May 14, 3:00 - 4:00 pm ET
“Why, if connection is the basic site of growth and human development, have conventional models so emphasized separation, independence, and individuation? And why, if relational skills and attributes are key to the growth-fostering and learning process for all humans have they been historically devalued and disassociated with power and leadership?”
- Joyce Fletcher
Join Joyce Fletcher, Darren McLean and Julius Yang in this Cafe to explore strategies to make visible and empower relational work. Based on their research and experience as leaders, they will explore these strategies in organizations and in the broader institutional context.. Jody Hoffer Gittell will facilitate and invite you to share about your work - as a researcher, leader and/or change agent.
Background
Follett (1924), Buber (1937), Miller (1976) and others have argued that relationships are fundamental to the life experience and identity of human beings. But what insights if any can we gain from these theorists regarding the role that relationships play in the coordination of work? It appears that Follett was the first to attempt to connect the relational nature of human identity to the coordination of work. Follett’s writings suggest that a relational understanding of human identity is somehow connected to a relational understanding of coordination. Just as human identity and causality are characterized by reciprocal influence, so too is coordination. Coordination, Follett argued, is most effective when it occurs through mutual adjustment among the factors of a situation, starting early and continuing throughout the process.
Fletcher (1998, 2001) introduced the concept of relational practice, arguing that it tends to be ‘disappeared’ from organizational discourse and reward structures due to our tendency to relegate it to the private sphere of women’s work, despite its potential to serve as a powerful driver of organizational performance. Fletcher’s work draws particularly on Miller’s insights regarding the gendering of relationality, due to the tendency for males to be socialized into the self-as-individual identity and for females to be socialized into the self-in-relation identity.
Other scholars have continued to translate relationality from the realm of social psychology into the realm of organizations, exploring relational conceptualizations of job design (e.g. Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001; Grant, 2007; Gittell, Weinberg, Bennett & Miller, 2008), learning (Edmondson, 1996, 2004; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006), professionalism (Fletcher, 1999; Adler, Kwon & Heckscher, 2008), and coordination (e.g. Weick and Roberts, 1994; Crowston & Kammerer, 1998; Faraj & Sproull, 2000; Gittell, 2002b; Quinn & Dutton, 2005; Bechky, 2006; Faraj & Xiao, 2006; Heckscher & Adler, 2006). More recently, McLean and colleagues (2025) showed how dominant male narratives can block the implementation of relational coordination in organizational change efforts.
What happens when the relationality of human identity is made relatively invisible through a gendered process of socialization - when relationality is associated with female qualities rather than human qualities more broadly? And what are the strategies for changing this narrative?
Panelists
Joyce Fletcher, Simmons College
Darren McLean, Gold Coast Health
Julius Yang, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Facilitator
Jody Hoffer Gittell, Brandeis University
Register Here
You will receive a zoom link and calendar invite after registering. You must be a member or be invited by a member. Contact us at relationalcoord@brandeis.edu to be invited as our guest.
Become a member or renew your membership here!
Readings
Fletcher, J. K. (2001). Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work. MIT Press.
Fletcher, J. K. (1998). Relational practice: A feminist reconstruction of work. Journal of Management Inquiry, 7(2), 163-186.
Gittell, J.H., Fletcher, J. (2019). Integrative solutions in a divided world: Toward a relational model of change. In M. Stout and J. Love (Eds.) The future of progressivism: Applying Follettian thinking to contemporary issues. Process Century Press.
McLean, D., Connor, M., Marshall, A. P., McMurray, A., & Jones, L. (2025). Illuminating power dynamics that influenced a relational coordination program in a tertiary hospital: An institutional ethnography study. Health Care Management Review, 50(1), 23-31.