helfrich, D. Bollier & Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Eds.): Die Welt der Commons. Bielefeld: transcript, 27-35. Sharpe, B., Hodgson, A., Leicester, G., Lyon, A. & Fazey, I. (2016). Three horizons: a pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society 21(2), 47. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08388-210247 Weber, Susanne Maria (2022): A new Audacity of Imagination. Envisioning Sustainable Inclusion - Transforming toward new Patterns - Practicing Heterotopic Organizing. In: König, Oliver (Hrsg.): Inklusion und Transformation in Organisationen. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn, S. 199 - 217