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Paradox as a Generative Practice

162 Eastern European Business and Economics Journal Vol.4, No.2, (2018): 162-188

Charmaine Williamson University of South Africa

College of Accounting Sciences, Muckleneuk Campus, Preller Street,

University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Unisa, South Africa,

0003 0027 (0)12 429 4306

[email protected], [email protected]

Peet Venter University of South Africa

Graduate School of Business Leadership, Muckleneuk Campus, Preller

Street, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Unisa, South Africa,

0003 0027 (0)12 429 4306

[email protected]

Abstract

The more conscious management of paradoxical situations is gaining currency as

practitioners wrestle with so called ‘wicked problems’ within regulated policy

environments. Organisations involved with improving lives, through furthering

development goals, often advance linear frameworks for such problems, amidst

contradictory and political inter-dependencies. The paper challenges prevailing practice

perspectives on rational strategy that are both claimed and assumed by the mandates of

development. Instead, core practices around incremental action occur, which in effect

massage the grand strategy. The findings theoretically anchor these central adaptions

through invoking Brunsson’s political qualities of organisations and inserting acquired

practices as conduits between his four qualities. In extending the theoretical context of

Brunsson’s analysis, the paper argues that practices and practitioners sustain and are

the carriers of both politics and action towards a calibration of organisational hypocrisy,

equilibrium and strategic survival.

Keywords: Strategy Activities and practices (SAP); organisational hypocrisy; nano

narratives; development.

JEL classification: M1; 02; 03

Introduction

Advancing development of societies has always carried with it noble

notions to improve lives in a sustainable manner. Development has been

attempted through redistribution of resources or leveraging local

capabilities more intelligently in order to facilitate human and ecological

development. Martens (2004:4) supports this and states that “income

redistribution between humans – is a phenomenon that is very deeply

embedded in human behaviour…. What distinguishes us as human, he

argues is “our ability to redistribute and share resources within a much

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Williamson C., Venter P. 2018. Paradox as a generative practice. Eastern European

Business and Economics Journal 4(2): 162-188.

wider social setting, outside immediate family and kin groups, even with

persons we have never met or will never meet...[such as] foreign aid,

[which is] worldwide redistribution to far-away places and people.”

Radcliffe (2016) claims that this premise is simply spurious, arguing for

how capitalism has undermined the common good. Moyo (2009: xviii;

49), however, ventures that where the rich are impelled to help the poor

through “aid”, it might well be a perverse cycle that encourages

dependency, declines in local livelihoods and facilitates

underdevelopment. In fact, perhaps the opposite of improving lives. Yet,

countries continue to accept such support, including those countries

whose budget does not require any funds from development assistance.

(See: South Africa’s Development Co-operation, 1994-2017).

Paradoxically, as well, with the rise of new forms of organisation,

social entrepreneurship and intellectual capital leveraged through big

data and technology, the macro context of ‘aid’, and attendant

development, now faces creative destruction (OECD, 2017;

Ramalingam, Laric and Primrose, 2014). Development practitioners

globally are expected to undo established norms of tight rational

management, and find more open and innovative means to respond to

constituencies (Lowe, 2013: 213: Ramalingam, Hernandez, Prieto, &

Faith, 2016). New and creative forms of financing are both provided,

and challenged, as a new panacea for poverty and inequality, previously

addressed through development effectiveness (Busan Fourth High Level

Forum, 2011; Mawdsley, Savage, and Kim, 2014).). Yet, rational

strategies are still systemically and systematically entrenched in terms of

how organisations interact within the development or ‘philanthropic’

sectors, despite periods of disruption and transition. (Radcliffe, 2016).

Asymmetry continues to characterise the strategic relationships: rational

on the side of the givers, attempts at more organic on the side of the

receivers (Eyben, 2006 a and b; Easterly, 2002; Lowe, 2013).

This paper takes up the problem of the organisation of financing for

development and challenges the landing of such strategies, in practice,

as rationally-driven (Abulof, 2015; Easterly, 2002, 2006; Holzapfel,

2016). We argue, instead, for a shift in perspective that seeks to open up

micro layers of practices that, in turn, move institutionalised goals

towards more contextually relevant strategic outcomes (Ash and Howell,

2016), as well as strategic survival. The data does draw on traditional

development co-operation (OECD-DAC, 2013), given the focus of the

transition of practice, in the nation under study (South Africa).

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‘Aid’ or development architecture has gained prominence for its

measurement-driven agendas (Linnerud & Holden, 2016) that are drilled

down from multi/bi-lateral levels to communities whose lives are to be

‘improved’. Development funding strategies have privileged the control

and measure culture in pervasive ways through ‘value for money’ and

‘results based management’ (Hatton and Schroeder, 2007; Holzapfel,

2016:3 Vähämäki, Schmidt, & Molander, 2011: 7 and 16; Radcliffe,

2016;) as well as ‘payment by results’ (Lowe, 2013: 213; Holzapfel,

2016) or ‘cash on delivery’ (Center for Global Development, 2014).

Economist, William Easterly, seminally, highlights that, ‘It is a lot easier

for…agencies to produce observable frameworks rather than actually

implement risky programs like “empowering the poor”’. (Easterly, 2002:

25).

