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(November) I am not sure how this evolved. I am caught in a paradoxical feeling. On one hand, I am happy that both Peter and Thomas find interest in my research project, and that they actively engage themselves in it. On the other hand, I feel involved in local politics that I did not expect to be involved in. My research was supposed to be about everyday innovation practice, but now it seems that I cannot avoid looking at every incident I encounter in the company through a perspective of management politics. It is becoming impossible for me to detach myself from.
“I am going to be a bit personal here”. I am in a meeting room with Peter, discussing what organizational culture means and how it may influence development. He looks at me intensely as if he is about to reveal something very important. “People like Thomas, in management positions, have been here for years on end and they are used to doing things the old way. An informal way, but now the level of complexity has risen, and the expectations are different. It is not acceptable to make agreements by the coffee machine anymore. Things need to be more systematic and formalized, especially because a lot of new people have been hired lately, and I am one of them.” I ask him what he perceives the challenge to be. “We have a lot of independent old doers, but they are not systematic, and practices are not formally described anywhere. It is all just random and run in silos. Nobody knows what is going on and suddenly we are surprised by 80 new different explorative concepts that my engineers need to adapt to. You can do the math. Eighty times 30 hours, and in many cases none of the ideas are materialized. Thomas, that is his way of running the show. I dont say this in public, but my opinion is that Thomas' way of running things has been the reason behind many of the problems we have.”
When meeting Thomas a few days later, I try to invite a discussion on processes of decision making and collaboration in the management team, which Peter is part of. Thomas, with his soft tone expresses...