Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice 9783110884494, 9783110145595

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de Gruyter Studies in Organization 77 Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice

de Gruyter Studies in Organization Organizational Theory and Research

This de Gruyter Series aims at publishing theoretical and methodological studies of organizations as well as research ñndings, which yield insight in and knowledge about organizations. The whole spectrum of perspectives will be considered: organizational analyses rooted in the sociological as well as the economic tradition, from a sociopsychological or a political science angle, mainstream as well as critical or ethnomethodological contributions. Equally, all kinds of organizations will be considered: firms, public agencies, non-profit institutions, voluntary associations, inter-organizational networks, supra-national organizations etc. Emphasis is on publication of new contributions, or significant revisions of existing approaches. However, summaries or critical reflections on current thinking and research will also be considered. This series represents an effort to advance the social scientific study of organizations across national boundaries and academic disciplines. An Advisory Board consisting of representatives of a variety of perspectives and from different cultural areas is responsible for achieving this task. This series addresses organization researchers within and oi.tside universities, but also practitioners who have an interest in grounding their work on recent social scientific knowledge and insights. Editor: Prof. Dr. Alfred Kieser, Universität Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany Advisory Board: Prof. Anna Grandori, CRORA, Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milano, Italy Prof. Dr. Comelis Lammers, FSW Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands Prof. Dr. Marshall W. Meyer, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Prof Jean-Claude Thoenig, Université de Paris I, Paris, France Prof. Mayer F. Zald, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

Robert Ghia

Organizational Analysis as Deconstractive Practice

W G DE

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin • New York 1996

Dr. Robert Chia, Senior Lecturer in Management, Department of Accounting and Financial Management, University of Essex, Great Britain

With 10 figures

@ Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chia, Robert Kay Guan. Organizational analysis as deconstructive practice / Robert Chia. p. cm. - (De Gruyter studies in organization ; 77) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-014559-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Organization - Philosophy. 2. Organization - Research. I. Title. II. Series. HD31.C4725 1996 302.3'5-dc20 96-18620 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chia, Robert: Organizational analysis as deconstructive practice / Robert Chia. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1996 (De Gruyter studies in organization ; 77 : Organizational theory and research) ISBN 3-11-014559-6 NE: GT

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Printing: WB-Druck GmbH, Rieden am Forggensee. - Binding: Mikolai GmbH, Berlin. Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin.

To the children of Dunblane Primary School who died so needlessly on 13th March 1996

Preface

This book is essentially about the logic and rhetoric of organizing as realityconstituting social practices. It is particularly concerned with examining the logical and rhetorical strategies deployed in the production of organizational texts and their consequent effects on our understanding of organization. As such, it is not primarily concerned with the functional analysis of organizations, nor of articulating a new alternative 'critical' perspective to the study of social organizations and their effects, nor even especially about the philosophical undeφinnings of contemporary organization theory. Instead its main concern is to systematically examine the organizing logic supporting the process of theory-building in organization studies, and to explore the textual practices and contextual circumstances which enable certain theories of organization to gain credibility within particular research commimities. In so doing, I hope to expose the many intellectual 'sleights of hand' which are to be found in much of the organization theory literature including those generated by so-called organizational meta-theorists. To do this it is necessary firstly, to examine the epistemological and ontological commitments of the various theories proffered and to show how such commitments structure and organize the discourse on organization. However this excursion into the philosophical underpinnings of organization theory is merely to draw attention to the underlying irresolvable tensions and contradictions which pervade the logic of current approaches to organizational theorizing. I trace the source of this theoretical conundrum to an excessive diet of representationalist thinking in which theories are unquestioningly regarded as straightforward attempts to accurately capture and represent an already constituted external reality. Representationalist thinking is a core feature of modernist discourse which, ever since Descartes pronounced his famous injunction, has sought to ground theoretical assertions in indubitable facts of the world. My claim here is that this is a misguided project which traditional approaches to organization theory have unreflectively participated in. This claim is based upon a postmodern rendering of the current state of the academic discipline we call organization studies. Postmodern thinking, with its radical questioning of the logical categories of thought shaping the discourse on organization, offers a more promising way of rethinking organization and consequently the intellectual role of organizational analysis. Postmodern thinking is a 'weak' form of thinking

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which orients us towards insistently moving 'upstream', away from the dominant concerns of mainstream organization theory, to an exploration of the linguistic and social networking micro-practices which collectively create stabilized effects that through time come to be construed as unproblematic states or entities. These entities and/or states include 'knowledge', 'truth', 'the individual', 'the organization', 'its strategy' and even 'theories of organization'. This process of reification is very insidious and pervasive in contemporary organization theory. It can be traced to the logical structuring of the English language as Chapter 6 of this book tries to show. An alter-native Heraclitean-inspired cosmology in which process, transformation and the becoming of material and social relations are accentuated, is needed for appreciating the central preoccupations of postmodern deconstructive analyses. In order to do justice to this emergent and truly processual approach to analysing social organizing processes, I shall need to traverse terrain as yet unfamiliar to the mainstream organizational theorist or indeed even some of the more progressive 'deviants' of the discipline who assiduously continue to engage in meta-level debates m organization studies. Specifically, I shall draw on the postmodern critique of the representationalist theory of truth, and the deconstructive analysis of the logic and grammar of language and writing, to illuminate this study of organization. If it is possible to chart the intellectual trajectory of organization studies as an academic discipline then it would seem that beginning with a systems view of organization, which assumed the unproblematical status of the latter as a concrete stable and describable entity, we have begun, in the recent past, to shift our attention to meta-level analyses of theories of organization which have tended to question this widespread assumption. This 'tum' to meta-theory, has been followed by an emerging awareness of the problem of language in organization theory. Language is increasingly seen as playing a crucial role in shaping the priorities and agendas of organizational research. It is increasingly recognised as a crucial but unexplored dimension of the organizational theorizing process. What is being proposed in this book is that extending the concern with language to its logical conclusion leads us to the realization that it is the grammatical logic of language, and in particular the logic of writing, which provides us with a fimdamental appreciation of the intrinsic taxonomic urge to order and organize our lifeworlds and to render them more controllable and manipulable. Organization studies thus takes on a new and radically different dimension. Instead of thinking about organizational analysis as concerning the analysis of organizations or the analyses of theories of organization, it can be more fruitfully conceived as a critical intellectual practice of decon-

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structing or dismantling the logical and rhetorical structures of language. This is the intellectual orientation adopted by a postmodernist reading of organization. It is one inspired by an ontology of becoming. This book has undergone a lengthy process of gestation and has consumed the best part of my relatively short academic life.In pursuing this research I was not initially aware of the extent of the task I had committed myself to and am utterly convinced that without the immense support, guidance and encouragement I received from my good friend and mentor Bob Cooper, this project might still have remained in its embryonic stages. I am eternally indebted to him. In the course of my intellectual journey, and at various stages of the preparation of this manuscript, many others have given their support, suggestions and encouragement. Gibson Burrell, Mike Reed, Harry Jamieson, Seungkwon Jang, Colin Brown, Jose Malavé, Lu Yuan, Steve Fox, Vivien Hodgson, John Burgoyne and my former colleagues at the Department of Management Learning at Lancaster University provided much support and encouragement during the earlier stages of this research. More latterly I have received invaluable advice, moral support and inspiration from Stuart Morgan, Jonathan Gosling, Julia Davis, Mohammed Branine, Qi Xu, Anne Keegan and Mark Dibben who have from time to time helped share my intellectual burden and enriched me with their friendship over the last few years. This end product would not have been possible without their unwavering faith in my capabilities. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Jeanny for her love, patience and untiring support throughout this research. Robert Chia March 1996 Dunblane, Scotland

Table of Contents

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking Downstream Thinking and Organizational Analysis The Critique of Downstream Thinking Upstream Thinking Constructionism/Pragmatism and Upstream Thinking Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice

1 2 8 11 14 17

Part 1: The Organization of Theory Chapter 1: Ontological Realism and The Ideology of Representation

25

Introduction The Status of Science Being-Realism The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness Representing and the Ideology of Representation The Ideology of Representation The Organization of Classical Knowledge Conclusion

25 26 31 33 35 38 39 43

Chapter 2: Epistemologica! Realism and Organization Theory

45

Introduction Scientific Realism The Organization of Science: Positivistic Knowledge The Organization of Science: Realist Knowledge Varieties of Realism Ontological and Epistemologica! Commitments of Realism Epistemologica! Realism in the Social Sciences The Science of Organization Conclusion

45 45 47 50 52 55 56 58 65

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Table of Contents

Chapter 3: The Problem of Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis

67

Introduction The Reflexive Problem of Representationalist Epistemology 'Methodological Horrors' in Representationalist Theorizing Paradox-Deferring Strategies in Organizational Analysis Reflexivity: The Postmodern Predicament Reflexive Theorizing in Organization Studies Meta-Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis Responses to the Problem of Reflexivity in Organization Studies Avoiding the Reflexivity Cul-de-Sac Conclusion

67 70 73 74 79 82 83 86 90 93

Part 2: Upstream Thinking and Postmodern Organizational Analysis Chapter 4: Reconfiguring Truth, Reality, Representation and Organization

97

Introduction Postmodernism Discontinuities and Fragmentation Postmodern Sensibilities Postmodern Pragmatism: Reconceptualising Knowledge and Truth Postmodern Priorities Towards a 'Weak' Thinking Style in Organizational Analysis Conclusion

97 98 103 105 110 115 117 118

Chapter 5: Organization as Representation: Power, Economy and Remote Control

121

Introduction The Structure of Representation Explaining Explanations Technologies of Representation The Space of Representation Organization as Representation Conclusion

121 122 124 129 137 143 146

Table of Contents

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Chapter 6: Thinking Processually: From Organizations' to Organizing Processes

149

Introduction The 'Will' in Organization and Representation Dismantling 'Organizations' From 'Organizations' to Organizing Processes Thinking Processually: Actor-Networks, Autopoiesis and Distributed Cognition Thinking Processually: The Linguistic Organization of Reality Conclusion

149 150 152 155 161 167 172

Part 3: Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice Chapter 7: Logocentrism and Deconstruction

175

Introduction Language, Writing and the Organization of Society Derrida and the Logic of Writing Deconstruction Conclusion

175 177 182 186 192

Chapter 8: Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice

193

Introduction The Case of 'Decision' in Organization Theory Deconstructing Decision-Making Rethinking the Concept of Decision After Deconstruction: Subtle Knowing and Supple Minds Implications: Deconstructive Analysis and the Educational Process Conclusion

193 193 195 204 209 211 215

Conclusions

217

References Index

221 237

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

To know is to put to death—^to kill the lamb, deep in the woods, in order to eat it. Moving from combat with prey outside the species to killing inside the species, knowledge now becomes military, a martial art. It is then more than a game: it is literally a strategy. These epistemologies are not innocent.... They are policies promulgated by military strategists. To know is to kill.... M. Serres Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy

Two modes of thinking are discernible in contemporary theorizing in the human sciences. These have been called 'downstream thinking' and 'upstream thinking' (Latour 1987), 'representing' and 'intervening' (Hackmg 1983), 'foundational' and 'anti-foundational' (Hekman 1986), 'systematic' and 'edifying' (Rorty 1980), 'modem' and 'postmodem' (Cooper and BurTell 1988), 'strong' and 'weak' (Vattimo 1988), 'representational' and 'anti-representational' (Rorty 1991). These attempted distinctions point to a straining to differentiate between two vastly contrasting yet inadequately elaborated cognitive styles and discursive logics which exists and persists in contemporary studies within the human sciences in general and organization studies in particular. Although these two modes of thought are often only expressible through the logic of modernist discourse, their ontological commitments, intellectual priorities and theoretical pre-occupations should not be mistakenly conflated. In this regard, it is more fruitful to conceive of these two modes of thought, not in traditional oppositional terms, but rather in terms of a logic of supplementarity (Derrida 1976) whereby the presence of the Other is implicitly recognized as the very condition for the articulation of the One. What is being alluded to here is the possibility of pursuing either of two contrasting views of human inquiry, each with distinctive consequences for the outcome of the intellectual enteφrise. On the one hand there is theorizing which aspires towards the convergent grounding of our knowledge bases so that the traditional project of theory-building can proceed unimpeded. The goal of accumulating established and verifiable bodies of knowledge can thereby be systematically attained. On the other, theorizing is deemed to be exploratory, emergent and processual in character. Advocates of this latter mode of thought tend to resist what is deemed to be the

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premature legitimizing forces that collectively conspire to constrain and thereby 'ground' this style of thinking. One gives rise to a discrete, static, and cumulative (theory-building) view of knowledge while the other emphasizes the tentative, processual and emergent character of human understanding. Given these diametrically opposing epistemologica! stances, it is necessary to begin to understand their implications for the academic discipline we call Organization Studies.

Downstream Thinking and Organizational Analysis If we take a walk along the river we realize that what makes a river recognizable as such is the existence of a stretch of identifiable flowing water framed by the contours of the river banks. Time and the continuous passing movement of water has etched out a distinctive passage along which the river now flows. The further we move downstream the more grooved and clearly defined are the river banks and the more likely that subsequent streams of water will continue to follow along the path carved out of the rocks. Much of what I call downstream thinking follows the same tendency. Traces of past patterns of thought constrain and help shape the possibilities of future ways of thinking. They serve as powerful formative influences in the academic production of knowledge. Unless and until we become aware of such powerful tendencies our thoughts, like the overly familiar contours of the river bed, stand in danger of becoming so self-evident as to be in principle unquestionable. Downstream thinking therefore privileges a generalizing, convergent, and consequential set of intellectual priorities. It shifts our intellectual focus onto the discreteness, unity, identity, and permanence of different aspects of our phenomenal experiences by deliberately marginalising and hence silencing competing accounts that threaten the integrity of such priorities. Challenges to the generally held axioms and truths of a particular community of inquirers are thereby systematically delegitimized. The fundamental epistemological stance of downstream thinking is representationalism; the belief that theories are attempts by the intellectual elites of society to accurately describe and represent reality as it is in itself When this accurate mirroring is achieved, theories are then deemed to be true and hence carry the full weight of scientific authority along with them. Univocality of assertion and, hence, universality of application is arrived at by systematically undermining and 'killing ofF competing views much in the

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

3

same way militaiy strategists maneuver to first isolate and then pick off opposing forces. Thus, we can see that what at one level appears to be the dispassionate presentation of an objective 'fact' of the world may, upon reexamination, be construed as the site of contestation in which the 'reason of the stronger' has prevailed. Downstream thinking is inextricably linked to foundationalism; the dominant predisposition since the Enlightenment to ground all our knowledge claims in irrefutable facts of the world. As such it is wedded to a 'correspondence (i.e., representational) theory of truth' and a 'transcendental realist' (Putnam 1981) view of knowledge production. What these philosophical expressions mean and their consequences for organizational analysis will be explored in detail in subsequent chapters of this book. Additionally the term 'modernism' has come into currency in recent years as an umbrella concept expressing a style of thinking and a set of intellectual preoccupations which are clearly identifiable with the downstream mode of thought. In the pages that follow it will become clear that many of these philosophical assumptions, epistemological commitments, and theoretical preoccupations are interwoven into one another to form a web of beliefs which has sustained the Enlightenment project for over three centuries in the Western world. For downstream thinkers the fundamental question which beset all intellectual inquiry is that of how best to overcome the problem of gaining access to an unmediated reality. Once this task is satisfactorily accomplished 'facts' can be called upon to 'speak for themselves'. Thus, the question of 'methodology' features preeminently in such forms of academic research. Facts are thought to be given and 'out there' awaiting our discovery. Operating in a downstream mode leads us away from the conditions of production of truth claims to the consequences of such claims. This has the curious effect of reinforcing the 'solidity' of such assertions making them seem even less controversial. Consider the statements below: a) An organization is a consciously coordinated social entity, with a relatively identifiable boundary, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. b) Organization theory is the body of thinking and writing which addresses itself to the problems of how to organize. c) Organization theory is in many respects a modernist discipline par excellence, springing as it does from Weber's modernist vision of the modernist world.

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Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

Such statements direct us to focus on the consequences of such apparently factual statements. They make no reference to the context within which they are produced and the individualities involved in making these pronouncements. These sentences are essentially devoid of any traces of ownership, construction, time, and place and as such make them less contestable since there is no particular individuality with whom the reader can easily take issue with. Such statements, therefore, form part of a rhetorical ploy to divert attention away from the locus of controversy surrounding such assertions by establishing an arbitrary but strategically useful distinction between what is problematical and what is not. The would-be critic is therefore oftentimes deprived of a legitimate ideological platform for contesting the plausibility of the very distinctions made and hence invariably diverted into a preoccupation with thinking downstream consequences. This leads, as we have indicated previously, to a preoccupation with exploring the implications of such statements since they are seen to be more easily identifiable and hence more 'manageable' as a field of study. Thus in (a), the writer goes on to articulate the purpose of organization theory as the study of 'why organizations are designed as the are' (Robbins 1987: 7). 'Organizations' henceforth are unproblematically taken to be discrete and identifiable social entities existing 'out there' that readily lend themselves to research and analysis. Likewise in (b), defining organization theory as he does, leads the writer to study the 'structure, ñmctioning and performance of organizations and the behavior of groups and individuals within them' (Pugh 1971: 9). Again, as in (a), 'organizations' are not a theoretical construct, but a factual entity possessing measurable structural charac-teristics that can be unproblematically identified, differentiated, and systematically analyzed. Finally in (c), we see an attempt to appropriate categories of contemporary discourse into mainstream (i.e., downstream) organizational theorizing. In this case the writer goes on to oppose modernity with postmodemity and to maintain that the 'crucial hallmark of modernity is taken to be the centrality of an increasing division of labor' (Clegg 1990: 2). By making the link of modernity to an increase in the division (or differentiation) of labor and then conveniently equating the postmodern with the 'de-differentiation' of labor, Clegg is able to simplistically cast the two terms in opposition to one another. In so doing he invariably misses out on the ontological subtleties associated with the modernism/postmodernism debate hence trivializing crucial ontological issues raised in the postmodern critique. Such insensitive misappropriations, in tum, help shift academic attention further downstream so that any flawed presuppositions becomes less and

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

5

less accessible for critical scrutiny. A closer examination of such downstream, and what can therefore be construed as anti-intellectual, tendencies will form the central thrust of this book. Subsequent chapters that follow will attend to specific aspects of this organizational tendency m greater detail. What it is important to state here is that the downstream mode of thought pervades the field of contemporary organization studies thereby defining in overly narrow terms. What started off as organization theory; a theory concerned with the study of 'organized complexity' (Rapoport and Horvath 1968: 74), has been appropriated and translated into a 'theory of organizations'. The apparent solidity of empirical facts about organizations and their functioning lead proponents of this form of thinking to convince themselves of the legitimacy of their knowledge claims. Theories are believed to be about an organizational reality 'out there' and such theories are deemed to be true in as much as they purport to accurately reflect this given reality. The fact that such theories are themselves complex 'organized' linguistic arrangements based upon a pervasive logic of ordering is not considered an issue of central concern in mainstream organizational analysis or their more recent variants. Downstream thinking takes as given the pre-existence of an already constituted world that we subsequently apprehend. Social and material objects, attributes and events exist prior to any attempts to linguistically represent them. A temporal sequence is established whereby representations are deemed to be referring to and, hence, secondary to the reality they are attempting to accurately mirror. Given this intellectual orientation questions about how organizations as social entities come to pre-exist and to lend themselves to systematic analysis are largely set aside. The idea that 'organizations' are social reifications is something which has been raised in earlier critiques of the systems view of organization (see for example Silverman 1970; Benson 1977). However, what has not been adequately explored is how the organizing process of representational abstraction, inversion and forgetting operate as crucial features of the process of reification. These are not generally considered to be questions appropriate to the domain of contemporary organization studies and hence do not form a central problematic of the field of study. It is, however, possible to relate this subtle process of setting aside or 'forgetting' as a central feature of the downstream mode of thought. Woolgar (1988) offers a usefiil explanation of this forgetting process in research which he calls the splitting and inversion model of discovery. He notes that much of scientific research often begins with the production of documents speculating on notions about how the world around us might be.

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Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

This then is used to project the existence of a particular object which then forms the legitimate focus of investigative work. At this stage the speculated object begins to take on a life of its own and is increasingly perceived as being separate and independent of our notions of it. Next an inversion of relationship occurs in which the impression is given that it is in fact the existence of the object which stimulated our attention towards it. Finally, researchers become so accustomed to talking in these inverted terms that the initial three stages of conceiving and reifying the object are 'forgotten' or strongly denied. Once this point is reached, the stage is set for a modemist/representationalist view of knowledge in which the central task of research is deemed to be the accurate description and representation of reality. The five stages in Woolgar's splitting and inversion model of discovery are shown below: Stage 1 : document exists Stage 2: document >object Stage 3 : document object Stage 4: document< object Stage 5: 'deny or forget about stages 1-3' Figure 1: The Splitting and Inversion Model of Discovery (from Woolgar 1988: 69)

Woolgar claims that although the splitting and inversion model of discovery was developed to explain the scientific research process it is, nonetheless, generally applicable as an explanatory device for understanding the practice of representational thinking. The latter reflects an attempt to establish the antecedence for objects and things and to render them fixed and hence objective so as to facilitate the investigative process. He writes: Construing the prior existence of the object entails the portrayal o f the observer as passive rather than active.... Once the object is construed as pregiven, fixed and antecedent, the involvement of the agent of representation appears merely peripheral and transitory. It is as if observers merely stumbled upon a pre-existing scene. (Woolgar 1988: 69)

Downstream thinking thus leads to the denial or 'forgetting' of the constituted nature of the object of study. This process is so subtle and insidious that it often goes undetected and hence leads to enhancing the pregivenness of the object of analysis and by implication the facticity of a statement describing it.

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

7

In general therefore, it can be claimed that the 'solidity' or facticity of a statement is highly dependent upon the deletion of reference to the 'agency' (i.e., the person making the factual claim), the agent's specific action (i.e., a particular paper, experiment or recorded claim), and any reference to antecedent circumstances which have a bearing on the agent's actions such as individual motives and intentions as well as specified interests (Woolgar 1988: 71). Thus the process of omitting or forgetting the context of truth claims is a crucial feature of downstream thinking. Organization studies may not appear so self-evidently 'forgetful' in its intellectual posture, but there is much evidence to suggest that an inversion of theoretical priorities have occurred whereby the analysis of 'organizations' have increasingly become the natural focus of the field of study rather than the analysis of the processes of organizing. Organization studies is thus unable to account for its own organized status as an academic discipline within the social sciences. This is a central reflexive question which haunts theorists of the orthodox persuasion. The problem of reflexivity results from a heightened awareness of the excessive tendency, in organizational research, towards self-privileging in the formulation of knowledge claims. In such assertions the constitutive role of the theorist/researcher in formulating these claims is deliberately backgrounded thereby creating the illusion that an objective reality exists apart from the investigator's perception and that statements made refer to this external reality. In other words, organizational theorists write about organizations conveniently excluding a deliberate analysis of the very organizational contexts within which they themselves are constrained to operate. In this way self-reference is skillfully avoided. It is this intellectual 'sleight of hand' which has served as a focal point of attack by the postmodern critique of representationalist knowledge. Despite this recent challenge, however, research and theorizing within organization studies persist in the dominant representational mode in most instances completely unaware of the problematical status of its ontological and epistemologica! bases. Postmodernism is thus characterized by the insistent 'turning back' of organization theory upon itself so as to reveal the tensions and contradictions embedded in the representationalists' truth assertions. It is this problematizing of organizational discourse which constitutes our entry into postmodern awareness. Postmodernism is thus not in any simple sense an 'era' which can be said to come 'after' modernism. Instead, postmodernism is parasitical upon the very conceptual categories promulgated by modernism which it seeks to criticize. It is not a substitute 'paradigm' through which organization theory should be articulated. In

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Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

short, postmodernism is another name for what we have called 'upstream thinking', an intellectual predisposition rather than an alternative perspective. Lyotard (1992) makes this point clear when he emphasizes that Ά work can only be modem if it is first postmodern. Thus understood, postmodernism is not modernism at its end, but in a nascent state, and this state is recurrent.' (Lyotard 1992: 80). The 'post' of postmodernism instantiates a procedure of analysis that elaborates or unforgets an 'initial forgetting' brought about by modemist/representationalist imperatives. The postmodern is the modem in a nacent state. It is not definable through the framing of a simple succession of historical periodizations, since this latter idea itself is a pivotal feature of modemist discourse. Modemism is better construed as a consequence or 'effect' of the systematic suppression and consequent 'forgetting' of its other term (i.e., the postmodem) brought about by the cumulative efforts of more than three centuries of privileging a dualistic mode of thought. Given this understanding of the issues at stake, there is an urgent necessity to rethink the рифозе of inquiry in the light of the challenges posed by the postmodem critique of the representational view of knowledge and to rethink the role of organizational analysis as an intellectual discipline.

The Critique of Downstream Thinking Downstream thinking as we have shown is essentially a closing off operation; a process of 'black-boxing' ideas and truth claims so that they become increasingly immediate, self-evident and uncontentious. To do this it has to rely on representationalism as an epistemological base for grounding its truth claims. Thus, as we have shown, downstream thinking inescapably relies on a notion of truth as a desirable end-state which is attained when theories correspond to reality. This is the procedure adopted by traditional science which sets itself the project of accurately representing the world 'as it is in itself. The product of such a mental predisposition is thus apparently factual descriptive statements and explanations of phenomena and events in the world. The statement 'It is raining' for example, is far less contentious and apparently factual than Ί think it is raining'. The former statement is presented as a self-evident extemal fact which my comments are deemed to objectively describe. This in tum presupposes an ability on the speaker's part to adopt a transcendental posture in order to verify the correspondence between what the sentence claims and the 'event' of raining in the world. This posture has been termed a 'God's Eye View of the World' (Putnam

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

9

1981) and the perceived plausibility of it forms the bedrock of representationalism. With the recent emergence of an awareness of the problem of reflexivity in representationalists' truth assertions, such apparently self-evident claims have been brought under closer scrutiny. Doubts have been raised about the credibility of the epistemological assumptions undeφinning representationalism and this, in tum, has led to what Lyotard (1984) called the 'collapse of grand narratives' marking our experiences of the postmodern condition. Lyotard's discussion of the Copemican claim that planets follow a circular path is instructive in this instance since it reveals the quintessential tensions involved in making such assertions. Whether this proposition (i.e., the Copemican claim) is true or false it carries within it a set of tensions brought about by the 'classes of prescriptions which regulate the admissibility of the statements as "scientific"' (Lyotard 1984: 23). What are these classes of prescriptions Lyotard refer to? Firstly, it is that the sender (Copemicus) should speak the truth about the referent (path of the planets). Secondly, it should be possible for the addressee (audience to whom the claim is made) to legitimately give his/her assent (or refiisal) to the statement received. Finally, the referent (path of the planet) of which Copemicus is making a claim, must be 'expressed' by his statement in conformity with what actually is (ibid.: 24). However, 'since what is can only be known through statements that are of the same order as that of Copemicus, the rule of adequation becomes problematic' (ibid.: 24). Hence, 'What I say is true because I prove that it is—but what proof is there that my proof is true?' (ibid.: 24). Herein lies the dilemma of circularity surrounding the representationalists' truth claims. Culler (1983) points to the inevitability of arriving at this problematical conclusion in the representationalist scheme of things: A theory of representation that seeks to establish as foundations must take as given, must assume the presence of, that which accurate representation represents. There is thus always a question whether any supposed given may not in fact be a construct or product, dependent, for example on the theory which it puφorts to support. (Culler 1983: 152)

Thus, entry into such reflexive awareness brings with it a realization of the essentially groundless and undecideable character of representational statements. This is one consequence of adopting an upstream thinking strategy that rigorously pursues a line of thought in order to exhaust the intemal logic goveming its acceptability. Culler (1983) captures this intellectual predisposition well in his discussion of the practitioners of deconstruction.

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Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking If "sawing off the branch on which one is sitting" seems foolhardy to men of common sense, it is not so for Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; for they suspect that if they fall there is no "ground" to hit and that the most clear-sighted act may be a certain reckless sawing, a calculated dismembering or deconstruction of the great cathedral-like trees in which Man has taken shelter for millennia. (Culler 1983: 149)

The outcome is what has been described as the postmodern condition. As Lawson (1985) observes the postmodern predicament reflects a crisis of our truths, our values and our most cherished beliefs and this crisis owes its necessity and force to the question of reflexivity: Reflexivity, as a turning back on itself, a form of self-awareness, has been part of philosophy from its inception, but reflexive questions have been given their special force in consequence of the recognition of the central role played by language, theory, sign and text. Our conceptions are no longer regarded as transparent—either in reflecting the world or conveying ideas. (Lawson 1985: 9)

Because of the irreducibly textual character of all truth claims, all arenas of certainty are open to question as a result of this postmodern consciousness. The outcome of this critical awareness is that, while for millennia we have accepted the well held distinctions between fact and fiction, reality and myth, and truth and falsity, reflexivity threatens these very distinctions upon which representational claims are made. With the questioning of these distinctions comes the realization that a 'God's Eye View of the World' is essentially unsustainable and that the very objectivity it implicitly claims is part of a larger network of embedded beliefs which reflects the self-privileging tendencies endemic in representational thinking. Reflexivity thus raises awareness about the problematical status of representational knowledge and with it the role of scientific inquiry. Organization studies as a social scientific discipline with its own established body of knowledge claims, must therefore come to terms with the issues and concerns generated by such heightened awareness. Preoccupations with questions relating to the issue of commensurability of different paradigms in organizational analysis (Hassard 1988; Willmott 1990; Jackson and Carter 1991) miss the central problematic of the 'reflexive tum' in the human sciences. Likewise, attempts to incoφorate postmodernist insights into the representationalist/modemist scheme of things demonstrate the unwillingness of certain organizational writers to critically reflect upon the problems associated with their own representational practices (see for instance Clegg 1990; Morgan 1990; Grint 1991; Hassard and Parker 1993). What postmodern (or upstream) thinking calls for is a radical revamping of the whole structure

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

11

of understanding in the field of study, away from the concerns of mainstream organization theorists, to one which privileges an emergent and processual view of the organizing process and its associated representational practices. Postmodernism is better thought of as an intellectual reaction which seeks to avoid the problems endemic to representational forms of knowledge.

Upstream Thinking The practice of science and intellectual theorizing has always been associated with the systematic project of knowledge accumulation. Science, it is believed, provides a privileged vantage point from which we apprehend the world and unlock its hidden secrets. Theory-building is the singular distinctive feature which serves to unite all forms of scientific inquiry. So it transpires that a view which promotes intellectual inquiry as anti-foundational, deconstructive and edifying rather than foundational, constructive and systematic must necessarily be treated with suspicion and mistrust and written off as some form of intellectual mischief What could such a practice hope to contribute to our understanding of the human condition? Critics of this mode of upstream thinking are fast to point out the seemingly destructive and nihilistic nature of this form of epistemological skepticism. Deconstruction is thus equated with the enterprise of destruction rather than that of the careful and systematic dismantling of deeply entrenched structures of thought. This assigning of negative consequences for critical inquiry is not new and has been viewed with suspicion from Socrates to Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger. This is, however, to overlook the intellectual rigor, purposefulness, and subtlety of a deconstructive approach which, in a multitude of ways, offer inexhaustible opportunities for gaining fresh insights into the ontological character of social organizing processes. In an illuminating discussion between Heidegger and a Japanese friend, the latter succinctly captures the 'gulf between Western and Eastern thinking and their corresponding intellectual predispositions towards deconstructive 'upstream' analysis. We marvel to this day how the Europeans could lapse into interpreting as nihilistic the nothingness of which you speak.... To us, emptiness is the loftiest name ... at a distance, it had always seemed amazing that people never tired of imputing to you a negative attitude toward the history of previous thinking, while in fact you strive only for an original appropriation. (Heidegger 1971: 20)

12

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

For Eastern thinkers, dismantling and emptying themselves of conceptual categories is what draws them nearer to understanding the subliminal aspects of their lived experiences. This is only achievable by thinking 'upstream'. Moving upstream from the cold hard facts that are presented to us by what Latour (1987) calls 'ready made science' to 'science in the making', we encounter very human forces at work in the formulating of scientific knowledge. Uncertainty, people at work, decisions, competition, controversies are what one gets when making the flashback from certain, cold unproblematic black boxes to their recent past. (Latour 1987: 4)

Such revelations are to be sure disturbing and unsettling for those accustomed to taking as given the factual nature of scientific claims. The thought that there is a possibility that the very epistemologica! ground on which a triumphant science derives its authority and power can be called into question, leaves representationalists uneasy. It is therefore unsurprising that attempts to place science within its social context is often viewed as unwarranted efforts to discredit the latter and hence regarded with suspicion and even contempt. Ludwick Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact which appeared at about the same time as Karl Popper's Logik der Forschung is a case in point. Whereas Popper's book was 'surprisingly successful', Fleck's book received a cool reception. As Theddeus Trenn, who edited Fleck's book with Robert Merton, observed: 'The dominant thought style of the 1930s was not one in which Fleck's seemingly idiosyncratic ideas would resonate widely.' (Fleck 1979: xvii). Fleck would surely not have been surprised at the modest reception accorded to his ideas. Treim goes on ftirther to say: With remarkable prescience, however, he (Fleck) forecasted in 1935 the emergence of a thought style compatible with his own theory of thought style and thought collective. "The thought style is a social product: it is formed within a collective as the result of social forces. This circumstance links problems of natural science with those of sociology and especially the sociology of thought." (Fleck 1979: xvii)

This example portrays succinctly the problems associated with going upstream in our thinking. Moving 'against the current' demands a certain healthy skepticism of the empirical givens associated with a traditional representationalist view of science. It is a move away from taking the 'givenness'

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13

of facts to revealing the organizing processes involved in the construction of a fact. Following Latour again, we see that 'By itself, a given statement is neither a fact nor a fiction; it is made so by others, later on.' (Latour 1987: 25). Facts and 'bodies of established knowledge' are products or 'outcomes' of primary social organizing processes rather than the resuh of an accurate matching of words with things and events in the world. When we make the claim that 'organizations are consciously coordinated purposeful social entities', what we are saying is that a particular conventionalized way of thinking has been established which has created for itself a legitimate object of study. This view is shared and hence upheld by a community of inquirers whose efforts serve to further enhance the facticity of 'organizations' as social entities. Moreover such entities are now bestowed with qualities such as purposefiilness, boundaries, structures and so on. By our imputing such qualities we fiirther participate in determining the collective fate of the entity we designate as 'an organization'. The outcome is that organization studies tends to become increasingly equated with the study of organizations and organizing practices within the problematic of management theory rather than as the study of fundamental social organizing processes. Hence the question of how perceptions and therefore ways of thinking are themselves organized becomes peripheral to the field of study. Given this predisposition in mainstream organization theorizing, it is unsurprising that important works of organizational and institutional analyses such as those produced by Michel Foucault (1970, 1979) and Mary Douglas (1986), are not usually seen as central to the field of study. Admittedly the renewed interest in 'institutionalism' in organizational analysis (see for example Powell and DiMaggio 1991), has meant that some organizational writers are just beginning to come to terms with the richness of thought offered by these powerful thinkers. But even more needs to be readily acknowledged as legitimate fields of inquiry within the problematic of organization theory. Rapoport and Horvath (1968) makes an invaluable distinction between 'organization theory' and a 'theory of organizations'. Whilst a 'theory of organizations' is what, broadly speaking, defines a sociological approach to organizations, organization theory, for Rapoport and Horvath, is better understood as the study of organizational principles applicable to any system exhibiting 'organized complexity'. Viewed thus, organization theory is an extension of mathematical physics drawing from field as diverse as cybernetics, topology, decision theory, information theory and game theory as well as social theory. This expansion of the realm of organization theory to

14

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

include the logic of social organization is what legitimizes an upstream, deconstructive, mode of thought in organizational analysis. Following Foucault, Douglas, Derrida, Latour and Rapoport and Horvath upstream shifts our focus of analysis away from the question of 'how to organize' to the question 'how does organization, ordering and representation occur as 'happenings' in the flow of reality. This implies adopting a critical view of established conceptual categories and deconstructing them to reveal the workings of organizational and representational processes.

Constructionism/Pragmatism and Upstream Thinking Constructionism and pragmatism may be understood as initial outcomes of the move towards thinking upstream. The contradictory tensions embedded in the fundamental tenets of a realisfmodemist philosophy of science underwriting representationalism has lead to attempts to reconceptualise the meaning of fiindamental linguistic categories, such as 'fact', 'truth', 'reality', 'representation', and the associated role of science, in radically different terms. From the constructionist/pragmatist point of view, facts are true not because they correspond to the world. Rather they become true because we believe in them and unquestionably use them repeatedly 'as if they are true'. Such repeated usage in tum helps initial beliefs gain credibility and to thereby be accorded the status of 'truth'. Likewise, knowledge is not a matter of 'getting things right', but of acquiring habits of action which enables us to cope effectively with our reality. Acquiring 'knowledge' is the name we give to our experience of becoming competent actors within a social collective. Consequently, science, as a human activity, is not about the search for transcendental truths but is better understood as legitimized social practices reflecting the consent and solidarity of a community of inquirers. We call a human activity 'scientific' not because it is able to make privileged claims about how the world is, but because it exhibits a higher degree of agreement among its community of inquirers than for example in literary criticism. Thus truth, in Rorty's words, is nothing more than a 'commendatory term for well-justified belief (Rorty 1989: 11). Moreover, terms such as 'reality' are deemed to be a consequence or outcome of thinking in representational terms rather than the cause of it. As Hacking (1983) persuasively argues, the practice of representing generates competing representations which then necessitated the conception of reality as that authoritative representation which differentiates itself from other 'mere' likenesses.