The researchers therefore asked, through a locally-situated narrative

design, and a strategizing activities and practices (SAP) perspective, the

following research question: ‘Within a transition, how do practices of

strategic practitioners respond to a formally proclaimed strategy? The

paper probes the narratives of practitioners in South Africa who were/are

organizationally mandated to orchestrate development strategies, using

official development assistance (ODA). Such support, it has been argued,

is to enhance the reconstruction of people’s lives from intergenerational,

oppressive deprivation towards development. While the data relates to

South Africa, this paper has implications for the “wicked problems” of

development practices and sustainable development, across the globe.

(Gaim & Wåhlin, 2016; Ramlingam, Laric and Primrose, 2014;

Ramalingam, 2013).

The theoretical implications of the study thus open up insights within

the practices of development– this in the light of current outcomes-based

performance management frameworks that are dominating newer forms

of development. (Lowe, 2013). The study also narrows a knowledge gap

about how strategy practitioners, within an organisational unit, practice

strategy in a manner that is not necessarily a configuration of strategy

such as that found in official descriptions (see e.g. South Africa. National

Treasury: 2003; 2013), but, rather shows human beings inhabiting and

working within ‘the skin of’ political and paradoxical organisational

systems. The milieu of entwined ambiguity, meaning-making and

counter-strategizing are also suggested as fruitful study areas around

strategic change, suggested recently by Spee and Jarzabkowski (2017).

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Ramalingam (2013:134) advocates for ‘organised complexity’ in

development contexts and the need to build the evidence base in these

under-theorised and under-practised fields. The changes in development

support also require different ways of strategizing, amidst transitions

suggested by the previously cited creative destruction. This paper

responds to such apertures.

The paper is in five sections. The first introduces the unit of analysis.

The second provides an overview of historical and current contexts that

both situate the strategy practices and practitioners and disclose the

contrasts. The research methods and the conceptual points of departure

are described. Data are presented (findings) and, thereafter, discussed.

The conclusion identifies limitations and makes recommendations for

further investigations.

Context: a narrative on development assistance: South Africa

In his analysis of pre-1994 development in relation to the people of South

Africa, Fioramonti (2004: 4) recalls that the Special Programme for

Victims of Apartheid was unique. The draconian slate of apartheid

regulations and the policing of activism allowed for the usual procedural

controls of systems to be relaxed, as such processes would open up

activist organisations to further oppressive measures. More permissive

practices were characterised by trust in, and solidarity towards, the

Liberation Movement, but were out of the ordinary mould for

development agencies. The cause was ‘humanitarian’, given apartheid’s

status as a crime against humanity (Centre for Policy Studies, 2001).

South Africa’s liberation funding, therefore, set up alternative routines

to govern funding, parallel to the routine of international development

practices. Such patterns set up embedded practices to contend with

socially complex issues. (Williamson, 2013). Furthermore, these

practices grounded a looser negotiated approach between the

practitioners within South Africa and the development agencies. This

entailed creative contextual responses that disbursed development for

covert on-the-ground liberation needs, and to bypass formal practice so

that detection by the apartheid government was confounded. (Centre for

Policy Studies, 2001).

In 1994, South Africa was welcomed as a democracy on the

international stage. This created massive-scale change, which included a

shift from liberation or ‘under-ground’ funding to Official Development

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Assistance within a democratic state. Official development funds were,

and still are, governed by The Reconstruction and Development

Programme (RDP) Fund Act (Act No 7 of 1994). (South Africa. National

Treasury: 2003). Organizational and practice definitions around ODA

were written into the adopted Policy framework and procedural

guidelines for the management of Official Development Assistance

(ODA). (South Africa. National Treasury, 2003). This policy framework

is constructed around the global, formalised paradigms of aid

effectiveness (Busan Fourth High Level Forum, 2011: OECD-DAC,

2013, South Africa. National Treasury, 2011). South Africa now needed

rapidly to shift towards organizing development within globally-

anchored development rules. (Ewing and Guliwe, 2008). This now

required a re-orientation of practice, with practitioners moving from

legitimately bypassing rational strategies to now legitimising such

prescribed development strategies and working within ‘the rules of the

game’. It could be assumed, if one traces this line of sight, that South

Africa’s strategy practices would then become aligned with, and conform

to, deliberate, exacting and legalistic patterns inherent in public

financing. We challenge this construction.

Research Methodology

We responded to the research question qualitatively, using interpretive

paradigms (Schultz and Hatch 1996: 537). Within narrative design and

analysis, diverse story lines, documents and memory work were

authoritatively associated (Shuman, 2015: 42; Schultz and Hatch 1996:

537; Haug, 1997) to respond to the bid for “the narrative turn” in SAP

(Fenton and Langley, 2011:1171).

Methods, able to probe more deeply below the surface of strategy and

organisations, were applied through in-depth unstructured interviews

(Nicolini, 2013; Paroutis & Heracleous, 2013; Seidl and Whittington,

2014; Suddaby, Seidle & Lê, 2013; Vaara & Whittington, 2012). We

used sensitising concepts (Bowen, 2008: 141) around SAP, followed by

a central question. (As a strategic practitioner, please tell me the stories,

from your experiences of organizing ODA…). A theoretical sample of

nine practitioners was interviewed in an initial preliminary exploration,

which confirmed the direction of the paper as well as the appeal of the

narrative turn. Thereafter, twelve purposively sampled practitioners,

including the researcher as a participant, narrated their insider knowledge

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(Shuman, 2015: 43; Guest, Bunce and Johnson: 74). Interview

conversations with participants from both samples were conducted over

six months. As a methodological norm, (Tracy, 2013) ethical

considerations were integral to the study.

