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JOCM
14,2 A role for individuality and
mystery in ``managing’’ change
Carol Steiner
150 Jitter Philosophical Services, Glen Iris, Victoria, Australia
Keywords Organizational change, Individual behaviour, Scientific management, Philosophy
Received June 1998
Revised November 1998 Abstract This philosophical paper explores why people have so much trouble understanding,
Accepted May 1999 coping with and managing change. It looks behind the problem to try to understand its origins. It
provides an account of human nature that suggests people are ``naturally’’ capable of coping with
change but that we have forgotten how to do so because of our intellectual history. It suggests the
pervasive influence of scientific paradigms and rationalism has turned us into conformists who
are afraid to trust our own individual experiences and who rely on others to validate them and tell
us how to respond. Change makes it difficult to conform because we do not know on whom to rely
for validation; we do not know which paradigm is ``right.’’ This paper suggests some current
management remedies respond to this conformity problem but others may exacerbate it. It offers
its philosophical analysis as a tool to interpret and evaluate such remedies from a fresh
perspective.

Why is managing or even just coping with change such a complex problem for
people and organisations? Management researchers across a wide range of
disciplines are looking for answers: perhaps organisational learning (Marsick
and Watkins, 1994; Nevis et al., 1995; Recardo et al., 1995/96; Senge, 1997),
maybe empowerment (Ehin, 1995; Jaffe and Scott, 1997; Pascale et al., 1997a;
Spencer, 1995; Story, 1995), possibly new technology (Jih and Owings, 1995;
Levin, 1997; Makridakis, 1995; Onstad, 1995), perhaps leadership (Katzenbach,
1996; Kouzes and Posner, 1995; Spreitzer and Quinn, 1996).
But what if those myriad solutions are just momentarily pragmatic, just the
latest management fads? Even worse, what if those solutions are exacerbating
the problem, creating more instability, more uncertainty, more mistrust of and
anxiety about change? (Kleiner and George, 1997; Markus and Benjamin, 1997)
The solutions might become part of the problem unless we understand the
origins of the problem we are trying to solve (Foegen, 1998; Guha et al., 1997;
Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1998).
For this reason, this paper sets out to look behind the problem to suggest
how coping with change has become a problem. Going back to the roots of the
problem may enable us to evaluate our solutions through a new lens.

Journal of Organizational Change
Management, Vol. 14 No. 2, 2001,
pp. 150-167. # MCB University
Press, 0953-4814
An overview
This is a philosophical paper written by a Heideggerian phenomenologist. This
means I have a lot in common with anti-rationalists in both philosophy and
management. I am a humanist, but not in the conventional mould of social
rights and responsibilities; I think of myself as a personalist rather than an
individualist or communitarian. I am equally at odds with positivists and
constructivists. I might be seen as a postmodern interpretist and a relativist,
but I diverge from those positions in my discomfort with anthropocentricism Individuality
and its consequent disrespect for the ontological integrity of phenomena. I am a and mystery
proponent of reflection and thought, but an opponent of rationalism, paradigm
research and theory.
My paper is about human nature and about what our intellectual history has
done to that nature. From its existential perspective, this paper suggests that
coping with change is a personal, not social or corporate, matter that calls for 151
individuality of a special sort. But it suggests that such individuality is rare
these days because scientific rationalism is the only sanctioned approach to
thinking about and understanding the world, the only approach widely seen as
producing credible and reliable results. This paper suggests scientific
rationalism has made individuality undesirable and uncommon and so has left
people unprepared for the current pace of change. It also suggests some
scholars grappling with the problems of managing or coping with change
might likewise be constrained by scientific rationalism’s limiting and
dehumanising demands, so this paper also advocates a little individuality in
exploring the problems of ``managing’’ change.
This paper explores two unconventional notions of individuality: existential
individuality and day-to-day individuality. These unconventional notions of
individuality come from a modern German philosopher called Martin
Heidegger who maintains that day-to-day conformity is a much more common
state of being for us than day-to-day individuality. This day-to-day conformity
also takes two forms: practical and theoretical mindlessness. Heidegger (1962)
suggests old-fashioned practical mindlessness is our most common mode of
being and relatively harmless to us as human beings. But a more recent form of
conformity ± I call it theoretical mindlessness ± is not so benign. I suggest this
later form of conformity makes us uncomfortable with change, but Heidegger
(1977b) feels it poses a threat to our human nature itself, to our existential
individuality.
But before I explore how Heidegger’s philosophy may help us get to the root
of our difficulties with change, I need to point out a nasty irony that some
scholars feel fatally taints Heidegger’s thought. I will also try to place
Heidegger’s unique views in a broader philosophical context.
The irony relates to Heidegger’s view of conformity and his involvement
with the Nazis. Despite Heidegger’s commitment to individuality and to the
courage to resist social conformity, he failed to practice what he preached in the
1930s. While it might be argued that Heidegger was merely attracted to
Nazism’s reverence for history and nationalism and its criticism of technology
and exploitive capitalism ± themes that were apparent even in his earliest
philosophy ± he is perhaps justifiably damned for failing to express regret for
his overt and tacit accommodation of Nazism, even after its full horrors were
revealed. His indefensible silence disappoints even his most loyal acolytes and
enrages his opponents. But I do not think his uncritical acceptance of Nazi
philosophy or even his bureaucratic involvement with the Nazi administration
JOCM diminish the richness or rigour of his thought, even though such behaviour is
14,2 inconsistent with his ideas of courage and non-conformity.
My view is consistent with a central tenet of his later philosophy, which
maintains that non-rationalist thought has a significance of its own, beyond the
intention and behaviour of its thinker. This unique insight has influenced many
thinkers, including some who have influenced management thought. These
152 include Sartre, Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Lacan,
Wittgenstein and Derrida. Yet, none of these thinkers seem to fully appreciate
the implications of Heidegger’s insight. They have embraced the interpretive
freedom his insight provides, but they have not relinquished anthropocentric
power over thought. They still consider all thought to be the product of human
minds. Heidegger sought to destroy the myth of this people power by giving
mystery a role in thought. He hoped this would make people more modest in
their claims for their thinking and in their actions based on that thinking, but
this has not happened. Despite his significant influence, Heidegger remains a
unique and often misunderstood voice in the postmodern philosophical
wilderness.
His unique voice, informed by his critical engagement with thinkers like
Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and his admiration for pre-Socratic
thinkers like Heraclitus, has much to contribute to understanding the problem
of humans dealing with change. To begin exploring that contribution, I will
deal with conformity first, because it is our most common way of being human.

