A Deep Dive Into Social Field Shifts

Abstract

Social fields have garnered increasing interest among practitioners and researchers, particularly due to the need to address multiple intersecting crises and their societal and organizational impacts. A recent conceptualization by Pomeroy and Herrmann (2023) proposes that social fields have a degree of autonomy that perpetuates phenomena like interaction patterns. The study adopts this lens to empirically examine the shifts at three schools during a longitudinal awareness-based change program. In-depth interviews with school professionals provide insights into the potential of relational awareness to “dive below the vortex” of autonomous and de-generative interaction cycles, facilitating a transition towards responsive and generative cycles. However, while field autonomy was transformed across the entire organization in some cases, persistent patterns were observed in others, indicating variations in the malleability of social fields. The implications of these findings for promoting organizational change are discussed.

Keywords

• social field
• awareness-based systems change
• organizational development
• organizational culture
• relational awareness
• systems sensing