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15

Reality is not what draws us to the scientific process of inquiry. Rather it is only when a number of realities begin to compete for legitimacy that the scientific approach emerges as a useful reference point for adjudicating between differing accounts of reality. This scientific approach serves to conveniently create a hierarchy of knowledge with 'scientific knowledge' at the top. As Nietzsche so perceptively observed, it is not the victory of science which distinguished the nineteenth century from others but the victory of the scientific method over science. The enduring faith in this scientific method is what continues to unite the multiplicity of scientific claims. The current, still pervasive, preoccupation with the accurate representation of reality is a testimony to this enduring faith. For constructionists/pragmatists on the other hand, scientific accounts, and therefore reality, is first and foremost a product of social convention rather than something that lies beyond human consciousness. Finally, from a constructionist/pragmatist perspective, the purpose of inquiry is not so much an attempt to converge at a single point called Truth, but that the process of enquiry is a matter of continually reweaving webs of beliefs to produce new and novel insights into the human condition. Constructionism and pragmatism, as provisional outcomes of moving upstream in our thinking, offers no substitute material grounding or external privileged vantage point with which authoritative claims can be made. Instead it problematizes the very basis of what constitutes scientific knowledge by inverting the priorities accorded to such privileged notions as truth, reality, and fact and show them to be inextricably linked to our own self-organizing practices. Knowledge, truth, and reality ultimately depend on plausibility within a social community and not on any transcendental Reason or materially grounded connections. Constructionism/pragmatism is therefore best understood as an attempt to rearticulate our accounts of human experiences without relying on the problematical assumptions undeφinning representationalism. As an alternative mode of thinking, it owes much to the influence of Kant who regarded the nature of our descriptions as being in the main dependent upon the universal properties of our human mind. The order we perceive in the world is, for Kant, a product of our minds rather than a natural order 'out there'. Thus, our experiences of reality are always already informed by our own a priori conceptions of the world. It is this unmistakable thread of thought which runs right through the constructionists'/pragmatists' theoretical agenda. It is possible to identify three loosely related yet significant elements in the constructionist/pragmatist perspective. Firstly, there is the well held idea that scientific statements are not to be viewed as either true or false descrip-

16

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

tions of some external reality but the creative constructions of a community of inquirers engaged in ordering, organizing and making sense of their experiences. This leads to the view previously discussed, namely, that theories, instead of reflecting reality, are in fact constitutive of it. A second related element is the claim that scientific theories become acceptable not because they are true (as understood in a representational sense), but because of the subjective interests and values of the scientists or the scientific community to which the theory is put. In this regard, theories become true by virtue of their being effectively linked to a network of other well held claims which in tum help shore up their status as true statements. As we have seen from the postmodern critique of representationalism, there is no objective means for determining the superiority of one theory over another. We cannot transcend our embeddedness in that which we seek to investigate and hence the notion of objectivity is better reconceptualised as the outcome of social agreement arrived at through the convergent forces of downstream thinking. Finally, there is the view that theories are always underdetermined by empirical data. This means that in principle there can always be alternative accounts derived from reading the data through different frames of reference. These three elements therefore are variously accentuated in what we call conventionalism, constructivism, constructionism or pragmatism. However, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, postmodern thinking, whilst sympathetic to some of the principles of constructionism/pragmatism, is not to be equated with a form of epistemological relativism that has come into vogue in organization studies in recent years. This is because postmodern thinking is committed to conducting a processual analysis of the emergence of organizing and ordering practices, not to an interpretation of the outcomes of such processes. Within the constructionist/pragmatist research program, it is possible to differentiate between 'first-order' and 'second-order' social constructionism. In the former case, vestiges of representationalist commitments remain in so far as researchers, whilst using the language of interpretation and social construction in their investigative work, nonetheless, unreflexively make claims about reality from an objective posture. Thus, it is quite often the case that the question of meaning in social action, which is openly acknowledged to be problematic and hence requiring much inteφretation, is nonetheless construed as being only problematic for organizational actors but not for the researcher him/herself within the research process. The latter is implicitly endowed with capabilities of transcending his/her own subjectivity. It is this lack of reflexivity which differentiates first order from second order social constructionists.

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

17

More recently, the 'reflexive tum' in the social and human sciences has rendered first-order social constructionism highly problematical. This has meant that theorists and researchers have had to come to terms with the consequences of taking the problem of reflexivity seriously. Within contemporary organization studies, writers like Weick (1989), van Maanen (1989), Gergen (1992) and Calás and Smircich (1992) have, each in their own ways, attempted to grapple with the implications of this reflexive tum. Many now concede that both their own accounts and the accounts generated by those they research are first and foremost imaginative linguistic constructions. Theories of organization are better understood as products of 'disciplined imagination' (Weick 1989). They are self-justifying 'intelligible narratives' rather than attempts at making transcendental truth claims. As Gergen puts it most succinctly: If there is one theme that unites most of those confronting the postmodern irony, it is a certain sense of ludic humility. The view of knowledge-making as a transcendental pursuit removed from the trivial enthrallments of daily life, pristinely rational and transparently virtuous, becomes so much puffery. We should view these bodies of language we call knowledge in a lighter vein—as ways of putting things together, some pretty and others petty. (Gergen 1992: 215)

Irony, self-reflection and 'playful seriousness' now replaces the quest for 'certain' or even 'partially-true' knowledge of an extemal reality. This 'second-order' social constructionism renders all forms of research accounts as the art of 'telling ourselves a story about ourselves' (Steier 1991: 3). The move from first to second-order constructivism/constructionism brings us nearer to the idea of organizational analysis as a form of deconstructive practice.

Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice While constructionism/pragmatism are clearly outcomes of the attempt to think 'upstream', they cannot be equated with the processual approach adopted by upstream thinkers. Upstream thinking, as we have indicated, is more an intellectual predisposition than an altemative form of knowledge. Whereas constructionists/pragmatists strive to articulate altemative ways of explaining human experiences that do not rely on transcendental notions of knowledge, truth and reality, upstream thinking or the intellectual strategy of deconstruction insists on moving even fiirther upstream by problematizing the explanations proffered by constructionists/pragmatists. Culler (1983)

18

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

identifies two significant intellectual differences between the project of constructionists and pragmatiste and that of deconstruction. In the first instance, deconstruction cannot be content with the conception of truth as an unproblematical outcome of social consensus. This is because the appeals to consensus and conventions work to legitimize the concept of social norms as adequate explanatory principles for the grounding of knowledge. This obscures the larger question of how such consensus is achieved and norms established amongst actors. Norms are in effect produced through acts of exclusion and since deconstruction or upstream thinking is centrally concerned with how these processes of exclusion operate, there can be no question of taking notions of convention, norm, and consensus as theoretical givens. We are again reminded here of Serres' insightfiil comments regarding the status of knowledge quoted at the beginning of this chapter: To know is to put to death—to kill the lamb, deep in the woods, in order to eat it. Moving from combat with prey outside the species to killing inside the species, knowledge now becomes military, a martial art. It is then more than a game: it is, literally, a strategy. These epistemologies are not innocent ... they are promulgated by military strategists. To know is to kill.... (Serres 1982: 28)

Knowing is putting to death because all forms of knowledge are essentially conventional and conventions arise because of organizing practices which work to marginalise 'undesirable' thinking and to normalize thought. Knowledge therefore is an outcome, a product of organizational processes that hide the violence necessary for its emergence as an operating principle. To know is to kill.... Secondly, while both constructionists/pragmatists and proponents of deconstruction are agreed that they cannot by an effort of self-scrutiny or theoretical enquiry get outside of the framework of beliefs and assumptions within which they operate, for deconstructionists this does not mean that we should not worry about how these have been brought about. Instead, the very questioning of such beliefs, assumptions and conceptual categories as well as institutional procedures are what intellectual inquiry is all about. True, such theoretical inquiry may not lead to new foundations, but the attempt to self-refiexively theorize one's own practices nonetheless works to produce changes in assumptions, institutional priorities and arrangements and hence organizational practices. Deconstructive analyses, therefore, can claim to have potentially radical institutional and organizational implication even though these implications are often difficult to pinpoint and incalculable in terms of their long term effects.

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

19

Despite their limitations, however, constructionism (particularly the second-order variant) and pragmatism may be seen as vital first steps in moving from the dominant downstream, representationalist thinking to an upstream deconstructive mode of thought. Deconstructive analysis is not a neutral activity. Rather it intervenes to reveal a marginalised and problematical aspect of our human experiences which has been denied legitimacy within the dominant modernist discourse. As Derrida asserts: Why engage in a work of deconstruction, rather than leave things the way they are, etc.?... Deconstruction, I have insisted is not neutral. It intervenes. (Derrida 1981: 93, emphasis original)

Deconstruction, therefore, is a logical outcome of rigorously extending the project to dismantle hitherto unquestioned assumptions embedded in contemporary research and theorizing and to expose the epistemological void at the epicentre of philosophical assertions. Thus, Culler (1983) points out that: The champions of an absolutist, correspondence theory of truth defend their position on pragmatic grounds: it has desirable consequences, is necessary to the preservation of essential values. We need not believe in the possibility of actually attaining truth, the argument runs, but we must believe that there is a truth—a way things are, a true meaning of a text or utterance—or else research and analysis loses all point; human inquiry has no goal. The proponents of a pragmatic view reply that whatever the consequences of their relativism, we must live with them because this is the truth, the way things are: truth is relative, dependent on a conceptual framework. (Culler 1983: 155)

This clearly creates a dilemma for both positions since: ... both attempts to maintain a position gives rise to a deconstructive movement in which the logic of argument used to defend a position contradicts the position affirmed. (Culler 1983: 155)

Thus it becomes clear that a deconstructive reading works to reveal the essentially undecideable character of such claims. Deconstruction as such does not yield a higher coherent position. It does not have a better theory of truth. Instead, it is essentially an intellectual predisposition specifically attuned to the 'aporias' which arise in attempts to legitimize truth claims. By so doing, it is able to reveal the essential groundlessness of such self-evident claims. Deconstruction as a specific textual strategy in upstream thinking leads us to understanding organization as a fundamental reality-configuring process; an ontological activity of carving

20

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

out and making familiar a world which we therefrom inhabit. Adopting a deconstmctive stance in the practice of organizational analysis involves the carefiil unfolding of texts, events and organizing processes through a strategy of 'close reading' with a view to revealing the internal tensions and contradictions lying behind these happenings. It involves meticulously charting out the strategic maneuvers of ordering and organizing entailed in creating networks of relations in order to mobilize bias towards serving a particular function. Such an intellectual predisposition requires that we 'set aside' the traditional project of organizational theory-building and instead attempt to demonstrate that the process of deconstructive analysis itself is what one might begin to regard as being central to the study of organization. This in turn has profound implications for how organization studies may be taught within a postmodern consciousness. The journey of organizational analysis itself is deemed to be more insightfiil and meaningfiil than any destination it might seek. We can then conceive of the process of organizational analysis as being essentially an intellectual journey without destination. This then is the main contention of the book. Organizational analysis has for too long concerned itself with the articulating of theories which purport to accurately describe how organizations function. This theoretical predisposition takes as given and essentially unproblematic the ontological status of organizations. With the critique of representationalist knowledge, such central presuppositions have been challenged and this has meant the necessity of rearticulating the role of organizational analysis as a critical intellectual activity rather than as part of the epistemological project of theorybuilding. What this implies for the teaching of organization studies is that the downstream representational mode of thinking should be replaced by an upstream deconstructive modality in which fundamental concepts and categories used in the analysis of organization are themselves subjected to critical scrutiny. These concepts and categories, I have tried to emphasize, must be recognized as themselves already effects of organizing processes and hence cannot be assumed as given. Instead they need to be explained by adopting an approach sensitive to the emergent and unfolding nature of primary organizational processes. Contrary to a modemist/representationalist view which sees knowledge as its principle focus, postmodernist/upstream thinking recognizes that the process of knowing and understanding does not lie in theories but in-between them. As such these insights are essentially unrepresentable if only because of their emergent and processual nature. Organization as a concep-

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

21

tual category is by no means defined by performative concerns, as is often assumed to be the case. Instead organization operates as a principle of 'general economy' in which the 'will to know' fonctions as the energizing force behind such organizational impulses. As an academic discipline therefore, organization studies should not be thought off as essentially involving the straightforward dissemination of pre-established knowledge about the field of study. Rather what is required is a teaching strategy which brings alive the uncertain, accidental, precarious and emergent nature of organizing 'events' in our flow of experience. This book is committed to demonstrating the richness of such an approach to organizational analysis. Part One concentrates on the modemist/representationalist project in organization studies and attempts to show that despite the shifting focus of the field of study, it (the project) remains circumscribed within the bounds of ontological realism which conceives of organizations or organization theories as 'things' that can be described and hence compared. Chapter 1 begins by examining the manner in which contemporary social scientific theorizing has been itself organized. It is argued here that the enduring commitment to a being-realist ontology creates a chain of interlocking commitments which reinforces a representationalist epistemology. Chapter 2 shows that a form of epistemological realism has effectively replaced an earlier enthusiasm for positivistic knowledge particularly in organization studies. However, epistemological realism is not without its problems. Chapter 3 explores the problems of reflexivity precipitated by a heightened postmodern consciousness and examines the various intellectual strategies adopted to circumvent this problem of reflexivity in organizational analysis. Part Two explores the issues involved in postmodernism and postmodern thinking and attempts to work out their implications for reconceptualising organization studies as an academic discipline. Chapter 4 attempts a comprehensive summary of the postmodern argument as inspired by influential thinkers such as Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida. Actor network theory and postmodern pragmatism are also seen here as being in a limited manner complementary to postmodernist concerns. Chapter 5 explores the significance of recognizing the activity of representation as a form of organization. In Chapter 6, I draw out direct implications of postmodernism for rethinking organization. I emphasize here the necessity to move away from thinking about organizations to thinking in terms of organizing processes. It is this shift towards thinking in terms of process, emergence and becoming which marks the distinctive style of postmodern writers. Part Three elaborates on the deconstructive approach to organizational analysis. Chapter 7 sets out to describe the logocentric tendencies in con-

22

Introduction: Upstream and Downstream Thinking

temporary Western thought and the significance of deconstruction as an intellectual strategy developed to critically examine the tensions and internal contradictions in logocentric thought. Chapter 8 attempts to demonstrate the effects of a deconstructive reading of the central organizational concept of decision-making. It then goes on to articulate the implications of understanding organizational analysis as a form of deconstructive practice. I end with some reflections about how we might begin to teach organization studies in a way which moves thinking processes upstream rather than downstream.

Part 1 : The Organization of Theory

Chapter 1 : Ontological Realism and the Ideology of Representation

Introduction Organization theories are academic products produced within the context of socially legitimized public institutions which are themselves effects of primary organizing processes. They are, therefore, first and foremost socially 'organized' bodies of knowledge claims. This has not always been readily acknowledged nor have its consequences been adequately explored in the organization theory literature. What characterizes the academic approach itself, however, is the consistently rigorous adherence to a certain set of conventionally established textual codes governing the organization and presentation of ideas, information, observations, and conjectures in such a way as to render them acceptable by the academic community. The detailed instructional guides established academic journals frequently specify as editorial requirements to potential contributors is one example of how such precoding of academic output is achieved and sustained. Through the establishment and control of this approved academic grammar, the maimer in which knowledge is created and legitimized becomes self-reinforcing. Academic respectability is, thereby, maintained by an academic fraternity sanctioning and promoting this style of textual presentation. Knowledge about organization is therefore circumscribed by the organizing codes determining the organization of knowledge itself Such organizing codes are, however, undeφinned by relatively unexamined ontological assumptions which inform much of contemporary Western academic thought. They reflect the continued dominance of a scientistic mentality governing the organization of thought. As a consequence a pervasive academic tradition is established and maintained which shapes and reinforces the epistemologica! priorities of mainstream organization studies, including its more recent interpretive variants. This scientific framing of organizational issues, and therefore its role in actively constituting the legitimate theoretical objects of organizational analysis is, however, rarely considered as a crucial question in the organizational theorizing process. Most contemporary organization theorists neglect or overlook the very processes involved in this initial 'organizing' of the disciplinary objects of analysis. As a consequence attention is diverted away from an appreciation of the effects that the grammar of scientism has

26

Chapter 1 : Ontological Realism and the Ideology of Representation

on the direction organization studies has taken. In other words, the organization of what constitutes legitimate knowledge itself has a substantial bearing on the theoretical trajectory of contemporary organization studies. In this chapter I begin by exploring the image and status of science as a privileged human activity and its consequences for shaping the discourse on organization studies. The term scientism has been used as a category for describing the oveφowering belief that science constitutes by far the most valuable part of human learning. Scientistic thinking, therefore, pervades academic theorizing and consequently shape and influence the form of knowledge produced. I try to show here that despite an apparent plurality of organizational perspectives currently on offer in organization studies, many of these, upon careful re-examination, can be shown to be circumscribed by an enduring set of metaphysical presuppositions which continue to dictate the priorities of the academic discipline. It is the continued commitment to a being-realist ontology and consequently to the epistemological problematic of representationalism in research and inquiry which undergirds the apparent differences in intellectual priorities and hence research foci in contemporary organizational studies. Beingrealism is a fundamental ontological posture which asserts that reality preexists independently of observation and as discrete, permanent and identifiable 'things', 'entities', 'events', 'generative mechanisms', etc.. This version of realism underwrites the still dominant academic predisposition which takes as unproblematic such commonsensical notions as 'the organization', its 'goals', 'culture', 'environment', 'strategies', 'life-cycles', etc., as theoretically legitimate objects of analyses. But it also underwrites the preoccupations of organizational 'meta-theorists' and/or 'perspectival' organization theorists who impute an objective existence to their self-generated typologies and paradigmatic schémas and then subsequently proceed to analyze and compare these as if their ontological status is not a crucial issue in its own right. A thorough and careful examination of these philosophical issues is necessary to create a theoretical space for reconceptualizing the practice of organizational analysis in a way which is consistent with a postmodern understanding of the human condition.

The Status of Science In modem times, science is generally held in high esteem. It is still widely accepted that science and the scientific approach it propagates, holds the

Part 1 : The Organization of Theory

27

key to revealing hidden truths about our natural and social world which are not immediately grasped by the 'unscientific' mind. When a form of reasoning or a piece of investigative work is labeled 'scientific', it is done so in a way which is intended to suggest that a special and privileged understanding of a phenomena has been attained through a systematic and rigorous process of inquiry. What is therefore critical in scientistic thinking is not just that something is scientific or otherwise, but the enduring belief that scientific knowledge is much more valuable than other forms of knowing. What, therefore, unifies the physicists, biologists, psychologists, economists, linguists and a whole host of other 'scientists' is not what they study, the research techniques used, or the amount of knowledge acquired, but the maimer in which knowledge is created and the organizing grammar deployed in the production of such knowledge. In the words of Karl Pearson, an ardent advocate of scientism, 'The unity of all science consists alone in its methods, not in its material.' (Pearson 1911: 12). For Pearson, the systematic classification of facts, the recognition of their sequences and relative significance and the formation of judgments based upon these rigorous intellectual activities constitute the 'aim and method of modem science' (Pearson 1911: 7). This unity of science is underpinned by the assumption that it is highly desirable for the methods of science to be spread to other areas of knowledge so that these latter domains do not remain in their prescientific state. It is the preoccupation with this colonizing of thought which marks the scientistic tendency. Modem science as such entails the disciplined training of the mind to an acceptable level of fluency in applying the grammar of the scientific method in investigative work. It is the grammatological consistency of this scientistic language which remains pervasive in contemporary research and theorizing and which, therefore, continues to circumscribe the intellectual scope and possibilities of organization studies. The study of this grammatical unity of the scientific approach which enfi-ames and hence produces information that we then call scientific knowledge has been called 'applied grammatology' (Ulmer 1985: 15). It is this 'applied' deconstructive analysis that I rely on in arguing for a reconceptualization of organizational analysis in Part Two of this book. Here, it suffices to note the dominance of this scientific language and the habits of thought associated with it in the academic production of knowledge. Whereas several centuries ago the legends and the myths, and then the authoritative voices of the church, provided the guiding 'truths' which sustained particular forms of life significantly different from that of our own, today it is science which speaks with the same kind of authority. In spite of a rising disenchantment with the consequences of scientific progress by

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Chapter 1 : Ontological Realism and the Ideology of Representation

those who hold it responsible for such disasters as the effects of the hydrogen bomb and the ecological effects on the environment, science continues to be held in high regard and its authority is frequently invoked to provide legitimization for legislative actions. To be sure, there are those who have sought to expose the 'myths' of scientificity associated with these traditional scientific practices. For example, an issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES September 30, 1994) carried a fiery exchange between scientists who maintained the superiority of scientific knowledge and sociologists of science who argued for a social constructionist view of scientific knowledge. Clearly, there is an increasing recognition that the status of scientific knowledge is by no means self-evident. However, despite such rare public forums, the prevailing view remains one of passive acceptance of the authority of science. By and large, therefore, science continues to hold the world captive with its seemingly magical powers of explanation and prediction. Science achieves its awesome hold over us by laying claim to being able to distinguish 'scientific' knowledge from the other forms of knowledge which are, thereby, deemed to be 'unscientific' and, hence, qualitatively inferior forms of knowing. Thus, through a subtle process of legitimization and exclusion, the latter forms of knowledge are, thereby, relegated to the realms of myths, superstitions or dogmas and then summarily dismissed as being at best ineffective and at worst dangerous. In this way scientific 'truth' is clearly differentiated from 'falsity', 'fact' from 'fiction', 'reality' from 'appearance' and 'causal relationships' from notions of'chance'. One typical line of argument proffered by defenders of science is exemplified by the apparent logicality of the line of argument adopted by Richard Dawkins. Ί once put the following question to a social scientist colleague: "Suppose there is a tribe which believes that the moon is an old calabash tossed just above the treetops. Are you saying that this tribe's belief is just as true as our scientific belief that the moon is a large Earth satellite about a quarter of a million miles away?" His reply was that truth is a social construct and therefore the tribe's view of the moon is just as true as ours. That there is something deeply silly about this sort of thing soon appears when you ask practical questions.... When you take a 747 to an international convention of sociologists or literary critics, the reason you will arrive in one piece is that a lot of western-trained scientists and engineers got their sums right. If it gives you satisfaction to say that the theory of aerodynamics is a social construct that is your privilege, but why do you then entrust your air-travel plans to a Boeing rather than a magic caφet? As I have put it before, show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I will show you a hypocrite.' (Dawkins in THES, Sept. 1994: 17, my emphasis).

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Clearly here, there is no distinction made between what is 'true', and what 'works'. This then allow Dawkins to conclude as he does. It is precisely this conflation of notions between what works and what is true which reinforces the perceived superior status of science. The success of science has thus been due, in large part, to its ability to create and organize its discourse around hitherto relatively unexamined epistemological and ontological assumptions. This image of science as being in some sense more valuable because of its superior explanatory and predictive power has, therefore, continued to exert a pervasive influence over modem thought and to provide the central legitimizing axis around which much of contemporary organizational theorizing revolves. It is, therefore, easy to forget that, despite its impressive successes, science is a relatively recent way of creating knowledge and only one of the many ways in which humankind have sought, and continue to seek, a better understanding of themselves and their environment. Nevertheless, its indisputable achievements has meant that the scientific mentality pervades much of contemporary academic thought and directs its intellectual priorities and preoccupations towards the ideals of scientific progress. Towards this end, the goal of any scientific process is, therefore, to systematically observe and carefully document the phenomenon being studied and then to provide a rational explanation for the regularities observed. Such explanations may involve the establishment of cause-and-effect sequences of events, it may specify in detail how a process occurs, or alternatively, it may indicate the consequences of a given process for other related phenomena. In this way, it is believed, our understanding of the world around us can be significantly enhanced. Plausible explanations are achieved through the construction of theories which are essentially characterized by sets of logically consistent and interrelated concepts and propositions that attempt to specify the relationships existing between various aspects or properties of the phenomena being investigated. Thus, the idea that the earth and the moon remains at a relatively constant distance from one another 'be-cause' of the opposing forces of gravity and centrifugal force is an example of a theory in astronomy. Such an explanation is adequate in the sense that it provides a plausible enough account of our phenomenological experiences. However, the central debate between traditional scientists and those who argue that scientific knowledge is a social construct revolves around the truth status of these explanations. To the former, the obvious superiority of scientific explanations as opposed to mythical accounts, for example, is testimony enough that scientific inquiry produces not just workable explanations but that these explanations are true

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in a universal and atemporal sense. To the latter, however, a necessary distinction must be made between that which is plausible and which 'work's to that which is 'true'. For them, science is a socially legitimized activity which produces workable knowledge that a community of inquirers come to accept as true. It may even be conceded that some types of knowledge are more workable than others, but this does not amount to accepting a claim to universal truth. Such forms of knowledge are not universal nor timeless as traditional scientists tend to maintain. Nonetheless, they do serve a useful and productive function in the civilizing process. Theories are intellectual abstractions created through the use of established scientific codes for the purpose of explaining phenomenological experiences. They do not, however, equate with the reality of brute experiences themselves. Far too often, however, these conceptual abstractions are not recognized as such but rather are deemed to be true and accurate representations of reality and therefore elevated to the status of established 'truths' by those committed to the traditional view of science. Tsoukas (1994) distinguishes between 'soft' formal knowledge and 'hard' formal knowledge and points out that this latter 'hard' version, which characterizes traditional scientific mentalities, tends to regard conceptual categories to be natural outcomes of the real world itself: Objects of study are thought to exhibit certain systematic, observer-independent similarities and differences, and the task of the social scientist is to find out what they are. (Tsoukas 1994: 764)

Tsoukas goes on to say that the widespread practice of constructing organizational 'typologies', for instance, has been undeφinned by this 'hard' logic of formal knowledge. Thus, typological classifications of environments, structures, technologies, control systems, leadership styles, organizational cultures etc., are attempted in the firm belief that such typologies reflect the organizational world as it is. Despite the oftentimes 'softened' language of 'inteφretation' and 'social construction' used by organization theorists, most theoretical claims remain relatively strong and 'hard' in Tsoukas's sense. The enduring nature of this deeply entrenched tendency to view theories as attempts to accurately mirror reality rather than relatively arbitrary representational abstractions, is traceable to a long tradition of unwavering commitment to a being-realist ontology still pervasive in contemporary organizational research and theorizing. The significance of these terms will be elaborated in some detail in the following pages. Here it is important to

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emphasize that without this unquestioned set of commitments to a beingrealist ontology, the preoccupation with a representationalist epistemology, and its consequent implications for methodological concerns in organizational research, would not have been a logical outcome. Representationalism is, therefore, first and foremost the love-child of a being-realist ontology. Realism, as a metaphysical concept undeφinning representationalist epistemology, must first and foremost be understood as an ontological set of commitments and not a set of epistemological priorities to be mistakenly contrasted with 'relativism' or 'positivism'. As Bhaskar (1989) rightly reminds us, 'realism is not a theory of knowledge or of truth, but of being' (1989: 13). By 'being' Bhaskar means here a set of assumptions about the nature of reality (i.e., an ontological question). Admittedly, such ontological commitments carry with them epistemological consequences since any theory about our knowledge of reality entails some theory about the nature of reality itself However, this does not detract fiom the necessity of making a priori such ontological assumptions. Thus, 'every theory of scientific knowledge must logically presuppose a theory of what the world is like for knowledge, under the descriptions given it by the theory, to be possible.' (Bhaskar 1989: 13). The pervasive ontological belief underwriting traditional scientism and most of its more recent variants, including Bhaskar's own version, is an ontology of being.

Being-Realism Contemporary Western modes of thought are circumscribed by two great competing pre-Socratic cosmologies which have provided and continue to provide the most general conceptual categories for organizing thought and directing human effort. Heraclitus, a native of Ephesus in ancient Greece, emphasized the primacy of flux and transformation whilst his successor Parmenides, a native of Elea in southern Italy, insisted upon the permanent and unchangeable nature of reality. To the ancient Ionian question 'Is reality One or Many?', our commonsensical experience tells us that reality is multiple, heterogeneous and always changing. For one thing it is made up of opposite states like hot and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, etc., all of which point us to accepting the changeable nature of the reality we apprehend. However, the evidence of our senses is always corrected by Reason, for reason show us that in changing there are nonetheless enduring aspects of a phenomenon which remains constant. For Heraclitus, reality is both One and Many—a singular unifying implicate reality with multiple explicate mani-

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festations. Only wisdom achieved through critical reflection allows us to comprehend the One in the Many. To those who are awake the world-order is one, common to all; but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own. (Heraclitus 5.34, in Mansley Robinson 1968: 95)

Reality for Heraclitus is constantly changing and in the process of becoming and it is this becoming process which underpins and hence unifies the apparent 'Many' disparate appearances. Heraclitean cosmology, therefore, provided one of the earliest comprehensive syntheses for reconciling appearance and reality. The unanimity of this approach was shattered by Heraclitus' successor Parmenides. The arguments offered and the conclusions he reached were so utterly at odds to the Heraclitean viewpoint that it initiated a complete break with the whole intellectual tradition. Parmenides' response to the Ionian question was uncompromising. For him, it is true that what is is One, and true that Reason is what tells us so. But for Parmenides reason tells us more than this; it tells us that if what is is One then it cannot also be Many. There is for Parmenides only one true world which is unitary, already constituted, and permanent. Observed changes in the world are not just apparent but false since Reason shows us that what is One cannot also be Many. One way remains to be spoken: the way how it is ... (reality) must exist fully or not at all. Nor will the force of conviction ever allow anything over and above itself to arise out of what is not; wherefore Justice does not loosen her fetters so as to allow it to come into being or pass away, but hold it fast.... Thus coming into being is extinguished and destruction unknown. (Parmenides 6.10, in Mansley Robinson 1968: 113)

By elevating Reason over the senses and permanence over change, Parmenidean thought encouraged the privileging of the notion of an alreadyconstituted and unchanging reality. Individual phenomenon only appear to change and this can be explained by the claim that the world is actually made up of permanent discrete entities which are capable of entering into a variety of combinations forming and reforming different configurational structures. As Harré (1981) puts it: Then the atoms would be Parmenidean, but the changing organization of the Parmenidean atoms into temporary structures would lead to the appearance o f change. The ordinary things in the world, which are certainly perishable and come into existence, would, on this view, have to be temporary conglomerations o f permanent atoms. (Harré 1981: 105, emphasis original)

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It is this intellectual legacy which has paved the way for the emergence of modem scientific thought. This Parmenidean-inspired being-realism which attributes primacy to fundamental 'facts' as the ultimate reality has, in tum, encouraged a subject-predicate mode of expression which Whitehead (1929: 66) identified as the defining characteristic of modem science.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness In his critique of the modem worid-view. Whitehead (1985, but first written in 1926) demonstrated incontrovertibly that Newton's first law of motion contained a fimdamental assumption which is central to any form of modem theorizing: I mean the concept of an ideally isolated system. This concept embodies a fundamental character of things, without which science, or indeed any icnowledge on the part of finite intellects would be impossible. (Whitehead 1985: 58, my emphasis)

This assumption of the property of simple location in which 'things' and 'entities' are believed to exist as discrete isolated systems in space-time is what defines the modem scientific mentality. Whitehead ñirther observed: We cannot wonder that science rested content with this assumption as to the fondamental elements of nature. The great forces of nature such as gravitation were entirely determined by the configurations of masses. Thus the configurations determined their own changes, so that the circle of scientific thought was completely closed. This is the famous mechanistic theory of nature which has reigned supreme ever since the seventeenth century. (Whitehead 1985: 63)

The point Whitehead is making here is not merely that we have been seduced by what has been popularly called the 'machine metaphor' (Morgan 1986), but rather that a whole style of thinking is rendered possible because of the assumed property of 'simple location'. A style deeply rooted in an ontology of being as opposed to an ontology of becoming. A style which privileges thinking in terms of discrete and static entities, events and effects rather than relationships, movement, process and emergence. A style which is able to accommodate the notion of causality as that which allows the strong linking of one discrete aspect of our phenomenal experience to another. A style which, finally, emphasizes that knowledge is about capturing and representing accurately the primary aspects of both the material and social worid and of explaining social and material phenomena in causal

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terms. It is this mode of thinking which has led to the 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness' that Whitehead sought to eradicate: And yet it is quite unbelievable. This conception of the universe is surely framed in terms of high abstraction, and the paradox only arises because we have mistaken our abstractions for concrete realities. (Whitehead 1985: 69)

The apparent concreteness of the qualities we perceive in the social world are in reality attributes which we impute to that which we apprehend as a way of making sense and ordering our experiences. However, Whitehead recognized that we cannot think without abstractions. Therefore, he maintained that it is of utmost importance that we remain vigilant in critically revising our modes of abstraction. Regrettably representationalist epistemology has resisted such intellectual initiatives and therefore remains the dominant academic dogma. Thus, a singular belief in the idea of an ideally isolated system (based upon a being-realist ontology) has propagated a whole chain of epistemological commitments, intellectual priorities and research rationales that include the correspondence theory of truth, the persistent emphasis on theory-building in human inquiry, the insistence on a causal explanation in accounting for material and social phenomena, and the often obsessive preoccupation with designing research methodologies that are believed to help minimize the effects of theory on observation. Modem scientific thinking, therefore, is characterized by a tendency to accentuate the view of social reality as comprising discrete, static and hence describable phenomenon. It assumes a 'logic of insulation' in which the 'world is organized in terms of clear separate fields which must not be allowed to "infect" each other' (Cooper and Burrell 1989: 1). According to this thought style, social phenomenon such as 'individuals', 'organizations' and 'societies' are concrete and isolatable real entities which can be systematically described and explained and, therefore, meaningfully compared. In a recently written paper. Cooper and Law (1995) maintained that a basic criticism of modem sociological studies of organization is that they tend to deal with results or organized states rather than with the complex social processes that lead to such outcomes or effects as organization. In such an idealized sociological view, the 'state of rest' is viewed as normal and hence implicitly privileged in social analyses whilst 'change' is considered accidental, transitory or even malfunctional. Thus, properties such as unity, identity, permanence, structure and essences, etc. (a legacy of Parmenidean thinking), are privileged over dissonance, disparity, plurality, transience and

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change (a legacy of Heraclitean thinking). Moreover, these latter processes are construed as epiphenomenon of primaiy social 'states' rather than the reverse. Thus, in a being-realist ontology the focus is on the relation or movement of things rather than the intrinsic relation or movement in things. Corresponding to this being style of thought pervasive in modem science, knowledge is unsurprisingly conceived of in discrete, commodifiable and hence cumulative terms. The term 'theory-building' makes sense only within the remit of such a being ontology. Such knowledge is, in tum, considered to be relatively successful attempts to accurately represent reality as it is in itself Within philosophical debates, this epistemological orientation has come to be labeled the 'representational theory of truth' (Putnam 1981), 'representationalism' (Rorty 1991) or the 'ideology of representation' (Woolgar 1988). It is to this representationalist epistemology that we now tum in order to illuminate the significance and influence of the scientific tradition.

Representing and the Ideology of Representation Representing is an intrinsically human activity. The products of representing include objects such as figurines, statues, pictures, and engravings and are often associated with anything visual and tactile which are themselves regarded as objects of interest. Ancient representations are what immediately comes into mind when we think of the products of such representational activities. However, representation is not restricted to the production of physical objects but also the production of any other forms of 'likeness'. For instance, audio imitations, such as bird whistles and the clucking sound of hens or the barking of a dog, are equally valid forms of representation. What seems to characterize representations therefore, is not the fact that they should always be visual or tactile, but that they are essentially external and public. As Hacking reminds us, 'Representations are intended to be more or less public likenesses.' (1983: 133). Hacking maintains that what we call reality 'is just a by-product of an anthropological fact' (ibid.: 131). By this, he means that the concept of reality only made sense when Kant added the fourth philosophical question to his agenda. This was the question: 'What is Man?' With this, Kant, according to Hacking, inaugurated anthropology and through it the concept of reality. Without the concept of 'man', the notion of reality would not have made any sense. This is because the concept of 'mind' as something belonging to the realm of the 'deep interior'.