Day-to-day conformity
To get an idea of what day-to-day conformity is like, consider the following
generalised characterisations of employees and managers alike.
. Employees and managers like to feel they are equal to their colleagues,
that they have a great deal in common in terms of ability, approaches
and values, that they all fit together in a nice, homogeneous team
working cooperatively toward the same goals. (Identity.)
.
But despite all that homogeneity, employees and managers are still
conscious of status and power. They like to know where they stand in
relation to their peers, their superiors, their subordinates in terms of pay,
power, performance, promotion and perks. (Status.)
. Such employees and managers have a sense of how the organisation
does business, of what is an acceptable approach and what is not. They
understand how the organisation sees the world, how it does things,
what counts as right for the organisation. (Shared understanding.)
. Because they understand these things, they also recognise that certain
decisions will be acceptable and others will not, so they try to stick to the
game plan, to keep everyone happy and not to rock the boat.
(Predictability.)
 . Because everyone is pulling in the same direction, making the same Individuality
decisions, upholding the operational norms of the organisation, and mystery
employees and managers are reinforced in their conformity. (Certainty.)
. When employees and managers are team players like this, it is possible
to share responsibility for decisions, to minimise the personal risk of
poor decisions and to protect oneself from accountability. (No
responsibility.) 153
. Employees and managers who are team players like this are secure in
their jobs because they don’t make waves. They stick around for the
long haul and get promotions for continuous service, for being an
organisation person and for being popular within the organisation.
(Security.)
Employees and managers with these characteristics are individuality-
challenged. They lack individuality. They are organisational conformists.
They don’t do their own thing; they do the organisational thing. They do ``what
one does’’ in their organisation.
People can operate this way because organisations sanction, encourage,
reward or mandate such behaviour. They do so because this behaviour is easy
to manage. Conformists are compliant and cooperative, everyone pulls in the
same direction, there is organisational peace.
Of course, modern management is no longer so sure that organisational
peace is desirable and that such conformist behaviour is worth cultivating
(Galam and Moscovici, 1994; Jansen and Chandler, 1994; Leonard and Straus,
1997; Macfarlane and Lomas, 1994). Now we understand that conflict can be
productive (Adizes, 1996; Klunk, 1997; Lindsay, 1994; Schwenk, 1997), that
creativity breeds innovation (Gundry et al., 1994; Pascale et al., 1997b; Perry,
1995; Ramsey, 1997), and that bureaucratised, hierarchical organisations are
less flexible, less amenable to change and less likely to empower staff (Jacob,
1995; Jeffane, 1995; Markovich, 1997; Milakovich, 1994/95). But still, we often
also consider homogenising phenomena like teamwork, organisational culture
and staff commitment important to managing change (Baba, 1995; Korsgaard
et al., 1995; Mikalachki, 1994; Uhlfelder, 1994). Does that not reflect tension in
the change management paradigm? (e.g. Fisher, 1997; Greg and Mitev, 1995;
Malone, 1997; McConnell, 1998; Ramsey and Calvert, 1994)
There is tension because we do not understand what we are dealing with
when we explore managing or coping with change. We cannot be consistent in
our thinking about change because we do not have a workable sense of how
human beings operate. We do not have a consistent notion of what makes
people tick. We also do not have a workable understanding of how the world is,
apart from scientific accounts that are often found wanting when it comes to
managing uncertainty.
I attribute the tension in the change management paradigm to our difficulty
in distinguishing between the benign conformity of practical mindlessness
and the dangerous spread of conformity as theoretical mindlessness.
JOCM ``Mindlessness’’ refers to a lack of conscious thinking, not to a lack of
14,2 intelligence.
Practical mindlessness refers to doing hands-on activities without thinking,
like logging on to a computer, making a cup of coffee or driving along a familiar
route. Practical mindlessness reflects personal knowing, personal familiarity
with the world we operate in and with the tools we use. Sveiby (1997) and
154 Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) refer to this as ``knowhow’’ to distinguish it from
knowledge. Theoretical mindlessness refers to unthinking appropriation of
generalised rational products without evaluating them for appropriateness to
the situation, like accepting assumptions, assertions and theories uncritically.
Theoretical mindlessness reflects abstract knowing, impersonal adoption of
``objective’’ and generalised interpretations of the world. This is Kuhn’s (1970)
``paradigm knowledge’’ and Polanyi’s (1962) ``tacit knowledge.’’
I see practical mindlessness as benign because it poses no threat to our
individual engagement with the world. It reflects either our original, personal
interpretations of our familiar environment, or pragmatic replication of our
own or others’ personal responses to similar circumstances. In contrast,
theoretical mindlessness is more dangerous because it encourages detachment
from the immediate, personal environment and substitution of ``objective,’’
institutionalised interpretations of abstract, idealised environments that no
person has ever experienced immediately and personally. This poses a real
danger to human nature because it prevents us from achieving our full
potential as human beings. To understand how this assertion could be true, we
need to understand human nature itself, which means we need to understand
existential individuality, which I believe is the primary, fundamental
manifestation of human nature.

