On Reframing and Its Epistemological Underpinnings

Philosophers describe  these four ways of knowing:

• The way of science. Nature doesn't care what anyone thinks; things just are. Empiricism allows us to know objective realities.
  
  For example, science allows us to specifically classify  Broccoli as a member of the Cruciferous (Brassica) family which includes Brussels  sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage,  Chinese cabbage, bok choy, kale and collard  greens)  We can assay brocolli chemically and learn it is an excellent food source of vitamins A and C, as well as riboflavin, calcium and iron.  Stacked with protective compounds , such as  isothiocyanates and sulforaphane, as well as indole-3-carbinol (I3C),  a substance that is said to have anticancer actions, broccoli tops the list of ‘must serves’. 

  Some scientists have even shown broccoli to be especially effective in ramping up the body's cancer defense mechanisms by increasing what we call 'phase 2’  enzymes. These vegetables are particularly rich in the compound sulforaphane, which boosts phase 2 enzymes. 

  Brocolli is green and  we can measure the nature  of light that casts a green color and determine if two brocolli pants are similar in their greenness
   

  There tends to be some general "scientific" agreement about such things as how much a pound of broccoli weighs.
  

• Then there is another way of knowing that treats subjective realities: I care what I think and I like broccoli. If you come to my house for a meal  expect to find broccoli on the  dinner table.
  
  For  example, I like the way broccoli tastes and I don't necessarily care what  you might think. (There tends to be lots of disagreement about how good broccoli tastes. I  think it is sweet; my Dad used  to say it tastes like chalk.) Shortly after becoming president, Mr. Bush senior  declared "No more broccoli on the White House menu" which infuriated broccoli growers who sent tons of the vegetable to the White House in a not so  humorous protest.  In this instance, brocolli became a subjective political reality, that is one would have to speculate about how much Bush was effective politically by his stance on brocolli.  Pollsters know to make statements in terms of + or -  assurance to indicate how certain they are about their polls.

   

• Religious (Faith) Based Reality: This is what "my book" about vegetables says is real and important.
  
  Broccoli is not a very big issue in the Sutras of the Tibetan script, the Talmud  of the Hebrews, the New Testament of the Christians, the Koran of the Muslims, the Hindu  Bhågavata, or the Tao by Lao Tse.  But in a religion in which broccoli is worshiped, priests might tell us broccoli has magical powers.
  
  My Mom believed broccoli had "magical  or one might argue religious meaning " for our family, and  she served it a lot. (Actually, she may have just really liked broccoli; many philosophers treat religion as a subjective reality while some religious folk believe "my religion is right; your religion and the billions of people who believe your way are wrong."
  
  On the other hand, my father hated broccoli, but he worshiped my mother and ate his broccoli like a good boy.   Thus, I suspect, Mom thought she had  "magical broccoli power" over my Dad when it came to what he would eat.  Actually he was brought up believing in "cleaning  your plate" and  the shibboleth "if it is served, you  eat it." So he would eat his broccoli with a strained look on his face which became a smile once he had  finished cleaning his plate. Mom would smile like the  Buddha, knowing she had this magical power over my Dad when it came to serving brocolli.
  
• Social Construction of Reality: What we think matters, how we frame our world of understanding about people matters. These "real conditions" of our understanding have meaning only through social interaction, that is, it is the perceived value of the things  that matter, their definitions and significance are socially produced and thus to some extent become subjective views of reality.

In this course we are interested mostly in social constructions of reality. The four frames we will study are ways to  understand our "social constructions of reality" of  organizational life, four ways to talk and think about what we believe is "real" about all social systems,  e.g., our family, our schools, this classroom, the places where we work, etc.

The idea of reframing  has four major points of views: the structural, the human resource, the political, and the symbolic frames.   Each frame derives from different assumptions and beliefs ("theories") about organizations and each advocates different avenues for action. These four frames encompass much of the existing theory and research about organizations and thus provide  comprehensive and integrated ways to understand behavior in organizations,  including  leadership behavior.  (The assumptions of each frame.) 

Let's think of this class as an organization to help make the point about four ways a student might frame his/her  experience so far. Here are four different ways students my  react to (frame) the first day in the class BMA505, Organizational Behavior.

Structural Frame: "The problem with this class and prof is that he and it are not very well  organized. If he would just give up on all this philosophic gooble-de-goop and tell us what we need to know to get an A, I'd be a whole lot happier."  Structural frame  often treat their view of organizations with the same degree of certainty as do scientist who seek objective realities.

Human Resource Frame:   "This is a course in which we all learn together in a learning community. I really like getting to know fellow students and learning this way." Those who embrace the HR frame are often accepting of the vast array of differences and uniqueness among people. They e,brace differences and easily allow others to have different  (subjective) views of reality.

The Political Frame: "Only a few folks get A's and I know how to get one but I won't tell you, just in case there is a grading curve". Political framers worry only about the pragmatic "truth" about whatever might expain how one group exercises power over another group.

The Symbolic Frame: "I like the class.  I get to figure out what is meaningful to me because that is all that really matters anyway." Symbolical framers, like the religious folk, are concerned foremost about what is most meaningful to people including  the spiritual side of organizational life.

Here is a definition of frames as social constructions of reality:

Frames.What we value in our organizational life is found mostly in our interpretation of it. We know our organizational world only as we interpret it,  as we "frame" it. 

The main vehicles which convey our meanings to others are the tools we use to talk and think about things, including our language, our cultural myths, larger social meanings of objects, actions, signs, episodes, and the structure and practice of our institutions and organizations in which we live and work.  These institutions and organizations , together with our experience in them, construct our world-view -- our sense of how the organizational world works, what is valuable, why things are the way they are and what we  might do about them. These are  our frames. They define:

Our sense of ourselves, our identity and purpose,  how we think about ourselves in our organizational life.

Our organizational ideologies -- our sense of what is appropriate and meaningful , the structure of, and the exercise of power, leadership actions, and roles in organizations, and our relationships with others.

Reframing. In countless ways and unceasingly, our interpretation  of our organizational life is often frozen into what we already believe about our organizational life. By "frozen" I mean  we sometimes learn little new from our experiences.  As a result,  we often fix the wrong problem because we make faulty diagnoses, use incomplete knowledge or, to put it another way,  we use the wrong or inappropriate frame(s) to make sense of things and  to act upon our understanding of what is happening. We tend to "see" and act upon what we know from only what has gone before in our definition of organizational life, what our previous  "frames of analysis" allow us to see. We are "locked into" these frames, these "social constructions of reality. "  In short, we misdiagnose, and then often try to convince others of our incorrect or incomplete diagnosis.

What we often need to do is reframe our understanding (become social re-constructionists)  and take a second, a third look, or even a fourth look.  Perhaps with a new set of assumptions and a reframed way of looking at things, we can understand more than we did before, or at least, maybe we can gain insight into why others might interpret things differently from how we interpret them.

Our perceptions about organizational behavior are based on these learned interpretations. This learning is social: we learn from and among others in social interaction.  For example,  we can learn new ways of framing through the social interactions in this class, i.e., others help us learn by sharing their social constructions of organizational life which may be dissimilar to ours, but give us new insight.

Dick Heimovics June 28, 2005