The sampling frame thus included the relevant public sector

organisational units that mainly deal with ODA. The main participants

of the study (anonymised) are the senior management layer of the

appropriate units. A past member of management was also interviewed.

The first author was also in a senior role in ODA and was a participant

observer, having been involved with ODA for eighteen years (1998-

2016). This knowledge was integrated into the study through memory

work (Haug, 1997:7). The first author, as researcher, took on the role of

“organic intellectual” and therefore participated in the construction of the

storying, as a participant, deliberately contributing to mutual memory-

making. Eighteen years of anecdotal observation formed a backdrop of

which two years rendered formal field notes.

Data were also analysed and associated through extracting story-lines

from a document review (Bowen, 2009; Shuman, 2015) of twenty-three

purposively sampled policy documents, official websites, research

papers, newsletters, strategy documents and official ODA reports. This

data was mainly used to establish the extant documented strategies,

within which the practitioners are expected to practice.

Using ATLAS.ti for its ‘working context’, transparency and collation

strengths (Silver and Lewins, 2014: 34), we used ‘structural coding’ and

directed content analysis which Saldaña (2015:98) identifies as a means

to respond to the research question. Coding was done in line with the

theoretical approach of SAP to verify strategic practice bundles or pillars

(Nicolini, 2013). The coding led to categories (Saldaña, 2015) that

generated aggregated practice-bundles (Nicolini, 2013), derived from the

document review, and from single and clustered codes induced from

interview and observation data. These bundles provided the detailed, yet

deliberate, organisational landscape, therefore addressing the sectoral

strategic practice environment (Whittington, 2006: 620).

The second cycle of coding explored the more interpretive strategy-

making against the deliberate landscape. (Jarzabkowski, et al, 2016: 254;

Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2017). Second-cycle codes were then coupled to

the foundational conceptual framework of the study that we had chosen

a priori. Codes of contradictions, intelligibility and dissonance led us to

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organisational hypocrisy (Brunsson, 1986, 1993, 2006) and complex

responsiveness (Stacey and Griffin, 2006; Stacey, 2012).

In coherence with the calls for fresh methodologies in SAP (Vaara

and Whittington, 2012), the findings are re-created as nano narratives

(Williamson, 2016: 863), defined, in a ‘byte-size’ world, as

‘concentrated views… in moments of routine or intensity… provided in

novel nano accounts, departing from the tradition of lengthier narrative

interview data’. These snippet narratives were derived from the coding-

to-theme-to-theorising pathway in Saldaña’s model. (Saldaña, 2015:14).

Conceptual Framing

The strategy as practice research agenda (Jarzabkowski and Spee: 2009;

Jarzabkowski and Whittington, 2008; Johnson, Langley, Melin &

Whittington, 2007; Vaara and Whittington: 2012, Wang, Lou & Hong,

2016; Whittington, 1996; 2003; 2006) asks questions about what

strategists do, in practice, for their strategising to be integral to the

organisational direction, strategic outcomes, success and/or survival of

the organisation. Given the multiplicities of strategies, strategists and

strategic practices when one considers such a human-centred approach,

it is not surprising that scholars in the field acknowledge that the

strategy-as-practice field departs from the privileged mainstream of

economic-driven models of strategy and, as such, requires more

empirical work, such as this study, to establish its ontological positioning

(Seidl and Whittington, 2014). Our intention was to explore the micro-

level of strategic agency against the macro structure of deliberate

pronounced strategy in terms of ODA (Jarzabkowski, Kaplan, Seidl &

Whittington, 2016), predicating that deliberate policy may be pursued

adaptively and iteratively.

To do this we used the theoretical lens of ‘embeddedness’ (Seidl and

Whittington, 2014: 2) of more intense interrelated strategy practices and

their outcomes, following the line of argument of Jarzabkowski. et al.,

(2016). We traced both the declared and practice parlances of broader

strategy in the society of ODA. Patterns of contradiction and paradox

(Gaim & Wåhlin, 2016) were theoretically recognised. We attended to

particular instances of how practitioners ‘interpreted, manipulated, and

improvised’ strategy practice while they were also immersed with

‘entanglement and interdependence’ (Jarzabkowski, Kaplan, Seidl &

Whittington, 2016:254), in attempts to implement policy. Brunsson’s

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theory of organisational hypocrisy (1986, 1993, 2006) followed on our

orienting theory to provide an instrumental theory (Galle, 2011:81).

Brunsson (2002; 2006: xiii), in explaining the ‘organization of

hypocrisy’, initially premises the consensual and normative views that

organisations are formed and exist in order to work collectively towards

the production of goods and/or services in a co-ordinated, effective and

efficient manner, a manner which ‘acts’. (Brunsson, 1986; 1993; 1995;

2006). This is the formal organisation. In the so-called real world,

however, there are environments, processes, structures and outputs

(Brunsson, 2006: 213) that do not neatly fit into normative

conformations of organisations and are intensely anchored in politics,

including the winning of diverse stakeholder support. Brunsson thus

follows on his initial contention and shows that managing

inconsistencies, through dissonance and disassociation, enables survival.