Existential individuality
Although Heidegger believed that we live most of our day-to-day lives as
conformists, he also believed that we all have the potential to be ourselves and
to operate as individuals. Day-to-day individuality is desirable because when
we operate individually in our day-to-day lives, we reach our full potential as
unique human beings; we manifest our existential individuality.
The fundamental, existential characteristic shared by all human beings is
the capacity to reflect on how we can understand anything, how we can know
anything. This is not reflection on what we understand, nor is it just criticising
current ideas or formulating new ones. It is not even identifying the causes of
our current ideas which scientific rationalism tells us are always other ideas.
Heidegger (1977c) said most of us have lost our willingness to reflect on how
we can understand things (how we can know) because we have become
accustomed to focussing only on what we understand (know). We have totally
surrendered to the dictates of scientific rationalism which says we can
understand things because we have minds. Even anti-scientific post-moderns
(Latour, 1993; Pickering, 1992) believe in social or cultural constructivism,
which is still rationalism stripped of the veneer of scientific objectivity.
Scholars have gone into the research business, which involves systematically Individuality
applying our minds to things to produce generalisable information about them. and mystery
As a result, we suffer from infomania, which is our obsession with information
which we often think of as knowledge (Heim, 1993).
Because we have become so enamoured of our intellectual traditions and so
comfortable with and cocky about the power of the mind to solve all problems,
we have lost what makes us distinctively human. What makes us distinctively 155
human is the capacity to deal with mystery. We have lost our human
relationship with mystery.
An example of our lost relationship with mystery can be found in Sartre
(1957). In Being and Nothingness, which is based on Heidegger’s Being and
Time, knowledge emerges not from mystery but from an inexplicably
impersonal self-consciousness. This may be what Nancy (1991) means by an
``operative community,’’ a mythical entity that comprises the identities of
conformists that they sacrifice to create a communal identity. Heidegger
pointed to mystery, but Sartre could only see mind.
Heidegger believed that without a relationship with mystery, we cannot
reflect on how we can understand anything because it is mystery, not mind,
that makes possible human understanding.
Mystery is not the unknown and definitely not the not-yet-known-because-
we-haven’t-put-our-minds-to-it. Mystery is unknowable; mystery is beyond
knowing. What we know comes to us out of mystery, not out of thinking. The
unknown is not transformed into the known by the force of our intellect. The
unknown emerges mysteriously out of mystery and so becomes known.
Mystery, not mind, makes possible our understanding. Mystery is the source
and limit of our knowledge and our knowing. Mystery is how we can
understand things; we can understand things because understanding is
granted or revealed to us individually and uniquely from mystery.
That little paragraph about mystery is probably clear as mud.
Unfortunately, that is how it has to stay because we cannot render the
mysterious known by thinking or talking about it. Mystery is beyond the
power of the mind and argument and it is beyond representation[1]. If we are
uncomfortable with that, it is only because we have grown uncomfortable with
what we cannot understand. We have forgotten how to live with mystery. We
have forgotten how to be human because we spend so little time personally
engaged with the world that is granted from mystery.
But all is not lost. Although we cannot define or describe mystery, we can
consider its impact on us because, even though we cannot explain mystery,
mystery affects us, especially when we cannot deal mindlessly with the world
because we have no handy prescriptions to use.
For example, where does change come from that makes us so uncomfortable
with it? Change comes from mystery. If change was just evolutionary progress,
we could cope. We could understand it. We could master it. But change
surprises us. One moment things are calm and clear and manageable. The next
moment things are strange, the game has new rules, little seems familiar or
JOCM reliable, things seem out of control. Why? Because mystery has revealed
14,2 something we have not had to deal with before, something we have not
anticipated, something we have not imagined, something we have not created
with our minds but something that has been foisted upon us.
A person’s ability to deal with change is related to how comfortable they are
with mystery, with the loss of control and the limits of rationality that any
156 emergence from mystery reveals. Mystery makes detached, impersonal
theoretical mindlessness difficult because any emergence from mystery
challenges us to think about how the world has became the way it is. Such
thinking can lead us to confront our own existential individuality, our human
nature. A person’s ability to deal with change is related to their willingness to
confront their existential individuality, to reflect on their relationship with the
mysterious source of their experience.
But existential individuality is supposed to be a common human
characteristic. We all have it. So why are we not all good at dealing with change?
We are not good at dealing with change because the intellectual history of
human beings charts a gradual but unrelenting move away from mystery and
to rationality as the source of what we know.
We no longer experience change as coming from mystery. Foucault (1970,
1988) and Habermas (1996, 1992) have us thinking it is created by social,
cultural or political forces. We think people have been engineering that change
and we are just out of the loop. In the age of conformity, being out of the loop
gives rise to anxiety and suspicion and blaming. Also, believing that change is
the product of human rationality, or perhaps rationality gone awry, we imagine
that we can manage change, we can control it, we can predict it and prepare for
it. We have forgotten about mystery. How has this happened?
Heidegger traced the origin of the move away from mystery and to
rationalism to Plato’s redefinition of the word ``idea’’ (eidos in Greek). Heidegger
claimed ``idea’’ used to mean ``the outward aspect that a visible thing offers to
the physical eye.’’ (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 20). ``Idea’’ used to mean what we might
