Exploring Meaning through Organizing in Musicking

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Exploring Meaning through Organizing in Musicking
John Paul StephensMay Meaning Meeting2008
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Presentation Score

• Theoretical background Coordination
• Conceptualization Musicking
• Methods Data
• Places of Meaning in Choir
• Framing attempt
• Questions for MMMMembers

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Introduction

• Dissertation work Understanding the experience
  of successful coordination
• Context
• Complex, interdependent group task
• Musicking (Small, 1998) as coordination and
  organizing

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Theory on Coordination

• Coordination in Psychology
• Synchrony (Bernieri, Reznick, Rosenthal, 1988)
• Coordination in Organizational Studies
• Organizational Design (Galbraith, 1977 Lawrence
  Lorsch, 1967)
• Contingency theories (Thompson, 1967 Van de Ven
  et al., 1976)

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Theory on Coordination (contd)

• Coordination between individuals at work
• Relational coordination (Gittell 2001 2002)
• Energy-in-conversation (Quinn Dutton, 2005)
• Heedful interrelating (Weick Roberts, 1993)

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Central Problem What we (dont) know about
coordination

• We know ways of managing coordination
• But how is it actually experienced or enacted?
• Coordination depends on mindfulness of
  interdependencies (Dougherty, 1992 Heath
  Staudenmayer, 2000 Weick Roberts, 1993)
• Mindful of what exactly? Where is attention
  focused?
• Coordination also involves the emergence of a
  new, holistic form (Fleck, 1979 Weick Roberts,
  1993)
• Where does a sense of being group come from?
  How is it related to coordination?

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Research Focus

• The psychological experience of coordination
• A dual characterization
• Attention (to self-in-relation-to-other)
• Feeling (of being group)
• A multi-modal communicative achievement

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Conceptual Framework

• (Successful) Coordination involves
• Individuals interrelating action mindfully,
  attending to the relationship between self-
  and other- produced actions (cf. Weick
  Roberts, 1993).
• Individuals apprehending being of a group, a
  whole that is greater than the sum of its
  parts (Sandelands, 1998 2003).

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What I mean by work

• A broad view of organizing
• Interrelated action to achieve collective purpose
  (Weick, 1979)
• Interest in the phenomenology (the
  in-the-moment-experience) of interrelating action
  as a collective

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Music as context

• Chorus as organizational form
• Singing in choir is most popular public arts
  activity (NEA survey, 1998)
• Almost 200-strong, community choir in Midwestern
  town
• Best Choral Performance Grammy winners
• Conductor prepares choir for other conductors,
  performance with symphony orchestras

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Motivation of Research

• Novice to choral singing and musical performance
• Sensitive to issues of attention and
  coordination concurrent interest in
  organizational cognition
• Ethnographic methods used given my insider
  status and the performative nature of task.

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Research Goals

• Ethnography representation of a culture and
  its meanings (Van Maanen, 1988)
• Cognitive ethnography how those meanings are
  created how action embodies mind how context
  shapes action and action renews context (cf.
  Hutchins, 1995)

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Meaning in the choir

• How do I link meaning with my core interests of
  attention and feeling?

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Methods

• Insider/Outsider research (Bartunek Louis,
  1996 Evered Louis, 1981)
• Participant-observation
• Semi-structured (collective) interviewing (cf.
  Fontana Frey, 1994 Morgan Spanish, 1984)

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Data

• Fieldnotes (8 months 57 hours of rehearsals 18
  hours of dress rehearsals 21 hours of public
  performance 187 single-spaced pages of notes)
• Interviews (27 individuals, 7 paired interviews)
• Video (one rehearsal)

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Where to begin?

• What are people saying is important to them?
• Attention (demonstrated in fieldnotes and
  interviews)
• Feeling (demonstrated in fieldnotes and
  interviews)
• Explicit testimony of meaning in interviews

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Where is meaning in the choir?

• Places of meaning
• In performance/action
• In context of action

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Meaning in Performance
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Meaning in Performance

• Harmony Meaning in togetherness of sound
• Focus on technical elements vs. engagement in
  emotion Linked to performance quality
• Repair Cant re-sing music comprised of
  related notes obligation to audience

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Meaning in Performance

• Connecting with conductor his facial expression
  signals performance quality eye contact creates
  shared moment
• Physicality co-located physical action
  discomfort gesturing in section self-correction
  seating arrangement

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Meaning in Context of Action

• Role identity Sopranos vs. altos Basses
  sopranos vs. altos tenors job vs. choir
• Music as meaning-laden communication Connection
  with entire story of musical work connecting
  text content to spirituality/religion

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Meaning in Context of Action

• Social connection making friends and being able
  to sing next to them responding to conductor as
  coordinating center transferral of significance
  of piece from conductor to singer socializing
  vs. work of singing getting married
• Seating arrangement preference and neighbors
  expertise
• Singer --gt singer vs. Conductor --gt singer
  correction

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An attempt at a framing
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Meaning of work framing

• Meaning as created in interpersonal encounters
  (Wrzesniewski, Dutton Debebe, 2003)
• In the case of the choirmeaning as created in
  apprehending place in collective, ones role in
  coordination
• Similar to Quinn Dutton (2005), where
  conversation helps clarify ones place in the
  narrative about the collective.

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What is work meaning?

• Work meaning employees understanding of what
  they do at work as well as the significance of
  what they do (Wrzesniewski, Dutton Debebe,
  2003).
• In the case of intragroup coordination,
  understanding in terms of attention and
  feeling.

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Construct of work meaning

• Meaning of task unpaid, amateur, publicly
  performing, choral singer
• Meaning of role soprano, alto, tenor, bass,
  manager, librarian, section leader
• Meaning of self in work I can do more than my
  day job, I am musically expert or am learner,
  I can influence others

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Potential Contributions

• Richer, more specific views of how coordination
  gets done
• Furthering relational view of how work is done
• Focus on both attention (cognitive) and feeling
  (affect)

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Questions to MMMMembers

• Other views of coordination, or ways of
  interpreting these situations?
• More to meaning in the choir than simply this
  is what is fun?
• What literatures would be useful to look into
  now, considering the early stage of work?

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Thank You!!