Lichtenstein’s Hypothesis for the Enactment of Generative Emergence: A Methodological Study for Operationalizing the Constructs for Empirical Testing

Abstract

It is a given that for-profit organizations must innovate to survive. To this end, for-profit organizations have employed a myriad of innovation methods, often which return little, exploit members, and seed competition. Thus, the capacities of innovation are often untapped at the organizational germline. Per Prigogine’s theory of Dissipative Structures and Lichtenstein’s socio-organizational transposition of such, Generative Emergence, an alternate paradigm and practice for for-profit organizational innovation is posited. This alternative is drawn from physiochemical organizing and corresponds to social organizational formation via a transdisciplinary phenomenon and an analogical model. This alternative proposes that if certain conditions are set within organizational/innovational nascency, these will trigger the processes of far-from-equilibrium order creation and yield a qualitative new form that itself confers exponential capacity gains to the organization. Substantial prior inductive social and transdisciplinary scholarly inquiry has explored this claim. However, Lichtenstein’s theory of Generative Emergence further posits its purposeful enactment. Before this present research, Lichtenstein’s hypothesis for the enactment of Generative Emergence has not been rigorously operationalized for deductive, empirical test. In this dissertation, methodological research was employed to rigorously operationalize Lichtenstein’s hypothesis. Theory and methods were braided to generate a rationaled and explicit eight-phase operationalization protocol for this purpose. Then, that operationalization protocol was itself enacted, phase-by-phase throughout the body of this dissertation. Resultant from this is a transparently scrutable analytical process, operational definitions for the conditions, process, and outcome characteristics of Generative Emergence, and the design of a deductive, mixed-methods empirical test for future empirical testing. Seven findings of potential theoretical and methodological significance are presented. Key among them are: the new operationalization, a new empirically testable pathway to explore Lichtenstein’s hypothesis, and the transparent and rigorous process of transdisciplinary definitional development via precising, universal, and operational definitional development integrated with attribute-by-attribute level analogical evaluation. Thus, a logically plausible method to reach Lichtenstein’s alterative paradigm and practice for for-profit organizational innovation via Generative Emergence is readied for test under the auspices that such a design and future test advances our access to the deep capacity of innovation within, for, and from for-profit organizations.