now call the stimulus of an experience, or the phenomenon of an experience,
that which was known because it was shown to us. But Heidegger said Plato
started us on the track to rationalism by using ``idea’’ to mean the invisible form
of something as opposed to its visible substance. ``Idea’’ came to mean the non-
sensuous, non-experienced essence of something.
Heidegger said this simple transformation of the meaning of ``idea’’ took
away our sense of how mysteriously something comes to be what it is. Plato’s
notion of the forms served to explain the unexplainable by denying the
dynamic and mysterious emergence of what was known in favour of the
persistence of forms.
The next major step in the move away from mystery and to rationalism was
taken by Descartes when ``I think therefore I am’’ became an anthem for
rationalism. No longer was the world known by some mysterious revelation of
reality. Now it was known because some knowing subject thought it. Not only
did we now have access to self-confirming certainty; we also had a masterful
nexus of subject and object that distracted us from the mystery of how both Individuality
subject and object came to be thought of at all. and mystery
Our inheritance from Plato and Descartes, via a coterie of other rationalist
thinkers, is a belief in ``scientific’’ thinking that deprecates ``unsupported’’
commonsense and individual experience, that denies the existence of
phenomena that do not conform to the approved vision of the world, and that
dismisses any thinking that departs from its methodological prescriptions. 157
Kuhn (1970) provided a clear account of how this works in his concept of the
paradigm or disciplinary matrix. Modern social constructivists of science have
updated Kuhn’s account and made it more postmodern (e.g. Lynch, 1993;
Pickering, 1992) and some might say anti-science (Cromer, 1997). But scientific
rationalism has come to dominate our lives so completely that anyone with
substantial education, particularly in old disciplines or professions, is likely to
have abandoned practical mindlessness in favour of uncritical and unconscious
surrender to one’s scientifically rational paradigm which is a theoretical
construct. Kuhn (1970) discussed this unconscious takeover by paradigms 30
years ago. Polanyi (1962) explained how it worked in his classic text, Personal
Knowledge.
But Heidegger’s critique of scientific thinking was not a critique of science
alone. It was a critique of our time, of our wholehearted embrace of scientific
rationalism. He did not believe scientific rationalism was confined to traditional
sciences. Heidegger believed that scientific rationalism had pervaded almost all
of Western human existence and was endangering human nature itself by
making us forget about mystery.
Heidegger (1977b) called our wholesale adoption of scientific rationalism
technicity. Technicity is an attitude toward the world and life that Heidegger
believed characterises our historical epoch. The epoch of technicity is
characterised by faith in the power of rational thought. Technicity manifests in
what Heidegger (1977a) called ``binding adherence to the rule and law’’ of
various disciplinary paradigms. A hallmark of technicity is the demise of
personal knowing and the corresponding rise of research as the rigorous,
institutionalised pursuit of certainty through rational, objective representation
of experience.
Heidegger saw technicity as a danger to human nature because it threatened
to reduce even people to mere products of rational representation. He saw the
proliferation of psychological, sociological and anthropological research as part
of that reduction.
But the more immediate danger of technicity is manifest in the growth of
day-to-day conformity with scientific rationalism, with what I called theoretical
mindlessness. Such day-to-day mindless conformity becomes the norm when
people are made to distrust their own experiences and seek validation in the
shared experiences of others, when their unconventional, personal experiences
are dismissed as irrelevant, mystical or crackpot, and when they are forced to
submit to the rigour of scientific method and rationalism to avoid ridicule. For
example, intuitive judgements about people, gut reactions to ideas, and
JOCM impulsive actions are usually considered unprofessional among managers
14,2 (even more among academics!). But few people frown on managers uncritically
adopting the latest management fad (Shapiro, 1995).
Is it any wonder that people who have lost belief in the validity of their own
experiences and judgements should fear change and doubt their capacity to
cope with it? Is it surprising that people who have learned that only conformity
158 validates and legitimates experience should feel all at sea when change occurs
faster than prescriptions for coping can emerge?
Heidegger said that all that could save us from technicity was the
reassertion of mystery, but he was pretty pessimistic about the prospects of a
return to mystery in our lives. He was pondering the dangers of technicity in
the 1950s and 1960s when science and technology were approaching their
zenith, producing startling discoveries and inventions that were changing our
lives. It was a hard time to stand up to scientific rationalism.
But in these postmodern times the situation is quite different. The image of
science and technology has been tarnished by their errors, failures,
inadequacies and conservatism. There are anti-science movements in
academia. Government is reviled for its intrusions on our lives. The public is
taking spiritualism and the occult more seriously. Religious fundamentalism is
on the rise.
This postmodern mistrust of orthodoxy and authority and the longing for
alternative routes to the truth might be responses to the reassertion of mystery
that is shaking our faith in rationalism. The reassertion of mystery might be
causing us to question and doubt our ways of knowing and explaining what is
going on around us. While we mostly still mindlessly cope using sanctioned
rationalist tools, more and more often those tools are letting us down. The
resultant uncertainty is creating anxiety which many blame on too much
change coming too fast. This is the best of times for Heideggerians!
Heidegger (1977b) called the reassertion of mystery the ``saving grace’’
because it is a gift that can save human nature from the danger of technicity.
The uncertainty brought about by inexplicable and now too common change
emerging from mystery confronts us with the possibility of choosing between
conformity to the prevailing paradigm or trust in our own experience. When we
see that we have a choice, we are ready for day-to-day individuality.