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is predicated upon an acceptance of man as an autonomous being acting on an external reality. Traditionally, we are accustomed to viewing reality as that final point on which we are able to ground all our beliefs. Thus, following Locke, our thinking follows a logical triadic order moving fiom 'appearance' to 'mental representations' and finally, to 'reality'. This mode of thinking presupposes that reality is the end-point of our intellectual speculation. Hacking, however, argues convincingly that we seem to have forgotten the sequential order of human development and hence, have unwittingly fallen victim to what has been called a Whiggish tendency of thinking the past in terms of the present. For him: The first peculiar human invention is representation. Once there is the practice o f representation, a second order concept follows in train. This is the concept o f reality, a concept which has content only when there are first-order representations. (Hacking 1983: 136)

This is not to deny the presence of a material essentially undifferentiated world preexisting representation or language, but it is to emphasize that the conceptualizing of reality is a secondary step which follows fi-om the judging of representations as being 'real or unreal, true or false, faithful or unfaithful' (ibid.: 136). Reality as a conceptual category, rather than being something which predates representation, is in fact parasitic on the practice of representing and, hence, a consequence of it. Thus, the idea of representation as an act of reflecting reality entails an inversion ofthe temporal order in which these distinctions emerged. Woolgar, as we have seen in Chapter 1, makes a similar point when he maintains that it is the practice of representation which gives rise to the constitution of objects of interest. This is because 'our ability to speak as if realities exist, independent of our knowing them, is a key function of language and representation' (1988: 56). Woolgar further asks if it is possible that such objects can exist independent of our practices of representation. There is a strong philosophical argument suggesting that this cannot be the case since we are always already constrained in our thinking by linguistic expressions. As Heidegger points out: Human beings remain committed to and within, the being of language, and can never step out of it and look at it from somewhere else. Thus, we always see the nature of language only to the extent that language has us in view, has appropriated us to itself (Heidegger 1971: 134)

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Heidegger describes this as the 'prisonhouse of language'. Without the facility of language, we cannot even begin to conceive of notions such as 'objects' let alone think of them as existing independently. Given the plausibility of both Hacking's and Woolgar's arguments, and Heidegger's endorsement, it would seem that being-realism has traded on a set of unquestioned assumptions which follows from the Lockean tradition of assuming the ontological priority of reality over appearance and representation. Hence, the project of representationalism i.e., the accurate representation of reality, is better understood as the product of the 'forgetting' tendency discussed in Chapter 1, whereby, an inversion frequently occurs in the 'discovery' process resulting in priority being accorded to reality over and above the act of representation. This inversion process gives rise to the uncritical acceptance of reality as the end-point of human inquiry. It can thus be argued that scientific realism thrives on the belief that a fundamental difference exists between representation and reality with the latter being accorded ontological priority. Merton captures this classical scientistic view when he reminds us that 'Science would be superfluous if there were no differences between the appearance of things and their essence.' (Merton 1942: 116, quoted in Woolgar 1988: 30). It is the unquestioned acceptance of this distinction which has kept scientific realism alive. However, it is important, at this stage, to make a distinction between the activity of representing and the ideology of representation. The former, as we have indicated, is very much an intrinsically productive human activity, while the latter consists of an ideological expansion of this basic idea into a prescriptive form which links truth to representation. On this account, representationalism is about 'getting things right' so that science can be seen to 'progress' towards closer and closer approximations of reality. Discussions about the aims of science are, therefore, characterized by their reliance on a fundamental dualism—the supposed distinction between 'representation' and the real 'objects' they refer to. The table below gives some idea of how these dualisms are organized. The following brief list of dualisms is by no means exhaustive, but it is meant to give some idea of the pervasiveness of the representational order which regulates and hence, organizes social scientific discourse. However, acceptance of this representational order brings about a persistent question which refuses to go away—how can we be sure that the left hand side (representation) of the table is really a proper and true reflection of the right hand category (object)? Woolgar (1988) maintains that this problem is as widespread as the dualism itself I shall explore this issue further in a later chapter on reflexivity. For our present puφoses however, it is this 'ideology

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of representation' which I wish to examine in order to throw some Ught on the organization of scientific discourse. Representation image signifier action structure menu voltmeter reading photograph myths and rituals organizations

Object reality signified intention relationships food voltage photographed scene culture patterns of interactions

Figure 2: Objects and their Representations

The Ideology of Representation Representationalism, or the ideology of representation, has been associated with Kant's notion of Vorstellung, a placing before the mind of images and abstract thoughts, as well as the Lockean notion of internal ideas which create images in the 'mind's eye'. This understanding of representationalism is axiomatic, not just to the more restrictive practice of science, but also to all other practices which lay claim to capturing some essential feature beyond the activity itself. This, of course, means that representationalism sustains not only the organizational theorist's claim about the nature of organizations, for example, but also the broader attempts of other 'meta-theorists' to analyze and accurately represent the 'first-order' representational activities which mainstream organizational theorists engage in. This process continues ad infinitum, with my own accounts forming part of this chain of self-privileging claims—^that is, unless we can begin to conceptualize this academic activity called organization studies in post-representational terms. This, I hope, will become more clear when I examine the key thrust of postmodern or upstream thinking in Part Two of this book. Here, I propose to examine how this ideology of representation has held us captive for more than three centuries. Science, as we have seen, is a highly institutionalized form of representational practice. However, its grounding in a being-realist scheme of things leads us to recognize that, despite its privileged status, science is no more

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than an especially visible manifestation of the ideology of representation. As Woolgar (1988) notes: ... it is the tip of the iceberg of the modern obsession with technical rationality and reason; the public face of the ideology of representation. It provides, so to speak, the official party line on an attitude which pervades practices well beyond the confines of professional natural science. (Woolgar 1988: 101)

This pervasiveness of the ideology of representation is such that it even informs critics of science as much as it does the scientists themselves. For example, the critic of science often sees him/herself as the mediator between the objects of his/her study and the signs which are representational of those objects. In qualitative terms, this is not different from the notion of the scientific 'observer' as a privileged mediator of objects and their representations. Thus, representational practices 'outside' science: ... are also similarly informed by a moral order of representation. As writers, practical reasoners, conversationalists and so on, we do not conceive of our writings, reports and practical actions as merely whimsical products, having no connection whatever to a "real world". (Woolgar 1988: 103)

Despite acknowledging the inevitability of distortion due to biases and s о on, 'we write (read, hear) with a commitment that signs are—at least potentially—^the reflection of real entities in the world; that things, other than signs themselves, lie behind and give rise to these (mere) signs.' (ibid.: 103). For all the attempts of inteφretive theorists and the strong arguments put forth by those who champion a social constructionist view of the social world, many continue to rely on the Cartesian dualism of objects and their representation and hence, remain in the grips of the ideology of representation. How this has persisted in shaping our ways of thinking is the central question which preoccupied the French writer Michel Foucault in his 'archaeology' of scientific reason.

The Organization of Classical Knowledge In The Order of Things, Foucault's ultimate concern is the cognitive status of the human sciences. He maintained that, to understand this status, it is necessary for us to locate these sciences in the epistemological field of modem knowledge. This, in tum, requires a grasp of the meaning of knowledge in modem culture, what forms it takes, and where among these forms.

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the human sciences are situated. To this end, Foucault made a number of fundamental propositions. Firstly, what knowledge means varies from one historical period to another. Foucault identified three historical periods which he called epistemes beginning with the Renaissance period during the sixteenth century, the Classical Age from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century and the Modem Age beginning from the early nineteenth to at least the middle of the twentieth century. Secondly, each episteme's conception of knowledge is grounded in its 'experience of order' by which things come to be seen as being connected to one another. For example, during the Renaissance period, things were ordered through resemblance, whereas in the Classical Age, order was achieved through strict identities and differences. Moreover, since knowledge is associated with some formulation of truth about things, its nature, according to Foucault, will significantly depend upon the period's construal of the signs used to formulate such truths. Finally, since the most important signs used for knowledge formulation are linguistic ones, the status of knowledge depends on an epoch's conception of language. These four key propositions provided the investigative framework for Foucault's archaeological excavation of our modern sense of order, signs and the language and knowledge associated with them. On Foucault's account, Renaissance thought was ordered around relationships of resemblances. As Gutting (1989) notes: Renaissance thought pursued knowledge of its world through an unending spiral of linked resemblances, each a sign of another. The system of the world and the system of knowledge of the world had, accordingly, the same essential structure. (Gutting 1989: 142)

Signs are themselves resemblances so much so that resemblances formed the means for recognition as in the case of aconite, a plant used for treating diseases of the eye which was recognized because of a resemblance between the eye and the seeds of the aconite plant 'They are tiny dark globes seated in white skinlike coverings whose appearance is much like that of eyelids covering an eye.' (Foucault 1970: 27). This is typical of Renaissance knowledge. Moreover, because the system of the world and the system of knowledge of the world had essentially similar structures based on resemblances, language itself was considered a part of the world, a subsystem of resemblance. Hence, the resulting conception of knowledge is one which does not discriminate between magic, erudition and science. All are placed on par so much so that we find the unlikely situation in which Newton's achievements in mechanics and optics are placed side by side with the serious pursuit of alchemy and bizarre

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Scriptural exegesis such as Paracelsus's claim that snakes are repelled by certain Greek words. Moreover, no essential distinction is made between direct observation and reported stories in the form of commentaries. Distinctions between the observed and the reported, so crucial in the Classical Age, was of little significance during the Renaissance. Natural signs, directly observed, are just as much a form of writing as are words themselves. Knowledge, therefore, becomes nothing more than 'relating one form of language to another form of language' (Foucault 1970: 40). Such was the Renaissance's experience of knowledge and order. This conception of knowledge had no place for representationalism, which only emerged during the Classical Age. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, Western thought took on a fundamentally different character from that of the Renaissance period. This new episteme was based on an experience of order radically different from that which regulated Renaissance thought. Whereas in the latter, the prmciple of ordering was that of resemblance, Foucault finds the Classical episteme to be ordered around relations of identity and difference. In Foucault's view, Descartes' Rules for the Direction of Mind, provides one of the most obvious examples of this radical break in which resemblances, which previously provided the basis for knowledge, now became considered as occasions of error. To be sure, resemblances between things remained the starting point of inquiry, but now resemblances are: ... no longer regarded as expressing the true order of reality, an order that is rather t o be found in the structure of the elements into which things and their resemblances can be analyzed. These elements are related not by vague and ambiguous resemblances, but by strict identities and differences. (Gutting 1989: 146)

Hence, the primary instrument of knowledge now becomes the analysis of resemblances rather than their mere perception. Proof is now required. Consequently, knowing no longer involves the connecting of things, but their discrimination and isolation through the principle of identities and differences. With this shift in order, the conception of signs was also altered during the Classical Age. For Classical thought, signs are now considered to be ontologically separated from the worid and existing only in the mental order. Moreover, whereas Renaissance knowledge revolved around the priority of natural signs, for Classical thought, conventional signs (such as linguistic terms and categories) provided the basis for the ordering of things and experiences.

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Chapter 1 : Ontological Realism and the Ideology of Representation Natural signs are awkward and inconvenient because they typically do not fit easily and effectively into the mind's working. Conventional signs—arbitrary in that we construct them but not arbitrary in that our construction is constrained by the function we need them to perform—are much easier to deal with. The ideal system of arbitrary signs would achieve two complementary goals. On the one hand, it would provide a framework for identifying the simplest elements out of which any system being analyzed is composed; on the other, it would provide a means of combining these elements to produce every possible configuration of the system. (Gutting 1989: 148)

Foucault argues that precisely because signs are ontologically separated from the world and conventional in nature, they relate directly to what they signify without the need for an intermediary such as resemblance. Thus, whether or not a sign happens to resemble what it signifies, it nonetheless directly represents it. These Classical signs are ideas or mental representations such as perceptions and images. Not only do such signs directly represent what they signify, but, additionally, they present themselves as so representing. Hence, there is no possible basis for doubting whether they, in fact, signify what they seem to. Like the conceptual lenses through which we see the world, the sign is 'transparent' and hence guarantees its acceptance. Thus, for the Classical Age, representation is the necessary form of all thought so that: ... thought can never "step back" from it and understand it in terms of anything else. There is, in other words, no possibility of treating representation itself as one of t h e elements of an ordered system and thereby understanding it in terms of its relationship of identity and difference to the other elements. (Gutting 1989: 152)

Corresponding to this new view of signs, language now belongs to a separate ontological realm. It is no longer intertwined with the material world, a reality of the same nature as the things it signifies. Instead, it is consigned to the task of representing and speaking about the world. The outcome of this dramatic switch is that the overall project of knowledge now becomes: ... a linguistic representation of things that places them in series according to t h e identities and differences existing among their properties. The appropriate expression of such a representation is a table (like the tables of genera and species developed by natural history) that lays out all the categories of being and places each thing in its proper place. (Gutting 1989: 155)

The enteφrise of Classical thought became one of representing things in language as exactly as possible. Its task was to reduce the distance between word and things 'so as to bring language as close as possible to the

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observing gaze, and the things observed as close as possible to words' (Foucault 1970: 132). Despite what Foucault sees as its decline during the Modem Age whereby a sense of historical consciousness challenged the Classical order, this ideology of representationalism has continued to direct the field of activity which we call science which itself has tended to resist the more recent rediscovery of historical consciousness. Hence, the modem practice of scientific inquiry remains under the operating umbrella of a Classical representationalist theory of knowledge, albeit increasingly modified by an awareness of the historical and cultural situatedness of such activities.

Conclusion Representationalism, the system of thinking that takes as self-evident language as a system of significations referring to the world beyond it, is of fairly recent origin. What distinguishes the Classical Age fi-om the Renaissance period as Foucault showed was the radical break fi-om a conception of knowledge as arising from the recognition of resemblances to an understanding of knowledge based upon categories of identities and differences. With this conceptual break, language took on a substantially different role. Linguistic signs were no longer held to be interwoven with the world but now viewed as ontologically separated and conventionally de-termined. But what is most striking about this new form of understanding is the emphasis placed on analyzing resemblances in order to exact some form of proof about their status. Getting things right became the order of things in the Classical era and this meant reducing the distance between the signifier and the signified so that the two mirrored one another. This 'strong' view of representing which associates itself with notions such as 'accuracy', 'proof and 'truth', is what still characterizes the representationalist agenda in the natural and social sciences. It is also this epistemologica! legacy that present-day academic realism continues to trade upon and which still circumscribes the theoretical project of mainstream theorizing including especially organizational theorizing. The ideology of representation sustains a well-held belief in the superiority of this discriminative form of knowledge over that of a system of resemblances. However, as Woolgar has asked and as Foucault has shown, the link which enables the signifier to represent the signified is a necessarily arbitrary one, albeit conventional in nature. It is therefore problematic to insist, as representationalists do, that particular words or particular theories

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can be essentially linked to a piece of reality. Indeed, as Hacking and Woolgar remind us, reality is a concept which can only arise from a representationalist theory of truth. Without the idea of truth as accurate representation, it is not possible to begin to conceive of 'reality' as that which representation refers to. Contemporary organization studies have thus inherited this Classical obsession with getting theories 'right'. Thus, we can see that organization studies, as a product of academia, has been inevitably shaped by the dominant ideology of representationalism. In other words, there are intrinsic organizational impulses which circumscribe, and hence serve to define, the legitimate scope of the field of study and to give it its sense of priority. These are often caused by institutional forces such as those investigated by Foucault in The Order of Things. Organizational analysis, as a reflexive intellectual activity, cannot afford to ignore the historical forces which have shaped and organized its own field of inquiry.

Chapter 2: Epistemologica! Realism and Organization Theory

Introduction Being-realism remains the dominant set of ontological commitments underpinning the research agendas of mainstream organization theorists and their more recent inteφretive counterparts. It accounts for the still unshakable confidence in the notion of 'accuracy of representation' as the ultimate aim of organizational research. Descriptions and explanations achieved through either 'quantitative' or 'qualitative' approaches are, thereby, deemed valuable or otherwise according to whether or not they are held to meet the demands of this singular criterion. When such theory-building efforts satisfy this key requirement, their products are elevated to the status of 'truths' or in some instances more modestly 'partial truths'. These knowledge claims collectively make up the legitimate epistemological base for judging the status of other subsequent contributions. In this manner, a dominant epistemology is created and sustained. It is this epistemological realism which governs the process of theory-building in organization theory. A careful examination of its key features will, therefore, enable a better appreciation of the central axioms around which organizational theorizing must be organized in order for it to be deemed acceptable by the dominant academic community.

Scientific Realism Hacking (1981), identifies nine features which, in his view, characterize the representationalist mentality. Realism in science is the belief that science is really an attempt to discover truths about the one real world which exists apart from the perceptions of people. For any chosen aspect of the world, there is one unique description and explanation which best fits the reality being investigated. Such an explanation is deemed to be true in the sense that descriptions tell us how things actually are and that the explanations provided establishes with a high degree of certainty the actual causal relations existing between different aspects of a phenomena under investigation. The purpose of scientific research is, therefore, to arrive at an accurate representation of reality. Scientists within this traditionalist view invariably

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believe that there is a зЬаф distinction to be made between scientific theories and other kinds of beliefs. Hacking calls this second feature demarcation. Scientific knowledge is superior knowledge because it provides a more adequate explanation of the occurrence of events. Furthermore, science is a cumulative project in which more and more established and verified knowledge may be added in order to arrive closer and closer to absolute truth. Einstein's theory for example, is better than Newton's because the former is a generalization of the latter. The puφose of scientific inquiry is systematic 'theory-building'. Old theories are not discarded. Rather they are modified and refined to account for the troublesome anomalies noted in empirical research. In this way science paves the way to a more and more complete understanding of how the world is. Moreover, there is a clear observation-theory distinction which enables us to distinguish observation statements from theoretical claims. This means that a patient and detailed accumulation of empirical data is a vital prerequisite for any form of theoretical conjecture. But it also means that it is possible, through the use of appropriate research methodologies, to minimize the 'contamination' of one with the other. Related to this point is the belief that observations and experiments provide the foundations for and justification of, such conjectures. All theoretical claims must be subjected to empirical tests and verified or falsified by systematic observation. Theories, therefore, have a deductive structure and the testing of such theories is achieved through empirical verification. This traditional image of science is also associated with the idea of precise scientific terms and concepts. These terms and concepts have fixed clear meanings which are unambiguous to those who have been schooled in the scientific approach. Moreover, contexts of discovery and contexts of justification are two separate issues which should be distinguished from one another. The social or psychological influences and the specific circumstances within which scientific discoveries are made do not, in any way, affect the logical basis for justification of those discoveries. Discoveries may be accidental or arrived at by other means than the scientific approach, but this does not, in any way, affect the truth of the discovery which can be logically ascertained and verified in an independent manner. Finally, Hacking characterizes traditional science as attempting to move towards a unitary view which presupposes that there should be 'just one science about one real world' (Hacking 1981: 2). These nine features, realism, demarcation, cumulation, the existence of a theory-observation distinction, the belief in the primacy of observation as foundations, the belief that theories have a deductive structure, the belief in the use of precise terminology, the belief that context of discovery and context of justification are separable and, finally, the belief in a unitary view of scientific progress, are what characterizes the modem scientistic mentality.

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In describing this scientific realism, Hacking draws our attention to what Bhaskar calls the epistemic fallacy—^the belief that ontological questions can always be reparsed in epistemological terms. In other words, that statements about being can always be analyzed in terms of statements about our knowledge about being. It is this confusion and hence conflation of ontological and epistemological questions which has allowed the popularizing of 'realism' as an epistemological rather than an ontological question. Nonetheless, these epistemological beliefs form the bedrock of the scientific method and have continued to guide the intellectual priorities of both the natural and human sciences. Although it is true that recent challenges to the status of scientific knowledge have led to significant modifications in these classical assertions, the idea that research and theorizing is about the accurate description and explanation of reality remains (albeit in alternative guises) as strong as ever.

The Organization of Science: Positivistic Knowledge Positivism or logical empiricism, which is sometimes also called commonsense realism (Lawson and Appignanesi 1989), or naive realism (Lincoln and Guba 1985), provides the most widely held epistemological position within the natural and social sciences. In its most basic form, positivism assumes that the scientist is a sort of 'spectator' of the object of inquiry. Reality is assumed to be unproblematically 'out there' independent of the perceptions, beliefs and biases of the scientists themselves. Scientists of this persuasion consider themselves as faced witìi the perennial problem of making contact with this external reality without unduly 'distorting' it through preconceived ideas about their object of inquiry. Rigor, on the part of the scientist, is what ensures that such biases, which could lead to an inaccurate representation of reality, are kept to a minimum. For positivists, therefore, scientific inquiry consists of the undistorted recording of observations obtained through efficiency-driven methods of investigation and the use of precise and literal terminology in the documentary process. These may include survey questionnaires, controlled experiments and systematic recordings, as well as other quantitative methods of measurement and data collection. Such investigative methods are deemed to be the key to the objective collection of data and it is therefore unsuφrising that scientists of this persuasion hold method to be the crucial factor in investigative work. Accordingly, a good scientist is one who clearly articulates his/her use of a particular method in empirical research and is able to justify its usage. It follows from this positivistic view

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that being a good scientist means diligently ridding oneself of all subjective tendencies by adopting a dispassionate attitude in the inquiry process and using well established research methods in a rigorous manner in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the data being collected. Equipped with this predisposition, the scientist can then proceed to record unbiased observations which he/she believes is an accurate reflection of the reality being investigated. Explanations regarding the observed patterns of regularities connecting one aspect of a phenomena with another can then be systematically developed and empirically verified. The term positivism was first invented in the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Auguste Comte who chose the term because of its felicitous connotations since, in the major languages in Western Europe at that time, the word 'positive' had overtones of utility, certainty and reality, all of which Comte held in high esteem. Comte saw knowledge as developing from a theological to a metaphysical and, finally, to a positivist stage in which non-observable entities and abstract principles were rejected in favor of the primacy of raw observations. This positivistic science Comte saw as replacing religion and providing the new basis for the objective prediction and control of natural and social processes. Nowadays, however, when reference is made to 'the positivists', it usually refers to the group of logical positivists who met regularly in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s and developed a research doctrine which drew heavily on the philosophies of Ernst Mach and Betrand Russell. This 'Vienna Circle', comprising eminent philosophers such as Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath championed a version of extreme empiricism in which scientific knowledge is essentially defined only by the extent to which it can be verified by an appeal to hard facts acquired through carefiil observation and are considered to have meaning and value only in so far as they are so derived. Whilst others such as Karl Popper, Kurt Godei and Ludwig Wittgenstein also took part in some of these discussions, they increasingly felt the need to distance themselves from the epistemologica! stance adopted by these logical positivists. Popper, in particular, has had the greatest of difficulties disassociating himself from this positivistic tradition mainly because of his continued belief in the unity of the scientific method. It is possible to identify sbc positivistic 'instincts' which characterize this form of naive epistemologica! realism. Firstly, there is an emphasis placed on the idea of empirical verification or some variant such as falsification as a key practice in scientific research. This requires that all theoretical propositions be empirically tested to determine whether or not such propositions are at all true. Secondly, positivists are strongly pro-observational. What this means

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is that they believe that what we can see, feel, touch or sense directly in any way provides the best foundations for all forms of knowledge. Thirdly, there is much support for the Humean notion of constant conjunction as a legitimate means for explaming cause and effect. Thus, for positivists, if it is observed, for example, that a match lights up because it is struck, one can conclude that striking a match causes it to light up. Cause, in this instance, is understood to be the likelihood of one event following another. No attempt is made to seek out any underlying causes or generative mechanisms, such as the chemical properties of the match head, for example, as a way of explaining why the match lit up. When one event follows another in a regular predictable manner, a causal relationship is said to exist. Fourthly, positivists see the task of science as enabling the prediction of events. Explanations of the past are attempted only in so far as they help determine the predictability of the future. The idea of understanding past events for their own sake is undeφlayed. Fifthly, positivists reject the existence of theoretical entities, insisting that such concepts are part of the metaphysical baggage which modem science can well do without. Since primary importance is placed on observable reality, the postulation of non-observable reality makes positivists uneasy. Finally, positivists are united in their rejection of metaphysics. By this they mean that untestable propositions, unobservable entities, deep causes such as Freud's idea of the 'unconscious', for example, belong to the realm of metaphysics and, hence, have no place in scientific inquiry. These sbc 'instincts' of positivism or naive realism, therefore, provide the epistemological justification for an objectivist view of science. What positivists are themselves blind to is the highly metaphysical character of their own assertions. For example, their claim that empirical verification provides the surest form of knowledge is, itself, based upon a particular view of knowledge which is not empirically verifiable. Positivism, as Bhaskar (1989) rightly points out is a theory of the nature, limits and unity of a particular form of knowledge. However 'it is not a theory of its possibility. Knowledge is, for positivism, quite improblematic—a given fact, it never inquires for a moment into its conditions or conceives that it might not be.' (Bhaskar 1989: 64). Despite its widespread influence positivism remains unable to epistemologically justify the status of its knowledge claims. It is for this reason that the initial enthusiasm for positivism, amongst academics in the social sciences in particular, is now giving way to a more reflexively rigorous form of epistemological realism.

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The Organization of Science: Realist Knowledge A first approximation of the epistemologica! realist position would begin with the assertion that the picture that science portrays of the world is a true one, faithfiil in all its details. The objects of scientific investigation, such as organizations or their attributes such as 'structure' or 'culture', etc., exist and act for the most part quite independently of their observers. It may even be conceded that such objects are socially constructed and socially sustained by actors within a collective. The crucial point, however, is that for the researcher these objects are considered real and hence amenable to systematic analysis and comparison in the same way as natural phenomena. The progress of science is, thus, advanced through 'discoveries' of what reality (whether socially constructed or otherwise) is really like. Such reality comprises things, structures, events and underlying generative mechanisms which, regardless of whether they are observable or not, are deemed to be legitimate objects of analysis. Unlike positivism, epistemological realism takes seriously the view that there are different 'levels' of reality which can be revealed through the rigorous application of the scientific method. Hence, there is no distinction of principle to be drawn between explanations of the workings of theoretical entities and claims about observable 'facts'. The task of science is precisely to explain such facts in terms of 'more fundamental structures, and in the process, it may reveal some of these "facts", such as the observable motion of the sun across the sky, to be, in part, illusions' (Outhwaite 1987: 9). Conversely, it may also reveal the real existence of hypothetical entities which may not be initially observable. The discovery of the virus is one good example of the realist claim that previously unobservable entities might subsequently be proved to exist through the development of more adequate instruments of observation such as the microscope. For realists, the idea of a Humean notion of causality, as expressed in the idea of the constant conjunction of events, is seen as being highly inadequate. To say that a match 'lit' because it was 'struck' is a misapplication of the concept of causality as far as realists are concerned. A true causal explanation should be capable of answering the question of why the match lit in terms of generative mechanisms such as the chemical properties of the match head, the roughness of the surface it was struck against and the force applied. Since such generative mechanisms underlie and produce observable regularities, the latter could best be understood as effects of their fimctioning.

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Thus, it turns out that, for the realist, the possibility always arises that generative mechanisms may be unobserved or even unobservable but be nonetheless 'real' in an ontological sense. This leads to the ontological being-realist scheme of things in which unobservable theoretical entities are considered as being objectively existing 'out there' just like physical observable entities. Theory, therefore, for the realist becomes the means for 'describing the relations between the unobservable causal mechanisms (or structures) and their (observable) effects' (Layder 1990: 13). This legitimizing of theoretical entities enables scientific knowledge to be construed beyond the immediate restrictions of the human senses. As Layder rightly points out, the positing of the existence of theoretical entities 'also decrees that the reahn of theory be broadened out beyond the given sensorily apprehended world' (Layder 1990: 13). These two aspects—^the insistence on the redefinition of causality and the consequent acceptance of the existence of theoretical entities—mark the realist break from positivism. By its ready acceptance of the reality of unobservable entities, realism is counterintuitive in a way which resonates with the Parmenidean insistence on the superiority of reasoning over the deceptive nature of the human senses. Nonetheless, prima facie, there is still much common ground which broadly supports both versions of science. Positivists and most epistemological realists believe in the unity of science and the superiority of scientific knowledge over all other forms of knowledge. Scientific knowledge provides the best measure of our progress in gaining more and more understanding about the world we live in. True, there may be problems about gaining access to an unmediated reality, however, this is precisely what scientific research is all about. The growth of scientific knowledge is a cumulative rational enterprise evolving towards a one true theory of the universe. Positivism and epistemological realism both hold that there is a distinctive difference between theory and observation, although realists are prepared to concede that all observations are necessarily 'theory-laden'. More importantly, however, both positivism and epistemological realism are folly committed to the view that theories are serious attempts to accurately mirror and represent the real world as it exists out there. It is this representationalist injunction which unites positivistic and realist science.

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Varieties of Realism A number of formulations of realism have been proffered in attempts to distinguish it from other philosophical positions. Bhaskar in A Realist Theory of Science, defines realism as the view that: Things exist and act independently of our descriptions, but we can only know them under particular descriptions.... Science is the systematic attempt to express in thought the structures and ways of acting of things that exist and act independently of thought. (Bhaskar 1978: 250, quoted in Outhwaite 1987: 20)

In order to lend weight to his argument, Bhaskar makes a distinction between three 'domains' which he calls the real, the actual and the empirical. The empirical is made up of our experiences obtained by direct or indirect observation. However, there is another level of reality comprising actual events which have occurred, whether or not they have been observed. What happens is not to be confused with what is observed to happen. Finally, there is the realm of the real which identifies the underlying process, or generative mechanisms, producing the events that happen which, in tum, may or may not be experienced. Thus, the task of realists is to see science 'as a human activity that aims at discovering, by a mixture of experimentation and theoretical reasoning the entities, structures and mechanisms (visible or invisible) that exist and operate in the world' (Outhwaite 1983: 322). From Bhaskar's position therefore, it is possible to claim that not only can events occur without being experienced, but also that unobservable causal mechanisms can actually neutralize each other in such a way that no event is observed to occur. However, this, in no way, denies the existence of such causal mechanisms. For example, an object placed on a table is said to experience the force of gravity, but it remains at rest because of the resistance offered by the table itself. Thus, two very 'real' forces exist, but because they counteract one another, no change of any sort is observed. Bhaskar's realism is therefore a realism which emphasizes the real existence of oftentimes unseen and unseeable causal mechanisms such as deep structural regularities which inhibit thought and constrain human behavior to the detriment of societal good. Bhaskar's critical realism has been strongly recommended by a number of commentators as offering real possibilities of a new beginning, particularly for the social sciences because, according to his supporters, he manages to avoid the pitfalls of positivism and irrationalism by recovering the belief that science can give us real insights into the nature of things. Critical realism

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can, therefore, make a valuable contribution to the Enlightenment project of human emancipation. Collier (1994), an ardent supporter of Bhaskar, suggests that critical realism 'enters the philosophical battleground fighting on two fronts: against the reductive naturalism that is rooted in empirical realism; and against anti-naturalistic positions rooted in ideaUsm' (Collier 1994: 237). According to Collier, this critical 'depth' realism has transformative and emancipatory potential in that a) because it allows for the possibility of counterintuitive knowledge, it creates a space for our 'liberation' from enslaving appearances, b) because it calls for theories to be judged by some objective criteria, it forces theoretical formulations that more likely transform our thinking rather than merely providing convenient rationales for existing practices, c) because it emphasizes the existence of relatively enduring structures that are deemed to determine the states of human affairs, it directs attention towards the transformation of such structures for the betterment of society, and finally d) because it recognizes that theories must make claims about what the world is like independently of the theories themselves, it accentuates the fallibility of such theories. These are attractive features which have endeared Bhaskarian realism to those seeking an alternative to what is perceived to be the nihilistic tendencies of poststructuralist thought. Putnam (1975) provides a somewhat different formulation of realism which he claims has been influenced by the work of Michael Dummet: A realist (with respect to a given theory or discourse) holds that (1) the sentences of that theory are true or false; and (2) that which makes them true or false is something external—^that is to say, it is not (in general) our sense data, actual or potential, or the structures of our minds, or our language, etc.. (Putnam 1975: vol. 1: 69)

Here, it is clear that realism is tied to a representationalist theory of truth in which the latter is affmned or denied by reference to something external. However, Putnam is no 'naive' realist. He maintains that it is not possible to attain what he calls a 'God's Eye Point of View' in verifying observational statements. Therefore the only possibility for a realist position is one which he calls internal realism. By this is meant that although reality exists as discrete things and entities independent of our descriptions of it, we can, in principle, never really descriptively exhaust their characteristics since we are always trapped by the limitations of our culturally bound perspectives. Putnam's version of realism has been influential in legitimizing an inteφretive and perspectival orientation to the analysis of social phenomena.

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Van Frassen (1980), in another recent attempt to locate realism for the purpose of mounting a critique from what he terms a 'constructive empiricist' perspective, offers a minimalist view of realism: Science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story o f what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true.... (Van Frassen 1980: 8)

Hacking (1983) usefiilly distinguishes between realism about entities (i.e., ontological realism) and realism about theories (or epistemologica! realism). Realism about entities, which 1 have called being-realism, accepts the existence of theoretical entities in contrast to both positivists as we have seen and also to the pragmatists and deconstructionists whom I referred to in the introductory chapter of this book. The former sees the postulation of theoretical entities as metaphysical while the latter treats theoretical entities as convenient logical constructs which are useful theoretical fictions that help us to cope with our experiences of the world. Realism about theories, on the other hand, makes the claim that scientific theories are either true or false and that this depends on how the world really is, not on whether we do or do not know about it. Science aims to attain truth and the truth is an accurate portrayal of how the world is and this, in tum is arrived at through a methodological approach which facilitates the accurate representation of reality. However, it is perhaps Harré's (1986) thorough analysis of realism, as it is generally understood, which identifies a crucial assumption underlying these different versions of realism. This is the bivalence principle in which the argument runs as follows: 'The theoretical statements of a science are true by virtue of the way the world is.' (Harré 1986: 35). Harré's bivalence principle involves acceptance of a split between theories and 'the world' to which they refer. These are taken as being distinct and separable from one another and that the task of the former is to make truth claims about the latter. Harré calls this position 'maximal realism', since accepting it would 'commit one to an epistemologica! ideal incoφorating the strongest possible relationship between discourse and the world, namely, truth and falsity' (ibid.: 35). Harré identifies four versions of scientific realism, all of which he sees as operating on the basis of this bivalence principle since all share the assumption that the goal of scientific practice must be understood in terms of truth and falsity. The world provides the reference point with which such truth, or falsity, is grounded.

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Ontological and Epistemological Commitments of Realism Despite the bewildering array of realisms depicted, it is possible to identify two key philosophical commitments which underlie the common understanding of realism. The first involves an ontological commitment which asserts the presence of an already constituted reality beyond and before human cognition. Like positivists, epistemological realists believe that reality exists objectively 'out there' as discrete self-identical entities independent of our perception of it. However, realism fiirther maintains, contrary to positivism, that, whether it is in material form or as unobservable generative mechanisms, reality creates effects which can only be understood through the postulation and acceptance of theoretical entities as a crucial feature of scientific knowledge. Thus, atoms and viruses exist even though they may not be directly observable. This means that, for organization studies, concepts such as 'organizations', 'goals', 'cultures', 'strategies' and 'environments' are legitimate terms in so far as they allude to the generation of observable effects such as patterns of behavior, puφoseíul action and social practices. Contrary to a constructionist/pragmatist view, these are not merely convenient theoretical fictions that help us to explain organizational life, but exist as discrete real entities. The second commitment is an epistemological one involving our knowledge claims. Theories for realists are believed to mirror the world and reflect how it is actually ordered. The more accurately our theories correspond with reality, the more true they are held to be. Ultimate truth is achieved by theories being able to produce a perfect copy of the world. However, unlike positivists, realists believe that our biases and perceptions interfere with our experience of the world. Hence, research and inquiry must take into account the necessarily theory-laden nature of our observations and seek out ways and means to minimize its effects on our theory formulation. Acceptance of the theory-ladenness of observation invariably leads to a central preoccupation with the methodological issues involved in carrying out research. These two philosophical commitments provide the basis for understanding the key features of an epistemological realist scheme of things. It is, perhaps, fair to say that much of mainstream organization theorizing is grounded on these two metaphysical commitments. What continues to bind them to these commitments is the belief in science as being essentially a representational practice. We can see, therefore, that what epistemological realism proposes is the acceptance of a dualism, not just between mind and matter, but between our theories or beliefs about something and that thing itself In other words.

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theories refer to something beyond themselves. Moreover, such things, entities etc., are taken to be relatively static and enduring. This is what gives theories and concepts their representational function. Hence, the essential point for realism, when understood this way, is the realization that theories can be wrong. As Ruben puts it: For a realist, the reality a theory is about is always an independent "other" relative to that theory, and as such, serves as a means by which we can check or measure theory.... Error and mistakes are always possible. (Ruben 1989: 60)

This means that we are realists, in so far as we believe that what our theory is about is essentially independent of the theory itself Realism is a philosophical posture concerning the thought-world connection and hence, at root, assumes this distinction to be a legitimate one. Moreover, despite the apparent variety of realisms rather briefly described here, they are united in assuming an ontology of being as the primary basis for theoretical formulations.

