From agency to structure: Analysis of an episode in a facilitation process

In this article, we analyze an exercise in a facilitation process by showing that the structuring of this episode can be studied just by highlighting how different forms of agency (human and non-human) articulate with each other. The objective of this study is threefold: first, it aims at demonstrating that structuring effects can indeed be identified through a bottom-up approach without resorting to any form of duality or dualism, as it is common to think in the traditional literature in organizational studies (Conrad & Haynes, 2001); second, through this analysis, it illustrates the analytical power of such an approach by showing how it allows us to identify specific strategies used by the facilitators to do their work, especially in the way they select who or what is acting in a chain of agencies; third, it illustrates how the attribution of agency to artifacts allows human participants to progress throughout the facilitation process by enabling them to objectify what they are supposed to think and wish for, a process that Weick (1979) has identified as the bulk of organizing processes.

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