Dissolving Anchors: Acid Management on Mars

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2003 by Taylor, Steven S

It's not difficult to imagine a world where change is the norm. After all we live in a world where the tide changes twice a day, the seasons come and go each year, the cells in our own body are constantly dying off and being replaced with new ones -there is little stability in the natural world in which we exist. Or is there? The mountains look much the same as they have for many thousands of years, people still fall in and out of love, murder each other, and do I need to say anything about death and taxes? Perhaps we can rise above this false dichotomy and say change and stability both depend on our perspective.

If I look at my desk, my first thought is that it has not changed much in the time I have owned it. I can count on it to be there when I get home and do all of its deskly functions just as it did when I left it. However, if I look closer, the desk has changed in many ways - here is a small nick from dropping the stapler on it, here is a stain from a friend's child's crayon, the handle to this drawer has worn. And if I take a longer perspective the desk has changed from being a tree (or trees) to wooden boards, to the structure I call my desk. Who knows how many forms these same atoms will take over the next century, over the next millennium? So the question of change or stability seems to depend on the distance I am observing from, both physically and temporally.

The question of change versus stability becomes even more unclear when I move from the world of physical objects into the world of constructed meaning-the world of organisations. Consider the question of whether an organisation's structure has changed or been stabile over time. First I have to construct in my head what I mean by the organisation's structure since it doesn't exist out there in the physical world. Then I have to compare my conception of the structure at one time to my conception of the structure at a second time. If those two conceptions, those two mental models are the same then I call it stability, if they are different I call it change.

This is really not very different than the example of the desk. When I consider whether my desk has changed, I first have to create a conception of what I mean when I say "my desk." I first conceive of it as the place where I write. In that conception it is stabile from day to day. Then I conceive of it as piece of fine furniture, perhaps even a work of art, and use has changed it over time - the small nicks, the gentle wear. Finally I conceive of it as a collection of atoms over many years which are constantly changing their collective form. I tend to think of my desk as the place where I write and it is very useful for me to have some stability in this conception. It allows me to not have to think about where I will write, it simplifies the task of writing - it is what I will call an anchor.

I use anchors both to simplify my world and to signal to others how I am making sense of that world. For example, in academic articles, I would normally use references as anchors. Here I would reference writing on schémas, scripts, frames, and mental models in order to anchor my thinking for the reader. However, this is written as part of an effort to imagine change as a norm and my argument is that change as a norm is an assault on anchors, so I will not include any academic references. And I ask you to consider, how does it feel to not have the references, the signposts that allow you to place this writing in your taxonomy of academic thinking? How does it feel to be deprived of your anchors?

In it's most extreme case, a world where change is the norm is a world where all of your anchors are constantly changing - that is, the anchors do not hold, you are adrift in a sea of meaning. I recently lived in a world that was constantly assaulting my anchors. I moved from the United States to England, from Boston to Bath, a couple of years ago and had been slowly learning what is really meant by the phrase, "two peoples separated by a common language" (I'd tell you who said that, but that would be a reference, an anchor). Allow me to tell a brief story to illustrate my point.

I was compelled to conduct an experiment into one of my anchors - what the word "quite" means. I ask one of my British colleagues, "if I say something is sad, and then I say something is quite sad, which is more sad?" They tell me that sad is sadder than quite sad. My Canadian and American colleagues tell me that quite sad is sadder than sad. I look and find both definitions in the dictionary. I realise that for the better part of the last year I have been using "quite" to amplify the meaning of something and the Brits I have been speaking to have understood it as lessening the meaning. Although this may have worked to my advantage, unintentionally turning my American tendency for overstatement into the British tendency for understatement, my point is that I have been living in a world that differs in how it understands the word "quite" than I how I understand "quite" and I was unaware ofthat difference. I was acting from the tacit assumption that my anchor was stabile, which proved to be wrong.