Epistemological Realism in the Social Sciences With the retreat of positivism in social scientific research, epistemological realism has come to be seen as a viable response capable of more appropriately capturing the essence of particularly social phenomena. Such phenomena, unlike physical objects, are not directly observable and hence, do not lend themselves easily to positivistic research. For instance 'exploitation', 'alienation', 'organizations' and 'culture' are not directly detectable except when their puφorted characteristics are agreed upon a priori. This is legitimized through the realist acceptance of 'theoretical entities'. Thus, it has transpired that social theorists such as Harré (1979), Keat and Uny (1975), Giddens (1984) and Outhwaite (1983, 1987), as well as more recently Archer (1995), have seen the attractiveness of the realist option (in particular Bhaskarian realism) for the social sciences and have thus attempted to work out their consequences for understanding the social world. Moreover, the introduction of the notion of'levels' of reality (see Bhaskar 1978, 1989) allows distinctions to be made between conflicting accounts of reality so that a degree of coherence is attained. For example, Layder (1990) points out that the realist preoccupation with the search for causal phenomena and tracing their causal effects distracts attention away from conceptualizing the possibility of acausal phenomena which he claims represents a

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different order of reality. Layder here applies a truncated reading of Bohm's (1980) concepts of the implicate and explicate orders to support his arguments that there are different levels of reality. This enables him to equate the causal with the explicate order and the acausal with the implicate order. As we shall see in a later chapter, Bohm's proposal to think of reality as emergent, processual and implicate is precisely an attempt to get away from the fragmented thinking which characterizes Layder's appropriation of his ideas. Nonetheless, Layder uses this idea to criticize social theorists such as Giddens (1984), Keat and Urry (1975) and Harré (1979,1981), for being unable to sustain 'a notion of macro structure as possessing properties which can be understood to be relatively independent of the agents whose behavior is subject to their influence' (Layder 1990: 23). In his views, realists, such as Harré (1979,1981, 1986), dismiss the idea of macro structures as merely 'rhetorical devices which appear in agents' accounts but have no existential or real status beyond these accounts' (Layder 1990: 23). On the other hand, the opposite camp, including Bhaskar (1979), Keat and Urry, (1975) and Giddens (1984), who are more sociologically oriented, 'are at best ambiguous on the relative independence (of macro structures) issue' (Layder 1990: 23). In Layder's own view: To argue for a relative independence (of social structure) is simply to argue that macro structures have properties which enable them to constrain, as well as facilitate, human action from "outside" as well as from within. Constraints and facilities do not simply exist in the minds of human actors; they are most crucially, socially generated and socially located resources which are drawn into agent's activities from external cultural "funds". (Layder 1990: 23, emphasis added)

Layder is here attempting to rework what he sees as weaknesses and deficiencies in the realist program which he, himself, is largely sympathetic to. Hence, the central aim of his book The Realist Image in Social Science, was to address what he saw as the inability of the realist project to 'sift through the divergent truth claims and to arrange them in an order which makes sense of the realist project itself (Layder 1990: 173). Like those whom he criticizes, Layder belongs to the more recent breed of social theorists who have come to accept the being-realist scheme of things as an attractive option in the social sciences. It is not difficuk to show that Layder's strong commitment to the use of terms such as 'macro' and 'micro' structures, 'internal' and 'external' resources, chains him to a familiar descriptive orbit circumscribed by the debate regarding the primacy of the individual/society. This preoccupation prevents him from appreciating that Böhm and other like-minded postmodern

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thinkers are more interested in conceiving 'interactions', 'relationships' and 'networks' as the basic 'stuff of social life in place of apparent unities such as 'individuals', 'organizations' and 'societies'. In short. Lay der takes as self-evident and unproblematic, the identity of things, entities and events while his postmodern counterparts, including Böhm, regard such identities as outcomes or effects of primary interactional processes. Much of this discussion of realism and postmodernism will not be familiar to organization theorists of the orthodox persuasion or even many who have embraced an inteφretive stance in generating theories of organization. Nonetheless, this is primarily due to a failure on the part of such theorists, to trace their assumptional bases to their roots; a task which Burrell and Morgan (1979) may be credited as being one of the first to systematically undertake. Using a realist argument, we might say that just because organizational analysis is often carried out without reference to such underlying assumptions, does not mean that such patterns of assumptions do not exist. It merely points to the unreflexive nature of much of mainstream organizational theorizing. In particular, the belief that theories are attempts to provide accurate descriptions which correspond to reality, undeφins the mental predisposition of such theorists. Representationalist epistemology, therefore, is a logical consequence of a being-realist vision of the world.

The Science of Organization Although realism is by no means a unitary concept, its pervasiveness is reflected by an almost unquestioned acceptance of science as being essentially a representational practice and that, conversely, the practice of representing accurately social and natural phenomenon is what defines the scientific activity. It suffices here to say that it is probably the ftmdamental underlying assumption of contemporary scientific practice from which the other features of science earlier discussed are derived. It is possible to relate these features of scientific realism identified to the practice of mainstream organizational theorizing in such a way as to demonstrate their underlying commitment to an epistemological realist view of the world. Thus, the acceptance of a clear demarcation between the quality of knowledge attained through a systematic analysis of organizations/organizational theories as opposed to stories, narrative accounts, and impressions about organization is what justifies the continued emphasis on empirical research and theorizing within the discipline. Moreover, these academic

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activities are carried out with the wholehearted behef that such research efforts do, in fact, help to uncover the underlying mechanisms which account for how organizations emerge, take shape, function and anticipate the future. Thus, the scientific study of organization is deemed to be essentially a cumulative project. Much of mainstream organization theory continues to be empirically driven. The quest for 'organizational data' as the 'raw material' for generating theories and 'testing' them necessarily implies that a clear observation-theory distinction is being made in accordance with the traditional view of scientific inquiry. Although increasingly less so, the grounding of theories in observable 'facts' of the world, remains a high priority on the agenda of organization theorists. Observations thus provide the legitimate foundations for justifying a particular point of view about organizational phenomena. Associated with this intellectual predisposition is the widespread practice of empirically 'testing' and 'verifying' theories of organization. Thus, theories have an in-built deductive structure. The use of precise terminology in organizational theorizing is also something increasingly demanded by students of the field of study. A number of recent appeals have been made to be more rigorous in the use of organizational terms and the language associated with it (see for example, Warriner, Hall and McKelvey 1981; and Sandelands and Drazin 1989). The separation of contexts of discovery from contexts of justification is clearly evident in any attempt to develop a science of organization in which generalizations are part and parcel of the theorizing process. In this sense, mainstream organization theory is clearly a child of orthodox scientific practices. This also is what makes it share a unitary view of the organizational world which it seeks to investigate. We can, thus, see that, despite an apparent plurality of perspectives, all the key aspects of the traditional science approach remain, to a greater or lesser extent, reflected in contemporary organizational theorizing. An examination of the stated aims and objectives of the more well regarded journals in the field of study reveals interestingly how such assumptions continue to undeφin research priorities in organization studies. For example, the Administrative Science Quarterly is explicit in its rejection of contributions which do not conform to its preferred mode of grounded conceptualizing: Theory is how we move from research to further research and improved practice. If manuscripts contain no theory, their value is suspect. Ungrounded theory, however, is no more helpful than are atheoretical data. We are receptive to multiple forms of grounding. We are not receptive to a complete avoidance of grounding. (ASQ: notice to contributors, emphasis added)

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It is not difficult to draw out from this short note to potential contributors, the underlying assumptions involved. Firstly, there is a clear insistence on the primacy of observation as the basis for grounding all forms of organizational theorizing. Secondly, there is also a clear distinction assumed between theory and observation. The concept of 'atheoretical data' makes sense only in a scheme of things which accepts the possibility of distinguishing theory from data. More implicit is the assumption that theorizing within the administrative sciences is, essentially, a knowledge accumulating effort. This is what allows 'improved practice' to be realized. Clearly, we can conclude that a traditional view of science is still widely upheld by the editors of this influential journal. Other journals are more circumspect and reflect perhaps, a greater level of awareness regarding the criticisms levied against the orthodox view of science. Nonetheless, it is still possible to point to the dominance of the language of orthodox science being used in such journals. For instance. Accounting, Organizations, and Society describes its aims and scope as follows: Accounting Organizations and Society is an international journal devoted to the behavioral, organizational and societal aspects of accounting. Published materials range from original theoretical and empirical contributions to review articles describing state of the art in specific areas. (AOS: I)

The distinction made here between theoretical and empirical studies, again acknowledges an acceptance of the observer-theory distinction. Here, however, it must be noted that the journal sees it as being a 'range from', hence, implicitly acknowledging the blurring of distinctions between these two categories of understanding. Clearly, it is attuned to the more currently acceptable understanding that all observations are necessarily theory-laden hence, acknowledging that empirical investigations are always already 'contaminated' by theory. Similarly, the Journal of Management Studies·. ... aim to publish papers that advance knowledge and address practice in the areas of organization theory, strategic management and human resource management.... By "advanced knowledge" we mean that papers should aim to develop empirically grounded theory that increases our understanding of behavior in and of organizations in their environments. We recognize that this statement may be viewed as problematic.... Accordingly, we would emphasize that we welcome contributions from a whole gamut of perspectives. Our only proviso is that each author should seek to maintain congruity within his or her own ontologica!, epistemologica! and methodological positions in the conduct and reporting of research. Our ultimate criterion for a paper's acceptability is that an informed reader is likely to learn something new from

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it and that it contributes to the development of coherent bodies of knowledge. (JMS, instructions to contributors)

Here, it is clear that, despite an initial preference for empirically driven research, sensitivity to the wider contexts of the shifting image of scientific practice has enabled the joumal to remain open enough so as not to exclude other forms of contribution which do not quite conform with such preferences. However, there is still a clear commitment to the idea of 'advancing knowledge', a distinctively traditional notion of the cumulative nature of scientifically based knowledge. For the editors of this joumal therefore, the science of organization and management is still very much a cumulative project in which the essential nature of organizational functioning can be more and more adequately grasped. Representational knowledge thus, continues to be the desirable outcome sought through scientific inquiry. Other journals such as Organization Studies, have kept their aims and scope more open, maintaining that the journal's primary concern is increasing understanding about 'organizations, organizing, and the organized'. Likewise, the Academy of Management Review acknowledges that '... when the purpose of a paper is to shift the way scholars view the world or the scientific enterprise, researchable propositions may not be appropriate.... Although detailed propositions may not flow from such discussions, research implications, nevertheless, should be argued explicitly and persuasively.' (AMR, Information for Contributors). Perhaps the most reflexively conscious statement of the knowledge forming process is reflected in the aims of the new joumal Organization. It states: The principal aim of Organization is to foster dialogue and innovation in studies of organization ... it promotes an ethos which is explicitly: theory-driven, international in scope and vision, open, reflective, imaginative and critical ... it particularly encourages attention to the links between intellectual developments, changes in organizational forms and practices, and broader social, cultural and institutional transformations. (Organization, Aims and Scope)

These latter journals express a more contemporary appreciation of the unduly restrictive character of traditional research imperatives and clearly demonstrate a resolve to be more 'open' and exploratory in their reviewing process. Whether or not this is realized remains to be seen. Joumals and the message conveyed by their espoused aims and intellectual priorities provide an invaluable measure of the extent of the epistemologica! commitments of those in whose power it is to define and influence the direction of the debate in organization studies. However, it is not only

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journals which have attempted to guide organizational theorizing along the path of well held scientific approaches. A number of influential writers in organization theory have also indicated what they see as a need to curtail the proliferation of alternative theories in the field of study by imposing the strict application of the criteria of 'parsimony, logical coherence, falsifiability, clarity and consistency with empirical data' (Pfeffer 1982: 259). Pfeffer maintains that the literature in this field of study has, as a whole: ... tended to move too far from the data and findings. Or, put it another way, there is too much ideology and assertion and not enough attention to the results (or lack thereof) of the various empirical investigations that have been undertaken. And the literature has moved too far from the basic properties of organizations. Organizations are material entities with physical characteristics, characterized by social relations and demographic processes. (Pfeffer 1982: 259, emphasis added)

Pfeffer's concern for 'grounding' research in empirical findings again reflects a set of underlying assumptions consistent with the traditionally held notion of the scientific approach. For him, organizations are material entities which can be observed, measured and analyzed much in the same way as in the natural sciences. That his own position reflects the very ideological slant he is critical of is not apparent to Pfeffer. This is, perhaps, the archetypal instance of a naive realism pervading the study of organization. Pfeffer, of course, is not the only one to perceive a need to make the field of study more respectable by relating it to what is deemed to be good scientific practice. For those engaged in mainstream theorizing, the search for convergence on unifying themes in organization studies appeared most pressing, particularly during the early to mid-1980s. Thus, it was in a spirit of shared undertaking that Warriner, Hall and McKelvey invited organizational researchers to contribute to formulating 'a standardized list of operationalised, observable variables for describing organizations' (1981: 173). This invitation stemmed fi-om a concern with perceived problems resulting from the tendency of researchers to use different sets of variables to describe and analyze organizations. As a result of this multiplicity of approaches, organizations are studied in different ways which deiy summary and hence, useful comparison. Thus the proposers argue that a more accurate representation of organizational phenomena could be achieved by establishing a 'repository of pooled data' or operational measures to be used in empirical research. Likewise, Pinder and Bourgeois (1982) and Bourgeois and Pinder (1983), in a spirited exchange with Morgan (1980, 1983) on the use of metaphor in organizational analysis, recommended 'the development of an analytical taxonomy of organizations' as a first step towards achieving the ideal of

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scientific precision in the administrative sciences. They argued that the development of a 'literal' language which enables the connection between observable phenomena and theoretical constructs to be made, will greatly enhance the progress of the discipline. More recently, Sandelands and Drazin, in an interesting discussion of the language of organization theory, maintained that 'an objection must be raised to words that name no entity or process whatsoever' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 472). For them, words that refer to objects or processes that cannot be observed or verified must be vigorously questioned, since they tend to impede progress in theory building. Thus, like Warriner, Hall and McKelvey as well as Finder and Bourgeois, Sandelands and Drazin follow in the tradition of thought which sees scientific rigor as residing in the precise use of descriptive terms so as to accurately capture the essence of organizational reality. Underlying these assertions is a mental predisposition which takes, as axiomatic, the central features of traditional science. Thus, the search for a unifying discourse, the call for greater 'precision' in the use of descriptive terms and the priority accorded to the primacy of observation are all aspects of the scientific mentality which Hacking (1981) referred to. It is, perhaps, more accurate to say that over the past decade in particular, such traditional views have undergone considerable modification in organizational analysis with the result that issues such as the theory-observation distinction, the insistence on precision in the use of descriptive terms, and the primacy accorded to observation, have all been called into question. The more contemporary view accepts a) the theory-ladenness of all observation, b) the impossibility of a 'literal' language which can aid precision in descriptive accounts and its replacement by a metaphorical understanding of linguistic terms and c) the idea that what we observe is very much colored by the frame of reference with which we use to apprehend organizational reality. As Morgan (1986) puts it: ... our theories and explanations of organizational life are based on metaphors that lead us to see and understand organizations in distinct, yet partial, ways. (Morgan 1986: 12)

Theories are not pure descriptions of reality, but interpretations of our experience of it. Hence, 'we theorize about or "read" situations as we attempt to formulate images and explanations that help us to make sense of their fundamental nature' (ibid.: 12). Clearly, Morgan is here departing from the traditional objectivist view of science to an inteφretive stance which some, like Lincoln and Guba (1985) have classified as a 'perceived realist' episte-

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mological position. From this position, Morgan is able to suggest that the use of metaphors enable us to enrich our understanding of organizations because of the partial truth which each metaphor reveals. Morgan makes a distinction between 'the full and rich reality of an organization, and the knowledge that we can gain about that organization' (Morgan 1986: 341). By doing so, he acknowledges the existence of an already constituted reality which has a fundamental nature but which we are never able to fully grasp. This is a decidedly ontological realist position, albeit a much modified version of it. The distinction fi-equently made between a realist and a relativist account of organizational reality is ontologically speaking a false distinction because of the persistent confusion of ontology with epistemology. More recently, the idea of socially constructed realities have come into currency as a substitute for understanding organization and organizational fimctioning (Silverman 1970; Mangham 1986). From this point of view, organizations are no longer considered in a simple sense as pre-existing objective entities but instead, are deemed to be socially produced, reproduced and sustained by the recurring actions of individual members of a collective. However, social constructionists differ in their understanding of the consequences of this theoretical perspective for the organizational research process. For some, attention is directed to the understanding of the meaning that individual actors attribute to their actions. This is a position advocated by Silverman (1970), and other subsequent writers on organization who have insisted on a qualitative and interpretive approach to organizational analysis (see for example, Van Maanen 1979; Morgan and Smircich 1980). However, despite an awareness of the social constructionist view in social theorizing, many of these accounts suffer from what Steier calls naive or 'first order constructionism' (1991: 3). By this he means that even within a community of inquirers who have accepted the idea of knowledge as embedded within a socially constructed process: ... there have been many who have adopted a constructivist label on a package whose content is still defined by "objectivist" inquiry. Here, we find those who take, as an "object" of study, other person's construction of reality as something to be studied in an objective manner, somehow apart from the researcher's own tools and methods with which the researcher's study is accomplished. This attempt to keep oneself, even as an active observer, out of one's construction, and to hold on to vestiges o f objectivism, I refer to as naive, or first order, constructivism (or first order constructionism). (Steier 1991: 4)

Thus, first order social constructionism, substantially influenced by The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann (1966), remains

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trapped in a realist vision of scientific practice in which representationalism continues to drive the research process. We can, therefore, see that despite a multitude of attempts to articulate viable alternatives to the orthodox view of science, many of these fall far short of providing a rigorously worked out alternative which escapes the representationalist mode of thinking pervading mainstream organizational theorizing. Realism and representationalism continue to circumscribe the very possibilities of theorizing within Organization Studies. Only postmodern, or upstream thinking, as we shall see in Parts Two and Three of this book, offers a possible way out of this theoretical quagmire.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to make the important link between the practice of organizational theorizing and the philosophical commitments from which it derives its logic of analysis. Organizational theorizing is a social scientific practice which makes privileged claims about 'organizations' and the nature of the organizing process. Such claims are legitimized by a epistemologica! realist scheme of things which takes, as self-evident, the existence of an already-constituted organizational reality, or of objective organizing frames of reference whose theoretical characteristics are 'discoverable' and describable in representationalist terms. In such instances, the researcher him/herself is considered to be the 'discoverer' rather than 'creator' of what he/she claims. Hence, the truth value derives from the fact that anyone else following the same scientific approach will 'get things right' and arrive at the same picture of reality. Whilst this scheme of things is somewhat modified by the 'inteφretive tum' in the social sciences in general and organization studies in particular, it has, through accepting the notion of the theory-laden nature of perception, not removed the desirability of the ultimate goal of attaining unmediated reality. Epistemologica! realism, at its root rests on the unquestioned acceptance of a fiindamental split between the word and the world. The word, as signifier, can only be grounded in the materiality of the signified and hence the task of all inquiry is to unite the two. This is the essence of the project of representationalism which, as Foucault shows convincingly, is a product of the shift in the conception of knowledge from one based on a system of resemblances to one which accentuates identities and differences. In the former, knowledge is attained by an ever expanding network of relations whilst in the latter, knowledge is a product of differentiation and discrimina-

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tion between the essential structural elements of things. Yet epistemological realism remains unclear about how it can reflexively justifies its own assertions. There remains unresolved tensions within this otherwise attractive metaphysical schema. The outcome of these unresolved tensions in the epistemology of the social sciences means that organization studies has not been able to adequately respond to the question of reflexivity which a postmodem consciousness poses. Such a consciousness implies that organization theorists need to seek our alternative ways of accounting for and justifying their own representational practices. This has severe implications for our understanding of the practice of organizational analysis.

Chapter 3: The Problem of Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis

Introduction In Chapter 2,1 tried to make the important link between the academic practice of organizational analysis and the representational system of thinking from which it derives its logic of analysis. As the previous chapter demonstrated, mainstream (or downstream) organizational theorizing is an institutionally legitimized scientific activity which claims a privileged understanding of organizational functioning based upon an essentially being-realist scheme of things. Orthodox organization theorists subscribing to the commonsensical view of 'organizations' as real and unproblematically isolatable social entities, continue to write and research about the latter as if such assumptions about its ontological status are not an issue in their investigations (see for instance, Pugh 1983; Bryman 1989). Whether quantitative or qualitative methods are advocated in the research process, the general view is that organizations are concrete observer-independent entities which can be empirically investigated using appropriate research methods. This mind-set leads to a characteristic preoccupation with the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative research methods in investigative work. In either case, the underlying presuppositions informing such organizational researchers is the belief that, firstly, organizations, whether taken as objectively existing independently of social actors or socially constructed by the interactions of the latter can, nonetheless, be still objectively documented in the investigative process by a competent organizational researcher using an appropriate research methodology. The essence of organizational functioning can be systematically grasped in this way. Secondly, and more importantly, that the task of such organizational research remains one of faithfully documenting and hence accurately representing enduring aspects of organizational reality as it exists 'out there'. Once this pervasive set of research priorities has been made more transparent, it becomes easier to see that the differences between quantitative and qualitative research which appear significant at the level of methodology, can, nonetheless, be shown to share a common commitment to representationalist epistemology. Both paradigms view the task of organizational research as quintessentially

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about revealing some enduring 'truths' about organizations and their modes of functioning. The more recent organizational 'meta-theorists' who construe theories of organization as their objects of analysis readily acknowledge that assumptions about epistemology and ontology play a critical role in shaping organizational perspectives. For them, whether or not 'organizations' exist as real observer-independent entities or otherwise depends crucially upon the philosophical framework from which one operates. Meta-theorists who take it upon themselves to classify and categorize the current diversity of organizational perspectives in order to bring some structure and coherence to the plurality of views implicitly rely on a being-realist mode of thought. For, whilst it is not the ontological status of 'organizations' that is now taken as unproblematic, it is this time the ontological status of the organizational perspectives themselves which are unproblematically regarded as legitimate theoretical objects that can be described, classified, compared and analyzed in a typical representationalist manner. Nevertheless, such meta-theoretical contributions to organizational analysis emphasizing the 'perspectival' nature of organizational accounting, have done much to destabilize the dominance of a Classical representationalist epistemology by highlighting the paradigmatic nature of organizational research accounts (see for instance Burrell and Morgan 1979; Morgan 1986; Mangham 1986; Calás and Smircich 1992). In so doing, they raise important questions about the epistemological status of our knowledge of organization and the ideological character of such 'truth' claims. However, the ontological assumptions underwriting contemporary organizational research and theorizing remain relatively unexamined. One consequence is that these organizational meta-theorists find themselves reflexively confronted with the problematical character of their own theoretical claims. For, if it is true, as many meta-theorists maintain, that all organizational accounts are paradigmatically circumscribed, this must reflexively apply to their own accounts thereby making their own claims questionable. The thorny question of reflexivity becomes, therefore, an inevitable one. Those more seriously committed to coming to terms with this problem of reflexivity have begun to examine the epistemological implications of reflexive theorizing and have thereby chosen to adopt a more modest and even ironic stance towards the theories they generate. This theoretical stance has been labeled 'meta-reflexivity' (Latour 1988). Organizational accounts, according to this meta-reflexive posture, are now to be understood as interesting 'stories' rather than privileged truth claims. They are, therefore, often presented ironically so as to avoid them being believed too much. Theories

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of organization are viewed as self-justifying 'intelligible narratives' rather than systematic attempts to accurately describe and explain an external organizational reality. This approach to circumventing the problem of reflexivity, however, still treats reflexivity as an epistemologica! issue. In so doing it obscures the deeper ontological character of the problem of reflexivity. A more rigorous defense for reflexive theorizing can be achieved by addressing these ontological assumptions and by explicitly articulating an alternative set of ontological commitments and intellectual priorities for organization theory. This chapter begins by examining the tendency for much of contemporary organizational analysis to uncritically engage in representationalist theorizing by readily embracing notions like 'the organization', its 'goals', 'culture', 'environment', 'strategies', 'life-cycles', etc., to be unproblematically referring to real external entities, states and attributes. It further tries to show that this tendency towards reification in academic discourse also bugs metatheorists who impute an objective existence to their self-generated typologies and paradigmatic schémas and then subsequently proceed to analyze and compare these as if the reified status of their objects of analysis (i.e., theories of organization) is not a critical issue in its own right. Indeed this tendency towards reifying thought and then setting them up as legitimate objects of analysis, itself forms part of the organizational impulse that must be systematically deconstructed by a postmodern study of organization. Thus, what often starts off as a promising attempt to reflexively deal with the status of organizational knowledge rapidly gives way to an obsessive preoccupation with the slotting of the various theoretical approaches into 2 x 2 schémas and the building of static conceptual boundaries around each 'paradigm' of thought. Such initially reflexive attempts quickly ossifies and degenerates into a form of academic dogmatism. It is an acute awareness of this propensity towards unreflexive dogmatism in organization theorizing which has prompted those committed to taking the problem of reflexivity seriously to adopt a more ironic stance to their self-generated organizational accounts. A careful examination of this new strategy adopted by 'metareflexive' theorists shows its limitations in dealing with the problem of reflexivity.

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The Reflexive Problem of Repiesentationalist Epistemology Representationalism is best understood as circumscribing a set of epistemologica! priorities which flow logically fix)m the being-realist view that a fundamental split exists between the word and the world (Harré 1986) and that the world is made up of discrete and identifiable material and social entities (Whitehead 1985: 58) which can be faithfully documented using precise literal concepts and categories. As an academic ideology in the social sciences, it readily promotes the view that research and theorizing involves the establishment of a body of knowledge that can lay claim to a privileged understanding of social events and phenomena in the world. For those who subscribe to this representationalist scheme of things, to know means to be able to represent accurately in our minds using linguistic or visual forms what the world 'out there' is really like. The picture used to ideologically captivate the Western world for over three centuries is the image of the mind as a mirror, containing various representations of the world. Rorty (1980) describes this representationalist paradigm most succinctly: The picture ... is that of the mind as a great mirror, containing various representations—some accurate, some not.... Without the notion of mind as mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have suggested itself. Without this latter notion, the strategy common to Descartes and K a n t — getting more accurate representations by inspecting, repairing and polishing t h e mirror so to speak—would not have made sense. (Rorty 1980: 12)

It is this set of epistemological priorities, created by the Cartesian split between mind and matter, which has supported the ideology of representation through the Classical and Modem Ages and which still continues to define the parameters by which much of current social scientific practice is legitimated. Such a mental predisposition, however, leaves a crucial question unanswered by advocates of this mode of inquiry. This is the problem of justifying the claim that combinations of words, fiom which theories are constructed, somehow matches up with pieces of the 'real' world. For, in order to make this claim stick, it is essential that representationalists show how this claim can be adjudicated. In short, since representationalists claim that their theories are 'true' because they accurately match up with reality, this must imply that they are able to somehow stand outside language and the world in order to verify their claims. Clearly this is a problematic stance. A number of attempts have been made to resolve this central paradox in representationalist thinking. For example, Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus

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logico-philosophicus, attempted to articulate a picture theory of meaning that would adequately justify a representationalist epistemology. According to this argument, the world and the way language depicts the world, must be of a certain similar form if thought as a representational activity is to be possible at all. His account, therefore, was an attempt to show that the character of the world, and the language used to describe it, must somehow match so as to make propositions meaningful. Wittgenstein, however, was unable, in the Tractatus, to reconcile the problem of meaning and reference, so much so that he was forced to conclude that: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: Anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—^to climb up beyond them. (Wittgenstein 1961: 6.54)

Like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Saussure and Derrida, Wittgenstein was led to realize that 'The limits of my language means the limits of my world.' (Wittgenstein 1961: 5.6). The reflexive problem faced by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus is that the theory he was attempting to articulate as one describing the relationship between language and the world appears to transgress the very limits of language which his own theory specifically denies the possibility of In other words, if thinking is only possible through language, how can we make any justifiable claim that language, in fact, makes some grounded connections with an external already constituted world 'out there'? To make matters even more complicated, the idea of a world 'out there' is only conceivable through language. Hence, we are caught within the confines of language so much so that we are unable to plausibly claim any special connection between linguistic terms and a supposed already constituted external reality. As a linguistic term 'reality', just like any other word, is given meaning through the linguistic web of interconnections of which it forms a part. Thus, Heidegger writes that we cannot know language 'according to the traditional concept of knowledge defined in terms of cognition as representation' (Heidegger 1971: 134, my emphasis). Words and language are not 'wrappings in which things are packed for the commerce of those who write and speak' (Heidegger 1971: 134). Instead, 'it is in words and language that things first come into Being and are' (Heidegger 1959: 13). Social entities, events and things do not first pre-exist and then suffer descriptive distortion through language. Instead, language actively configures such entities and events in the very act of representing. In our use of language we do not just 'write about' our objects/subjects of analysis.

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Rather we bring these objects into existence through representational acts of writing. Thus the structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure writes 'psychologically our thought—apart from its expression in words—is only a shapeless and indistinct mass' (Saussure 1966: 111). The French philosopher Jacques Derrida makes this same point when he claims that 'there is nothing outside of the text' (Derrida 1976: 158). What Derrida appears to be alluding to is not that there is nothing outside of language, but nothing outside of it. There is no thingness about the material or social world except when comprehended through the codifying structures of language. As discussed in the previous chapter, Whitehead (1985 but first published in 1926) notes that this being-realist tendency to view the world as being made up of a succession of discrete configurations of matter (i.e., 'things') is a result of the 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness' inherent to modem Western thought. This 'fallacy' is best illustrated in Wordsworth's The Prelude·. ... That false secondary power By which we multiply distinctions, then Deem that our puny boundaries are things That we perceive and not that which we have made William Wordsworth The Prelude, Book II

In truth, the world is but a 'dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly' (Whitehead 1985: 69). Contrary to the being-realist view, language is not a straightforward literal tool for description and communication. Rather, we can only think the possibility of reality through linguistic structures and language, therefore, has us even whilst we assume it for our puφoses. Terms such as 'reality', 'the world', or 'organizations' are themselves linguistic products. To claim that it is possible to match up bits of language to bits of the world is to smuggle in a transcendental posture which cannot be reflexively sustained legitimately. This is the central dilemma faced by a representationalist epistemology. Representationalism, as an academic ideology, is first and foremost a set of epistemological priorities which privileges a specific organizing code for guiding thought in the theory-building process. As an academic ideology for directing research and inquiry, it suppresses the problematical nature of its own truth claims by unrefiexively concentrating attention onto the

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'outcomes' of research thereby ignoring the philosophical problems underpinning its own epistemological stance. In so doing it conveniently obscures the paradoxes and contradictions surrounding its knowledge claims.

'Methodological Horrors' in Representationalist Theorizing Despite these unresolved problems and paradoxes endemic to the ideology of representation, its epistemological priorities continues to dominate the field of organization studies. The ability of representationalism to maintain and sustain its pervasive influence over the academic world in general and organizational theorizing in particular rests on a series of well rehearsed textual/rhetorical maneuvers which work to deflect or defer the question of self-reference and the paradox of reflexivity in the making of truth claims. Essentially, these strategies involve a combination of the hierarchizing of knowledge and the practice of self-privileging in the making of truth assertions. Such strategies help temporarily overcome the contradictions associated with organizational research and theorizing. Woolgar (1988) identifies what he calls the 'methodological horrors' inextricably associated with the reliance on a representationalist epistemology. The problem of the adequacy of connection between the linguistic term and the thing referred to in the act of representing arises in three distinct but interrelated forms. The first is the problem of indexicality whereby the link between representation and object is such that it is not possible in principle to establish an invariant meaning for any given representation/object couple. There is always a constant availability of alternative versions or interpretations so much so that 'all attempts to do representation (specify the meaning, describe the object, nominate the cause, and so on) are defeasible' (Woolgar 1988: 32). Secondly, there is the problem of inconcludability. By this Woolgar means that: ... the task of exhaustively and precisely defining the underlying pattern (meaning) of any one representation is, in principle, endless. In other words, it is always possible to ask for further clarification, elaboration, elucidation and the like. (Woolgar 1988: 32)

Meaning is, in other words, context bound. But as Culler points out, context is boundless (1983: 123); hence, what we experience is a continuing process of referral which ends when we collectively agree not to ask for more clarification and to stabilize and establish a mean for the meaning of a

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term. Finally, the third type of methodological horror encountered in representationalist epistemology is the problem of reflexivity. For Woolgar this is essentially the claim that explanans and explanandums are intimately and inextricably intertwined so much so that any explanations we might offer reflects just as much about ourselves as about that which we seek to explain. Reflexivity undermines the authority of a truth assertion by insisting on placing the observer into the frame of the observation process thereby 'turning back' the observation process onto the observer him/herself. Whilst Woolgar's listing of these methodological horrors attending the representationlist enteφrise is helpfiil in that it points to the oftentimes unexamined issues underpinning the research process, what he does not do is to critically examine the character of these 'horrors' and to thereby make a distinction between epistemological and ontological problems. Of the three methodological horrors which he identified, it is the paradoxes created by the problem of reflexivity which poses the greatest obstacle to the viability of representationalist epistemology. This is because accepting the problems of indexicality and inconcludability implies accepting the necessarily interpretive character of representationalism but unlike the problem of reflexivity, it does not insist upon the constitutive nature of the process of representation. The problems of inconcludability and indexicality can be arrested and hence minimized by calling a hah (albeit arbitrarily) to the inteφretive process. Reflexivity, on the other hand, resides at the very core of any representationalist assertion. Thus, the problem of reflexivity is not so much a 'methodological horror' as an ^ontologicaV dilemma. Whilst indexicality and inconcludability readily recognizes the inevitable 'slippages' associated with attempts to accurately represent reality, reflexivity deals with the problematical ontological status of reality as a 'thing in itself. It is this crucial differences which must be considered in understanding the reflexivity quagmire.

Paradox-Deferring Strategies in Organizational Analysis According to Woolgar (1988), a number of textual strategies have been developed to reduce the effects of the methodological horrors previously identified. As reflexivity is the critical aspect of representationalist discourse, I shall concentrate on elaborating on the textual strategies which Woolgar identified that deals iriore specifically with this question, in particular as it relates to the field of organization studies.

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Initially, an implicit appeal is made to the existence of a hierarchy of knowledge whereby certain forms of knowledge are held to be more dependable (and hence more 'true') than others. For example, it is generally perceived that the psychoanalyst has much greater difficulty in gaining acceptance for his/her interpretation of dreams than, say, the astrophysicist in demonstrating the underlying pattern of the galaxy of stars. The latter form of knowledge is generally held to be more universally 'true' than the former. This argument is what provides the justification for assuming a natural hierarchy in the epistemologica! status of knowledge. In this way the issue of reflexivity is partly circumvented or deflected by the argument that some forms of knowledge (meaning scientific representationalist knowledge) are more true than others. Hence we can be more 'objectively' certain about their truth claims. This hierarchizing of knowledge is followed by a self-privileging stance which enables theorists to construe the problem of accurate representation as being only a problem for others. This is, perhaps, the most widespread theoretical stance deployed by organization theorists who have become reflexively aware of the problems associated with representationalism. Essentially, it involves the assumption (usually de facto) that although the reflexive problem of representing organizational reality is significant in the work of others, it is not so in one's own work. Woolgar (1988) explains how this is achieved. This involves a subtle feature of the argumentative discourse such that the fallibility of one's own arguments is de-emphasized, while the fallibility of the arguments o f one's subject is highlighted. Typically, the author (researcher) proceeds as if she is acting at a more robust level of representational practice than the subjects (objects) being studied. (Woolgar 1988: 35)

The strategy employed here is to proceed as if, as researchers/theorists, we are somehow less susceptible to the problems of representationalism than the subjects we are studying. This avoidance of self-reference, thus, enables us to make truth claims which implicitly suggest that the problems of representationalism have been contained in our case because of our superior understanding. This strategy is particularly evident in organization studies where the notion of socially constructed realities has been used as the basis for supporting alternative perspectives on organizational ñmctioning. Thus, Silverman's (1970) action fi-ame of reference, Strauss' (1978) negotiated order theory and Pettigrew's (1973) political theory of organizational decisionmaking, explicitly make use of the notion of 'constructed reality' in their explanatory schema. However, this notion of socially constructed ac-

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counting is not turned back onto the researchers/theorists themselves. Their own accounts are presented to us as if they have, somehow, been able to avoid socially constructing the claims they themselves make. This textual maneuver is what enables them to present their findings to us as being in some sense 'objectively' true. Meta-theorists tend to resort to these rhetorical strategies in order to maintain coherence and plausibility in their own theory-building efforts. One example of their effective use is found in Burrell and Morgan's (1979) Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis. Burrell and Morgan begin by stating that 'all theories of organization are based upon a philosophy of science and a theory of society' (1979: 1). This claim enables them to produce a 2 X 2 paradigm matrix which they then used to locate the plurality of social and organizational perspectives. They further insist that 'all social theorists can be located within the context of these four paradigms according to the meta-theoretical assumptions in their work' (ibid.: 24). In so doing, Burrell and Morgan necessarily imply that they themselves must be locatable within the framework they had generated. The question then arises of their ability to be both within the framework and at the same time be in a privileged position to frame it. This is especially problematic if we remember that Burrell and Morgan insist that their four paradigms 'reflect four alternative realities' and that they stand as 'four mutually exclusive ways of seeing the world' (Burrell and Morgan 1979: 398). This maneuver is however necessary in order to defer self-reference so as to make their claims plausible. Burrell and Morgan are, of course, not the only ones to engage in this self-privileging practice which has been termed ontological gerrymandering (Woolgar 1988). Others, including Kilmann (1983), Astley and Van de Ven (1983), Reed (1985), Grint (1991) and Aldrich (1992), who have attempted to produce typologies of organization theory or attempted to compare or integrate them, find themselves resorting to this rhetorical maneuver in order to avoid the paradoxes of reflexivity. Indeed, this feature is typically characteristic of any text which puφorts to write authoritatively 'about' something other than itself As organizational writers, we frequently create theoretical objects that first serve as 'explanatory principles' but which subsequently appear to take on lives of their own. This thereby enables us to feel more comfortable about commenting upon these objects as if they have always been external to our thought processes. An idea which first served to organize and direct our thoughts is chronologically reversed and then reified so that it appears real and independent of our perception. Such textual/

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rhetorical maneuvers help sustain our self-privileging stances and, therefore, the apparent objectivity of our observations. Paradox-avoiding strategies such as these were extensively explored by Betrand Russell in his theory of logical types. Russell's problem was to find a way of maintaining logical consistency by excluding reflexive paradoxes and hence contradictions from his system of logic. In the theory of logical types, he identified the source of reflexive paradoxes as arising from what he called 'illegitimate totalities'. A totality, for Russell, was illegitimate when it involved all of a collection of which it was itself a part. For example, Russell cites the case of a barber in a small town who is defined as someone who shaves everyone who does not shave himself. The paradox then is: who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then he should not do so, for the barber only shaves those who do not shave themselves. On the other hand, if he does not shave himself, then he is, of course, one of those who is not shaved by the barber. Russell claims that this is an illustration of the error of illegitimate totalities. His solution was to argue that a class must belong to a higher logical order than the elements that belong to that class in order to avoid such logical contradictions. Thus, a name and the thing named cannot belong to the same class. In the event that they are placed together in the same category, an error of logical typing occurs in which paradox is generated and discourse vitiated. Russell's solution meant that a hierarchy of logical types had to be created and sustained in order to circumvent the otherwise debilitating effects of reflexive paradoxes. Thus, statements such as 'There is no absolute truth' or 'There is no singular organizational reality' can only hold if it is implicitly assumed that these statements are not selfreferencing. In other words, what is implied is that it is an absolute truth that there is no truth, or that it is a reality that there is no singular reality and that therefore the stance from which these statements are being made remains a privileged one. Likewise, Burrell and Morgan's claim that all social theorists can be located within their 2 x 2 paradigmatic matrix according to their metatheoretical assumptions and that these paradigms stood as 'four mutually exclusive ways of seeing the world' (1979: 398), is not intended to be selfreferring otherwise they would end up being unable to account for their own theoretical position since they themselves as social theorists must be fitted into one of these paradigmatic frames. This is clearly a necessary rhetorical maneuver in order to allow them to put their, by now well-known, paradigm matrix to productive use in clarifying and classifying organizational perspectives. In such an exercise, theoretical 'distance' is effected, thereby allowing the processes of inversion and reification to take over.