In fact, such contradictions should be specifically built into

organisational ‘DNA’. These measures coalesce, then, into the informal

organisation. Brunsson (1986, 1993, 2006) therefore provides an ‘action

model’ as well as a ‘political model’ of organisations, as well as a

mixture of both. (Brunsson, 2002; 2006). Pure action organisations

operate on the basis of consistency which incorporates talk, decisions

and actions that deliver products in coherent and predictable manners.

Organisations which act and/or react politically are organisations

constituted around shifting environmental norms, that have conflicting

structures and that have outputs that are inconsistent in relation to their

‘talk, decisions and products’ (Brunsson, 1986: 181; 2006: 213).

Organisations that operate within the political mode survive effectively

and grow on the basis of ‘organisational hypocrisy’, which Brunsson

(1986: 1) describes as ‘necessary’ and what we could expect of

organisations.

In his discussions of such organisational configurations, Brunsson

(2006) indicates that the public sector, in particular, which incorporates

more politically-based institutions, requires deepened study as there has

been little attention paid to contributions and interpretations made by the

sector in relation to organisational theory. In addition, Brunsson does not

attend to the role of practices in such institutions. These are gaps

addressed through this research.

In consideration of the above theoretical position, ODA might well be

considered as a political organisation, located as it is in the public sector

and dealing with wide-ranging contradictions from the environment

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(Collier and Dollar, 2004; Easterly, 2002, 2006; Holzapfel, 2016;

Quadir, 2013), multiple, conflicting and competing interests (Moyo,

2009; Radcliffe, 2016; Ramalingan, 2013), and problem orientation and

inconsistencies integral to the complexities of development (Abbas and

Niyiragira, 2009; Easterly, 2006; Easterly and Williamson, 2011;

Ramlingam, et al., 2014). Development and public policy are seen to deal

with ‘wicked problems’ (Ramalingam, 2013; Gaim & Wåhlin, 2016).

While the data confirmed paradoxes that Brunsson’s scholarship

makes explicit, they also showed complex responsiveness in the micro

incremental practices of strategy. Complex responsiveness (Stacey and

Griffin: 2006, Stacey: 2012) became further instrumental theoretical

positions that, as Galle (2011: 91) states, provided the ‘task’ lighting of

the subject matter, providing ‘more concentrated illumination’ and

accelerating a more nuanced understanding of practitioners’ strategy

work in ODA.

Stacey and Griffin (2006: 3) argues that there is a naive assumption

that the public sector is constituted of simple systems programmed

around intended global patterns which are expressed through a targeted,

rational and almost cybernetic management of ‘the system’ and its

performance. Despite this, programming and systems, in ODA, are taken

up in the discipline and enacting of logical framework and results-based

management (Cracknell, 1989; Earle, 2003; Wiggins and Shields: 1995).

Stacey does temper his assertion by indicating that there are also people

who bring a more sophisticated level of systems thinking to within the

public sector. Challenging this assumption, and in the light of his

tempered assertion, Stacey (2006: 33) cautions that people should not be

seen as ‘simple rule-following human beings’, an organisational tenet

taken up by Gaim & Wåhlin (2016: 34), who argue for creative people

working within coexisting paradoxical tensions. Organisations and

systems, like strategies, are not things, but are instead an intricate set of

relational interactions between people (and their practices) and the

infrastructures of their organisations (Stacey and Griffin, 2006). As such,

Stacey (2012) considers organisational life not only at the level of the

macro, but pointedly refers us to the local and micro. At this micro level,

organisations might better be understood through the closer study of

paradoxical strategising practices of the organisation and, in

understanding these strategising practices, understand how both people

and organisations continue to cope, survive (Brunsson, 1986; 1993;

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2006) and even thrive. (Chia and Holt, 2006; Chia and Mackay, 2007;

Suddaby, et al., 2013; Gaim & Wåhlin, 2016).

Our review and subsequent data thus led us to the consonance

between Brunsson’s constituents of a political organisation and complex

responsive processing of relating (Stacey and Griffin, 2006). This

alignment is demonstrated in the following table which shows how

Brunsson’s characteristics have the close-to-equivalent characteristics in

complex adaptive or responsive processes of relating. Table 1 presents

an alignment of these respective characteristics.

Characteristics of the Political

Organisation

Characteristics of adaptive

and responsive processes

within systems of complexity

Paradoxical and inconsistent Contradictory and contains

paradox; often in state of non-

equilibrium

Contrasting organisational structures:

formal and normative and informal and

performative/ritualised

Formal and covert informal

patterns at play as people

respond to complexity

Political activity as a form of

organisational hypocrisy

Political actions as a form of

chaos or evolution

Conflict structure Disjuncture and chaos can take

the forms of conflict

Existence of organisational hypocrisy

that leads to survival

Ordinary everyday processes of

relating allow people to cope

with complexity and uncertainty

of organizational life

Emergent outputs as opposed to action

outputs or in ‘real organisations’: part

action, part political

Outcomes that move along

continuum of emergence and

intentional

Not overt or conscious

‘Tacit and unconscious’ (Stacey

1995: 493)

Balancing a multiplicity of ideological

networks

Self-organising in processes of

emergence; local networks

support emergence

People expressing contradictory ideas

and practising inconsistent ideologies

within a complex environment

Human responsiveness that

expresses contradictions within

complexity

These theoretical perspectives, as discussed above, framed the

exploration of strategising practitioners as they calibrate strategic

Table 1.

Alignment of

characteristics.

