Background & Objectives
A turquoise organization is a concept crafted by Belgian business practitioner Frédéric Laloux. It is a rarely implemented, high maturity demanding model based on three pillars: sense of mission; wholeness of humanity; self-management (Bartosiewicz, 2017; Laloux, 2014; Tabaszewska-Zajbert & Sokołowska-Durkalec, 2019; Wasiluk, 2022). Accumulating information and collective transforming it into knowledge is considered to be its fundamental success factor (Januszko-Szakiel, 2020). Despite scarce evidence on this point, it may reasonably be inferred that, in practice, this flexible and individually empowering model, invests every employee with an equal load of responsibility for the organization’s prosperity. It engenders specific information needs and patterns of information behaviors as well as requires a particular form of information literacy. The authors, one of whom runs an information brokering company based on the turquoise scheme, inspected LIS students’ receptivity to the very idea of a turquoise organization and, subsequently, their readiness to develop skills needed to work with? such an entity.
Our objectives are defined as follows: 1) to measure, using mixed-method approach, LIS students’ receptivity to key principles of turquoise organizations. We define receptivity as capacity, grounded in already acquired knowledge, to project oneself in the turquoise settings and anticipate the type of information work and skills to be mobilized; 2) to assess mental and operational readiness of LIS students to integrate turquoise entities once graduated. In other words, to assess whether students demonstrate competences such as autonomous and self-responsible information sharing, discovering and encoding tacit knowledge within organizations, self-managing and improving the quality of data and information generated, sustainably archiving, and preserving information resources of the company for further reuse; 3) to suggest adding relevant content to existing LIS academic curricula in order to better equip future employees of turquoise organizations.
Methodology & Outcomes
For the study we used both quantitative and qualitative approach, the former being an online survey questionnaire. For he latter we conducted a series of individual semi-structured in-depth interviews, the full transcripts of which we analyzed conjointly by the prism of the affordance theory and the actor-network theory. We administered the survey to a group of 90 students of master in information management, from which we recruited 12 volunteer interviewees.
Results showed that students exposed ambivalent attitudes towards turquoise organizations, ranging from naïve approval to acute suspiciousness. Their nearly unanimous declarations of readiness to be hired by a turquoise entity, are mitigated, if not contradicted, by the results of individual interviews. Students showed some difficulties in properly identifying information affordances and networking connections (ANT theory) in turquoise settings. They seemed to be intimidated by the high level of autonomy and responsible personal involvement in information management processes embedded in the turquoise model. Since information is the major asset in turquoise organizations, LIS graduates are, a priori, predisposed to seek employment in such environments and there is merit in verifying their capacity to be actually recruited and to deliver proper work. These preliminary outcomes still need to be nuanced and processed in view of transforming them into actual proposals of curricula enrichment.
References
- Bartosiewicz, S. (2017). Turquoise companies, future or utopia. Central and Eastern J. of Manag. and Econ., 5(3), 393–397.
- Januszko-Szakiel, A. (2020). Turkusowy model komunikowania i informowania w organizacji biznesowej: Studium przypadku. In P. Korycińska (Ed.), Horyzonty informacji (pp. 123–140). Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Biblioteka Jagiellońska. Retrieved March 11, 2023 from https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/261425
- Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing organizations: A guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness. Brussels: Nelson Parker.
- Tabaszewska-Zajbert, E., & Sokołowska-Durkalec, A. (2019). Towards a turquoise organization–personal change of employees and its socio-cultural barriers. Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego We Wrocławiu, 63(9), 200–210.
- Wasiluk, A. (2022). On the way to turquoise organizations and turquoise leadership. Zeszyty Naukowe Politechniki Śląskiej. Organizacja I Zarządzanie, 647–661.
Aneta Januszko-Szakiel, Paloma Korycińska
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
English 
French