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Willmott (1990) points out this objectifying tendency in his critique of Burrell and Morgan's notion of 'paradigm closure'. He takes objection to the rigidities implied in the creation of binary oppositions such as 'subjective' and 'objective' philosophies of science which provided the organizational axis for Burrell and Morgan's sociological paradigms. Thus: The fundamental flaw in Burrell and Morgan's thesis arises from the assumption that theories and perspectives are actually determined, in structuralist fashion, by the préexistence of four "mutually exclusive" paradigms (p. 25). Certainly, the outer boundaries o f the 2 χ 2 matrix suggest plausible limits for social theorizing. More questionable is the sense of dividing this intellectual territory into four paradigmatic enclaves. A more defensible approach would be to recognize both the diversity o f assumptions guiding analysis and the ways in which they may be combined. Instead, the tendency in organizational analysis (following the intellectual lead o f social theory) to construct, solidiiy and defend such dualisms is presented as a metaphysical principle. (Willmott 1990: 49, my emphasis)

Willmott here reiterates the point which was made in the introductory chapter that in a downstream representationalist mode of thought, an idea which first served to constitute its object of attention is subsequently denied its formative role. Such is the widespread influence of this objectifying tendency which is closely linked to the paradox-avoiding strategies previously discussed. It is this curious set of textual maneuvers which Woolgar (1988) labels ontological gerrymandering. Essentially, the practice of ontological gerrymandering entails the establishment and manipulation of a distinction between arguments which are and which are not held to be problematic in nature. Distance is thus effected by means of the creation of a rhetorical boundary between the constitutive practices of other theorists—to be regarded as interesting and therefore worthy of investigation—and the textual practices of the author him/herself which are downplayed so as to become unworthy of investigative attention. It is this essentially arbitrary distinction created which allows that which is henceforth construed as given to be differentiated from that which forms the problematic. For Whitehead, this operation of 'distancing' has great significance for what he calls the notion of'givenness' (1929: 58). Givenness is a resultant effect of a decision (i.e., incision) operation which is designated to facilitate and procure a form of limiting so that what is apprehended becomes henceforth bounded and therefore 'manageable'. Through this practice of ontological gerrymandering, attention can therefore be legitimately directed to content issues (in the case of organization studies), such as 'organizational

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culture', 'ecology', 'symbolism', 'organizational strategy', 'constructed realities', 'paradigm commensurability/incommensurability', 'gender' and 'race' issues, etc.. Meanwhile: ... in all these studies, the role of the agent which makes these representations (i.e., the researcher/theorist) ... is hidden, subdued, silent.... The insinuation and articulation of agency detracts from the facticity claimed by the subjects of study; at the same time, the deletion of agency enhances the facticity claimed by the author's own report. (Woolgar 1988: 100)

Our attention is thus directed away from the authorial role towards the substantive claims being made, thereby obscuring the active role of the author in constituting the problematic. It is this subtly obscured textual/ rhetorical strategy which has sustained the claims of organizational metatheorists. However, the recent postmodern critique of representationalist epistemology has meant that this practice of ontological gerrymandering has been made more transparent and therefore more recognizable as a necessary textual strategy for deferring the problem of self-reference in organizational theorizing. The recent 'drift' towards meta-theorizing in organizational analysis characterizes this self-conscious bid to avoid paradoxes previously identified. Talk of 'meta-theories' is now commonplace as is increasing interest in second-order problematics such as the 'cybernetics of cybernetics' (von Foerster 1981a), 'decision-making about decision-making' (van Gigch 1987), and meta-systems thinking (Beer 1987; Checkland 1981). The common thread which runs through these meta-theoretical preoccupations is the search for a higher vantage point from which commentaries about the field of study can be legitimately defended without being haunted by the question of reflexivity.

Reflexivity: The Postmodern Predicament What constituted the initial 'reflexive tum' in academic theorizing resulted from a heightened self-awareness associated with the increasing realization that the researcher/theorist plays an active role in constructing the very reality he/she is attempting to investigate. Such awareness stemmed from the challenges initiated by Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Niels Bohr's Quantum Postulate. As Bohr writes:

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Chapter 3: The Problem of Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis ... the quantum postulate implies that any observation of ... phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation ... an unambiguous definition of the state of the system is naturally no longer possible, and there can be no question of causality in the ordinary sense of the word. (Bohr, in Plotnitsky 1994: 66-67, emphasis original)

The hitherto privileged objectivist status of the observer/researcher/ theorist has since been rendered problematic and social scientists including organization theorists are now increasingly called upon to reflexively justify the knowledge claims they make. This reflexive awareness is much in evidence in the more recent organization theory literature. Brown (1992), for example, provides a thoughtful exploration of the relationship between organizational studies as an intellectual discipline and the cultural authority of science in Western societies. He is critical of both the scientistic and relativistic (in other words the objectivist and interpretive) emphases in much of contemporary organization theory and feels that discussions of, for example, the question of 'epistemological incommensurability of our paradigms ... or assumptions about the epistemological equivalence of metaphors, seems limited and misplaced' (Brown 1992: 78). For Brown, issues such as scientific truths should be understood as the 'outcome of struggles between competing actor networks in which the weight of allies, both physical and social, determine outcomes' (ibid.: 81). Only after such outcomes are decided can terms such as 'fact' and 'truth' be used to describe the status of assertions made. Brovm is here responding from what might be called a 'post-representational' style of thought which 'sets aside' the problematic of representational truth in preference for a careful exploration of the formative processes of actor networking which help shape the outcomes of debates in organization studies. This approach to rethinking the intellectual priorities of organizational analysis will be ñirther extended in Part Two of this book. What we can draw from Brown's thoughtful contribution is the futility of attempting to either provide 'outside' objectivist or 'inside' inteφretive accounts of organizational realities or even meta-theoretical contributions since all these approaches concern themselves with representing the end-states and not with the becoming of social concepts and phenomena. They are therefore inextricably caught up in the reflexivity tangle. Such reflexive problems have emerged as an overriding concern not just within organization studies as we have seen but also within the broader ñeld of the human sciences primarily because of an increasing appreciation of the

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central role which language plays in organizing our thoughts and our textual strategies. 'Facts' are no longer regarded uncontentiously as accurately mirroring reality. Instead, convincing arguments have been put forward to show the 'fabricated' nature of facts: Goodman (1984), Latour and Woolgar (1979), Knorr-Cetina (1981). Lawson describes this postmodern predicament succinctly: ... at the very philosophical core, post-modernism is an attack on truth. It is an attack that originates not so much in an awareness of alternative perspectives as in a critique of the very possibility of objectivity. (Lawson, in Lawson and Appignanesi 1989: xi)

In this very process of self-doubt and self-questioning, there have been fears expressed of intellectual thought degenerating into an endless abyss of ungrounded and relativistic assertions. However, it is here that the postmodem self-reflexive mentality is able to distance itself from the priorities of epistemological relativism by insisting on the self-contradictory character of relativistic assertions. A relativistic assertion that 'all perspectives in organization studies are partially true', is itself an absolutist statement and as such remains parasitic upon the very absolutist position it wishes to reftite. Postmodem thinking insists upon examining the reflexive problems surfaced by this tuming of theory back onto itself Hitherto, such problems have been conveniently overlooked, ignored or even dismissed as trivial or irrelevant to the central problematic of organization studies. It is for this reason that, firstly, a positivist epistemology and then a relativist epistemology have been able to gain currency in the organization theory literature. As Brown writes: ... the popular alternative position (to objective scientism) stems from an outright rejection of such scientism. Here, advocates suggest that the freedom from a reliance upon scientific idealism and imagery should be welcomed. Drawing support for their position from an emasculated reading of Kuhn and Feyerabend, they claim that there are no secure grounds for attaining objective truth in principle or in practice. Consequently, it is argued that paradigms in organization theory are incommensurable ... metaphors are infinitely exchangeable...and that all judgments of the adequacy of different theories and methods are inherently relativistic. (Brown 1992: 67)

However, as we have seen, this popular relativistic claim is itself fraught with reflexive problems because reflexivity operates at the very core of the presumed split between reality and representation. The postmodem awareness is, therefore, better characterized by the Nietzschean paradox of a burden which we can neither carry nor throw off.

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Reflexive Theorizing in Organization Studies Within organization studies several attempts have been made to explore the implications of reflexivity for the field of study. Astley (1985), for instance, adopts a social constructionist viewpoint to argue that what we call the 'administrative sciences' are essentially socially constructed products, socially sustained by a closed community of inquirers. Administrative science is not 'an objective representation of administrative practice; it does not, through literal correspondence, simply reflect events and activities in the managerial world.' (Astley 1985: 509). For Astley, the real significance of organizational research is not the collection and reporting of data, but the exercise of creative imagination in generating new modes of thinking and inteφretation. Likewise, Weick (1989) moves away from a traditional view of organizational research as a descriptive fimction to the notion of research activities as a form of 'disciplined imagination'. Finally, van Maanen (1989) directs our attention away from preoccupations of both theoretical conjecturing and research methodologies to the importance of 'writing' in the research process. For van Maanen, organizational research should not be thought of as either the product of artistic imagination nor should it be construed as a 'count and classify' activity based primarily on the hypothesizing and testing of simple analytical models. Instead, he proposed a moratorium on such efforts to be given over to: ... the construction of simple narratives about organizational life. Such descriptive work might provide us with a deeper sensibility than we now possess and, hence, an appreciation of just what is involved in the telling of a good story, one that can attract a wide cross-section of readers, (van Maanen 1989: 32)

In all these instances cited, it is clear that there is a decisive emphasis on 'tempering' the hitherto grandiose claims of representationalist organizational research. The raising of such concerns have had a substantial impact on the direction organizational studies has taken in the last decade. One obvious outcome is exemplified by the July 1992 special issue of the Academy of Management Review. Within this collection, reflexive analyses were attempted on the notions of 'emancipation' (Alvesson and Willmott 1992), 'bounded rationality' (Mumby and Putnam 1992), 'race' (Nkomo 1992) and even the very ideas of 'theory-building' (Jacques 1992) and the 'framing' of what constitutes 'acceptable' academic discourse (Smircich et al. 1992). This collection marks one of the first systematic attempts by organization theorists to be deliberately self-reflexive in organizational theorizing.

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Similarly, in a recent call to organization theorists to critically reflect on the social consequences of their own research and theorizing practices, Calás and Smircich (1992) maintain that organizational theorizing and organizational arrangements mutually construct each other through 'an interplay of practical interests and scholarship' (Calás and Smircich 1992: 223). As such organizational research and theorizing has direct practical consequences in that they help shape and define the texture of modem society. Such recent epistemologically inspired critiques, however, whilst a crucial first step, do not quite reach the heart of the paradoxes raised by the problem of reflexivity. Reflexivity lurks within the very ontological core of representationalist epistemology. It is this realization which accounts for the unique intellectual preoccupations of 'postmodem' organization theorists such as Cooper (1986, 1992), Cooper and Burrell (1988), Law (1994), Cooper and Law (1995). Their attempts to articulate a theory of organizational becoming will be explored in more detail in Part Two of this book.

Meta-Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis Although many of the organizational meta-theorists discussed previously have made important steps in reflexively addressing the epistemological status of organization theory, many have not imputed their own research 'accounting' into the theorizing equation. The strategy employed in many cases is to proceed as if, as researchers, we are somehow less susceptible to the problem of reflexivity than the subjects we study or even others who have done similar types of research. This avoidance of self-reference, enables us then to subtly privilege to ourselves the status of observer, making our claims thereby appear more credible than others. Noting this widespread tendency in organizational research, Knights (1992) points out that: ... insofar as they fail to acknowledge their own participation in the constitution o f social reality, qualitative researchers, who claim a distance from positivist beliefs, also have a tendency to be unreflexive about the representations they produce. Whether quantitative or qualitative methods are used, representational approaches t o knowledge production rest on a privileging of the consciousness of the researcher who is deemed capable of discovering the "truth" about the world of management and organization through a series of representations. (Knights 1992: 515)

What has been called 'first-order' reflexivity (Steier 1991) encapsulates this research orientation. Thus, the notion of 'constructed reality' which is

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frequently used as a means of legitimizing the authenticity of organizational accounts is rarely 'turned back' on the researchers/writers themselves. Their own accounts are presented as if they have been somehow able to avoid socially constructing the claims they themselves make. Astley's (1985) claim, for instance, that the administrative sciences are essentially socially constructed products appears to take on a social constructionist viewpoint. However, he unreflexively overlooks the questionable status of his own claims. To paraphrase Astley, 'Administrative science is a socially constructed product, and that is the way it really is!!'. Somehow his own claim that the administrative sciences are socially constructed is presented as if it is not itself a socially constructed 'fact'. This is a common feature of firstorder reflexivity. There is basically a ñmdamental inconsistency between what is advocated and what is practiced. Such inconsistency does not necessarily lead to its rejection. On the contrary, it is often applauded and enthusiastically embraced as a more enlightened approach to the field of study. Proponents of this first-order reflexivity are well aware of the criticisms of representationalism. However, by explicitly incoφorating such critiques of representationalism into their own discourse, they hope the question of reflexivity can be contained. Such rhetorical practices are fairly commonplace in social scientific research as Steier (1991) astutely observed. Thus the construing of meaning in social action is conveniently considered only problematical for organizational actors but not for the researcher him/herself in the research process. This self-privileging tendency is what still characterizes much of contemporary 'meta-theorizing' in organization studies. Calás and Smircich (1992), for instance, begin by asking, 'Who is watching the watchers?'in their discussion of the'Social Consequences of Management'. They then go on to emphasize the importance of focusing 'our attention on the social consequences of our own practices—organizational research and theorizing' (Calás and Smircich 1992: 223). For them, organizational scientists '"make" organizations as much as they study them' (ibid.: 223). This, then, allows them to justify the importance of examining the social consequences of 'our research approaches' (ibid.: 223) through feminist perspectives. The central point I wish to make here is that much rhetorical 'jostling' is required in order to prepare the 'ground' for a feminist reading of organization. This practice involves a deliberate but subtle backgrounding of the reflexive problems associated with these writers' own assertions i.e., that it is important to 'watch the watchers'; that organizational scientists 'make' organizations as much as they study them; and that it is therefore important to examining the social consequences of 'our research

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approaches'. It is these rhetorical practices which are necessary for deflecting the problem of reflexivity when viewed epistemologically. The reader will obviously not fails to recognize this as a critical maneuver in the organization of an academic product such as this manuscript itself It is precisely the insistent making transparent of such organizational maneuvers that characterizes the project of deconstructive organizational analysis. One more recent development in organizational theorizing results from taking the consequences of reflexivity seriously. These organizational writers accept that both their own accounts and the accounts generated by others are first and foremost linguistic constructions which operate according to established conventional linguistic codes. Theories of organization are deemed to be self-justifying 'intelligible narratives' which enable a community of inquirers to arrive at some consensus regarding their social experiences. As Gergen (1992) puts it: If there is one theme that unites most of those confronting the postmodern irony, it is a certain sense of ludio humility. The view of knowledge-making as a transcendental pursuit removed from the trivia! enthrallment's of daily life, pristinely rational and transparently virtuous, becomes so much puffery. We should view these bodies o f language we call knowledge in a lighter vein—as ways o f putting things together, some pretty and others petty. (Gergen 1992: 215)

Hence, 'irony', 'self-reflection' and 'playful seriousness' replaces the rational quest for 'certain' or even 'partially-true' knowledge of an external organizational reality. For these 'meta-reflexive' theorists both the body-ofknowledge claims in organization theory and their own claims are to be understood in a lighter vein as artistically crafted pieces of work in their own right. Theories generated mirror the concerns and preoccupations of the theorists themselves and do not as such claim any absolute, grounded connection with a reality beyond. Such writers would argue that these crafted pieces of'linguistic webs' contribute to the making of organizational reality. This second-order or meta-reflexive theorizing in organizational analysis renders all forms of research as the activity of 'telling ourselves a story about ourselves' (Steier 1991: 3). Meta-reflexivity entails the writing of a text in such a way as to avoid it being believed too much. Attempts to e)φeriment with this approach in social research are found in Woolgar and Ashmore's (1988) use of the 'second voice' in narrative discourse as well as Gergen and Gergen's (1991) use of'data matrix rotation' and 'dialogic participation' in self-reflexive enquiry. Within organization studies, Gergen (1992), van Maanen (1989) and Weick (1989) come closest to advocating this intellectual orientation. A somewhat different approach is advocated by those

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who pursue a postmodern set of intellectual priorities. This latter style is advanced by writers such as Cooper (1986, 1987, 1992, 1993), Latour (1987, 1988), Law (1992,1994) and Cooper and Law (1995).

Responses to the Problem of Reflexivity in Organization Studies It is possible to identify three, different but equally significant, types of strategic responses to the problem of reflexivity as currently practiced by organization theorists none of which, in the end, deals adequately with the issue at hand. Using a common self-privileging stance, it is possible to classify these responses according to the underlying epistemological assumptions adopted and the attitude organization theorists take towards both the epistemological status of field of study and the status of their own claims. Bearing in mind the criticisms of classical representationalism, such labeling and classification should be better construed as self-generated schémas that serve as convenient aids for comprehension rather than attempts to accurately represent the state of organization theory. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, they should be viewed as convenient aids to be immediately discarded once they have outlived their use. Here Latour's (1988) equivalent concept of a 'throw-away' explanation is a usefiil one to remember. With this caveat we can proceed to somewhat arbitrarily create conceptual distinctions for aiding comprehension. Figure 3 shows the common strategic responses to the problem of reflexivity in organizational research. In the first instance (position 1), we locate those who view organization studies as an appropriate social scientific enteφrise whose aim it is to accurately describe and represent organizational reality as it is in itself Consistent with this view such organization theorists view their own efforts at describing and explaining organizational phenomena as themselves legitimate representational activities. For these mainstream or orthodox organization theorists, the task of theorizing is precisely to build up a body of representational knowledge about organizations and their functioning so that this pervasive social phenomenon can be better understood. Within this category, we can include a wide range of familiar writers from both the positivist/functionalist paradigm as well as the inteφretive paradigm because, despite their apparent differences, both these groups remain tied to a concern with the accurate representation of organizational reality. For advocates of this persuasion, there is no problem of reflexivity in making truth assertions. While it may be accepted that realistically a whole true

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picture of organizational functioning is unattainable, this is generally attributed to the problem of differences in perception in the research process resulting in partially inaccurate representations of organizational reality. Here it is believed that the use of more sensitive research methodologies will help minimize such perceptual distortions in the research process. The writer/researcher him/herself does not pose an insurmountable obstacle to the research process itself Much of current theorizing in organization studies occurs v^^ithin this domain inasmuch as they continue to believe implicitly or explicitly that their explanations and theories do give partially true accounts of organizational reality. This is a coherent and consistent position vigorously defended by writers as diverse as Child (1972, 1984), Aldrich (1979,1992), Donaldson (1985), Clegg (1990). This intellectual orientation may be labeled dogmatic scientism since it remains undeφinned by the dogma of scientism. The second category of organizational writers (position 2) created refers to those who adopt a posture whereby the representationalist nature of organizational theories is regarded as essentially problematic. These writers accept that organizational accounts are necessarily shaped by deeper philosophical assumptions which are brought to bear in the way organizational accounts are constructed. Organizational accounts reflect as much the interests and preoccupations of the theorists themselves as they do the objects of analysis. This is the by now familiar epistemologically relativist position adopted by organizational meta-theorists. There is, however, an ironic twist in that this category of writers construe their own accounts as being somehow more accurate or more true than those they criticize. This is the subtle form of self-privileging discussed previously. Each meta-theoretical account is an attempt to outdo the others by claiming a less 'naive' depiction of how things really are. For meta-theorists being less intellectually naive is a good thing for progress in understanding. It is therefore not surprising that we find paradigm 'warriors' of all persuasions within this enclave. There is a certain self-righteousness about such postures in that writers adopting this intellectual position imply that, somehow, they have been able to discover the right path amidst the intense intellectual fog and hence are 'chosen' to lead the bungling and the stumbling into the promised land of enlightened understanding.

Chapter 3: The Problem of Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis

1

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Organization meta-theories

- Denies significance of - Acknowledges problematic status reflexivity of representational knowledge in organizational theorising - Dogmatic scientism - Accepts both organization theory - Does not acknowledge and own explanations as attempts problematical nature of own to "mirror" reality representational explanations - Methodological relativism - Self privileging - Epistemologica! relativism - 1st order reflexitivity - Problem representation

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- Conservative and epistemologically naive - Insignificant posture in organization studies

Acknowledges "constmctiveness" of both own accounts and organization theories - Meta-reflexitivity - Ontological relativism - Problem of reality - Danger of becoming sterile

Figure 3: Strategic Responses to the Problem of Reflexivity in Organization Theory

Like the familiar Marxists, Critical theorists or psychoanalysts they are committed to emancipating us from the theoretical wilderness which we seem to have found ourselves. There is basically an inconsistency between what is claimed and what is practiced, whereby a social constructionist view is expressed whilst retaining a representationalist mode of thought. The net result is still a commitment to representationalism, albeit a much modified one. This first-order reflexive approach is almost a token acknowledgment of the problem of reflexivity in research and theorizing. Those who have argued from this limited position include Astley (1985), Morgan (1986), Gergen (1985) and Mangham (1986), Calás and Smircich (1992). The third category of organizational writers (position 3) accepts that both their own accounts and the accounts generated by organization theorists in general are first and foremost linguistic constructions. Both the knowledge

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accumulated in the field of study and the author's own attempts at knowledge production are to be construed as idiosyncratic ways of patterning thought and producing coherent accounts which are rendered plausible and acceptable by the wider community. They are not to be understood as privileged claims about organizational reality. As such it is a consistent position but one which radically departs from traditionally held views about the purpose of organizational theorizing. This approach accepts and embraces the foil implications of the problem of reflexivity by deliberately incorporating its implications into the very fabric of their own intellectual practices. As mentioned earlier, this has been labeled second-order reflexivity or metareflexivity. The adopting of this intellectual posture renders all forms of research and theorizing activity as engaging in a conversation with ourselves. Meta-reflexive accounts are written in such a way as to avoid it being taken too seriously by its readers. This is in stark contrast to the previous two positions in which rhetorical strategies are deployed to persuade the reader of the plausibility of the accounts being offered. The fourth position (position 4) entails the acceptance of the privileged representational status of organization theory but considers the writer's own account to be of a lower non-representational status. This is a conservative and essentially theoretically naive position, which because of the acceptance of the hierarchy created between scientific and non-scientific accounts sustains the status quo with regards to the field of study. This position reflects more the view of the layperson who perceives the role of academics in privileged public institutions to be precisely that of generating legitimate knowledge for public consumption. Amongst organization theorists however, this is a relatively insignificant position since it leads to attempts to ensure that what is written in this position is not to be believed because it does not have a legitimate scientific status. Of the four possible positions only the first three may be viewed as coherent attempts to respond to the problem of reflexivity. Of these, the first suffers from the danger of dogmatism, the second suffers from the charge of self-privileging, whilst the third suffers from the problem of becoming sterile. Latour (1988) finds all these alternatives unacceptable. He insists that we need to be at once 'more scientific than the sciences, since we try to escape from their struggles—and much less scientific—since we do not wish to fight using their weapons' (Latour 1988: 165). He likens the quandary faced by those seeking out this position as being comparable to that of a non-violent pacifist who still wishes to be stronger than a violent militarist. Latour suggests that we should look for weaker rather than stronger expla-nations, but we still want these weaker accounts to defeat the stronger ones in order

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to get our views heard. This is the dilemma faced by those who choose to confront reflexivity at its ontological root.

Avoiding the Reflexivity Cul-de-Sac If we reexamine the issues of reflexivity, and the way it has been dealt with by those previously discussed, we find that in the case of first and secondorder reflexive theorists, it is the search for consistency and the avoidance of contradiction in making their claims that marks their efforts in coming to terms with this problem. Clearly, second-order reflexive theorizing appears to be a more consistent way of engaging with the problem of reflexivity. Consistency is, however, part of the language of representationalist epistemology and the idea that it is something desirable is tied to the idea of truth as framed in a representationalist scheme of things. It is part of the vocabulary borrowed from the notion of science as essentially one of striving to accurately represent the world as it is. Hence the attempt to maintain consistency on the part of meta-reflexive theorists implies that deep in their belief systems there is still lingering hope of reaching a fmal level of reality where truth endures. Their passion for ever-increasing meta-levels of analysis which could provide a better vantage point from which competing theoretical accounts can be understood is a decisive indicator of this mindset. However, it is increasingly clear that no amount of methodology—metareflexivity or otherwise—^will ever bring 'representation' closer to 'reality'. Moreover, with the increasing postmodern insistence that representations are our reality, there is a pressing need to reconceptualise the enteφrise of science in general and organizational theorizing in particular. What alternative assumptions can we make about the status of representation, reality and truth and how can we begin to rethink them in radically different terms so that a more cogent and plausible account of intellectual practices such as organizational analysis can be articulated? Latour's (1988) response is to resort to a textual strategy which he calls infra-reflexivity. He sees all the strategies previously discussed, and in particular meta-reflexivity, as being counter-productive because it (meta-reflexivity) makes texts less interesting, less rich and, as we saw, less believable. Latour maintains that the belief that meta-reflexivity is desirable and beneficial: ... is in my view, a suicidal attitude, similar (in spite of the contrary impression o n e might have) to the older idea that a sociological account full of statistics and meth-

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odological commitments can defend itself better than a "plain" journalistic account. (Latour 1988: 169)

Latour's infra-reflexivity recommends itself as a viable alternative way forward which is able to maintain the necessary reflexivity 'without whirling helplessly in our efforts to outdo and outwit each other in proving that the other is a naive believer' (ibid.: 170). Instead of writing about how not to write, infra-reflexivity proposes that we just write. '"Just". Well not exactly.' (ibid.: 170). The practice of infra-reflexivity entails commitment to a number of textual practices. Firstly, it is committed to deflating methodology. Since no amount of methodology will bring a text closer to that which it writes about, 'why not do away with the paraphernalia of methodological precaution altogether?' (ibid.: 170). Instead of taking all such precautions, Latour recommends that we 'just offer the lived world and write'. Secondly, we should replace methodology by style using all the literary resources we can muster in order to render an account lively, interesting, perceptive and suggestive and so on just like the way philosophers and scientists of a previous era used to do. Thirdly, we should stick to principles of analysis that are self-exemplifying rather than self-referencing. No apriori privileges are needed, or asked, for the account at hand since: ... my own text is in your hands, and lives or dies through what you will do with it. In my efforts to forestall certain outcomes and encourage others, I too, muster all available allies, all linguistic possibilities. (Latour 1988: 171)

The main difference between infra-reflexivity and meta-reflexivity is that the former is committed to an ethical and stylistic approach rather than a methodological one. Fourthly, Latour urges us to write non-scientific texts. All texts face the problem of writing about something absent and of maintaining, surveying and keeping up this relationship. Since all writers are always moving back and forth in order to sustain this relational status, 'why don't we take this activity (itself) as the name of our game: displaying the knower and the known and the work needed to interrupt or create connections' (Latour 1988: 172). Latour maintains that the reflexive character of this approach will be recognized not by the tedious presence of 'reflexive loops' but by the multiplicity of genres woven into the fabric of the text. These add richness to the accounts proffered. Fifthly, Latour claims that the reflexivists invest much energy on the side of the knowing and almost none on the side of the known. They are apprehensive about engaging with talking about 'something' for fear of falling into the trap of representationalism. This strategy is, for Latour, self-defeating.

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Chapter 3: The Problem of Reflexivity in Organizational Analysis I claim that there is more reflexivity in one account that makes the world alive than one hundred self-reference loops that returns the boring, thinking mind to the stage. Infra-reflexivity is the program followed by Serres (1983) that pushes the knower off-stage. Down with Kant! Down with the Critique! Let us go back to the world still unknown and despised. (Latour 1988: 173)

Like Hacking (1983), Latour advocates intervening and experimenting with the unknown concrete world rather than either attempting to represent it or to become caught up in the prison-house of a priori categories. Sixthly, Latour maintains that, instead of trying to explain everything with the same causal framework, 'we shall provide a one-off explanation, using a tailormade cause' (Latour 1988: 174). Throw-away explanations are the essence of reflexive intellectual practices because the belief in the existence of an enduring framework within which things fit and hence can be wholly explained is the halhnark of a non-reflexive science. Seventhly, instead of attempting to create a meta-language with which to talk about language, Latour recommends cross-over from one language to another. We want to learn our sociology from the scientists and we want to teach the scientists their science from our sociology. This program seems ambitious, even arrogant, but it simply means equal status for those who explain and those who are explained. (Latour 1988: 175)

Cross-over allows us to bridge the gaps between disciplinary boundaries. Finally, Latour recommends an intellectual approach which champions hybridization of thought. By this he means that the criterion of reflexivity is the extent with which we are able to distribute our ideas and work equally effectively among academic and non-academic networks. The shibboleth of reflexivity is not "Do you include the author in your study?", but "Can you make good your promise not to remain within the academic boundary?". (Latour 1988: 175)

These eight features of infra-reflexive theorizing point us away from the preoccupations of reflexive and meta-reflexive organizational theorists to a mode of theorizing which is tentative, emergent and grounded in the concreteness of pre-theoretical experiences. They offer a plausible way out of the reflexivity cul-de-sac. More significantly, they point to new ways of conceptualizing the project of organizational analysis.

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Conclusion We have arrived at the point in our inquiry where it is becoming more clear that none of the previously described strategic responses to the problem of reflexivity appears worthwhile to pursue in a postmodern consciousness. Scientific dogmatism is an increasingly discredited and unattractive option. Continued commitment means forcing us to bury our heads in the sand and ignoring the rising crescendo of criticisms levied against it. The strategy of first-order reflexivity remains susceptible to the charge of inconsistency and self-privileging whilst second-order reflexivity runs the risk of prostituting its critical force in the name of theoretical consistency. More importantly, all these strategies are haunted by the ghosts of representationalist epistemology. Only Latour's mfra-reflexive stance offers a fioiitfiil way out of this reflexivity quagmire. But there is a price to be paid. It requires us to reconceptualise familiar categories such as 'reality', 'representation', 'truth', 'theory', 'explanation', and 'organization' in order to situate them within a postmodern problematic. Framed in a radically different mode of thought, inquiry is now no longer regarded as the process of attempting to accurately describe and represent an external organizational phenomenon. Instead, it is recognized as an intrinsically constitutive process involving the continual weaving and reweaving of ideas, relationships and material elements in order to generate plausible and coherent accounts which strengthen particular conceptual links. Such accounts are deemed to be accomplishments in their own right and they do not defer to a supposed reality beyond. Organization as such is an accomplishment as are theories of organization. The latter are not linguistic attempts to accurately mirror an external reality. This way of thinking has profound implications for organizational analysis.

Part 2: Upstream Thinking and Postmodern Organizational Analysis

Chapter 4: Reconfiguring Truth, Reahty, Representation and Organization

Introduction In this chapter, I begin by exploring what has come to be called 'postmodernism' and the condition of postmodemity frequently associated with it. I then try to show that the entry into a postmodern consciousness has wide ranging implications for the understanding of key concepts such as 'knowledge', 'truth', 'reality' and 'representation' in radically different terms. Finally, I attempt to effect a conceptual distance between an increasingly widespread populist rendering of postmodernism, particularly in organizaton theory, and what might be called a postmodern 'weak' style of thinking with its radical questioning of modernist social ontology and its consequent representationalist epistemology. This postmodern style of thinking, I argue, is one which emphasizes the need for vigilance in resisting conceptual closure and which therefore insistently elevates dissonance, absence, disparity, plurality, transience and change over unity, presence, identity, structure, essences, durability and permanence in our theoretical attempts to understand lived experiences. This is not just a consequence of blind anarchistic thinking, as some would charge, but a genuine recognition of the irretrievable conceptual gap which exists and persists between our lived experiences and our ability to express it within the dominant grammatical codes circumscribing modemist thought It is the cultivation of the intellectual equivalent of what the poet John Keats calls 'negative capability' when dealing with ideas, that marks a postmodern style of thought. Within such a revised postmodern cosmology, organizational studies takes on a vastly different complexion. One in which local reality-constituting assemblages of socio-technical 'organizings' become the more appropriate theoretical focus for a deconstructive approach to organizational analysis. Postmodernism is characterized by a rejection of the modernist drive towards unity, consensus, totalization and mastery of the natural and social world. In contrast to this modernist imperative, it emphasizes the fragmentary, contingent and ephemeral nature of the bases of social understanding and readily acknowledges the necessarily multifarious and heterogeneous character of human experiences. This loose multiplicity of collectively lived experiences are what precipitate a form of local explanatory schema that correspondingly generate context-specific attitudes towards things, phenomena

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and events in the natural and social world. Such localized phenomenal effects, it is maintained, can only be appreciated within particular institutionalized contexts through the detailed examination of context-specific, sociotechnical micro-practices of ordering and organizing that defy conceptual generalizability. In emphasizing such ontological commitments and epistemologica! priorities, postmodernism seeks to undermine and displace the still-dominant master discourses which inhabit or insinuate themselves in the modernist project of'theory-building'. The outcome of this postmodern dismantling of modem meta-narratives is a post-representational epistemology which understands common notions such as 'truth', 'reality', 'knowledge', 'representation' and 'organization' in radically different terms. Within this vastly different mode of thought, our attention is directed away from the modernist obsession with accurate representations of social and material phenomena, and therefrom the discovery of 'essential' and timeless truths in things, to an examination of the micro-practices of social organizings, including especially symbolic representational activities, that collectively work to legitimizing and hence reinforce the modernist problematic. This, in tum, necessarily leads us to a radical reconceptualizing of representation as a reality-constituting process of ordering and organization and the intellectual activity we call organizational analysis as a form of deconstructive practice.

Postmodernism The term 'postmodemism' has been associated with 'the collapse of grand narratives' (Lyotard 1984), 'simulations' (Baudrillard 1983), the crisis of 'our truths, values and our most cherished beliefs' (Lawson 1985), the 'death of Reason' (Power 1990), the process of 'de-differentiation' (Lash 1990), the replacement of the 'real with the representational' (Gergen 1992), and the privileging of 'difference over identity' (Cooper and Burrell 1988, Lemert 1992). In all these instances, what is continuously alluded, to is the insistent rejection of privileging any representationalist discourse which may serve to sustains our desire to make unproblematically determinate and hence controllable that which we apprehend. Postmodemism, it is argued, expresses a project of distantiation from the modemist assumption of unity, order, selfidentity, immediacy and hierarchy, implicit in the Enlightenment concept of reason. It resists the modemist drive towards determinacy and consensus by deliberately engaging itself in the 'search for instabilities' (Lyotard 1984: 53).