Source: authors

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outcomes (Jarzabkwoski et al., 2016), amidst the political attributes of

the ODA system. These calibrations, entwined in both practices and

practitioners, entail the use of the requisite hypocrisy. (Brunsson, 2006).

Findings

The strategy practices established through the document review are

described with their descriptive nano elements and thematic antecedents.

Table 2 presents a summary of the strategy practices described with their

nano elements and thematic antecedents.

1. Themes 2. Practices

from themes

3. Nano descriptive elements

National Policy,

Formalised strategy,

Global alignment to

development

effectiveness, Policy

Prescriptions

Formulaic

presentation

of strategy

Practice bundles of formal ODA

strategy elements: RDP/NDP;

Development Effectiveness

Agendas; Strategic Partnership;

Executive /Parliamentary processes

and documents Medium Term

Strategic Framework/Budget;

Outcomes Approach; Strategic

Plans; Country Strategy Papers;

Agreements; Guidelines;

Programming; Annual consultations,

Formal meetings; Logical

Framework Approach; Reports

Espousing/

acknowledging

legitimacy of formal

strategy, Informal

strategy, Multiplicity

and Contradiction,

Attempts at

alignment,

Massaging policy

and issue selling

Espousing

Strategy and

seeking

Alignment

Multiple agendas: inherited flexible

systems (pre-1994) are overtaken by

formal ODA; South Africa’s

transition towards alignment; yet

practice on the ground remains

contradictory and practitioners

espouse policy while juggling

multiple agendas

Reading the system,

Finessing,

Reframing,

Mediation,

Translating

Intelligible

Responsivene

ss

What is stated in policies is

juxtaposed and massaged through

responding to misalignments or

conflict in the system with

intelligibility and responsiveness

Table 2.

Summary of the

strategy

practices

described with

their

nanoelements

and thematic

antecedents.

Source: authors

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Formal organisation

(compliance),

Informal adaptations

(contradictory),

Seeking equilibrium,

Contradictory

compliance

Paradox Made up of the formal and informal

organisations; complexities.

Hypocrisy allows for mediation

between the complexities and

therefore for the organisation of

ODA/DPs to be sustained and

survive.

These described practices establish the extant proclaimed strategy. Data

presented from interviews, as nano narratives, are headed with in vivo

codes (Saldaña, 2015), selected for their evocative imagery, and are

accompanied by the interpreted strategy practice.

Nano Narrative 1: Practice of espousing strategy while seeking

alignment: ‘...the art of managing multiple agendas… that intricacy,

that finesse’ (William)

We established practice bundles of the deliberate strategy landscape.

Yet, countering this prevailing view, the data capture the espousing of

strategy within actual manifold agendas. Attempts at strategic alignment

are described against the mandated and deliberate agenda (first, the

RDP/later the National Development Plan – NDP) and strategies of

ODA. Yet participants relate the ‘finesse’ of choreographing formalised

strategy against parallel and often seductive imperatives. Data categories

showed that formalised strategy bundles abound and that each

practitioner sells the deliberate strategy, citing it and explaining it. Yet

what is practised is the ever-present active massaging of the plans within

conflicting demands.

Susanna: This is integral to your story, an RDP office: a whole lot of

donors, some of whom had very strategic, important links with the ANC

in exile, like the XX and YYY… wanted to be part of building a new

South Africa. It was romantic, it was idealistic, it was the sexiest thing

in the world…everybody flooded in with bags of money.

William: the issue is that ODA started from a fraternal relations

perspective and moved… become more sophisticated and we need to up

our game to meet that sophistication, that intricacy that finesse. [From]

the honeymoon period, [donors] became worried and created a whole

range of additional bureaucracy, and South Africa said this is actually

not what we want for development.

Organizationally, the transition from the pre-1994 looser practices

(the “sexy”; “honeymoon” period), in the introductory problem

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statement, and the bureaucracy of official relations become problematic.

Practices that had held true for political liberation funding now had to be

aligned to formal agreements. Activists of the struggle now become

mainstream strategists and find themselves straddling a paradoxical

tension.

Felicity: [We have]… a disconnect between political and strategic

…so let’s allow for parallel processes that do ‘get’ to each

other…because you have such a lot of just parallels … everything …

looks so smooth on paper, this is the time frame for this…but it never

happens like that…everybody wakes and like oh, there’s now guidelines

to satisfy on the donor’s side and there’s your public finance

management act on the other part of the local partners side that needs to

satisfied and there’s really a disjuncture…”

Amidst formulaic means of implementing strategy, practices of issue-

selling and story-telling try to mimic or modulate the deliberate agenda.

The strategists provide exemplars of seeking alignment amidst

contradictory circumstances.

Charles: …my experience of strategy, in this space. Things happen,

there’s an international agreement, there’s a move, there’s a new paper,

there’s a new policy, there’s research coming out. You take these ideas

on, and you digest them and you apply them without even knowing or

thinking into your current practice and so, that’s how quick it is, it really

happens quickly, there’s always a new perspective.

Peter:…[S]trategies has had to be constantly readjusted, that’s what

it’s about. I mean strategic planning is about saying at this point in time

with what you know here and what you don’t know here or what you

think you don’t know here you can do the following things. But by next

year you need to readjust the strategy …it is always fluid.

Felicity: …In terms of the strategy, it could have taken forward much

better if there wasn’t this disconnect between the programming and

signing of financing agreements basically …if there was more honesty

around where you heading to a certain extent.

