Openness as an Organizing Principle

Leonhard Dobusch
University of Innsbruck
Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
January 9, 2024
OPENNESS AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE
Between Inclusionary and Exclusionary Practices

second coming of openness within the
supposedly already-open society
“
Tkacz, N. (2012, p. 400)

How smart companies are
opening up strategic initiatives
to involve front-line employees,
experts, suppliers, customers,
entrepreneurs, and even
competitors.
“

Quelle: David Lerner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_troll.jpg, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Increasing Openness as a PROGRAM
Tensions such as
“compromising speed” or
“burdening wider audiences
with the pressures of
strategy” (Hautz et al., 2017) as
limitations or hurdles for
achieving greater openness
II
IOpenness as the opposite
of closure, representing two
endpoints of a continuum
from closed to open:
Inviting more actors, sharing
more information >> open++
open++ as a normative ideal

Routined Practices…
(re)produce patterns of action and social
structures", including "patterns of social equality
and inequality"
“
(Feldman & Pentland, 2022)
>> openness imperatives demand changes to the way
organizations re-produce these patterns

OPENNESS AS THE "OTHER" WAY OF ORGANIZING
[S]trategy is traditionally exclusive. […] Opacity is
important to strategy […]. Open strategy challenges both
these orthodoxies[.]
“ (Whittington et al. 2011, p. 535)
Open strategy balances the tenets of traditional business
strategy with the promise of open innovation.
“ (Chesbrough and Appleyard
2007, p. 58)
>> 'openness' as an open (no pun intended) conceptual frame to
evaluate, adapt and/or complement established (clusters of) routines

as not “traditional“, “closed“, “exclusive“
NEGATIVE DEFINITION OF OPENNESS
…selective revealing
(Henkel et al. 2014)
…selective inclusion
…"openwashing"
(Heimstädt 2017)
Allows… Practices related to openness:
licensing, (re-)integrating …
soliciting, deliberating, …
auditing, window dressing, …

Normative Anchors for Organizing Openness:
Transparency and Inclusion

OPENNESS AS TRANSPARENCY
17
openness in terms of transparency, both in
the strategy formulation stage and, more
commonly, in the communication of strategies
once they are formulated.
“
(Whittington et al. 2011,
p. 532)
>> practices of informing, communicating and discussing strategically
relevant information

18
Inclusion refers to participation in an
organization’s ‘strategic conversation’[.]
“ (Whittington et al. 2011,
p. 536)
>> practices of collecting, deliberating, and condensing strategic
ideas, maybe even decision-making routines
OPENNESS AS INCLUSION

“Open forms of strategy-making with
more inside and outside
organizations and more of
different actors internally and externally.
Whittington et al. (2011, p. 531)
transparency
inclusion

Surveying Dialoguing Rating
Informing
transparency inclusion

How are openness and inclusion connected?

How connected are openness and inclusion?

CO
M
M
ERCIAL
BREAK
Dobusch, L. & Dobusch, L. (2019): The
Relation between Openness and Closure
in Open Strategy: Programmatic and
Constitutive Approaches to Openness. In
D. Seidl, G. von Krogh & R Whittington
(eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Open
Strategy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 326-336

Practices of Openness Revisited

Why is open for "anyone" not open enough?

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Community_Insights_Survey_2022_-_Figure_1.png

358 Organization S
Table 4. Data on members of strategy task forces
Region Members’ origin % Associated with Wikimedia Foundation
Arabic 7 6.5
China 6 5.6
Eastern Europe 2 1.9
EU 25 23.4 4 (2 WMB, 1 WMF, 1 WMC)
India 17 15.9 1 (WMB)
Latin America 2 1.9
USA 37 34.6 15 (3 WMB, 7 WMF, 5 WMC)
Other 2 1.9
Unclear 9 8.4
Totals 107 20
*includes Wikimedia Board (WMB), Foundation staff (WMF) und hired consultants (WMC)
Source: Dobusch et al. (2019, p. 358)
58%

Lack of diversity in spite of radical openness?
because of

Common Explanation:
Imported Exclusion

Bild: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Being_any_Gender_is_a_drag_-_World_Pride_London_2012_(7527764372).jpg,, CC BY 2.0, by xJason.Rogersx
Mirror of societal (gender) structures and inequalities?

