Meaning-Mating And Hyphenated Actualizing In Individual-Organization Units: Lived Experiences Of Organization Development Practitioners Learning And Carrying Out The Philosophy Of Organization Development

Abstract

Individuals have been organizing for millennia. The purpose of this study was to investigate what it means for individuals and organizations to each experience how an exposure to the instrumentalized philosophies of one impacts the internalized philosophies of the other. This phenomenological investigation focused on the lived experiences of Organization Development (OD) practitioners with learning and carrying out the philosophy of OD. Individual conversations with six participants during fourteen separate interview sessions were phenomenologically carried out, analyzed, and interpreted. The experiences articulated during these conversations elucidate two concepts not found during the literature review – meaning-mating and hyphenated actualization. These two new concepts can help understand what it means for individuals and organizations to each experience how an exposure to the instrumentalized philosophies of one impacts the internalized philosophies of the other. These two new concepts can provide OD and OD practitioners with an extended awareness of an interconnected development and use of self within more selfless and always actualizing social systems of human organization. And, these two new concepts can help OD further its disciplinarily foundational operationalization of a phenomenological and dialogic account of things where and how they really are. To ignore these concepts – articulated by OD practitioners themselves – is to exclude lived realities of OD practitioners from important feedback loops that foundationally serve the philosophy of OD, OD practitioners, and OD clients. Operationalizing the concepts of meaning-mating and hyphenated actualizing can help all individual-organization unit stakeholders to THINK HYPHENATED. That is, to always consider the interconnected multidirectional actualizing occurring within and among us.