Amidst balancing multiple agendas, the practitioners were also seen

to respond with practices that show how to sustain inconsistencies

(Brunsson, 2006) through responding, intelligibly, to the dissonance in

the system. This introduces Nano Narrative 2.

Nano Narrative 2: Practices of intelligible responsiveness:‘…we apply

the theory when we use these concepts in the big forums, but what does

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this actually mean in practice?’ (Giselle).

While observing the workings of a political organisation and hearing its

stories, we encounter complex responsive people using intelligibility to

counter the misalignment and conflict in the system (Nicolini, 2013). We

hear that strategy, while it is stated in policies, is not reified. It needs to

be hands-on and driven by attuned, conscious micro-practices.

Giselle: …got to find the balance between the necessary red tape and

the unnecessary…so when you stretching the boundaries and trying to

make things happen you’ve also at the back of head you’ve got a piece

of legislation. The person is not using that [stretching] to get away with

something or have an easy time, the person’s actually seeing the

complexity of the situation and knowing how to respond in order to get

you to what needs to be done.

Practising intelligible responsiveness entails a balancing act between

the espoused and the practised strategies. The dynamic interactions

between inconsistent attributes (Brunsson, 2006) are refereed by human-

driven practice.

Charles: I think that’s the word, ‘responsiveness’. We are forced to be

responsive to the system, because the environment is constantly

changing … the system works, it does work, but, at the same time, it’s a

human driven system. In development, more than anything else, it is

human driven. You know, you’re not building machines.

The intention is to sustain the system through these hypocritical

(Brunsson, 2006) practices. Consequentially, one such practice is

reframing and, while there are several examples from the participants,

the following exemplar is illuminating: A donor prescribes the policy to

fund the HIV and Aids crisis. The recipient receiving the funds does not

have the mandate to implement HIV and AIDS responses, but does have

the mandate to improve government systems. The practitioners, through

responsive interpreting and reframing, convince the donor that HIV and

Aids would be better addressed, if at a strategic level, there is a focused

programme to address the country’s health systems as a whole, and not

simply HIV and AIDS in isolation. This was but one of many examples

of spinning the implementation to fit the formal agreements.

A second exemplar of a survival practice is mediation. Several

participants speak of different layers of mediating between policy,

politics, people and implementation on the ground. An assumed tidy

world of strategy, delivering according to the agenda of development, is

disrupted by what a seminal participants outlines as ‘untidy’ to-ing and

176



fro-ing between donor and government as practitioners spend a year of

bureaucracy meeting, massaging and debating on a small set of common

indicators: ‘…there was even a fight…about how to create indicators…’.

(Peter). Peter’s words, reproduced here verbatim, illustrate this practice

of mediation even further:

What government tried to do was to persuade them [development

partners] away from saying to us you have to do the following indicators,

because that was how we were going to use ODA. We were saying to

them, ODA is for value addition… it had to do what supported

Governments’ strategic direction and indicators…[so we had] to re-

orientate the view, and it was not an easy thing…

Giselle sums this up in her explanation of the importance of

translating formal strategy into practice:

…[we] drive this whole process by saying whatever theorising we’re

doing and pontificating around issues, what does it mean in our practice?

Is this adding value [as ODA policy states] to the Government that we

are supporting? So, how are you translating all of this, in practice?

Therefore, the practices of attuned responsiveness, reframing and

mediating, while ostensibly smoothing the surface, also speak to the

creative tension of paradox (Gaim and Wåhlin, 2016).

Nano Narrative 3: Contradictory compliance as a generative practice:

‘I give, in a way, schizophrenic answers…’ (Maria)

The story of paradox is oftentimes the narrated and observed tale of the

formal and informal organisation (Brunsson, 1986; Stacey, 1995). On the

one hand, the formal organisation exists with a declared strategy that,

nevertheless, emanates tension and questioning. It is held as the binding

agent of formal policy and the ‘right thing to do’ within the mandates of

policy. Not consciously surfaced, but in the sub-text layers of

practitioners and practices, is the informal organisation. It is made up of

contradictory compliance (seemingly complying with the rules, yet with

an interpretation that is more adaptive and intelligible so as to rationalise

rule-following while massaging diverse stakeholder interests). Hence,

strategy is practised through daily re-interpretations, re-framing and

ultimately survival within Brunsson’s ‘political attributes’ (2006: 213).

Yet, at the same time, the formal strategy may not be lost and is invoked

(see also: RDP and NDP) to provide referent power amidst the daily

asymmetrical informal dimensions so as to reconcile competing

demands and to ‘simplify a complex reality’ (Gaim and Wåhlin, 2016:

177



33). The following extracts demonstrate the contradictions in the system

and the calibrations between the formal and informal dimensions:

Charles: …And that means that I probably do more, say more in

coffee breaks, in talking to colleagues and supporting certain stances,

rather than you know, dominating a policy discussion in plenary. That’s

the practice, the practice is influence… it does become a hidden

agenda…

Interviewer Yet, you’ve got a rational strategy that you’re now

implementing…

Charles: You know what, we do… except development co-operation

is a conflation of so many different interests at play… The strategy is a

guide, the strategy is part of cajoling, convincing and motivating, the

strategy paints this picture, a better South Africa for all and that’s a

different thing for everyone…

Felicity: So you have all the regulations, that’s good, but there’s this

disconnect to get to implementation… so a lot gets lost in terms of that…

The quotations above are but a sample of data that combined to

demonstrate both the organisation of hypocrisy (Brunsson, 2006) and the

umpiring role of practices to facilitate survival and equilibrium

(Brunsson, 2006; Stacey, 1995). The data, while responding to the

articulated gaps, also responds to a gap in ‘practical competence in

divergent situations’ as well as explorations of ‘micro practices’ amidst

ambiguity (Gaim and Wåhlin, 2016). Practitioner competence within

disjunctive situations, therefore, might well be about the practices

demonstrated by such data. These issues and the data of the study are

taken further in the discussion that follows.