Quelle: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Zero_1_Mumbai_Guy_on_phone.jpg
Mirror of societal (gender) structures and inequalities?

Path dependence of (lack of) diversity?
Quelle: Sydow et al. (2009, p. 692)

Complementary Explanation:
Created Exclusion

Non-performativity of Openness

Non-performatives
describes the “reiterative
and citational practice by
which discourse” does not
produce “the effects that it
names” (Butler 1993: 2)
“
Ahmed, S. (2012, p. 117)

Questioning practices
of (failing to) talking
openness into being as
a precondition for
openness?

If your group has nine helpful
and polite members, and one
rude, sexist, loud member,
most women are going to
continue to stay away because
of that one member
“
Valeria Aurora (2002),
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/
Encourage-Women-Linux-
HOWTO/

Practices of excluding
exclusionary behavior
as a precondition for
openness?

How to resolve this dual character of
openess-related practices as
both inclusionary and exclusionary?

Openness and Closure as CONSTITUTIVE
Analyzing the paradoxical
nature of openness (and
closure) by focusing on
legitimate closure routines.
e.g., classifying documents
(as a form of of
fi
cial secrecy
(Costas & Grey 2014)) to enhance
transparency
II
IOpenness and closure as
inextricably linked and
interacting with each other
>> we
fi
nd examples of
closure in all empirical
studies of open strategy

As researchers:
How to investigate the dual character of
openess-related practices as
both inclusionary and exclusionary?
Discussion QUESTION

CONTACT
E-mail:
Leonhard.Dobusch@uibk.ac.at
Twitter / Mastodon:
@leonidobusch // @leonido@chaos.social
Websites:
bit.ly/LD-UIBK // www.dobusch.net
Research blogs:
governancexborders.com // osconjunction.net

References
‣ Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included. Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham/London, UK: Duke
University Press.
‣ Chesbrough, H. W., & Appleyard, M. M. (2007). Open Innovation and Strategy. California Management
Review, 50, 57–76.
‣ Dobusch, L. (2022). Schöne Neue Digitale Organisationswelt: Offen für Diversität oder Exklusion durch
Offenheit? In: Schnegg et al., (Hrsg.): Inter- und multidisziplinäre Perspektiven der Geschlechterforschung
Innsbrucker Gender Lectures IV. Innsbruck University Press, 57-70.
‣ Dobusch, L., & Dobusch, L. (2019). The Relation between Openness and Closure in Open Strategy:
Programmatic and Constitutive Approaches to Openness. In: Seidl, D./von Krogh, G./Whittington, R. (Eds.):
The Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 326-336.
‣ Dobusch, L., & Dobusch, L. (2022). Wie offen sind „offene “Online-Gemeinschaften? Inklusion, Exklusion
und die Ambivalenz von Schließungen. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 74,
257-281, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11577-022-00836-5
‣ Splitter, V., Dobusch, L., von Krogh, G., Whittington, R., & Walgenbach, P. (2023). Openness as Organizing
principle: introduction to the special issue. Organization Studies, 44(1), 7-27, https://journals.sagepub.com/
doi/full/10.1177/01708406221145595
‣ Whittington, R., Cailluet, L., & Yakis-Douglas, B. (2011). Opening Strategy: Evolution of a Precarious
Profession. British Journal of Management, 22(3), 531-544.

Explicating and addressing normativity inherent in (calls for) openness
from looking at degrees of openness to investigating combinations of
openness and closure desirable in strategy-making labelled as ‘open’
together with a switch
from exclusionary openness to inclusion through legitimate closure
allows moving

Openness as an Organizing Principle

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