Day-to-day individuality
Day-to-day individuality involves choosing to be an individual rather than a
conformist. Day-to-day individuality is not being an individual because we all
are already individuals by virtue of our existential individuality, by virtue of
our unique relationship with mystery which gives us unique experiences.
Rather, day-to-day or operational individuality is choosing to be an individual,
recognising that one might also be a conformist but choosing the uncommon
road.
Heidegger allowed that we go through much of our lives without ever
having to make that choice. Most of the time we do not think about conforming
or asserting our individuality. We just go about our business mindlessly. But Individuality
we can’t always just mindlessly cope. Whenever anything goes wrong, we are and mystery
forced to think about what we are doing. At these moments, individuality
becomes an issue for us and we have to choose how to be.
One of the times when we need to choose is when we are confronted by
something unexpected or new. We need to choose when we need to change.
This is why individuality is an issue in managing or coping with change. 159
How does day-to-day individuality manifest itself? There are three ``events’’
that characterise day-to-day individuality.
First, day-to-day individuality involves our acknowledging the possibility of
being an individual. This involves our understanding our capacity for
individuality, that is, recognising our existential individuality, which renders
us uniquely related to mystery as the source of our unique experience. This
does not have to take the form of philosophical enlightenment about
Heideggerian phenomenology. Rather, we only need to recognise the mineness
of our individual experiences, that our experiences are uniquely our own and
not some predictable, generalisable experiences that anyone else might have.
This cannot be a simple intellectual concession to some abstract notion of the
uniqueness of experiences. Rather, it must be a feeling of faith and confidence
in the validity of one’s private, personal experiences.
In a large group of engineers I studied, this mineness of experience emerged
as a loss of uncritical confidence in paradigmatic prescriptions. These highly
successful technical innovators working in private enterprise accepted the
inexplicable nature of much of their success and opened themselves to what
they called ``intuition,’’ by which I think they meant trusting their own personal
understanding of their situation rather than accepting the paradigmatic,
theoretical interpretations mandated by their scientific training. They
considered their intuitions mysterious, magical or at least beyond rational
explanation.
These innovators, by virtue of acknowledging and accepting the mineness of
experience that was granted by mystery experienced the second ``event’’ of day-
to-day individuality. They became resolute. Mineness shows us the possibility
and validity of unique, personal experiences; resoluteness is the courage to act
on those experiences, to operate outside paradigm prescriptions. Resoluteness
is what I call ``the courage to be incompetent,’’ the courage to do something
other than what a ``good’’ engineer or manager or academic might do. I believe
that resoluteness produces what we usually think of as creative or innovative
work. What is creative or innovative is simply different than what conformity
with a paradigm prescribes or produces.
Of course, my engineering innovators did not totally abandon their
paradigmatic principles or practices. In fact, their paradigms shaped all their
routine, mindless work. But when they encountered a problem with which they
could no longer mindlessly cope and when their familiar paradigm
prescriptions came up wanting, they abandoned those prescriptions and gave
JOCM themselves over to the inexplicable mystery of their individual, personal
14,2 intuitions.
When we are resolute, we have more possibilities for action because we are
not constrained by the prescribed possibilities of our paradigms. Those new
possibilities are unique to us because they come from our unique relationship
with mystery. These new and unique possibilities create the third ``event’’ of
160 day-to-day individuality. They constitute a new situation, one that is not open
to paradigm conformists who only have the possibilities prescribed by their
paradigm. Possibilities are important to individuality because, for Heidegger,
we are our possibilities. We are defined fundamentally and primarily by our
potential, not by our actions, which are only made possible by our potential. So
the emergence of a new situation pregnant with myriad unique possibilities is
the defining event of day-to-day individuality; what emerges defines the
individual as an individual.
It is through the events of mineness, resoluteness and the emergence of new
situations that a person escapes their day-to-day conformity and manifests
day-to-day individuality. Such individuality renews people’s confidence in the
validity of their own experiences, gives them the courage to operate in accord
with those experiences, and creates new possibilities for action. It is not
difficult to see how such individuality can take the threat and sting out of
change. People who trust themselves and their experiences and who can see
lots of alternative possibilities for coping with change are less likely to be
frightened or suspicious of change and are much better placed to deal with it.
But what can managers do to encourage such individuality, to help themselves
and others cope with change?

