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Recent interest in the multimodal accomplishment of organization has focused on the material and symbolic aspects of materiality. We argue that current literature invokes diverse “multimodal imaginaries,” that is, ways of conceiving the relation between the material and the conceptual, and that the different imaginaries support a plurality of perspectives on materiality. Using the empirical case of a large urban renewal project in São Paulo, Brazil, we illustrate three different multimodal imaginaries – the concrete, the semiotic, and the mimetic – and indicate how each imaginary determines the way in which the site in question is discursively constructed. After outlining the different approaches, we discuss their theoretical implications, advantages, and constraints, setting an agenda for future studies of materiality in organizational and institutional contexts.

Over the past years, the educational environment has undergone a revolution, caused mainly by the wide diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the multiscalar implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. This chapter taps into educators’ first-hand experience relating to the adoption of online technologies in an action learning process during the pandemic. Action learning is one of the experiential training methodologies aimed at individual, group, and organizational growth and development through practical, hands-on experience. It is an educational process that facilitates and improves the mechanism and functioning of groups of people who come together to support real challenges or activities, also by learning from direct experience. To this end, the case study of a University Master Course in leadership and change management is examined, based on unstructured interviews and analysis of written documents. The case study represents an emblematic case of adaptation and response to the change imposed by Covid-19 through the promotion of an innovative teaching and learning method. Results show how the adjustments devised to cope with the consequence of teamwork virtualization proved to be synergistic, delivering positive outcomes in terms of participants satisfaction, learning and impact, and producing deeply innovative change management projects. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Why is it that highly trained and seasoned executives fail? On the surface, this doesn’t make sense because they are very successful; yet research in the organization sciences provides no shortage of evidence to prove just that. From the classic Mann Gulch fire disaster of Weick’s famous collapse of sensemaking study, to studies of myopia of learning, escalation of commitment, threat-rigidity, dominant logic, the architecture of simplicity, the Icarus Paradox, to core competencies turning into core rigidities, and navigating new competitive markets using “old” cognitive maps, and many more such examples point to a ubiquitous phenomenon where highly trained and experienced professionals find themselves “stuck” in the heat of battle, unable to move and progress. On the one hand, for some, there is a desperate need for change, but are unable to do so, due to their trained incapacities. On the other hand, some simply cannot see the need for change, and continue with their “business as usual” mentality. For both, their visions of the world shrink, they have a tendency to cling onto their past habitual practices and oversimplify the complexity of the situation. In moments like these: DROP YOUR TOOLS and UNLEARN! This book chapter introduces a framework (grounded in clinical psychology) that has had consistent success in helping seasoned executives and key decision-makers open up the alternatives whenever they find themselves stuck with complexity.