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In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard draws our attention to the indeterminacy expressed in modem science, particularly in quantum theory and microphysics, to show that it is, in fact, indeterminacy and not determinacy that characterizes the human condition. For him, as for a number of other postmodern writers, the human agent is 'faced with a condition of irreducible indeterminacy and it is this endless and unstoppable demurrage which postmodern thought explicitly recognizes and places in the vanguard of its endeavors' (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 98). Postmodernism, therefore, draws attention away from the project of representationalism, which relies on unquestioned assumptions such as self-identity, convergence, hierarchy, and the transparency of meaning in the organization of thought, to a critical examinmg of the logic of social ordering processes which make such basic modernist assumptions tenable. For postmodern writers, these conceptual categories must themselves be critically examined and understood as always already stabilized effects of prior organizing processes. Yet the still-dominant uncritical attitudes towards such formative categories, prevalent in the social sciences, invariably works to distract attention away from these constitutive processes. Accordingly, for postmodern thinkers, a more intellectually fixiitful approach to inquiry is to direct attention to the workings of difference as an ongoing and active ordering process of differentiating through space and time. Difference provides the energizing impulse necessary for securing and stabilizing meaning in concepts and things and hence locating them in an orderable manner for ease of comprehension. Conceptual terms, according to this view, therefore, are deemed to derive their meaning not from a one-onone connection with a singular external referent, as is the commonly held view of language, but from an intrinsically precarious differential process involving the endless differing and deferring of the term from other related terms within the linguistic system of representation. Meaning and understanding are, therefore, not intrinsic to the world; they have to be constructed, sustained and elaborated via this interminable process of difference. The career of 'difference' as an analytical tool, began with the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure (1966) used the notion of difference to sever linguistic signs from any direct relationship with the social and natural world. For him, language was a complex structure of terms and rules arbitrarily agreed upon by a linguistic community. Thus, the meaning of a term such as 'woman', for example, bears no intrinsic relationship to the material world beyond. Instead, the term depends for its linguistic significance on the consensus of the community of language users whose

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competence lies in their ability to recognize the differences between the concept 'woman' and the term 'man' which it, thereby, helps to reahze. Thus, it may be argued, many academics, including especially social scientists, have been trained into accepting as essentially unproblematic socially constructed inteφretations of, for example, gender, class and racial distinctions in their analyses. The term 'white' (as a racial designation), for example, does not refer to any real object in the world since few whites actually have white skins. In Weberian terms, we might call these categories 'ideal types' which in effect are neither pure ideals nor empirically discoverable types. In actuality, they are little more than established social conventions designed to enforce difference and hence to create and sustain a distinction between 'whites' and 'blacks' as abstract labels for the purposes of social classification and, hence, the organization of society. Likewise, in the case of mainstream organization studies, differences between 'structure' and 'culture', between 'organizations' and their 'environments', and between the various 'paradigms' which are supposed to Ашпе organizational theories, are themselves discursive effects brought about by the increasingly widespread use of academically acceptable linguistic conventions. At a broader level of understanding, this would mean that terms such as 'truth', 'representation', and 'reality', acquire their meanings by differentiating themselves fi-om their counteφarts rather than from a reliance on any straightforward connection between the term and an external stable referent. The distinction made between representation and reality is, thus, a conventional attempt to privilege one term over the other so that the hierarchical system of thought which characterizes modernist representational discourse can be made to work for those in whom there is most vested interests. Postmodernism, because of its insistent questioning of the validity of such conceptual categories, invariably threaten these pivotal distinctions by making more transparent their essentially ambivalent nature. Hence, it is this increasingly pervasive confiision and conflation of the 'real' with the 'representational' that informs the notion of 'de-differentiation' which Lash (1990) identifies as the defining moment associated with the condition of postmodemity: If cultural modernization was a process of differentiation, then postmodernization is one of de-differentiation. (Lash 1990: 11)

Lash argues that the increasingly widespread process of de-differentiation, witnessed in late capitalist societies, results in the cultural spheres

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losing their autonomy such that, for instance, the 'aesthetic reahn begins to colonize both theoretical and moral spheres' (ibid.: 11). For Lash, one crucial outcome of this process is that our everyday life becomes pervaded with a reality which increasingly comprises representations of representations rather than representations of what is unquestionably accepted as real. This leads Lash to conclude that if all the objects of significance in the social world were divided into 'reals' and 'representations', the transition from modernization and differentiation to postmodemization and de-differentiation can be understood in terms of a 'chronology of the increase in the pervasion of representations in society' (Lash 1990: 15). On this account, he argues, at a historical point in time when representations came to constitute a sufficient proportion of all objects such that 'they came to be taken seriously in all their opacity and complexity' (ibid.: 15), this point would mark the advent of modernism. If, later, the pervasion of representations increased to such a point that they began to challenge the 'hegemony' of real objects, what would become problematized would not be representations, but the very status of reality itself This, for Lash, would be the point where postmodernism takes over. While Lash's account provides an initially useful way of understanding how one might begin to distinguish modernism from postmodernism, his depiction of objects and their representations reflects an uncritical view of the problematical nature of such conceptual distinctions. The result is that his populist account betrays his own overly dualistic and linear mode of thought. This is a particularly crucial point to note since postmodernism is a spirited attempt to problematize such distinctions and to insist on the nonlinear, multiple, and heterogeneous character of meaning formation. How such distinctions themselves have come to be formulated needs to be understood within the context of local meaning adjustments. In short. Lash does not attempt to explore the problem of meaning and the tensions associated with its formation in the way that writers like Saussure (1966), Derrida (1976) and Bateson (1972) have attempted to do so in their meticulous examination of the workings of difference. As Cooper and Burrell put it: Difference is a form o f self-reference in which terms contain their own opposites and thus, refuse any singular grasp o f their meaning.... Difference is, thus, a unity which is, at the same time divided from itself ... it is intrinsic to all social forms. (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 98)

To speak of the transition from modernization to postmodemization in terms of the increase in pervasiveness of representation is to already accept

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uncritically the reality/representation distinction as being essentially unproblematic in meaning. This is precisely a key distinction which postmodem thinkers seek to displace. The move away from representational discourse to a self-referential postmodem one is an attempt to avoid a totalizing and controlling style of thought which obsessively seeks to render the world immediately determinate and thinkable in terms of pre-established conceptual categories. It is an attempt to avoid the colonizing tendencies of 'downstream thinking' by actively resisting the intrinsic urge to order and organize the world in referential terms and to recognize that meaning and order are necessarily imposed by the observer-community rather that externally given through any phenomenal experience. As Cooper and Burrell emphasize: For the postmodern thinker, systems do not have meanings or puφoses; these are human projections in which we uncritically assume that the world exists only for us and by which we locate ourselves at the controlling centre of things. Since the world is basically self-referential, it is neither pro-human nor anti-human; it just is. Postmodernism, therefore, decentres the human agent from its self-elevated position o f narcissistic "rationality" and shows it to be an essentially observer community which constructs interpretations of the world, these interpretations having no absolute or universal status. (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 94)

Observing systems are essentially self-referential and, hence, the representations generated are not attempts to mirror something 'out there' that we call reality. Instead, the act of representing needs to be understood as a form of economic, advantage-gaining strategy which mirror the concerns and preoccupations of the représenter in his/her engagement with his/her own experiences rather than as an attempt to accurately mirror an alreadyconstituted and extemal reality. Representations, therefore, operate according to a principle of economy in which the remote, the obdurate and the intractable are thereby brought to hand in order to facilitate manipulability and control. Representations, in this sense, are our realities and the only ones we can ever have. It is this aspect of the subtlety of postmodern thinking which Lash glosses over in his attempt to contrast modemism with postmodernism. In so doing he unwittingly helps to perpetrate a reductive view of the postmodem. A good illustration of this reductive tendency in modemist theorizing is Baxandall's (1985) incisive explication of the art critic's Kenneth Clark's rendering of the artist Piero della Francesca's the Baptism of Christ. Baxandall, in his perceptive analysis of the historical understanding of pictures, uses Kenneth Clark's account of Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ to

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demonstrate that the authoritative descriptions offered by Clark represented less the picture he was observing than the thoughts resulting from his seeing the picture. An excellent passage in Clark's account helps to drive this point across: ... we are at once conscious of a geometric framework; and a few seconds' analysis shows us that it is divided into thirds horizontally, and into quarters vertically. The horizontal division come, of course, on the line of the Dove's wings and the line o f the Angel's hands, Christ's loin-cloth and the Baptist's left hand; the vertical divisions are the pink angel's columnary drapery, the central line of the Christ and the back of St. John. These divisions form a central square, which is again divided into thirds and quarters, and a triangle drawn within this square, having its apex at the Dove and its base at the lower horizontal, gives the central motive of the design, (quoted in Baxandall 1985: 5)

Baxandall points out that the words used by Clark, such as 'geometric framework', 'divided into thirds horizontally', 'divisions form a square', 'a triangle drawn within this square', 'apex at the Dove', are not descriptions of the picture, but rather are descriptions of his thoughts about the picture as he attempted to make an explanation of it. Hence, 'what one offers in a description is a representation of thinking about a picture more than a representation of a picture' (Baxandall 1985: 5). This finding is reminiscent of Cooper and Burrell's (1988) earlier point that systems, like paintings, do not have meanings or рифозез and that these are, essentially, projections of the observer community representing their thinking about the world rather than the world itself. In this sense, all attempts at offering descriptions and e ^ l a nations are necessarily self-referential. Postmodern thinking is characterized by this insistence on a self-referential and 'decentred' mode of thought in contrast to the totalizing and referential attempts of modernist discourse.

Discontinuities and Fragmentation The influential writer, Isaiah Berlin, distinguished between two types of writers and thinkers. He drew a line from the Greek poet Archilochus which said: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing', and used this to differentiate between those who attempt to relate every event to a single central vision, and those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and contradictory in nature. In the former case, every attempt is made to feed into a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which all that is said

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and done has significance. On the other hand, there are writers and thinkers who: ... lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifiigal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. (Berlin 1953: 1)

For Berlin the first group of writers and thinkers belong to the hedgehog category whilst the second to the fox's. Berlin finds that, in the case of Tolstoy, for example, there is no clear-cut way of locating him within these categories: But when we come to count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and ask this of him—ask whether he belongs to the first category or the second, whether he is a monist or a pluralist, whether his vision is one or many, whether he is of single substance or compounded of heterogeneous elements, there is no clear or immediate answer.... Is he a fox or a hedgehog? What are we to say? (Berlin 1953: 3)

Berlin's thesis was that Tolstoy was, by nature, a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. For him, this is exemplified by Tolstoy's contempt for any grand theories which attempted to synthesize and, hence, explain the events of history. For instance, Tolstoy applied himself to the discrediting of the liberal theory of history according to which everything is deemed to hinge on a singular significant event. Thus, he tried to prove that Napoleon knew as little of what actually went on during the battle of Borodino as the lowliest foot soldiers. Hence, attempts by historians to make much of his (Napoleon's) 'cold' on the eve of the battle were unfounded, since, according to Tolstoy, it could have made no appreciable difference to the outcome of the battle. Tolstoy's efforts to dispose of the 'heroic theory of history' derives from his insistence on 'decentring' historical accounts away from privileged persons puφortedly endowed with heroic virtues or heroic voices who are, thereby, proclaimed to be 'great men'. What are great men? They are ordinary human beings, who are ignorant and vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of society, individuals who would rather take blame for all the cruelties, injustices, and disasters justified in their name, than recognize their own insignificance and impotence in the cosmic flow which pursues its own course irrespective of their wills and ideals. (Berlin 1953: 27, a summary of the central point made by Tolstoy in the Epilogue of War and Peace)

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Tolstoy perceived reality in all its fragmented multiplicity, as a collection of separate entities, individuals and events, but he longed for a universal embracing vision which could make these apparent disparate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle come together. He was a postmodernist who, like writers such as Foucault, Lyotard and Baudrillard, belongs to a category of writers and thinkers that are content to chip away at the cathedral-like structure of the modernist vision setting aside the urge to offer an alternative grand narrative in its place.

Postmodern Sensibilities Postmodem awareness is characterized by a shift from an epistemological to an ontological domain of concern. This is a move away from: ... the kind of perspectivism that allows the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but, nevertheless, singular reality, to the foregrounding o f questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide and interpenetrate. (Harvey 1989: 4)

Inteφretations of an assumed unproblematically constituted external reality, however rich and varied, remain within the grips of modernist epistemology. The shift to a questioning of the deeply held assumptions about the nature of reality is what undeφins the postmodern critique. It is the elevation of becoming-realism over being-realism and a recognition of their inextricable relatedness which marks the entry into a postmodern consciousness. As Lyotard reminds us in The Postmodern Explained, Ά work can become modem only if it is first postmodem. Thus understood, postmodernism is not modemism at its end, but in a nascent state, and this state is recurrent.' (Lyotard 1992: 80). In other words, the postmodem is the modem in a nascent state and modemism is better understood as a consequence of the systematic suppression and denial of its Other' (i.e., postmodernism). The 'post' of postmodernism, therefore, instantiates a procedure of analysis that elaborates an initial 'forgetting' brought about by the modernist impulse to order and organize the worid in discrete categorical terms. It is this 'supplemental' character of the postmodern which has been systematically overlooked by many populist writers on postmodernism particularly within organization studies. Hassan (1985) has provided a useñil series of stylistic oppositions which serve to differentiate postmodem preoccupations from the modemist pro-

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ject. This scheme provides a usefixl starting point from which we may begin to better appreciate the postmodernist response to modernism. Modernism

Postmodernism

form (conjunctive, closed) romanticism рифове design hierarchy mastery/logos art object/finished work distance creation/totalization synthesis presence centering genre/boundary semantics paradigm hypotaxis metaphor selection root/depth inteφretation/reading signified lisible (readerly) narrative/grand histoire master code symptom type genital/phallic paranoia origin/cause God the Father metaphysics determinacy transcendence

anti-form (disjunctive, open) paraphysics/Dadaism play chance anarchy exhaustion/silence process/performance/happening participation decreation/deconstruction antithesis absence dispersal text/intertext rhetoric syntagm parataxis metonymy combination rhizome/surface against inteφretation/mis-reading signifier scriptible (writerly) anti-narrative/petite histoire idiolect desire mutant polymoφhous/androgynous schizophrenia difference-deference/trace The Holy Ghost irony indeterminacy immanence

Figure 4: Schematic differences between Modernism and Postmodernism (Source: Hassan 1985: 123-4)

Hassan, himself, is of course quick to point out that these dichotomies are themselves insecure and equivocal. Yet, there is much here which recommends itself for enabling us to capture an initial sense of what these differences might be. One example of how this might work out for understanding the differences between modernism and postmodernism is in the concept of town planning. Modernist town planners tend to conceive of 'grand designs' which assume the possibility of'mastery' of the metropolis by assuming a 'closed form' in

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their plans, whereas postmodernists tend to view the urban process as necessarily uncontrollable and 'chaotic', in which 'anarchy' and 'chance' feature in 'playful' relationships characteristic of'open' situations. Likewise, modernist literary critics tend to look at literary works as examples of a 'genre' and to judge them according to a 'paradigm' or 'master code' which circumscribes and, hence, provides a 'boundary' for the genre. On the other hand, postmodern critics simply view such works as 'texts' with their own particular 'rhetoric' and 'idiolect', which can, in principle, be related to other texts whatever their genre. We can therefore see that Hassan's dichotomies, though essentially caricatures are, nonetheless, more sensitive to the questions raised about modernist and postmodernist discourses than for example Lash's view presented earlier. They show us that the most startling fact about postmodernism is its total acceptance of the ephemeral, discontinuous and fragmented nature of our lived experiences. Postmodernism does not attempt to transcend it, counteract it or even to define. Instead: Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents o f change as if that is all there is. (Harvey 1989: 44)

Harvey suggests that embracing this fragmentation and effemerality in an affirmative way carries with it a whole host of consequences regarding our attitude towards the dichotomies identified by Hassan. Harvey cites Foucault and Lyotard, in particular, as: ... explicitly attacking any notion that there might be a meta-language, metanarrative, or meta-theory through which all things may be connected or represented. Universal and eternal truths, if they exist, cannot be specified. (Harvey 1989: 44)

We are here reminded of the first line of the Tao Te Сhing which reads: 'The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.' This Tao, like the universal truths which Harvey refers to, represents the domain 'beyond' language and, hence, cannot be specified since it is that which makes language possible. For Foucault, this means that the preoccupation with meta-narratives should be replaced by an examination of the plurality of 'powerdiscourse' formations while, for Lyotard, it is the examination of 'language games' which provides a more fruitful way of appreciating the postmodern condition. The relation between power and knowledge is a central theme in Foucault's work. However, Foucault's notion of power is conceived radically differently from the traditional understanding of power as something which can be possessed. Thus, we frequently speak of individuals or social

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groups as 'having power'. This is not Foucauk's understanding of what power means. Instead, he urges us to: ... conduct an ascending analysis of power, starting, that is, from its infinitesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their own trajectory, their own techniques and tactics, and then see how these mechanisms of power have been—and continue to be—invested, colonized, utilized, involuted, transformed, displaced, extended, etc., by even more general mechanisms. (Foucault 1980: 159, quoted in Harvey 1989: 45)

Foucauh's close scrutiny of the micro-politics of power relations in a variety of localities, contexts, and social situations, leads him to conclude that an inextricable relationship exists between discursive formations involving the codification of techniques and practices and the experience of domination felt within particular localized situations. Thus, social institutions such as the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the schools, and the universities, form local sites where the 'dispersed and piecemeal organization of power is built up independent of any systematic strategy of class domination' (Harvey 1989: 45). What happens at each local site cannot be adequately explained using an overarching 'grand theory' such as that typically occurring in modernist theorizing. Given this understanding of power and its effects, Foucault exhorts us to mount a multi-faceted and pluralist critique of localized practices of domination rather than depend on some form of totalizing scheme such as 'democracy' or 'human rights' in order to avoid new forms of repression occurring. It is not difficult to see the similarities between Foucault's approach to the analysis of power and Tolstoy's account in War and Peace. Foucault's ideas, in particular, have provided a fecund source for the postmodernist challenge to the totalizing tendencies of modernist thought. Lyotard (1984), for his part, draws on Wittgenstein's view of language in order to illuminate the condition of postmodern knowledge. Wittgenstein writes: Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (Wittgenstein 1953: sec. 8.8)

Lyotard sees this metaphor as a helpful way of understanding how our forms of knowledge have come to be as they are. New knowledge, like new houses, are continually being added 'forming suburbs of the old town'

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(Lyotard 1984: 41). More than three decades later after Wittgenstein made his observations regarding language, we can add to this list: ... machine knowledge, the matrices of game theory, new systems of musical notation, systems of notation for nondenotative forms of logic (temporal logics, dontic logics, modal logics), the language of the genetic code, graphs of phonological structures and so on. (Lyotard 1984: 41)

Harvey (1989) suggests that Lyotard, like Foucault, accepts the potentially open-ended qualities of discursive formations in which linguistic codes and rules are often bent, shifted and reshaped to encourage greater flexibility of utterances. Although social institutions embracing the realms of law, of the academy, of science, of military control and bureaucratic government, as well as of corporate power appear to circumscribe in important ways what can be legitimately said and how it can be said, these limits are never established once and for all. Harvey reminds us not to 'reify institutions prematurely, but to recognize how differentiated performances of language games create institutional languages and power in the first place' (Harvey 1989: 47). Since there are a multitude of language games being played out, we should recognize that these would only give rise to institutions in 'patches'; in other words, a form of'local determinism' which only operates meaning&lly within specific social contexts. This understanding is reminiscent of Foucault's notion of the micro-politics of power. Hence, these postmodern thinkers insist that we cannot hope to aspire towards a unified representation of the social world or picture them as part of a totality of connections and differentiations. Instead, our experience of the social world should be viewed as peφetually shifting fragments which inevitably defy any summary description or explanation. Acceptance of the fragmentary and pluralistic nature of other voices and other worlds is a logically necessary consequence of realising the intrinsic instability of language and discursive formations. This understanding, in tum, allows us to make the important connection with the Lacanian notion of 'schizophrenia' as a form of linguistic disorder in which breakdowns inevitably occur in the signifying chain of meanings forming the basis of sentences. For Lacan, schizophrenia emerges from the failure of an individual infant to enter fully into the realms of speech and language and he/she is therefore unable to fiilly experience temporality, trace, memory and the persistence of personal identity associated with the time-structuring effects of language. It is because in speech and in language that sentences written or uttered are perceived to move through the present into the future that we are

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able to concretely live the experience of time. For the schizophrenic, however, the various moments of his or her past have little connections with the future so that his/her experience is one of isolated, disconnected significations which do not link up into a coherent sequence. In this sense the schizophrenic has no singular stable identity through time. One consequence of this fragmented experience of postmodemity, as exemplified by the schizophrenic's situation, is that conceptual terms such as 'alienation' and 'paranoia', the language of modernist discourses which presuppose some idealized originary state of authenticity or normality, are increasingly displaced by regimes of significations; the phenomena of shifting and loosely linked chain of signifiers which serve as momentary and intrinsically unstable unification points fi-om which meaning is precociously gleaned. The ephemeral and transient character of such experiences gives rise to a predisposition towards participative involvement, performance, and the sensual immediacy of happenings rather than towards passivity, the authority of a finished art object, and with root causes (Harvey 1989: 53). Hassan's (1985) schema, here again helps to point us towards a more sensitive appreciation of the unfolding trajectory of postmodemity. The portrait of postmodernism sketched thus far, enables us to begin to understand how radically different postmodern intellectual preoccupations are in relation to those of modernism. Modernist representationalism, the project of providing a totalizing and unified picture of the human condition appears now a misguided intellectual exercise. It is the intellectual vacuum created by the critique of modernism which has enabled a reactionary antirepresentationalism, following along the lines of Dewey's pragmatism, to strike a chord with this postmodern tum. We, thus, find Rorty (1980, 1989, 1991) at the forefi-ont of a new-found postmodern pragmatism conceived as an altemative program of inquiry within the human sciences.

Postmodern Pragmatism: Reconceptualising Knowledge and Truth In our previous discussion, it has been shown that postmodemism is abundantly concerned with the question of differences in terms of the complexity and nuances of interests, cultures, places and the like. Particularly, it has insisted upon the ... multiple forms o f otherness as they emerge from differences in subjectivity, gender and sexuality, race and class, temporal (configurations o f sensibilities) and

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spatial geographic locations and dislocations. (Huyssens, 1984: 50, quoted in Harvey 1989: 113)

One major consequence of this style of thinking is that knowledge and action can be conceived of and, hence, understood only within the confines of a form of local determinism which commentators, such as Fish (1980) call 'interpretive communities'. Such communities are made up of both producers and consumers of knowledge and actions that are generated within particular institutional, cultural and social settings. Thus, members within such inteφretive communities are held to control, within these domains, what are considered to be valid forms of knowledge and action. When taken out of these domains, their purported meanings and anticipated effects are rendered incoherent by the lack of contextual significance. This is the point which Rorty (1989, 1991) emphasizes. For Rorty, what we call knowledge is not a question of 'getting things right' but a matter of 'acquiring habits of action for coping with reality' (Rorty 1991: 1). These habits of action are what we call 'beliefs' and the process of enquiry is nothing more than a matter of continually reweaving such webs of beliefs into more acceptable forms rather than the straightforward application of pre-specified criteria to a particular case. Accordingly, what we call 'true' should be understood as those sets of beliefs which the inteφretive community are able to endorse or, in other words, are consensually justified. Rorty draws substantially from Davidson's (1986) 'coherence' theory of truth and knowledge to support his arguments for a postmodern pragmatism. For Davidson, beliefs may indeed be true or false, but they represent nothing. This is because to say that a statement is true or false is to say that it does or does not cohere with an existing system of other statements and beliefs held by a social collective. Hence, it is accepted or rejected according to whether or not it fits into this web of beliefs whose elements are tied to each other by socio-logical implications. Thus, each inteφretive community has its own localized logic which governs the acceptability of particular habits of thought and action. Each time an assertion is made, its implications and consequences are fed into the existing system which either accepts and assimilates it, or denies it truth status. On this view, assertions come to be accepted as true, not because they are accurate representations of an external reality, but because they function as economizing aids that enable the individual and collectivity to cope with their specific set of local circumstances. What we call knowledge, therefore, is essentially a social product tied to a social rationality (see Gergen 1982) rather than something generated

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by the application of a scientific method. Knowledge is the cumulative 'effect' of the precarious coming together of complex relational networks through the process of what Law (1992) calls 'heterogeneous engineering' in which: ... bits and pieces from the social, the technical, the conceptual and the textual are fitted together, and so converted (or translated) into a set of equally heterogeneous scientific products. (Law 1992: 2)

Knowledge, therefore, is not something which exists in the mind. Instead, it takes on materially relational forms. It exists as talk, conference presentations, written papers, patents, or as skills embodied in the scientists and technicians. It is the end product of a lot of hard work in which: ... heterogeneous bits and pieces—^test tubes, reagents, organisms, skilled hands, scanning electron microscopes, radiation monitors, other scientists, articles, computer terminals, and all the rest ... are juxtaposed into a patterned network. (Law 1992: 2)

This is the crux of the theory of the actor-network which Law lucidly expounds in his recent works. Actor-network theory treats society, individuals, and other related notions such as knowledge, truth, reality and organizations as socio-technical effects generated by the coming together of an otherwise heterogeneous set of network relations. For Rorty, what this implies is that we should stop thinking of science as the place where the human mind confronts the world. Instead, science should be understood as an expression of the high degree of consensus and solidarity shared by a community of inquirers. Rorty (1989) distinguishes between two senses of the term 'rationality'. In its traditional sense, to be rational is to be systematic and methodical; to have criteria for success well defined in advance such as is often depicted in judicial law and business management. However, it is in the enduring image of the scientist that this expression of rationality is able to derive its potency. Rorty argues that if, in the humanities, we already know what criteria we wanted to satisfy: ... we would not worry about whether we were pursuing the right ends. If we thought we knew the goals of culture and society in advance, we would have no use for the humanities—as totalitarian societies in fact do not. (Rorty 1989: 8)

Hence, it should be a characteristic of democratic and pluralist societies to 'redefine their goals continually' (ibid.: 8). This means that a second sense of the term rationality should be understood. In this second sense, the word

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rational means 'sane' or 'reasonable' rather than systematic and methodical. Understood thus, it invokes a set of moral values such as: ... tolerance, respect for the opinion of those around one, willingness to listen, reliance on persuasion rather than force.... In this sense of "rational", the word means something more like "civilized" than like methodical. (Rorty 1989: 9)

Rorty's brand of postmodern pragmatism leads him to recommend that the desire for objectivity in scientific representational practices should be replaced by the desire for solidarity within the interpretive community of inquirers. Hence, 'the only sense in which science is exemplary is that it is a model of human solidarity' (ibid.: 15). Therefore, we should think of the humanities or the social sciences as being less scientific in the sense that the amount of agreement among humanities scholars or amongst social scientists on what counts as significant beliefs is noticeably less than that within the natural sciences. Rorty speculates that, in a world-view governed by pragmatic values: ... there would be less talk about rigor and more about originality. The image of the great scientist would not be of somebody who got it right but of somebody who made things new. The new rhetoric would draw more on the vocabulary of Romantic poetry and socialist politics, and less on that of Greek metaphysics, religious morality or Enlightenment scientism. A scientist would rely on a sense of solidarity with the rest of her profession, rather than a picture of herself battling through the veils of illusion, guided by the light of reason. (Rorty 1989: 21)

One major consequence of this form of postmodern pragmatism is the recognition that no description of how things are from a God's eye view or any other skyhook that we may wish for, will free us from the contingency of our locally determined circumstances. Our acculturation is what makes certain options 'live, or momentous, or forced, while leaving others dead, or trivial, or optional' (Rorty 1991: 13). Hence, without splits or gaps in our acculturation to supply us with 'toeholds' for new initiatives, we cannot hope to expand the horizon of our understanding in order to think beyond the limits of our inteφretive community. It is only in this sense that the activity of 'climbing out of our own minds' which Nagel recommended, can be realized. Since we cannot set aside our old vocabularies, beliefs and desires, we can only add and modify them by playing them off against each other so that new options are made possible through the enlargement of our imagination.

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Whereas Rorty conceives of science only in social terms, Law (1992) goes a step further by removing any a priori distinction between the social and the physical. Law agrees with Rorty that there is nothing particularly special about science. But, since science, like society and other institutions such as the individual, the family and the economy, are all effects of the ordering of networks of heterogeneous materials, what we call the social cannot be simply human. Instead, it should include any material we would care to mention so that the social is 'nothing more than patterned networks of heterogeneous materials' (Law 1992: 3). If human beings form social networks, it is not only because they interact with other human beings, but also with endless other materials as well. Machines, computer keyboards, the printing press, buildings, clothes and texts, all these participate in the networking of the social. Actor-network theory, therefore, unlike Rorty's postmodern pragmatism, does not 'celebrate the idea that there is a difference in kind between people on the one hand and objects on the other' (Law 1992: 4). People are who they are because they are patterned networks of heterogeneous materials. Hence, the term actor-network—an actor is also, always already, a network. Actor-network theory, as a version of postmodern pragmatism, thus, provides a novel way of understanding fundamental notions such as agents, science, truth, knowledge, reality as well as society and organizations. These are now conceived of as outcomes of such heterogeneous

engineering

which, at time, take on the appearance of a concrete unity. As such, they need to be explained rather than assumed as self-evident. For example, we have very little trouble in identifying things like a television set, a well managed bank, or a healthy body. Law explains that this is due to our tendency to simplify the endless possibilities created by network ramifications into a form that is conceptually manageable. Such simplification processes

or

'punctualisations' provide a convenient indexing (and hence delineating) of the otherwise numerous social networks involved so much so that the apparent unity of an experienced phenomena is created and sustained. In essence, television sets are no different from human agents in that both are produced by the conceptually precarious 'holding together' of heterogeneous materials through the act of punctualisation. Likewise, truth, reality, individuals and organizations are similarly conceptually conceived.

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Postmodern Priorities It is useful to draw out some of the postmodern intellectual tendencies which we have discussed in the previous sections. This will enable us to understand how such tendencies have helped to give shape to a postmodem view of the world. Clearly, Tolstoy's attempt in fVar and Peace to portray reality in its fragmented multiplicity and particularity, bears some resemblance to Foucault's genealogical efforts and Lyotard's discussion of the emergence of language games. What unites these writers is their preoccupation with the often specific details which more traditional historians and analysts tend to gloss over. Berlin (1953) discusses admiringly this aspect of Tolstoy's work: The celebrated life-likeness of every object and every person in his world derives from this astonishing capacity of presenting every ingredient of it in its fullest individual essence, in all its many dimensions, as it were; never as mere datum, however vivid, within some stream of consciousness, with blurred edges, an outline, a shadow, an impressionistic representation: not yet calling for, and dependent on, some process of reasoning in the mind of the reader; but always as a solid object seen simultaneously from near and far, in natural unaltering daylight, from all possible angles o f vision, set in absolutely specific contexts in time and space—an event ftilly present to the senses of the imagination in all its facets, with every nuance sharply and firmly articulated. (Berlin 1953: 40)

Any comforting grand theory which encourages the attempt to collect, relate and synthesize or reveal hidden substrata and concealed inner connections in order to show that they are ultimately parts of a unified whole, were rejected by Tolstoy. This intellectual attitude is also evident in Foucault's discussion of power/knowledge where a dispersed and piecemeal form of localized power is accentuated in preference to the notion of a deliberate and systematic strategy of control. Likewise, Latour's (1987) analysis of scientists in action and Gallon's (1986) rich account of the scallop's harsh existence deep in St. Brieuc's Bay in Britanny, display the same life-likeness which Berlin identified in Tolstoy's work. The rejection of meta-narratives in preference for the particularities of lived experience is, therefore, a central feature of postmodern intellectual priorities. The multipUcity and heterogeneity of peoples, events and things are accentuated together with an insistence on emphasizing particularity, contingency and difference as principle defining features of the human condition. Hierarchical thinking and the search for a meta-language or narrative or, conversely, the search for 'root' causes is also rejected by postmodern thinkers. Instead, the superficial and manifest heterogeneity of elements,

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events, micro-practices and processes which generate locaHzed effects, are given particular attention in postmodern analyses. This is coupled with the emphasis on engagement, experimental performances and emergent processes in place of the pre-defined, the already completed, or the ready made. Such valorizing of experimental indeterminacy and the search for ever newer and novel expressions describes yet another distinctive facet in postmodern thinking and practice. In particularly academic fields such as literary studies, rhetoric and irony tends to feature in postmodern works since these are deliberately incorporated as part of the textual strategy designed to force language to 'work' demonstratively so that they constantly threaten the traditionally held linguistic rules of language. Self-referentiality and the insistence on the primacy of difference over identity as the motivating impulse for meaning generation is yet another intellectual tendency distinguishing postmodern discourse from modernist ones which unquestionably rely on the plausibility of a transcendental reference and necessarily assume the isolability of identities. The insistence on a legitimate role for chance, and play (in the engineering sense) and a deconstructive orientation towards inquiry, make up other crucial aspects of the postmodernist's intellectual priorities. These are intended to demonstrate the precarious and equivocal nature of what are otherwise thought to be apparently unproblematical texts and to show the tensions and aporias contained therein. The works of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, in particular, provide exemplaiy instances of this form of 'immanent critique' (Descombes 1984) in which hitherto unproblematic texts such as Plato's Phaedrus or Rousseau's Confessions are shown to contain moments of indecision and blind spots or aporias as well as contradictions which oftentimes unbeknown to the authors themselves subvert the very meaning they wished it to convey. Through exposing these blind spots and contradictions, these postmodern writers are able to reveal the power relations and essential tensions existing between privileged and unprivileged terms. These loosely identified currents in postmodern thinking must, however, be themselves appreciated as consequences of adopting a deliberate orientation towards human inquiry. It is this 'thought-style' (Fleck 1979) which has been inadequately examined.

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Towards a 'Weak' Thinking Style in Organizational Analysis In a recent paper, Cooper and Law (1995) maintained that the basic criticism of modem sociological studies of organization is that they tended to deal with the results or organized 'states' rather than with the complex social 'processes' leading to these outcomes or effects. In such an idealized sociology, the 'state of rest' is viewed as normal and hence implicitly privileged in social analyses whilst 'change' is considered accidental, transitory or even malfiinctional. Thus, properties such as unity, identity, permanence, structure and essences, etc., are privileged over dissonance, disparity, plurality, transience and change. Moreover, these latter processes are conceived of as secondary aspects of primary social states rather than their very bases. According to Elias (1978) Talcott Parson's work is one striking example of this tendency towards an idealized homeostatic mode of analysis. Elias noted that Parson's work is a 'systematic reduction of social processes to social states, and of complex heterogeneous phenomena to simpler seemingly homogeneous components' (1978: 228). Following Elias, Cooper and Law (1995) therefore propose a sociology of becoming in which taken-for-granted static states are viewed as effects of complex social processes in contrast to the Parsonian approach which assumes the primacy of the static and which Cooper and Law therefore label a sociology of being. Cooper and Law then use this basic opposition to distinguish between distal (an outcome of a sociology of being) and proximal (an outcome of a sociology of becoming) modes of thinking and to examine their implications for organizational analysis. For Cooper and Law, these two modes of thinking are both complementary yet different ways of looking at human organizing and organization. Cooper and Law's notions of distal and proximal modes of thinking correspond to what might be termed modem and postmodern styles of thinking each with their own ontological commitments, epistemological priorities and theoretical preoccupations. This postmodem style of thinking is one which privileges an ontology of movement, emergence and becoming whereby the transient and ephemeral nature of what is 'real' is accentuated. What is real for postmodem thinkers are not so much social states or entities but emergent relational interactions and pattemings that are recursively intimated in the fluxing and transforming of our life-worlds. Debates in organization studies which do not address this fundamental ontological distinction between modernism and postmodernism miss out on the potential contributions of a postmodem approach to organizational analysis. Commitment to a postmodem mode of thinking, however, implies radical consequences for the study of organization. Instead of the traditional emphases on the analysis of organizational structures, cultures, gender, ethics, etc., in organizations, the

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postmodern emphasizes the myriad of heterogeneous yet interlocking organizational micro-practices which collectively generate relatively stabilized effects such as individuals, organizations and society. Postmodern thinking argues that the tendency to think of these latter categories as selfcontained social units is a consequence of what Whitehead has called the 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness'. In an earlier chapter the consequences of this modernist tendency has been extensively explored and its implications intimated. The modernist tendency to think egocentrically and to reify walls or boundaries around social systems is therefore rejected by this postmodern style of thinking in favor of loose 'figurational' webs of interdependencies. This is because conceiving of social systems in terms of such invisible barriers 'seduces us into thinking and talking about "individuals", "groups", "organizations", etc., rather than "actions" and "interactions"' (Cooper 1990: 1). Cooper goes on to maintain that the tendency to reify such social entities also leads us to believe that 'actions' and 'interactions' are epiphenomena rather than primary processes in their own right. To avoid this tendency, he proposes that we think transactionally rather than in structural terms. Thus, figurations are 'networks' which, in turn, can be understood (following Bateson 1972), as 'circuits of difference' (Cooper 1990: 2). The idea of construing organizations as networking effects, rather than systems with definable boundaries, is increasingly beginning to be accepted in organizational analysis. In a later chapter, I shall explore more fully how this use of figurational or network thinking by postmodern writers on organization has helped to reconstitute the field of study.