Encouraging individuality
Heidegger (1962) maintained that people could encourage others to choose
individuality over conformity by helping them see that they have such a choice.
He called this helping ``being a conscience’’ for others. Therefore, I suggest
managers interested in ``managing’’ change must first learn how to encourage
individuality. They must become consciences for their staff by putting in place
now familiar structures and practices that encourage and reward staff
individuality. But here is where academics and managers need to think long
and hard, not about what they are doing but about how such structures and
practices might work or not.
For example, to encourage mineness, managers need to legitimate, respect
and value diverse individual experiences (Baba, 1995; Lindsay, 1994;
Mikalachki, 1994; Onstad, 1995). To encourage resoluteness, they need to
protect and encourage staff who diverge from organisational norms (Adizes,
1996; Klunk, 1997; Malone, 1997; Schwenk, 1997). To encourage the emergence
of new situations, they need to encourage operational creativity and to create
structures that generate new possibilities for interaction (Ehin, 1995; Gundry
et al., 1994; Korsgaard et al., 1995; Markovich, 1997).
 But if one accepts that individuality can help people cope with Individuality
organisational change, then some other academic prescriptions to facilitate and mystery
managing change may need to be reevaluated. For example, are commitment,
teamwork and homogeneous organisational cultures conducive to mineness or
do they encourage identification with organisational or team paradigms
instead? Such paradigms change much more quickly, more often and more
capriciously than academic paradigms do, contributing to the distress of 161
anyone who cannot keep up with the pace of change. What effect do quality
management, benchmarking, risk management, performance reviews, and
measurement and evaluation strategies have on resoluteness, on the courage to
be incompetent, to take risks and to make errors? Will they not encourage
resistance to change by encouraging people to use tried and proven practices
that are safe, familiar and approved? And can new knowledge management
technology that standardises the form and content of information that is
available to people or that locks people into procedural routines encourage the
emergence of new situations? Or might such technology encourage
mindlessness and detachment from actual situations?
From my Heideggerian perspective, it seems some organisational change
management theories and practices have the potential to do more harm than
good if they are promulgated or adopted without a clear understanding of
human nature and without a clear appreciation of the uniqueness of the people
they are meant to help. A very good example of the dangers of such theoretical
mindlessness in regard to managing an organisation in continuous flux is
provided by Kunda (1992).
He produced a portrait of a big technology organisation that is doing all the
supposedly right things to help its technical staff cope with their rapidly and
continuously changing work environment. It offers its engineers jobs for life so
they are not worried about taking risks and making errors. The organisation’s
commitment to organisational learning and staff involvement has them
running regular meetings and pep rallies to keep everyone in the picture. The
walls are covered with posters to encourage esprit de corps. The organisation
provides oodles of money to let people pursue their expensive pet projects.
Yet the engineers who are being targeted for all this care and largesse jokingly
refer to themselves as ``interchangeable work units.’’ People feel trapped by their
jobs for life. They feel they cannot speak at their carefully orchestrated meetings.
They feel brainwashed and manipulated by the pep rallies and posters that are
reminiscent of Mao’s cultural revolution. Secretaries cry because they are not
given Christmas turkeys like professional members of staff.
Kunda’s ethnographic study shows how an organisation’s uncritical
commitment to creating a strong culture and its mindless use of progressive
management tools can undermine its own efforts to manage change. It failed to
understand that it was dealing with individuals who resented but could not
completely resist the strong organisational pressure to conform. This pressure
created existential angst among the staff and worked against the aims of the
organisation which wanted to set its people free to innovate.
JOCM The engineers of culture see the ideal member as driven by strong beliefs and intense
emotions, authentic experiences of loyalty, commitment and the pleasure of work. Yet they
14,2 seem to produce members who have internalised ambiguity, who question the authenticity of
all beliefs and emotions, and who find irony in its various forms the dominant mode of
everyday existence (Kunda, 1992, p. 216).

