ABSTRACT
Schön’s view, it will be recalled, is that Technical Rationality presents us with a view which is at odds with our experience. It is in this context that Schön seeks an account capable of explaining why it is that, for example, modern industrial corporations are ambivalent towards innovation (1963/67, p.73), something the ‘rational myth’, argues Schön, is unable to explain and which presents a view of innovation as orderly and planned; a view at odds with what actually happens (1967a, pp.72-73). In describing what he calls ‘dynamic conservatism’, Schön argues that it is a notion applicable not just to company organisations but also to other societies or reference groups such as governments, hospitals, countries (1967a, p.57), the church, the army, the family (1967a, p.60), industries such as the building industry (1971a, pp.39-42), and concepts of occupation and profession (for example, a university or a scientific community (1967a, p.73; 1971a, p.13)). Indeed, it is, argues Schön, a notion applicable to society as a whole (1967a, p.73). Furthermore, Schön argues that as we each belong to so many overlapping cultures we do, in a sense, each belong to an individual personal culture (1963/67, p.67), made up of
ways of thinking and acting that are characteristic of, and perhaps idiosyncratic to me … reflected in my language, and … fruitful as sources of metaphor (1963/67, p.67).
By and large, suggests Schön, each of these different worlds wishes to resist change (1963a, p.82)—‘this is not only normal but in some ways even 34desirable’—though, if this tendency is not recognized, it can cause all innovation to be stifled (1963a, p.83). Innovation does though usually still occur.