Conclusion The insistence on the possibility of a distinctly postmodern style of thinking has profound implications for a revised 'methodology' within the social sciences in general, and organization studies in particular. Two outcomes are immediately discernible, both of which have significant consequences for the academic activity we call organizational analysis. On the one hand, the move away from representationalist epistemology results in a critical rethinking of the function of representation as a human activity. Representations, from a postmodern reading, turns out to be not the attempt to reflect or mirror an external reality, but instead, an attempt to 'condense' what is remote, obdurate and intractable into a form which facilitates control and

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manipulability. This line of thinking leads us away from the tendency to reify organizations to a reconceptualization of the latter as essentially comprising dense socio-technical networks of representation. Organizations' are formed by cumulative acts of representational abstractions in which the remote, the obdurate and the intractable are rendered more easily accessible and manipulable for the purpose of mastery and control. In what follows, I shall first explore the organizational consequences of such technologies of representation and the economy of effort associated with these practices in order to see how we might begin to appreciate thinking in terms of this expanded realm of organization. A more detailed exploration of this understanding of organization as representation, as understood in post-modem terms, forms the central focus of Chapter 5. The second outcome of our adopting a postmodern style of thought is the necessity to rethink the academic practice of organizational analysis in radically different terms, given that our theories are no longer taken as seeking to represent organizations or, for that matter, other theories of organization. Chapter 6 extends the analysis of organization and representation further 'upstream' in order to examine the consequence of thinking in terms of a theory of organizational becoming. This, in tum, leads us to a second set of imperatives regarding how we need to begin to rethink organization studies as a form of 'deconstructive practice' involving the careful dismantling and making transparent of the organizing frames, forms, codes and conceptual categories that continue to shape the priorities of modemist discourse. The consequences of adopting a deconstructive approach to organizational analysis will be rigorously pursued in Chapter 7.

Chapter 5: Organization as Representation: Power, Economy and Remote Control

Introduction It has to be remembered that the postmodern critique of representationalism does not entail an outright rejection of the activity of representing nor the notion of truth. What it does reject is the ideology of representation which presumes the necessary validity of the relationship between 'accurate representation' and 'being true'. For the postmodernist, representations are not true just because they accurately reflect an external reality. Instead, truth reflects a social function designated by a community of inquirers on particular statements which that community values. Statements are held to be true because of their explanatory power, and explanatory power, for the postmodernist, does not depend on the idea of correspondence with reality. Instead, explanatory power hinges on a general principle of economy which enables us to act and control at a distance. We say a statement is true in so far as it allows us to economically grasp the complexities of a situation expediently and to thereby enable us to act coherently. It is this economy of expression which defines the status of truth. Understood in this way, the practice of representing is not an attempt to 'copy' an external reality, but to enable us to hold in our hands and to control and manipulate what is intractable or absent from us, i.e., to represent is to 'make present again'. For Cooper, the function of this process of representation is to 'translate difficult or intransigent material into a form that facilitates control' (1992: 255). It embodies a principle of economy which turns our weaknesses into strengths and our potential losses into gains. Representation is simply a device for realizing gains and for ensuring that the gain comes again. (Cooper 1993: 255, emphasis original)

As such, the advantages derived from the practice of representation results from its ability to incorporate strategies of remote control, displacement and abbreviation in order to permit ease of handling and acting at a distance. How this ability to act at a distance is achieved will be explored in a later section.

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The Structure of Representation The modernist problematic of accuracy in representational practices unquestionably accepts the fundamental split between an already-constituted external world and our attempts to talk about it. When construed as an epistemologica! issue, preoccupation with 'gaining access' and justifying such attempts dominates the discourse on representationalism. Hence strategies of justification, such as those discussed in Chapter 3, become part and parcel of the intellectual weaponry of defence deployed by ardent supporters of representationalist epistemology. They remain high on the agenda of a being-realist/modemist ontology. The previous chapter has attempted to show that postmodem thinking does not merely problematize or relativize representations of reality. That has always already been a characteristic feature of modernism. Our postmodern consciousness problematizes the very status of reality itself It raises doubts about the status of reality itself so much so that we are thereby forced to reexamine the very core distinction which we habitually make between that which we take to be 'real' and that which we take as 'representation'. This reflexive awareness is by no means of recent origin. The ancient Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, alluded to it in his anecdote concerning the reality of dreams (i.e., representation). Once I, Chuang Chou, dreamed that I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but did not know that I was Chou. Suddenly I awoke, and there I was, visibly Chou. I do not know whether it was Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming that it was Chou. (Chuang Tzu I: I8a-48b in Chan 1963)

This beautiful story illustrates the constant and inevitable inteφenetration of reality and representation which typify the human condition. This is because, as we have shown, postmodern thinking challenge the very notions of sequential temporality and necessary origin which remain the key conceptual axes around which modernist thought is organized. Postmodern thinking asks questions about the creation of such distinctions through a critical examination of the structures of representation within which modernist thought operates. Contrary to well-held beliefs, the Cartesian split between mind and matter does not just create a system of dualism. To be sure, dualisms such as inside/outside, representation/reality, objective/subjective, mental/physical, is/is not, and so on, may be seen as derivatives of this fundamental schism created. However, what the Cartesian split creates is better appreciated as a dualistic structure of dualism in that the primary distinction made between

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mind and matter also creates at the same time a distinction between the representer and the represented. The duaiistic structure of dualism hinges upon a primary act separating the internal from the external. This is a preconscious distinction in that it is what enables conscious discrimination to be made. For example, it enables a young child to make the first distinction between itself and its environment. Spencer Brown (1969) finds that the making of this distinction is by itself sufficient to generate the logical structures necessary to guide and develop our most complex reasoning processes. Because it provides the basis for the subsequent making of other distinctions, the structure in terms of which social phenomena are perceived are neither in the external world nor in the mind. This is because the categories of'inside' and 'outside' are themselves products of this fundamental structuring process. Therefore, the primary distinction (or structuring process) is expressible, following Spencer Brown, as a 'cleavage of an empty space and defined as a crossing of the first distinction' (Herbst 1976: 86). By crossing this distinction we simultaneously create, not just the distinction between the inside and the outside, but also between what is and what is not. The ability to perceive a separation between 'self and the 'other' also generates an ability to differentiate between what is and what is not the case as represented 'out there'. Our entry into a structured consciousness, which is thereby rendered already 'given' to us, enables us to generate simultaneously other decisional operations regarding what 'is' given and what 'is not'. For Whitehead (1929) the making of this primary distinction is an 'incisional' decision involving the act of 'cutting off whereby: 'what is "given" is separated from what, for that occasion, is "not given'" (Whitehead 1929: 58). Henceforth, what is given recedes into the background to form the context for the 'problematic' which is now construed as that which is not given. This element of 'givenness', therefore, implies the effect of an operation which is designed to facilitate and procure a form of limiting so that that which is thereby apprehended becomes more easily manageable. Preoccupation with the 'is/is not' dualism obscures the distinction simultaneously made between the inside and the outside, or in other words, the représenter and the represented. The role of the former is taken as unproblematic and henceforth does not form a part of the modernist discourse. The upshot is a familiar modernist preoccupation with the 'is/is not' couple which thereby constitutes representationalist epistemology. This means that even when such dualisms as subject/objective are explored and discussed by social scientists, they are mistakenly construed as problems of epistemology rather than of ontology. Thus the false distinction created

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between realism and relativism are products of this inattention to the ontologica! act of constituting reality. A simple statement like 'This is a paradigm', therefore, implicates a representational scheme of things involving the representar, the represented, and the claimed representation. It is this triadic set of elements which is generated by the primary distinction and which therefrom enables us to form explanatory accounts of what would otherwise be nothing more than mere 'happenings'. Our initiation into a postmodern consciousness, however, has made these 'incisional' operations into the flow of lived experiences more transparent and thereby directed our attention to examining such issues more rigorously. More specifically, the central role of 'explanation' as the representational act of persuasion, in a reconstituted world where 'truth', 'knowledge', 'reality' and 'representation' have been reconceptualised, becomes a key question.

EJφlainmg Е?ф1апайоп8 One writer, who has attempted to think in postmodern terms using 'networks' as an explanatory vehicle for the study of the sciences, thereby avoiding the problems of 'boundary' reification endemic to modernist thought, is the French social theorist Bruno Latour. Latour (1987, 1988) offers a radically different approach to understanding the traditionally perceived problems of the social sciences. He begins by examining the notion of 'explanation' in order to establish how scientific and non-scientific claims differ in terms of explanatory power. В List of elements to provide the explanation

X

Figure 5: The Power of Explanation (From Latour 1988: 157)

List of elements to be explained

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For Latour, to explain something is to establish some sort of relationship between two repertoires, one comprising an inventory of elements which require explanation (B) and the other comprising elements said to provide the explanation (A). Latour notes that, if there is a one-to-one connection between the left list and the right one, nothing is explained since there are as many elements in one list as in the other. Therefore, an explanation is only said to be provided when a single element of A is able to relate to more than one of the elements in B. Hence, in this general form, the politics of explanation becomes such that ... when you hold X elements of A, you also hold the x', y', z', elements of B. It is in effect a general definition of power, power being understood in both its political and logical sense. The corollary of this "holding o f several elements by one is a general feeling of strength, economy and aesthetic satisfaction: the one element may "replace", "represent", "stand for", all the others, which are in effect made secondary, deducible, subservient or negligible. (Latour 1988: 158)

Thus, the power of an explanation depends on the number of elements of В that can be related to the single element A which serves as an explanation. Understood thus, the power of explanation is akin to the 'mechanical advantage' one achieves from the use of levers. If we consider the types of claims made within the social sciences, these tend to vary fix)m 'descriptions' to 'correlations' and then, fmally, to 'laws' or 'theorems'. Descriptions have the character of a story because, in this instance, the list of elements in A is simply the repetition of the elements in B, so much so that holding list A is, provisionally equivalent to holding list B. At the other extreme, laws, theorems and mathematical equations have high explanatory power because a single element of A can account for all of the elements of B, so much so that holding an element A is equivalent to holding all of the list of B. It is this political equivalent of 'mechanical advantage' that enables some claims to bear the distinction of truth while others with less economical 'advantages' are construed as 'opinions' or 'fiction'. But, there has to be a reason for attempting to gain this representational advantage. For Latour, a strong explanation becomes necessary when we wish to act at a distance (Latour 1987). If we are in setting x' we do not need to explain it—demonstration or practice or weak accounts will be sufficient. For example, if I wish to explain what a 'door' is to someone who has no prior sense of what it is, I can point towards one in the room where I am sat. Hence, little or no explanation is required. However, if I wish to explain what a door is when the door is at x' and I am at X, then I need a stronger explanation because I now need to be at both X and x' at the same time. We call all

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the elements of x' that can be mobilized, transferred and accumulated in X in order to give strength to our explanation, information: Information is the go-between, the mediator, the translator, the metaxu that constantly oscillates between the presence of "x" and its absence. (Latour 1988: 159)

Language is part of this effort to gain an explanatory advantage when we find ourselves in circumstances where we need to act at a distance. For example, we formulate the word 'door' to explain, or take the place of the object, 'door' hence, allowing us to stay in X while explaining the various elements x', y', etc., which make up the material experience called 'door'. In Chinese writing, for example, the word for door has undergone a series of 'reductions' which, thus, increasingly amplifies its explanatory power. This shift is shown in the diagram below tracing the etymology of the Chinese word 'door'. What this diagram illustrates is the general economizing tendency of words and explanations as they take part in this evolving process of representation and translation over space and time. Cooper (1992) calls this representational process of shortening, 'abbreviation'. Representation in its abbreviation mode is a tactic of micropractices; it displaces the molar for the molecular. Abbreviation economizes space and time in two ways: by close packing and by the reduction of size and mass. (Cooper 1992: 263)

Abbreviation facilitates manipulability and control by arranging the elements of representation, such as symbolic strokes in writing, closely together so that the minimum amount of effort and time is required to manipulate them. Miniaturization serves a similar fiinction. All these practices enhance the ability to act effectively from a distance. Representations are therefore advantage-gaining micro-acts of ordering and organizing which collectively help constitute our social reality. Latour reminds us that it is the Greeks who offer us the best mythology of effective action at a distance attainable by the practice of representation. Thaïes is credited with inventing geometry when, not wishing to climb on Kheops' pyramid, he "simply" measured the shadows of a stick firmly stuck on the ground.... His theorem ... resulted in the possibility of holding all the pyramids ... through the little calculations held in the hand. (Latour 1988: 159)

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What we admire so much in Greek thinking is the abiüty to dramatically reverse the power relations. Now, a small group of people, holding only pyramid shadows and paper forms, become suφrisingly stronger than the ancient and powerful Egyptians with their massive stone pyramids. In this instance, the language of geometry provided the means for this ability to act at a distance. Modem-day computer languages and other forms of inscriptions, etc., produce a similar effect in terms of enabling control at a distance. For Latour, all modem day sciences are: ... defined first o f all by the sort o f elements they extract from their settings, and then mobilized, accumulated, combined and displayed: fossils, stuffed animals, pho-

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tographs, trophies, questionnaires, everything which, in one way or another, solves the problem of action at a distance, fills the gap ... between the presence of "x" and its absence. (Latour 1988: 159)

Against representationalists, Latour maintains that the perceived problem of 'correspondence' or 'accuracy' between the representation 'in here' (i.e., in the mind) and the reality 'out there' is raised without ever asking the question of how either came to be where they were construed to be; i.e., 'in here' and 'out there'. For Latour, the answer to this latter question is simple enough, given his definition of explanation. The problem of correspondence between the forms mobilized and the settings from which they have been extracted, becomes crucial only for those who want to act at a distance. If you are not at a distance, or do not wish to act upon other settings, the notion of correspondence vanishes, and so does the problem of referent. (Latour 1988: 160).

Representationalism only makes sense because firstly, a distinction is assumed between the inner 'mind' and outer 'reality'. Secondly, there is a need to recover the outer into the inner i.e., to control the external via the internal. Latour's view of explanation, as a measure of distance between contexts, enables us to understand the separation customarily made between the 'outside world' and our 'interpretation' of it. Likewise, it serves to create the very distinction between practice on the one hand and knowledge on the other. ... practice becomes whatever people do in the setting acted upon; knowledge becomes whatever is mobilized in X to act upon the other setting. (Latour 1988: 160)

Once it is understood how these distinctions have been formulated, we can begin to appreciate that the modernist project has been based upon the uncritical acceptance of such arbitrary categories without ever offering an adequate explanation for their constitution. The postmodern view, on the other hand, is characterized by its preoccupation with exploring how such distinctions come to be made and sustained in scientific discourse and with the assumed a priori necessity of their existence. Latour's account of the politics of explanation are extremely insightful and helpful in providing the basis for explaining how such self-evident distinctions as 'subject' and 'object', 'representation' and 'reality', 'practice' and 'knowledge', 'inner mind' and 'outer world', 'individual' and 'society', come to be formulated. It helps shift our attention away from the represen-

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tationalist's preoccupation with truth as correspondence to reality, to the examination of the micro-practices involved in 'making true', using the strategies of explanation we have identified. However, Latour does not appear to place enough attention to the function of representation in extending and amplifying human capability. For example, he seems to think that explaining x' by X (a one-to-one situation) is a weakest form of explanation which is, thus, reduced to the status of a 'story' rather than a valued explanation. Tiie other extremity on the scale o f explanatory power is when no deduction or correlation o f any sort can be established. The list of elements in A is simply the repetition of several elements of B, arranged and summarized in such a way that, for a few practical ends, holding list A is, provisionally, equivalent to holding list B. This kind o f explanation most often has the literary character of a story. (Latour 1988: 159)

This is to overlook the fact that even such apparently mere descriptions possess significant powers in that they are made to 'stand for' that which is not present. Even if no economizing 'simplification' is achieved in this instance, the effort gain attending such representational practices remains a substantial advantage. This is because this practice of 'standing for' results in helping to 'black-box' (to use Latour's (1987) own terms) the explanations and privileging them over that which needs to be explained. The latter is, thus, repressed in favor of the former. But as Heidegger reminds us, explanation is always twofold. It 'accounts for an unknown by means of a known, and at the same, time it verifies that known by means of the unknown' (Heidegger 1977: 121, quoted in Cooper 1993: 295). It is this relational aspect of this process of explanation which remains relatively unexplored in Latour's otherwise valuable contribution. Cooper's (1992, 1993) discussion of the logic and function of representation, therefore, provides a useful extension of some of these ideas.

Technologies of Representation We are now in a position to move away from the traditional preoccupations of scientific and philosophical discourse which, in one way or another, seek a form of justification for truth and knowledge. From our perspective, the fate of scientific and philosophical claims do not depend in the first instance on their truth value as understood in the traditional representationalist sense. Instead, their fate depends upon the explanatory power they display

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and this in turn, is a function of the economy achieved through such acts of representation. Hence, as we have seen, a mathematical theorem has in>· mense power because it is able to displace the 'intractable and the obdurate' (Cooper 1992: 257), such as the Egyptian pyramids, with symbolic representations so that we are able to expediently act on them with minimal effort and at a distance. The act of representation therefore, far from being an attempt to accurately reproduce a given reality, is instead a means for enabling us to gain advantage over what is inherently our physical, temporal and spatial limitations. Representations are, in effect, attempts to translate 'a precarious and vulnerable inside into a secure and objective outside. The body enters the world by means of bio-technical representations.' (Cooper 1993: 291, emphasis original). Our 'will' to represent derives from this urge to find alternative ways of overcoming our human limitations. This 'will' translates itself into three features of representation. Firstly, there is an attempt to represent the parts of the human body. For example, a bandage represents an attempt to replace the missing skin while spectacles, microscopes, and telescopes are self-evidently replacements for the eye. Secondly, representations may incoφorate a replication of bodily capacities and functions. Thus, printed books, photographs, films and writings are embodiments of human memory. By having these forms of substitution, we come to rely less and less on memory which we recognizes as limited and vulnerable and more and more on these inerasable imprints. Thirdly, representations attempt to transform the division between the inside and the outside of the body in such a way as to 'deprive the extemal world of the privilege of being inanimate—of in other words, its privilege of being irresponsible to the sentient inhabitants on the basis that it is, itself, nonsentient' (Scarry 1985: 285, quoted in Cooper 1993: 291, emphasis original). Cooper cites the industrial glove as one instance of how these features of representation are used to overcome human limitations. ... the glove (lets say an industrial glove) represent the hand; while the natural hand is frail (for example, it can be easily burned), the industrial glove is robust and refractory. Whereas the body and its parts are limited by a natural frailty, it is precisely these limitations that enable and promote the process of representation. (Cooper 1992: 256)

The products of representation; techniques and artifacts, compensate for the deficiencies inherent in our human bodies by extending and magnifying their capabilities and making them more durable. Cooper (1992) identifies three core elements involved in the process of representation—remote con-

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trol, displacement and abbreviation. Through these core technologies of representation, the affairs of the world are made pliable, wieldable and, hence, more amenable to human intervention. In the case of remote control, economy is realized through substituting symbols and other prosthetic devices for direct involvement of the body and its senses. The recent Gulf war provides a useful illustration of remote control in action. Allied commanders in Riyadh and Washington maintained control over their operations in the Gulf using maps, models, numbers and formulae which directly represented the Gulf situation hundreds or even thousands of miles away. In Cooper's terms, such commanders, like managers and administrators more generally, do not work directly on the environment. Instead, through the process of remote control, they are able to monitor complex and heterogeneous activity 'at a distance and in the relative convenience of a centralized work station' (Cooper 1992: 257). Thus, the power of representation resides in its ability to control events remotely by making present that which is absent through this process of substitution: Events that are remote (i.e., distant and heterogeneous) in space and time can be instantly collated in paper form on the desk of a central controller. (Cooper 1992: 257)

For Cooper, this has the paradoxical effect of both bringing remote events near, but at the same time, keeping them at a remove through the intervention of representation. For, the very act of representing both brings to hand and yet distances the event from the représenter. Cooper uses the Portuguese East Indies Company, which flourished during the late fifteenth century, to illustrate the workings of remote control in action. The main technology which facilitated control at a distance, in this instance, was the ship. Whereas medieval European sailing ships had a limited range and carrying capacity, the Portuguese developed new vessels that were more mobile and more durable in order to enable them to endure the long journeys to the East. Law (1992) calls this method of overcoming obstacles and resistances, translation. Durability and increased mobility are two of the core strategies of translation. In the case of durability. Law notes that some materials are more durable than others and so are able to maintain their relational patterns for a longer period of time. On the other hand: Thoughts are cheap but they don't last long, and speech lasts very little longer. But when we start to perform relations—and in particular, when we embody them in inanimate materials, such as texts and buildings—^they may last longer. Thus, a good ordering strategy is to embody a set of relations in durable materials. Consequently, a

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relatively stable network is one embodied and performed by a range of durable terials. (Law 1992: 9, emphasis original)

ma-

The ships built by the Portuguese were more durable and, hence, were able to embody and sustain a relatively stable and predictable network of relationships pertaining to range, capacity and ability to cope with weather conditions. Moreover, the new forms of sail used on the Portuguese ships were more efficient in harnessing wind power and, therefore, helped to reduce the uncertainties involved in taking long journeys. However, durable and efficient ships alone do not provide sufficient advantage to account for the success of the Portuguese East Indies Company. Other translation strategies involving technologies of representation were required to realize the possibilities of remote control. These included the development of navigational devices. As Cooper writes: The navigational advances of the Portuguese were even more dramatic. In 1484, King John II of Portugal set up a prototypal research and development group and charged it with the task of developing a system for navigating outside European waters. (Cooper 1992: 259)

As a result the system developed by the research group, the Regimentó do Astrolabio et do Quadrante, not only fulfilled the king's expectations, but established the foundations of modern astronomical navigation. The navigational system developed by the Regimentó used written or printed inscriptions to depict the positions of the Sun and the North Star as navigational reference points. In short, the new system represented the wider world and the heavens in models, tables, rules, and their possible permutations; it reproduced a complex astronomical and geographical framework in a portable and manipulable system. (Cooper 1992: 259)

If the durability of the Portuguese ships is more about ordering through time, then their navigational systems and devices which enhanced mobility is about ordering through space. For Law (1992), this is a second strategy of translation which exploits the process of communication—'writing, electronic communication, methods of representation, banking systems, and such "apparent mundanities as early-modem trade routes'" (Law 1992: 9). These gave rise to the emergence of what he calls immutable mobiles such as 'letters of credit, military orders and cannon balls' (ibid.: 9). Cooper reminds us that the success of the Portuguese East Indies Company was the

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result of a 'patient accumulation of many small technical advances arranged in an interlocking series. Each small advance was a triumph of remote control' (Cooper 1992: 260). Viewed in this way, the organization of the Portuguese East Indies Company is best understood in terms of a sociotechnical network of displacements and translations of power. These achievements were embodied in a three-stage sequence in which, firstly, a reduced model of the original is built. This is then followed by bringing the remote near to hand in order to facilitate manipulability. Finally, a visual representation is made of that which defies physical contact. Thus, the solar table devised by the Regimentó: ... not only represents the sun's declinations, but it also represents the work o f countless predecessors, which remains ever present in the sociotechnical organizations of the Portuguese vessels. Both the heavens and history may be "distant" but they are, nevertheless, actively present in the remote control capacities of representation. Remote control, in this case, borrows power from astronomical, geographical, natural and historical sources. By incorporating significant features of the environment into representational forms, by appropriating environmental powers through models, data and instruments and turning them back on their sources, remote control ensures independence from external forces, freedom of mental and physical motion and, ultimately, secure a position from which it is able to dominate the world. (Cooper 1992: 260)

Remote control, in this instance, is attained by harnessing the powers of the natural elements and then turning them back on these sources through the use of models, data and instruments so that a certain level of control and independence is realized. Another way of understanding the process of gaining advantage in remote control is to view successes, such as that of the Portuguese East Indies Company, as resulting from a series of displacements or translations in which a process of reversal occurs whereby firstly, entities are converted into inscriptions such as reports, memoranda, documents, survey results, and samples so that these inscriptions now represented such entities in a manageable form. These are then, in tum, analyzed in the comforts of centralized control offices and laboratories so that underlying causes and explanations can be deduced. Armed with these explanations, the findings are then sent back to be acted upon and reacted to. Cooper (1992) cites the work of the microbiologist, Louis Pasteur, who was responsible for the development of an antidote to the anthrax bacillus, as an example of how such displacements occur in the micro-practices of representation.

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In the early 1880s, Pasteur's laboratory, situated in the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, directed its attention to finding a cure for the cattle disease anthrax, which was, at that time, causing much damage in the French farming industry and which had proved to be difficult to study using traditional laboratory investigative methods. In order to overcome this problem, Pasteur established his 'laboratory' in a farmhouse in the French countryside in order to be nearer to the source of the disease and to study the context within which the disease was causing the damaging effects. Cooper points out that this had the effect of confusing the 'usual distinction between the laboratory and the outside world' (1992: 261). By being out in the 'field', Pasteur and his colleagues were able to leam, from the veterinarians and the farmers, the condition in which the disease occurred and its effects on the cattle. After a period of time, Pasteur returned to his laboratory in Paris, bringing along with him the cultivated bacillus in order to enable him to conduct more extensive tests with it. Once in his main laboratory, Pasteur was able to grow the bacillus in isolation and in larger quantities. What was once difficuU to trace, because of its microscopic size and its admixing with other organisms: ... now becomes visible and, therefore, amenable to investigation. The cause of the anthrax can now be seen at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, while back at the farm, it remains invisibly lethal. (Cooper 1992: 261, emphasis original)

This is a result of the process of displacement, but, as Cooper shows, more displacements were to follow. Pasteur is now able to simulate the outbreak of the disease by innoculating animals with the anthrax culture he had produced. Cooper notes that this makes the nature of the process of displacement self-evident: ... by isolating its cause and developing an effective vaccine, Pasteur and his colleagues increased their own power while reducing the power of the microbes. Still weak in relation to the microbes, the veterinarians and the farmers are forced to go to Pasteur in order to become strong, so further enhancing the power of his laboratory. (Cooper 1992: 261)

The final displacement occurs when the anthrax, now in the form of a vaccine, is returned to the farm in order to demonstrate its effectiveness on farm cattle. Field trials were held to prove the success of the vaccine. This, again, is yet another displacement since Pasteur now had to represent outside the relevant features of his laboratory in order that the same results, which he obtained in his laboratory, could be successfully repeated in the

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field. This illustrates a triumphant reversal of power in which the once invisible microbe, which had the power to decimate the cattle population, is turned back on itself in the form of a vaccine which is then used to neutralize the destructive effects of the disease. Displacement is, thus, a strategy of translation which enables the latter to build up what Gallon (1986) calls an 'actor-world' fi-om the heterogeneity of elements involved. Cooper goes on to tell us that neither remote control nor displacement are thinkable without the element of abbreviation as a crucial feature in representation: 'Abbreviation is intrinsic to the economy of convenience and control that representation embodies.' (Cooper 1992: 263). I have briefly discussed abbreviation earlier when referring to the economizing tendency in words and explanation and used the example of the Chinese word for 'door' as an illustration of one such instance. Abbreviation involves 'close packing' and 'miniaturization' in order to facilitate manipulability and control. For example, the information contained in the computer disc that I am using at this moment, is many times more closely packed than the printed pages which can be produced from it when I decide to convert the information to 'hard copy'. One small disc measuring three and a half inches square is equivalent to several hundred pages of printed A4 paper. Moreover, while on disc, I am able to manipulate the data with greater ease: shifting paragraphs, deleting lines, adding and modifying the text. In printed form, this would clearly be much more difficult to accomplish. The significance of abbreviation is better appreciated in Foucault's (1979) analysis of the arts of administration and governance during the 18th century. Foucault notes that, before the 18th century, the system of governance was based on the model of the family and, hence, administrators adopted a paternalistic view in which the common welfare of all was the paramount consideration. With the population increases which occurred in the Western world during the 18th century, the system of governance was radically altered: From now on, one managed a large amorphous mass whose sheer magnitude kept it at a distance, and which one could only understand in terms of statistical representations. (Cooper 1992: 264)

Statistics, being the 'science of the state', gave rise to notions such as 'population densities', 'death rate', 'birth rate', cycles of scarcity', etc.. These were the representational mechanisms through which the masses could be brought under control. Knowledge at a glance, was what administrators demanded in order to cope with the increasing problems of mass

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administration. Hence, 'optic-friendly' technologies of representation began to emerge systematically as a response to the increasing complexity associated with these problems of administration. The new art of administration, as in the case of the Portuguese experience, arose from the necessity to extract the maximum compliance from all the elements involved: Just as the Portuguese were forced to develop more effective technologies to represent and control the distant heavens and the refractory natural forces of the sea and weather, so the new breed of administrators were forced to develop more effective ways of representing and, thus, controlling the new urban masses of the eighteenth century. (Cooper 1992: 264).

Thus, it was that Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) came to be preoccupied with the major concern of taming these urban masses. Bentham wrote extensively on various aspects of government and administration, but his central concern was with devising schemes to regulate and control the masses. The new human masses evaded taxonomies and made enumerations indeterminable, so much so that confusion and unrest were common features of urban life during this period: Almost by definition, a human mass defies formal knowledge and representation. Any mob or mass, simply because it lacks classification and resists calculation, is "already seditious" (Miller 1987: 17). In this sense, the masses were remote; their sheer numbers also made them physically unmanageable. Before they could be organized and managed, the masses had to be re-presented in the form of remote control, displacement and abbreviation. (Cooper 1992: 264)

Bentham's approach was to divide and rule: ... the spatial and temporal divisions of workers at their benches, pupils at school, prisoners at their cells, etc., enabled clarification and counting, the rudiments of representation.... 'Books must be kept.... Chronological entries will be made daily, methodological entries—products, population tables, stock inventories, health records, moral conduct records, requests....' (Miller 1987: 19). By this "methodization" (Bentham's terms), large numbers of people, distributed over a large area, can be represented in the small space of a book and inspected "at first glance", (ibid.: 265)

This is the power of abbreviation which operates on the principle of condensing much into little. Hence, representation as abbreviation, is not so much about the reproduction of things, as about an organizational process involving translation and condensation, in order to gain greater temporal and spatial control. Representation is centrally concerned with issues such

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as ordering, listing, displaying, prioritizing, and spacing. It is what produces the 'invisible' space that allow things to become what they are known as. This is what Foucault (1970) invites us to consider: the 'invisible holes in the visibility of conventional representation' (Cooper 1993 : 291). The logic of representation which produces the visibility in conventional representation (i.e. representationalism) is topological or spatial rather than designative, 'it is a manifold which doubles back on itself, and not a simple naming mechanism' (Cooper 1993: 291). Representation incorporates an 'unfolding' or 'doubling' which subsequently enables the distinction between a first, or primary, term and a secondary term to be made. It is this space in which the unfolding occurs in representation that we now tum our attention to in order to grasp the subtlety of the act of representation.

The Space of Representation Representation, as description or explanation involves the 'unfolding of a manifold onto a flat plane' (Cooper 1993: 289). In so doing, it produces the space of 'saying' which enables proper names and categories, as well as oppositional terms, to operate with their self-evident identities. This, however, hides a dimension of space in which such terms and oppositions are 'constantly collapsing into each other and losing their separate identities' (Cooper 1993: 290). What is at stake here are two kinds of space which Cooper (following Foucault) identifies as a space that is said and a space that is seen. What can be said is designative and at the service of discourse. What can only be seen, on the other hand, is manifold and, hence, escapes discursive explanation. Although the function of representation is to ... unfold the fold, detach its duplicity, lay it out on a plane, give it a temporal order so that a "second" will always seem to follow a "first", a sign always to have a referent, a copy an original. (Cooper 1993: 294)

there is always the fold that resists unfoldment. As Foucault observes: It is in vain that we say what we see: what we see never resides in what we say. And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying; the space where they achieve their splendor is not that deployed by our eyes but the sequential elements of syntax. (Foucault 1970: 9)

The other space of representation lies beyond discourse and words, beyond proper names and designated categories. This is the space between

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things and not the things in themselves which representationalism is primarily concerned with. Foucault, therefore, is mainly concerned with exploring the threshold between what is named and located, with the fold which reveals the invisibility that gives rise to the visibility of conventionalized representations. In The Order of Things, Foucault begins with a detailed analysis of Velazquez's painting. Las Meninas. Approached from a traditional representationalist understanding, the painting in question depicts the Spanish Infanta Margarita surrounded by an entourage of duennas, maids of honor, courtiers and dwarfs. Other aspects of the scene include a painter working on a canvas that viewers are unable to see, but whose models appear reflected in a mirror behind the artist. They are the unmistakable figures of the Infanta's parents. King Philip PV and his wife, Mariana. Foucault further observes that it is possible to attribute names to the other members of the group with great precision since 'tradition recognizes that here we have Dona Maria Augustina Sarmiente, over there Nieto, in the foreground Nicolaso Pertusato, an Italian jester' (Foucault 1970: 9). These proper names form useful landmarks and help avoid ambiguous designations so that we can know what the painter is looking at. Thus, once everything is named, identified and located, everything becomes known and there is 'no remainder, no shadow' (Cooper 1993: 293). Cooper points out that Foucault knew that Velazquez was working with both the spaces of saying and seeing in Las Meninas in order to show that the relationship between language and painting is an infinite one: But if one wishes to keep the relation of language to vision open, if one wishes to treat their incompatibility as a starting point for speech instead of an obstacle to be avoided, so as to stay as close as possible to both, then one must erase those proper names and preserve the infinity of the task. (Foucault 1970: 9)

What we say differs from and is incompatible with, what we see. Therefore, the use of proper names 'blinds' us to the space of seeing in representation. Hence, we must 'pretend not to know who is to be reflected in the depths of that mirror, and interrogate that reflection in its own terms' (ibid.: 10). In a further five pages of painstaking analysis, Foucault shows that the 'reflection' which he sought to interrogate, turns out to be 'a complex fold, a manifold, marked by reversals, oppositions, inversions, displacements, dissolutions, voids and infinite regresses' (Cooper 1993 : 296). Velazquez's painting turns out to be a picture which plays with the impossibility of representing representation:

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It may be that, in this picture, as in all representations of which it is, as it were, the manifest essence, the profound invisibility of what one sees is inseparable from the invisibility of the person seeing—despite all mirrors, reflections, imitations, and portraits. (Foucauh 1970; 16)

It is impossible to represent representation because of the invisibility of the representer or seeing eye (gaze), to itself This is the other subject of Velazquez's painting, the 'space' of representation, not the things represented. Velazquez is exploring the act of representing in his painting but finds that he cannot represent his own act of representing. The very act of seeing is predicated upon the necessity of dividing oneself into the seer and the seen. To say 'it is raining' is not merely to make a distinction between that which is and that which is not, but also to reinforce the more obscure assumption about our 'seer' status when making such statements. When I make such a statement, I immediately create a primary distinction which separates me from that which I claim to be observing. Earlier in this chapter I have discussed Spencer Brown's exploration of the consequences of making a primary distinction between that which, then, forms the internal and the external which it correspondingly creates. Spencer Brown's analysis of the laws of form is best exemplified in his discussion of the paradox of the physicist whose subject matter is the material world. For Spencer Brown, the material world described by the physicist: ... consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as wave ... and other wave forms, called electromagnetic, which (travel) through space with a standard velocity. (Spencer Brown 1969: 104, quoted in Cooper 1993: 290)

However, the physicist himself or herself is also made up of the very factors which he/she is attempting to describe. This means that, in practice, the physical world of which the physicist is him/herself made up: ... must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever is seen is only partially itself We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e., is indistinct from itself). But, in any attempt to see itself as object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and, therefore, false to itself (Spencer Brown 1969: 105, quoted in Cooper 1993: 290)

Consequently, the world, which the physicist is attempting to represent, always partially eludes itself Each renewed attempt to represent the world.

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no matter how detailed and cumulative, will be swallowed up by the world expanding to contain it: ... the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us. The snake eats itself, the dog chases its own tail, (ibid.: 106, quoted in Cooper 1993: 290).