Kunda says the engineers are victims of ``normative control’’ initiated by

162 management but sustained by the engineered culture. This is not how an
organisation acts as a conscience for its staff. It is not how to encourage
individuality or manage change.

Mineness
For example, the managers of Kunda’s organisation actively seek to undermine
mineness by manipulating the very reality that the staff experience. A senior
manager refers to the organisation’s cultural reality as ``the religion.’’ He admits
his management strategy is to ensure staff ``have the religion and (do) not know
how they ever got it!’’ (Kunda, 1992, p. 5). Kunda says this management team
``maintains and enhances its power not by imposing ideological clarity but by
creating and selectively applying and interpreting ambiguous definitions of
reality.’’ (p. 222). To define reality for someone is to deny them their natural
capacity for unique experience of reality, to deny them the mineness of their
own experiences.

Resoluteness
Management of this organisation also makes resoluteness difficult; they make
it hard to choose day-to-day individuality over conformity. The existential
distress this causes to the staff is apparent in the compensatory responses they
adopt to this loss of choice. They compensate for their loss by appearing to
distance themselves cognitively and emotionally from the culture while
succumbing to it. In effect, they try to assert their individuality while opting for
conformity.
Cognitive distancing takes three forms:
(1) Cynicism about one’s own behaviour in the form of debunking some
ideological belief; e.g. ``In this group, `do what’s right’ means `make your
manager visible.’ [Laugh]. Aren’t all organisations like that?’’ (Kunda,
p. 178).
(2) Detached theoretical observation of organisation; e.g., ``Look at the
`Engineering Guide.’ Look at the values in it. It is a uniquely American
value system, grounded in, almost straight out of the Puritan tradition,
out of Emerson, Thoreau. You know, the Protestant Ethic, Weber and all
that.’’ (Kunda, p. 179).
(3) Invocation of common sense or pragmatic knowledge as an excuse for
one’s behaviour; e.g. ``I don’t buy all that theology. If it works, it’s good.
If it makes money, it’s good. Everything else ± everything! ± is bullshit.’’
(Kunda, p. 181).
Cognitive distancing generally says, ``I know what’s really going on; I just play Individuality
along.’’ and mystery
Emotional distancing also takes three forms:
(1) Denial of any emotional involvement with the organisation; e.g., ``Some
people feel a sense of belonging, but in my case it’s not strong. It’s a nice
company but it isn’t my mother.’’ (Kunda, p. 182).
163
(2) Denial of any feelings about what happens to you as a victim of the
culture (depersonalisation); e.g. ``I have to keep reminding myself it’s a
game. I should watch it and enjoy it.’’ (Kunda, p. 184).
(3) A self-serving ``strategic’’ show of (maybe false) feelings that some
manager wants to see (dramatisation); e.g. ``Before I had the one-on-one
with my boss, I read some advice in Things They Never Taught Me at
the Harvard Business School. Good stuff. It says, `Never show them that
you’re feeling anything: keep a straight face, confuse them.’ It’s exactly
what I did. Worked too!’’ (Kunda, p. 186).
All the existential energy of the staff goes into the charade of individuality
instead of into the courage to be genuinely individual in the face of such a
strong culture. This takes a serious toll on staff who regularly suffer burnout.
But even in burnout, the organisation’s power to transform individuals into
conformists is apparent in staff attitudes to burnout. Kunda observes:
One the one hand, burnout is considered both demeaning and difficult, evidence of a personal
failure and dramatic proof that despite the promised benefits, the sirens’ call for identification
with organisational demands may have dangerous, painful, and potentially disruptive
consequences. On the other hand, many members feel some pride in surviving burnout or
living with its threat. It is a battle scar, a purple heart, a call for respect, a sign of belonging
and of willing self-sacrifice, an indication that one’s heart is in the right place (Kunda, p. 204).