Discussion

As our data substantiate, we distilled core elements that constitute

practice bundles (Nicolini, 2013) and shaped these into narrative

accounts of how strategy, in reality, is practiced against a proclaimed

official plan. While the ‘case’ was one of South Africa’s development,

there is sufficient evidence that development agencies work with

prescribed goals and plans (See United Nations Sustainable

Development Goals; Organisation for Economic and Development Co-

operation: Development Assistance Committee; World Bank and

bilateral development partner strategies), yet might well be under

pressure to go through change. (Ramalingam, 2013).

178



We responded to the research question (repeated for ease of reference:

‘Within a transition, how do practices of strategic practitioners respond

to a formally proclaimed strategy?) through findings and interpretations

that follows.

The practice lens, as presented in this research, uncovered the

rendering of contradictory and assumed political stratagems. Practice

(SAP) is a hitherto theoretical dimension not covered by Brunsson whose

organisational theory on political characteristics include: ‘the

environment of inconsistent norms’; ‘conflict’ at the level of structure;

problem-focused and ‘rationalistic processes’ as well as ‘outputs’ that

are equivocal in terms of the interplay of ‘talk, decisions and products’.

(Brunsson, 2006: 213). Ramalingam et al., (2014) anticipated the need

for a shift in global development practices that need to address wicked

problems during anticipated or real transitions. This study provides some

of the exploratory flesh of how practitioners may respond in a localised

manner, using both politics as well as incremental action, as opposed to

keeping only grand strategic swathes of development in mind.

South Africa, as one player, within the chronological trajectory of its

evolving systems, takes on formal practices of ODA in alignment with

its structure of government. Yet the data allude that this micro lens is

founded in macro expected practice, structure and processes of

international partners. The influence of the wide-spread development

partners, with their more mature democracies, indicates a practice

environment, drawing from their broader socialised practices

(Whittington, 2007). These established practices are brought to bear on

low income and emerging economies that do not necessarily respond to

the sophistication of systems (Easterly and Williamson, 2011), while

they are grappling with the complexities of their home-grown growth

and survival.

Within this situated contradictory space, we discerned incremental

and embedded patterns of strategy practices that have been reproduced,

developed, adapted, directed and tweaked. The main organizational

practices (Jarzabkowski et al: 2007) of espousing strategy, alignment,

responsiveness, reframing, mediation and paradox happen in a web of

inter-alia: messiness, negotiations, issue-selling, politicking,

romanticising, rationalising/ trade-offs and ‘talk’ (Brunsson 1986: 7)

between development givers and recipients. These routines, as this

research suggests, are established through responsive practitioners,

equivocally spanning the disjunctive formal and informal organisations,

179



while seeking equilibrium for strategic outcomes, within contextual

complexity (Stacey, 1995). The actions are also undertaken in the

interests of improving lives, the so-called intention of the development

co-operating partners. Following Brunsson (2006), we find the use of

organisational hypocrisy as one of the productive solutions by which

these tensions could be managed. ‘Hypocrisy is seen as a solution, it

possesses moral advantages and it is often impossible to avoid’.

(Brunsson: 2006:xi).

Therefore, unlike a so-called normative view of hypocrisy which is

treated as ‘dysfunctional, problematic and to be avoided at all cost’, the

practice of double standards (Brunsson 2006: xvi; 1986: 4) is part of

managing the tensions and intellectual endeavours around the artificial

separation of ‘the formal and informal organization.’ (Stacey: 1995: 488;

Brunsson: 2006:7; 206). Practitioners deal with and ‘survive’ the

complex strategy demands of development architecture, by infusing

practices with ‘organized hypocrisy’ amidst wicked problems

(Brunsson: 1995, 2002; Ramalingam, 2013). Because of the transitions

in the dynamic world of aid, practitioners are required to walk a tight

rope of alignment and responsiveness, artfully interpreting their strategy

journey. (Eyben, 2006; Whittington, 2006). Practising strategy,

therefore, at a granular level, entails both complexity and hypocrisy.

Strategizing together with organisational hypocrisy allow the parties to

build deliberately actions of ‘inconsistencies into the organization and

into the organizational output’ (Brunsson, 2006: 13; 206), given that

most public sectors faces problem that cannot easily be solved or

resolved. In this case, the public sector faced an additional problem: how

to undo a history of organic practice and reformulate it into an expected

formalised strategy. This has implications for strategic change (Spee and

Jarzabkowski, 2017) that has to accommodate the manifold slippery

meanings of development assistance.

Also, in the use of micro-practice, so as to extend Brunsson’s thesis,

we discerned that Brunsson’s (2006:19; 213) ‘political organisation’ has

more ‘action’ than previously assumed: manifested in practitioners’

creative, adaptive actions. These incremental measures are detected as

forms of action only when and if organisations recognise that micro

actions do constitute interpretive strategy instead of focusing only on

best practice (Jarzabkwoski et al., 2016) and/or grand scales of strategy.