New Situations
Management of Kunda’s organisation also wants to deny its staff
individualised situations, unique arrays of possibilities for how to be. It does
this by prescribing work behaviour and even thoughts and feelings.
At one level, the culture offers a description of the social characteristics of the company that
also embodies a specification of required work behaviour: informality, initiative, lack of
structure, inherent ambiguity, hard work, consensus seeking, bottom-up decision making,
networking, pushing against the system, going off, taking risks, and making things happen.
But as the frequently heard metaphors of ``family,’’ ``marriage’’ and ``religion’’ suggest, the
rules run deeper. The culture also includes articulated rules for thoughts and feelings,
mindsets, gut reactions: an obsession with technical accomplishment, a sense of ownership, a
strong commitment to the company, identification with company goals, and, not least, fun.
(Kunda, p. 7).

In the face of rules not only for how to behave or act but also how to think and
feel, the organisation limits the possibilities of its staff. Even when confronted
with mystery, employees of this organisation are programmed to respond in
keeping with ``the religion’’, which means alternatives to ``the religion’’ do not
JOCM emerge as alternatives. Kunda’s book is filled with examples of staff who are
14,2 prisoners of such normative control.
The management of this organisation is itself conformist, doing ``what one
does’’ when one is a modern, up-to-date manager. There is a bad kind of
theoretical mindlessness in how this organisation’s managers operate. They
have not tried to understand their people or their organisation as unique. They
164 are not interested in diversity; they are interested in productive conformity that
masquerades as a unified team, shared commitment, a common vision. These
progressive, culturist managers are as interested in control as were old-
fashioned scientific managers like Taylor.

Concluding remarks
A desire for ``control’’ may also be behind our scholarly approaches to
organisational change ``management.’’ We may intend to help managers and
their staff ``manage’’ change more productively and less painlessly through
cultural control or normative control or ``hearts and minds’’ control. But very
quickly any such control can degenerate into ontological control, control of the
very being of people. Kunda writes:
More than ever, domains of the self once considered private come under corporate scrutiny
and regulation. What one does, thinks or feels ± indeed, who one is ± is not just a matter of
private concern but the legitimate domain of bureaucratic control structures armed with
increasingly sophisticated techniques of influence (Kunda, 1992, pp. 13-14).

Any form of control that seeks to render people mindless through imposition of
rational and generalised corporate values and cultures is ontological control.
Such control seeks to undermine our human nature as creatures capable of
being mindful rather than mindless, of reflecting on how we understand things
and, ultimately, of reflecting on the mysterious origins of our unique
understanding and experiences. Such control denies people their existential
individuality. This constitutes an assault on the ontological integrity of
individuals because it makes it even more difficult for people to overcome their
alienation from mystery.
And if I am right about individuality and mystery being important to coping
with change, then management prescriptions that undermine individuality and
engagement with mystery will not help organisations manage change. I think a
more moral as well as pragmatic stance for us academics would be to promote
``sophisticated techniques of influence’’ that encourage accommodation of
change, adapting and adjusting to the unexpected and inexplicable. We are on
the right track toward accommodation with theories that promote appreciation
of diversity, leadership, autonomy and even teams when teams are used to
promote multiple perspectives rather than groupthink. Such theories gesture
toward existential individuality by discouraging paradigmatic mindlessness or
by making it operationally problematic. They make room for unique human
experiences and so foster engagement with mystery.
Encouraging accommodation rather than management of change may
engender organisations that are more turbulent but also more dynamic. But
such organisations should also attract and hold people who can contribute to Individuality
and thrive in turbulent, dynamic organisations. Such people are likely to be and mystery
comfortable with change and capable of coping with it productively, so change
will not be a problem that needs managing.

Note
1. Heidegger faced this truth continually in his work because he spent his life trying to get us 165
to contemplate mystery (which he called Being), but his best efforts were confounded by
mystery’s resistance to being represented in word or thought. Rationalists like Carnap
(1959) and other logical positivists, who valued simplicity and explicitness in argument,
dismissed his work as nonsense.

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