Graphically, we depict the contention on micro strategizing within

political attributes, in Figure 1 as follows:

180



Therefore, when Brunsson (2006) questions the interrelations between

the ellipses of the figure of political attributes of organisations, as he does

(see: Brunsson, 2006: 212-215), we overlay Brunsson’s interconnecting

arrows with daily, intermeshed configurations of the strategising

practices as connectors or practice carriers between Brunsson’s four

dimensions. (Brunsson, 2006: 213).

By adopting a practice-based lens as complementary to the other four

existing dimensions of political processing (environment, process,

structure and output), incremental practices may, therefore, allow the

systemic dissonance to be better discerned, used, understood and worked

with, within organisations that have political leanings (Brunsson: 1986;

1993; 2006).

The central implication, therefore, is that the strategising practices, as

daily levels of activities are in themselves micro actions, or are part of

micro politics, towards a strategic outcome. Therefore, while action-

driven organisations might well see the marks of more obvious and

dramatic actors producing central action-oriented outputs, the

practitioners of this political world calibrate micro activities through

various elucidated practices to achieve an output. This output might well

Fig. 1. Schematic

depiction of micro

strategizing with

political attributes.

Adaptation of

Brunsson:

1986:181;

2006:213 and

Stacey: 1995.

181



be strategic compliance with, or achievement of, the expected outcomes,

but, within the world of hypocrisy, it might well be seen as ‘contradictory

compliance’. The summative concept of contradictory compliance also

modestly deepens Jarzabkowski, et al.’s views that strategy is ‘neither

deliberate nor emergent…[but] is continuous deliberation of interpreted,

manipulated, and improvised’ practices (2016: 254) of people who go

beyond the economic man and woman to the responsive emotive men

and women who speak in both text and sub-text as they strategise,

respond and adapt.

This study therefore adds to the model of the political qualities of

organisation through inserting practices as central conduits or

associations between the four qualities. In extending the theoretical

context of Brunsson’s figure (2006: 213, 1986: 181) with practices, and

with practices being inherently based at micro activity, we are

contending that micro calibrations of practices introduce a subtle level

of ‘action’ into the real world of organisations. These micro elements are

made up of ‘patterns of action with the sub-text of politics’ and ‘patterns

of politics with the sub-text of actions’. The activity is undertaken by

various practitioners who play an integral role in working with strategy,

not only through their creativity…, but also through ‘resistance and

reinterpretation’ (Whittington: 2010: 121), as has been shown through

the findings and interpretation of the data.

Beyond this, we have also introduced the very real existence and

implications of strategic practices into a figure that has, thus far, been

limited to norms, structure, processes and outputs. We posit that

Brunsson’s theory has not, until this study, been opened up to the practice

perspective.

Conclusion

This exploration found that South Africa’s ODA is not necessarily only

about the pursuit of planned-for development goals for the sake of nation

and humanity, but an intensely political construction between role

players within international relations who talk, act, legitimise and

respond in complex ways that calibrate the system towards ‘a necessary,

[and responsive] hypocrisy’ (Brunsson: 1993; Stacey: 2012; Stacey and

Griffin: 2006).

The research has a number of implications for development

programmes within the public sector and perhaps even for the

182



understanding of organisational strategy, also within the public sector.

The latter is an area, to which Brunsson (2006) alerted scholars, as being

under-theorised. ODA and public sector practitioners need to examine

current strategy practice in the light of how the dissonance between

espoused strategy and strategy-as-practised operates. This would imply

recognising the value for organisational hypocrisy as a survival and

coping mechanism which allows people within the organisation to be

more responsive to a multiplicity of differing, but perhaps equally

important, expectations.

This study was undertaken following an exploratory research process

that brought forth a more human–centred ‘take’ on ODA within a

transitional public sector setting. As such, this research has its limitations

in that it has explored a country that has a responsible track record in the

management of ODA and international relations (Alden and Schoeman:

2013; South Africa, 2008; Vickers: 2012). There is therefore room to

apply these theoretical implications to other settings of ODA where the

contours of politics, development needs, and the management of public

monies might be more complicated and complex.

The practice turn, in the light of its confluence with organisational

hypocrisy and complex adaptivity and responsiveness, requires far more

empirical ventures in order to develop a more robust view of what it is

able to bring to these evolving theoretical approaches. Equally,

organisationally hypocritical practices, as complex responsive processes

equivocating between deliberate and emergent strategies (Jarzabkowski,

et al, 2016) and meaning making during change (Spee and Jarzabkowski,

2017) may render a more insightful view of the contested practice

landscape, illustrating that it requires far more intense examination and

exploration.

Taking into account these limitations and areas for future study, but,

in full consideration of the empirical findings, the research reinforced,

within organisational studies, the worth of strategy as practice,

organisational hypocrisy and complex responsive relating as useful

lenses to understanding strategy in a public sector setting and beyond the

documented scripts and espoused statements of that strategy. Certainly,

it allowed broader insight into how strategy practitioners live out and

cope within a complex continuum of intentional and unintentional

practice options. People, we discovered, inhabit such strategy day-to-day

and also enter and need to survive within the paradoxical layers of such

strategy.

183



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