As Cooper puts it succinctly, the physicist 'enfolded by his own unfolding is compelled to follow a receding horizon that is always beyond representation' (Cooper 1993: 290). The term duplicity or infinite redoubling has been used to allude to a similar effect produced by Derrida's (1967) 'différance'. Gasché (1986) takes up this question in what he calls the 'general theory of doubling' which essentially rests on the idea of terms turning back upon themselves. Gasché points out that, traditionally, 'the double came after the simple, and subsequently multiplies it' (Gasché 1986: 225). However, if we foreground the actual process of doubling itself, we begin to recognize that 'original and copy, firstness and secondness, is an after-effect of a more basic process of doubling' (Cooper 1993: 298). This resonates with the point made earlier by Spencer Brown in our discussion of the making of a primary distinction. What is thought of as an original unity is, in fact, already divided within itself Gasché develops a notion of doubling as a process which eludes conventional representational thinking: ... by adding itself to itself, the reflected or doubled is also split in itself Because the possibility of reflective duplication must be inscribed within it, the reflected is divided by its reflection in itself. An original division of the reflected must double the dual relation between the double and the original if the original is to lend itself to duplication at all. The originary duplication eliminates the possibility of establishing a lasting source, origin, and original, installing instead an infinite reference between originals and doubles. The dual relation of the simple and the secondary, of the original and the double, becomes derivative of this structure o f dividing reference, or infinite duplicity. (Gasché 1986: 226)

Cooper notes from this that the logic of doubling must deny the illusion of a presupposed originary unity because such unity is always already divided since any entity 'can come into presence only by immediately producing the possibility of its duplication' (Gasché 1986: 227). For Gasché's general theory of doubling, therefore, unity and division occurs at the very same time; hence, firstness and secondness emerge simultaneously. Herbst (1976) suggests that the original state, prior to a distinction being made, is 'neither finite nor infinite, neither something that exists nor something that

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does not exist. It is entirely free of any distinguishing characteristics' (Herbst 1976: 90). For him, the triadic set which makes up the primary distinction is the irreducible atomic element of any conceptual system. Thus the set shown below, we have 'being', 'boundary' and 'non-being'. These elements emerge simultaneously so much so that 'being' can only have any sense because of the possibility of 'non-being'.

Ì being

boundary

non-being

Figure 7: The Primary Distinction (From Herbst 1976: 90)

If we remove the boundary, what results is not 'non-being' or 'nothing', but an indistinguishable empty space. No single element can ever exist in isolation or produce its own self-identity. Therefore, we can see that even when we talk about the 'original state', it is, in fact, not the originally original state but an already divided unity. Gasché calls this the in-advance divided unity whereby the simple notion of undivided unity is forever out of reach. The primary distinction thus reflects the moment of our insertion into awareness in which the very organizational structures of understanding are generated as a triad of elements through which we then think representation. Cooper (1993) identifies this 'in-advance' or 'already' as a suppression and conversion of the indeterminate and the 'un-ready' into a form that alleviates our anxieties. The 'un-ready' is the indistinguishable empty space which Herbst (1976) refers to. It is the pure unnamed, unidentified act which precedes all conscious thought. For Lyotard, the un-ready is: ... a stranger to consciousness and cannot be constituted by it ... it is what dismantles consciousness, what deposes consciousness, it is what consciousness cannot formulate, and even what consciousness forgets in order to constitute itself. (Lyotard 1989: 197, quoted in Cooper 1993: 300)

The un-ready is 'older than' all questions pertaining to meaning in the scheme of things. It is the pure event. The already, on the other hand:

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... constitutes the setting-before in space and time of the "world picture" where a unitary system of representation fashions the world in its own image. (Cooper 1993: 300)

Codes, timetables, models, documents and registers serve to construct an administrative system w^hich provides the basis for knowing in-advance. Likewise 'theatres of representation', including art galleries and theatres, work by means of predetermining both the subject that is represented and the subject who views the representation. Frames of division, which, as part of a cumulative series of injunctions or punctualisations, 'implicitly instruct the spectator what to see and how to see it in a framework that is a setting before of both forms of subject' (Cooper 1993 : 300). Thus, 'in-advance' knowing and representing are essentially the suppression of the other scene, the 'un-ready' which forms the space in which representation occurs. We are now in a position to understand the indistinguishable empty space which forms the 'un-ready' or the 'fold' as another way of thinking about Derrida's (1967) 'différance'. 'Différance' is neither a word nor a concept for Derrida. It cannot be couched in the conventional representational understanding of language since it yields and, hence, must necessarily be 'older than' the linguistic system which tries to describe it. In coining the term 'différance', Derrida combines the two senses of the French term differer which means both to 'differ' in space and to 'defer' in time. Différance is, therefore, the play of the differences both in space and time which provides the possibility of a 'conceptual process and system in general' (Derrida 1981: 11). Like the 'un-ready' or the 'fold', 'différance' can never be fully grasped in the present (in-advance or the already) since it is an active play that always runs away from us like a receding horizon. As with Herbst's (1976) discussion of the fundamental nature of the primary distinction, différance is what produces the internal and the external, the first and the second, the before and the after. 'Nothing' is already a product of this ever active play of différance since it, in effect, prefigures the triadic structure that Herbst refers to: Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to one another. This spacing is the simultaneous active and passive (the a of différance indicates the indecision as concerns activity and passivity, which cannot be governed by, or distributed between, terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function. (Derrida 1981: 27).

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DifFérance answers to an economical question. It is the most general structure of economy which enables all other economical concepts, such as 'representation' and 'organization', to be articulated. Put into more concrete terms, différance like the 'un-ready', is a notion whose meaning can never be fully grasped. It is the 'non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences. Thus the name "origin" no longer suits it.' (ibid.: 11). At best, we can say that it generates the primordial divisional act which produces the cleavage that is the 'in-advance divided unity'. Like the Tao in ancient Chinese thought, 'différance' is what achieves the 'cutting-off that produces the actuality of what we apprehend. It is the non-originary origin of the space of representation.

Organization as Representation We are now in a position to begin to articulate some implications of postmodem thinking for the concept of organization and for that intellectual practice which we call organizational analysis. In the first instance, postmodem or upstream thinking, denies that the task of theory is essentially to capture the essence of pre-existing entities such as 'organizations'. The belief that organizations are concrete, stable and identifiable entities with distinctive boundaries that can be described and analyzed, using appropriate research methodologies, has been a dominant assumption in traditional representational thinking. Organizations, like 'individuals' and 'societies', are conceived of as being separated by a structure of invisible 'walls' which Elias calls the 'brittle facade of reifying concepts which obscure and distort our understanding of our own life in society' (Elias 1978: 15). Belief in the existence of such invisible walls seduces us into thinking about organizations as free-standing entities rather than as effects produced through precariously balanced figurational patterns of actions and interactions. Such figurational patterns of actions and interactions make up an emergent sociotechnical network of transactions characterized by a heterogeneity of material and social elements. What we call 'organizations', therefore, are apparent stabilized socio-technical representational networks comprising existing relationships between these material elements. Such networks of organization are not only composed of people, but also of machines, animals, buildings, money, computer keyboards, test tubes, skilled hands and electron microscopes. All organizational actions and interactions are mediated through material objects of one sort or another. They participate in the

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formation of the social and the organizational. Understood in this way, an organization may be seen as a set of strategies which operate to: ... generate complex configurations of network durability, spatial mobility, systems of representation and calculability—configurations which operate to generate t h e center/periphery asymmetries characteristic of formal organization. (Law 1992: 10)

Alternatively, formal organization is a representational device involving the use of advantage-gaining micro-practices such as abbreviation, substitution and displacement in order to tum human limitations into gains. This approach to organization studies suggests that our analyses of organization would involve the detailed study of representational practices and the socio-technical networks associated with such practices. The postmodernist rejection of a sustainable distinction between reality and representation forces us to recognize the reality of representation and to see the latter as a crucial aspect of formal organizing processes. Representations, as organizing practices, embody a principle of economy in which the limitations of our human bodies are compensated for, and magnified through, these acts of representation. In this postmodern style of thinking, organization is now viewed as the product of our human 'will to order' generating dense relational networks of representation. In the next chapter, I explore further the implications of this postmodern thinking for understanding organizing/ organization. Moving further upstream, a second strategy I shall be adopting is to rethink the role of organizational analysis as an intellectual practice. From an upstream mode of thought, organizational analysis is better construed as the intellectual practice of dismantling or deconstructing the pervasive structure of organization and representation characterizing modernism, and of making more transparent the manner in which these organizing practices help constitute a version of social reality that we find so immediately necessary and familiar. In this regard, our attention is directed towards the space within which organization and representation occurs. The space of representation and, hence, organization, as we have shown in the previous section, foregrounds the subliminal aspects of these practices whereby the processes of division and framing, which operate according to a logic of inclusion and exclusion, are made the focus of analysis. As discussed earlier, this was shown to involve the suppression of the 'fold' or the 'un-ready' in the act of representation. Organization, as the act of representation when understood in terms of Derrida's 'différance' involves the deliberate process of stabilizing the

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'manifold' so that it becomes possible to perceive of the latter as a discrete entity in itself. Couched in these terms, the project of organizational analysis becomes not so much one of accounting for organization and representation but rather one of deliberately uncovering the tensions, contradictions and blindspots in the hierarchical system of thinking which has provided the conceptual foundations for Western thinking. Following Derrida (1976, 1981), we can begin to rethink organizational analysis as a form of deconstructive practice whereby the analysis of framing, dividing, codifying and other familiar ordering practices becomes the central focus of organizational inquiry. Instead of focusing on the characteristics of organization or even the dynamics of the networking micro-practices which contribute to generating effects which we call organization, we tum our attention to the 'close reading' of the language of organization in order to reveal how language, as a system of representational abstraction, helps to shape and define organization as an appropriate object of analysis. Language, as an organized and codified mode of representation, is what allows us to say less and less about more and more. This is, by now, the familiar point I have been making throughout this chapter; that representation is essentially a question of reversing an unfavorable relationship and turning disadvantage into advantage. What is organized and representable can be set out in advance for our control and manipulation. In this process, a deliberate form of suppression occurs which remains hidden and unexplicated. It is the task of uncovering or deconstructing this tendency of organization that characterizes the alternative approach to understanding organizational analysis. To deconstruct is to 'undo' or to 'dismantle' the conceptual oppositions in linguistic convention which have provided the bases for framing our modem experiences of social reality. It is to expose the persistent domination of one term over another in the academic production of knowledge. We recall, in the introductory chapter, that knowledge according to Serres (1982), is not innocent. What we call knowledge is the outcome of a violence fiieled by our insatiable will to organize. Deconstraction seeks to expose this violence for what it is and, therefore, to put the status of knowledge into question. It proceeds by: ... the carefiil teasing out of the warring forces o f signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claims to an unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. (Johnson 1980: 5)

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Deconstruction seeks to 'disorganize' and, hence, neutralize the power of organized hierarchical systems of conceptual categories which serve to frame the discourse on organization and, therefore, to situate it differently. As an intellectual strategy in organizational analysis, it will serve to enrich our understanding of organizing processes and representational practices. In chapter 6, I shall argue a case for rethinking organizational analysis as a process of deconstructive practice and speculate on its significance as an intellectual strategy for teaching organization studies.

Conclusion Postmodern 'de-differentiation' of the real with the representational, a condition associated with what has been termed postmodemity, directs our attention to the inevitable reality of representation. Representations, as such, are not attempts to 'copy' an external reality. Instead, it is a means of enabling us to bring the remote, obdurate and intractable to hand and to thereby enable us to act economically from a distance. Hence, to represent is to 'make present' that which is absent. The act of representing therefore embodies a principle of economy which enables us to tum our weaknesses into strengths and our potential losses into gains. Remote control, abbreviation and displacement are key techniques of representing and organizing. Through these core technologies of representation, the affairs of the worid are made more amenable to human intervention. Representation involves the unfolding of a manifold onto a flat plane in order to aid processes of comprehension. Through this process, it produces the space of 'saying' which facilitates the proper use of names and categories and enable them to operate with their self-evident identities. Thus, the function of representation as an organizational impulse is essentially to provide a temporal order so that it is able to create effects such as firstness and secondness, original and copy, and, in so doing creating a sequential linearity which denies the logic of 'doubling'. However, as we have seen, Gasché (1986), Herbst (1976), and Cooper (1993), have all demonstrated that the logic of doubling must necessarily deny the illusion of this temporal sequence or of an unproblematically existing originary unity. Traditional concepts of organization which rely uncritically on notions of center/periphery, inside/outside are, thus, rendered problematic. This implies a necessity to rethink organization and, by extension, the academic activity we call organizational analysis. Chapter 6

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moves on to examine the consequences of bringing an emergent and processual orientation to bear in the analysis of organization.

Chapter 6: Thinking Processually: From Organizations' to Organizing Processes

Introduction In Chapter 4, I explored a postmodern style of thinking which entails the radical questioning of conventional institutionalized categories of knowledge characterizing the modemist/representationalist discourse. Postmodern thinking epitomizes the insistence on moving inexorably upstream so as to problematize self-evident (black-boxed) evocative terms such as 'reality', 'truth', 'knowledge', 'representation' and 'organization' with a view to situating these terms differently and to thereby reveal their constitutive nature in shaping modernist discourse. To do this, postmodern thinkers have developed a number of intellectual strategies which have helped them to think 'outside' and 'beyond' the constraints imposed by the hegemony of representationalist epistemology. The result has been the creation of an entirely new 'thought style', bringing with it a new critical approach to old questions. Postmodern thinking brings to bear an 'emergent' and 'processual' orientation to the analysis of social phenomena including fundamental and selfevidently held notions such as'individuals', 'organizations' and 'society'. In doing so, it eschews the attraction of uncritically using such convenient encompassing terms in favor of conducting an ascending analysis (see Foucault 1980: 159) of the discursive micro-practices which generate these stabilized effects and show them to be 'outcomes' of social interactions rather than explanatory mechanisms in their own right. In this regard, postmodem thinking parallels the Lamarckian inversion of evolutionary theory whereby mind, which had previously provided the basis for explanations of the biological world, now became that which needed explanation itself For Lamarck, the starting point was the infusoria from which evolutionary changes led to what we now call mind. Mind is an outcome or 'effect' generated through biological evolution rather than that which accounts for this process. Hence, the then well-accepted ladder of explanation, which went downwards from the supreme God to man and then to the apes and, finally, to the infiisoria, was turned upside down by this Lamarckian claim. Adopting an emergent and processual approach in social analysis enables us to avoid the problems of reification of social entities such as 'indivi-

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duals' and 'organizations' and, instead, directs our attention to the underlying organizing processes which create these effects that are then subsequently taken to be concrete existing entities in their own right. We recall, following our earlier discussion of the splitting and inversion model of discovery in the introductory chapter that the process of reification or objectification is effectively 'forgotten' in the reconstruction of events thereby enabling the observer/theorist to believe in the prior existence of social entities such as organizations. Once the existence of such entities is accepted, it is not difficult to see how the modemist/representationalist discourse can be legitimated and sustained. To break this theoretical closure in modernist thinking, postmodern writers insist upon the necessity to explain how modern knowledge, in particular the organizational codes they implicitly rely upon, structures our thinking processes enabling us to thereby generate these social effects. Thus, postmodern thinking enables us to see that theories of organization, as institutionalized modes of thought, are themselves outcomes of primary organizing processes. What all these imply is that we need to begin to think of 'organizations' not as 'things' whose properties such as unity, identity, permanence and structure can be explored and described, but rather as loosely emergent sets of organizing rules which orient interactional behavior in particular ways within a social collectivity. In short, the study of organization should involve the study of the emergence of organization rather than the relatively static features displayed of this constitutive process. It is this 'upstream' attitude towards organizational inquiry which is adopted here on.

The 'Wfll' in Oiganization and Representation That our organizational world is a product of acts of will and representation is the inspiration behind the works of such writers as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer argues that the primary act of'division into object and subject is the first, universal and essential form of representation' (Schopenhauer 1966 vol. 1: 25). It is this act of distanciation which makes possible the complementary pair, object and subject. The former exists for the latter alone and therefore: ... the objective existence of things is conditioned by a représenter of them ... consequently the objective world exists only as representation.... For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is, therefore, the representation of this subject, and consequently is conditioned by the

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subject, and moreover by the subject's form of representation, which belongs to the subject and not the object. (Schopenhauer 1966, vol. 1: 5)

Schopenhauer's point is reminiscent of Spencer Brown's (1969) discussion of the primary distinction which forms the cleavage separating the internal from the external. This issue has been well discussed in Chapter 5 when we explored the structure of representation. What is important in Schopenhauer's observation for the purpose of our analysis here is his emphasis on will and representation as the source of organization. Our material world can only be known to us through the reality we create in willfiil acts of representation. Schopenhauer asks: 'From what source could we take the elements out of which we construct such a world?' and answers: 'Besides the will and representation, there is absolutely nothing known or conceivable for us.' (Schopenhauer, vol. 1: 105). Furthermore: ... if the material world is to be something more than our mere representation, we must say that, besides being the representation, and hence in itself of its inmost nature, it is what we find immediately in ourselves as will. (Schopenhauer 1966: 105)

Our experience of organization can be traced to a self-referential urge to organize and establish order on what is perceived to be remote and distant or unwieldy to our grasp. This will to organize is well illustrated by Italo Calvino's novel, Invisible Cities. Calvino's story begins with the young Marco Polo at the palace of the great Kublai Khan. Newly arrived and completely ignorant of the Levantine language, Marco Polo could only express himself 'with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and of horror, animal barkings or hootings, or with objects he took from his knapsack' (Calvino 1974: 20) in order to convey to the Great Khan the stories of his travels. The latter deciphered the signs, but the 'connection between them and the places visited (by Marco Polo), remained uncertain' (ibid.: 20). However, as the seasons passed and Marco Polo's missions continued, he came to master the language and idioms which enabled him to give precise and detailed accounts of the cities he had visited so that the Great Khan's curiosity was fully satisfied. Soon, with each description of the cities Marco Polo had visited, the Great Khan's mind 'set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inverting them' (Calvino 1974: 36). Eventually, while Marco Polo continued reporting his journeys, the emperor no longer listened. Instead, he interrupted: 'From now on, I shall describe the cities and you will tell me if they exist and are as I have conceived them.' (ibid.: 36). The fmal expression

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of this irrepressible wUl to organize is realized when Kublai, a keen chess player, observed that Marco's movements, as he spread out the samples of the wares he had brought back from his visits, followed a pattern of movements which constituted a system of display resembling a chess game. He thus decided that 'If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have leamt the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.' (Calvino 1974: 96). Now Kublai Khan: ... no longer had to send Marco Polo on distant expeditions; he icept him playing endless games of chess. Knowledge of the empire was hidden in the patterns drawn by the angular shifts of knights, by the diagonal passages opened by the bishop's incursions, by the lumbering, cautious tread of the king and the humble pawn, by t h e inexorable up and down of every game. (Calvino 1974: 97)

We can understand, through this episode and through our understanding of the fimction of representation, the crucial role played by will in the process of organization and representation. The organizational rules produced through this 'will to order' establishes an effect which renders the indeterminate, the remote and the obdurate more easily manipulable and, hence, more controllable and amenable to human intervention. It is this primordial and emergent character of the organizational process that forms the focus of analysis in this chapter.

Dismantling Organizations' The question of reification in organizational studies has been raised by a number of writers critical of the dominant mainstream view in organizational analysis (Silverman 1970; Weick 1969; Benson 1977; Knorr-Cetina 1979). Silverman, for instance, questions the still-dominant tendency to attribute goals to organizations, arguing that this involves imputing concrete reality to what are essentially social constructs (1970: 9). However, despite his awareness of the reified status of 'organizations' as a theoretical entity, Silverman remains trapped in the very discourse he sets out to criticize when he assumes the unproblematic constitution of 'individual' actors. KnorrCetina (1979), on the other hand insisted upon the contextuality of organizational action and urges us to forego the notion of organizations as natural systems or autonomous units operating within a specified environment. She vigorously questioned the validity of the organization/environ-

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ment distinction and, by implication, challenged the power of explanations derived therefrom. For Knorr-Cetina, organizational action is inherently contextual and this contextuality is to be searched within the synchronic and diachronic organization of action which is itself 'trans-organizational' since it goes 'beyond the smallest concentric circles of the immediate situation explored by microsociological approaches' (Knorr-Cetina 1979: 83). Contextuality, in this sense: ... cannot be added to systems of internal, organizational action through linkages o f exchange and adaptation according to some preestablished boundaries between an internal and external world. (Knorr-Cetina 1979: 80)

Rather, it is the organization itself which must be seen as an 'environment', that is, as the local site and the political arena in which the reproduction of specific contextual structures, such as an industrial-political market or a scientific specialty, is achieved (ibid.: 97). Thus, the notion of organizations as natural unproblematically bounded entities is dissolved and replaced by networks of interactional activities which serve to enact meanings that are contingent upon given social situations. Within this perspective the notion of 'organizations' becomes a redundant concept and attention is, instead, redirected to the emergent networks of interactional activities which take place in concrete situations and which collectively help make our modem world appear so immediate and familiar. Both Silverman and Knorr-Cetina based their critique of organizational reification on a symbolic interactionist reading of the social world which eschews the use of unifying concepts such as organizations and society. In doing so, they follow in the tradition of influential thinkers, such as Dewey and G. H. Mead, who emphasized the primacy of interactions as the appropriate unit of analysis. This is a view also upheld by writers as diverse as Buckley (1967) and Elias (1978). Buckley's influential treatment of the morphogenesis of complex adaptive systems emphasized the centrality of acts and interactions in the constitution of stabilizing matrices that make up what we call organizations and institutions. Adopting this ascending analysis of organizational formation enabled Buckley to avoid the pitfalls of reiflcation previously discussed. For him, social organization: ... can be seen in terms of a set of common-meaning based constraints in the ensemble of possible interactions of social units, a reduction in uncertainty of behaviors, or a set of "mappings" of behavior and goal states. (Buckley 1967: 94)

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Thus, what emerges as the apparent concrete organization is a resultant both of actors following out pre-established rules plus the interactions of these actors with each other and 'with an environment whose constraints or exigencies are usually much too rich to be covered by the rules' (ibid.: 94). Buckley's analysis of social organization is, perhaps, one of the more fruitful attempts to developing a processual approach to organizational analysis that remains more sensitive to emergence of the latter as a social phenomenon. Elias, similarly, is critical of the conventional conceptual instruments for thinking which are generally constructed as though everything we experience as external to the individual were a thing; an 'object, and moreover, a stationary object' (Elias 1978: 13). Whilst concepts such as 'family', 'school' or 'organization' plainly refer to groupings of interdependent human beings, to specific figurations which people formed with each other: ... our traditional manner of forming these concepts makes it appear as if groupings formed by interdependent human beings were pieces of matter—objects of the same kind as rocks, trees, or houses. These traditional reifying ways of speaking, and corresponding traditional modes of thinking about groupings of people ... manifest themselves in many ways, not least in the term "society" ... this reifying mode o f expression greatly hampers and may even prevent one from understanding the nature of sociological problems. (Elias 1978: 13)

According to Elias, the commonsense model which dominates people's experience of their relationship to society is a 'naively egocentric' one, whereby a structure of invisible walls or barriers is deemed to exist which, at one and the same time both separates the individual from society and yet includes him/her in it. For Elias, these 'invisible barriers' obscure and distort our understanding of our own life in society. As Cooper (1990) points out, belief in the existence of such invisible walls seduces us into thinking in entitative terms rather than in terms of action and interaction. To overcome this problem, Elias proposed a more 'realistic picture of people, who, through their basic dispositions and inclinations, are directed towards and linked with each other in the most diverse ways' (Elias 1978: 15). This involves conceiving of people as making up 'webs of interdependence' or 'figurations' sustained by 'power balances' of many sorts. Cooper (1990) and Cooper and Law (1995) note that Elias's idea of figuration is a way of getting us to reverse the commonsense view of social systems as 'things' with clearly definable boundaries and to instead substitute 'practice' and 'process' as the stuff of social life. Elias's figurational webs are clearly similar to the notion of 'networks' and in particular the idea

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of 'actor-networks' which has come into increasing usage in organizational studies in recent years. In a later section of this chapter, I shall extend this analysis using actor-network theory and the related concepts of 'autopoiesis' and 'distributed cognition' to precipitate a reconceptualizing of organization and the organizing process. Here, I wish to move on to reviewing some of the consequences of dereifying 'organizations'.

From 'Organizations' to Organizing Processes In his seminal contribution to the study of organizing, Weick (1969, 1979) defines the organizing process as 'a consensually validated grammar for reducing equivocality by means of sensible interlocking behaviors' (1979: 3, emphasis original). To organize for Weick is to assemble ongoing interdependent actions into meaningful sequences which produce sensible outcomes. Organizing involves the systematic accounting of the rules and conventions through which such sets of interlocking behaviors are put together to form social processes which are intelligible to the actors concerned. In this sense, it serves as a grammar for all concerned. The central point in Weick's argument, however, is that the function of organizing must be understood as a means of reducing equivocality in what would otherwise be just a stream of indistinguishable and chaotic experience. Organizing, thus, serves to narrow the range of possibilities of behavioral responses in a given situation. He maintains that the activity involved in organizing 'are directed towards the establishment of a workable level of certainty' (Weick 1979: 6). Thus, organizing is not so much about attempts to achieve specific pre-established goals, as many mainstream organizational theorists are still inclined to believe, but instead the process of organizing facilitates the transformation of otherwise equivocal information into a degree of unequivocality so that it can then be more easily handled. This is what is also implied by the celebrated notion of bounded rationality by March and Simon (1958). The traditional inteφretation of bounded rationality revolves around the argument that, because actors do not have perfect information to aid their decision making processes, they tend to 'satisfice' rather than 'maximize' their situations. However, this interpretation obscures the greater significance of the 'bounding' activity as one involving the necessary removal of equivocality in order to make the information 'manageable'. Contrary to popularly held beliefs, the real argument proposed by March and Simon was not that bounded rational action was a consequence of inadequate infor-

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mation, but rather that it was due to the inherent limitations of human beings as information processors. These limitations were 'limitations of computational capability, the organization and utilization of memory, and the like' (March 1988: 270). Hence, bounded rational action is better understood as an outcome of primary organizing processes rather than as an epiphenomenon of 'choice' traditionally attributed to autonomous organizational actors. What is characteristic of this organizing process is that it is selfgenerated and that the structure which results is not a response to some environment 'out there', but rather develops naturally as a manifestation of self-referential behavior. Weick's social psychology of organizing as well as March and Simon's contributions, therefore, offer an attractive, alternative approach to the study of organization and rationality. This is a point pressed home by two other organizational theorists, Sandelands and Drazin. Sandelands and Drazin (1989) applaud Weick, in particular, for showing the lead in formulating this alternative approach to theory building in organizational analysis. For them, Weick's theory of organizing is 'an object lesson in how to go about building (and not building) a theory of organization' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 469). As they saw it, Weick departed radically from the exogenetic and endogenetic arguments characteristic of current mainstream debates in organizational analysis. Thus, in his accounts, there are no 'ghostly forces intruding from the environment nor decision-making elites choosing design' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 470). However, as Sandelands and Drazin noted that 'after staking this claim on the territory of organizing, Weick abandons it by retreating to endogenetic and exogenetic arguments' (ibid.: 470). Thus, after a promising start the 'true process description of organizational members is transformed into familiar and mistaken arguments from strategy and environment' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 471). Sandelands and Drazin attribute Weick's subsequent 'lapsing' into more familiar arguments to his inattention to the function of language in theory building. For them, the problems of organization theory are problems associated with the use of words. Thus, theories of organization are: ... undermined by words that refer to unauthentic processes operating between uncompanionable objects. These words portray an unreal world where organizing appears to be explained, but is not. (Sandelands and Drazin: 472)

Essentially, Sandelands and Drazin's argument revolves around the claim that theories of organization rely upon verbs such as shape, determine, select, etc.. Although these verbs, when used, give the illusion of referring to organizational processes, they tum out, on further examination, to be

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achievement terms. An achievement verb refers only to the fact that an event has occurred. Thus, the word 'choice' does not refer to a definite and separately identifiable process or activity. Instead, it is a powerful and convenient figure of speech which only serves to obscure the interactional activities between and amongst organization members. The danger, therefore, is that the more these achievement verbs continue to be used, the more they seem to refer to actual organizational processes. When this happens, they become taken for granted and absorbed into our descriptive vocabulary despite the fact that they 'do not and could not have the existential warrant supposed for them' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 458). Thus, instead of explaining how organization comes about, they tend to mystify the process 'in a welter of misbegotten abstractions and unauthentic processes' (ibid.: 458). Sandelands and Drazin, therefore, advocate viewing the use of such words critically. For them, words that refer to objects or processes that cannot be observed or verified should be questioned. Objections should be raised to the use of words 'that name no entity or process whatsoever' (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 472). Above all, this critical approach ensures that process concepts are developed by generalizations from observed behavior and not from inference of their consequences. In the former case, descriptions of process are provided whereas the latter only produces achievement verbs and an appearance of process. Descriptions of process enables us to keep our sights on what happens in the organizing process whilst interest in achievement tends to obscure this understanding by asking why it was that one thing and not another occurred. Finally, for Sandelands and Drazin, all these views are predicated upon the principle of methodological individualism. This principle underwrites the view that organization is the emergent property of 'phenomenally given actions of individuals'. Thus: ... organization develops from interactions of individuals much in the same way that snowflakes or ice-crystals develop from interactions of water molecules, or melodies develop from the inteφlay o f musical notes. (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 4 7 3 )

Organization theory, from this standpoint, properly consists of words that describe individual actions and interactions. Once again, we see the deliberate effort made to resist organizational reification. Despite their insightful analysis, the commitment to a being-realist ontology precipitates an unquestioning acceptance of methodological individualism as a principle of analysis. This, in tum, prevents Sandelands and Drazin from arriving at a more radical understanding of the organizing process.

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It is not difficult to show that Sandelands and Drazin remain essentially trapped in a representationalist mode of thinking which accepts the idea of individuals as already existing entities that subsequently proceed to engage in social interactions. How these individuals come to be what they are is not construed as something requiring explanation. Furthermore, they rely on a representationalist view of language to support their argument for more rigor in the use of words: Although scientific words need not refer to something observed, they must, at least, refer to something. Behind them must stand a definite object or event of some kind. Where this minimum criterion is not met, words denote non-existent (unreal) objects or events, which by virtue of not being observed, cannot easily be disputed. These are words for science to avoid. (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 458, emphasis added)

In this sense, like Weick and some other more thoughtful writers on organization such as Pondy and Mitroff (1979), they display a sensitivity to the problems of language in organizational discourse. However, their own inattention to the characteristic structure of the English language prevented them from fully appreciating the significance of their own insights. Their reliance on the principle of methodological individualism, which views individuals as the ultimate 'building blocks' of organization suggest that, in an important sense the notion of individuals as self-contained and isolatable entities persists. That it is individuals who act and interact remains a 'blackboxed' assumption and, hence, from a postmodern point of view, becomes a prime candidate for 'upstream' deconstructive analysis. Thus, it does not occur to them to question the plausibility of assuming the 'individual' as a discrete entity in social analysis. Having recognized and hence given up the idea of 'organizations' as a reified entity, they are unable to take the bolder step of recognizing this insight as being similarly applicable to the notion of 'individuals'. The tendency to think in such 'atomistic' terms is, inherently, a function of the logic of language. This is an issue which the theoretical physicist, David Böhm (1980), takes up in his discussion on the fragmentation of Western language and thought. Böhm begins by noting that much of our thought is fragmented and he attributes this phenomena to the way the English language, in particular, has been structured. He specifically identified the subject-verb-object structure of sentences as a very important feature of how the English language is commonly used. This structure:

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... implies that all actions arise in a separate entity, the subject, and that, in the cases described by a tentative verb, this action crosses over the space between them t o another separate entity, the object. (Böhm 1980: 29)

Since this is a pervasive structure, it tends to lead in the whole of life to a style of thought which tends to divide things into discrete entities. Moreover, such entities are, thereby, conceived to be 'essentially fixed and static in their nature' (ibid.: 29). This is what sustains the dominant scientific world view in which 'everything is regarded as ultimately constituted out of a set of basic particles of fixed nature' (Böhm 1980: 29). We can therefore see that the principle of'methodological individualism', which was discussed earlier, is a direct extension of this mode of thinking. Consider a simple example such as the sentence 'It is raining'. Böhm points out that the 'It' is a highly problematical notion, since, couched in this way, the statement somehow implies that there is a subject, the rainer, that is doing the raining. Clearly, it would be more appropriate to say: 'Falling rain' instead. In fact, this is precisely how it would be stated in the Chinese language within which the verb tends to play a more basic role compared to the noun. Thus, we can see that the tendency for organization theorists to think of 'organizations' and 'individuals' as separate and distinct entities derives essentially firom the objectifying (and hence reifying) tendency of the English language. Recognition of this important insight therefore, leads Böhm to ask if it were not possible to avoid such fragmented ways of thinking by accentuating the verbal function since the verb effectively describes actions and movements 'which flow into each other and merge, without sharp separations or breaks' (Böhm 1980: 30). Moreover, since 'movements are in general always themselves changing, they have in them no permanent pattern of fixed form with which separately existent things could be identified' (ibid.: 30). Such an approach would then be more able to fit in with a world view in which process and movement is taken as the primary notion whilst apparently static and distinct elements are viewed as relatively invariant states of this continuing movement. This is, of course, Bohm's own theory of wholeness and the implicate order which (following Whitehead's Process and Reality) offers a processual and emergent approach to understanding reality. In order to initiate us into thinking in terms of the primacy of movement, Böhm proposed what he called the rheomode as a new form of language in which movement becomes central to our thinking in order to help us avoid the fi-agmentary tendencies endemic to the English language. The world view thus implied is one in which 'all is an unbroken and undi-

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vided whole movement, and that each "thing" is abstracted only as a relatively invariant side or aspect of this movement' (Böhm 1980: 47). What we can draw out from Bohm's way of thinking about language and thought is the priority that should be accorded to the activity of 'organizing' over and above 'organization' as a manifest effect of this reality-constituting activity. Organization now, as we saw in Elias' and Buckley's views, should be better understood as relatively invariant states of primary organizing processes. In short, the implicate order of organizing gives rise to explicate manifestations which we then call organization. Hence, organization is always already an expression of a pre-organizing impulse which creates a distinction between organization and disorganization. Such an impulse both separates and joins together the two terms as Cooper's (1986) penetrating analysis of order and disorder demonstrates. For Cooper, organization in its fundamental sense is the appropriation of order out of disorder. Hence, the work of organizing is directed towards 'transforming an intrinsically ambiguous condition into one that is ordered so that organization, as a process, is constantly bound up with its contrary state of disorganization' (Cooper 1986: 305). Whilst most of organizational analysis tends to focus attention on the nature of either organization or disorganization, Cooper draws our attention to the role of the boundary as a complex and ambiguous structure which both separates and joins organization with disorganization. Cooper further notes that, in the systems approach to organization, it is commonly assumed that it is the system that has the boundary and not the environment. Thus, the boundary serves 'to frame the system, encapsulating it as a thinkable entity and thus preserving its metalinguistic identity' (Cooper 1986: 303). As we have noted earHer, the boundary serves as a cleavage which produces the inside and the outside. Hence, as a framing device, the boundary is a structure which produces two mutually defining points of view. It, therefore, needs to be thought of not as a static concept, but as an active organizational process of differentiation which serves both system and environment or the inside and the outside equally. Organizing is, therefore, this active process of differentiating which produces the apparent identity of social objects such as organizations which then gives rise to a traditional representationalist view of the world. In order to draw attention to the primacy of this urge to organize. Cooper postulates a 'zero degree of organization' in which there is 'no specific order, organization or direction, a process of undecidability that pervades all social organization' (Cooper 1986: 316). This zero degree is to be conceived of as an excess of order or meaning. It is always 'more than':

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Zero degree is, thus, a theoretical condition of no meaning, no form, of absolute disorder which one might call the primary source of form or organization, if the concept of "primary" and "source" did not call to mind the sense of an absolute origin which was itself organized. The disorder of the zero degree is that which is essentially undecidable and it is this feature which energizes or motivates the call to order or organization. (Cooper 1986: 321)

Cooper's 'zero degree of organization' translates into Bohm's notion of the 'implicate order' which the latter maintains, is an unbroken and, hence, formless whole. If one extended the comparison further, it is not difficult to detect parallels with the notions of 'Tao' and 'Chi' in ancient Chinese thinking as well as what Derrida terms 'différance'. Zero degree represents that unthought state which is always 'an excess, a surplus, a supplement' (Cooper 1986: 321). If this is so, then order and organization must necessarily involve a reduction, a deduction from this unthought primordial state.

Thinking Processually: Actor-Networks, Autopoiesis and Distributed Cognition Refocussing our attention back onto thinking about organizing as an emergent process, I shall now examine the contribution of what has come to be called actor-network theory, and other closely related perspectives, to the analysis of organization. In a recent paper which attempts to set out the operating terms of the actor-network approach. Law (1992) defines organizing as a process of 'heterogeneous engineering' in which: ... bits and pieces from the social, the technical, the conceptual and the textual are fitted together and so converted (or "translated") into a set of equally heterogeneous scientific product. (Law 1992: 3)

Like Mead, Buckley, Elias and Cooper, Law insists that if we want to understand social phenomena such as organization, 'it is important not to start out assuming whatever we wish to explain' (Law 1992: 1). Instead, we should start off by assuming that interaction is all that there is. From this, we might begin to ask how it is that some kinds of interactions appear to 'succeed' in stabilizing and reproducing themselves generating more durable effects such as organization whilst others disappear completely. For Law, this way of explaining the emergence of social order suggests that 'society', 'organizations', 'agents' and 'machines' are all effects generated in pattemed networks of diverse (not simply human) materials. Organizations are.

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thus, ordered networks of heterogeneous materials whose resistance has been provisionally overcome. The function of actor-network analysis is, therefore, to 'explore and describe local processes of patterning, social orchestration, ordering and resistance' (Law 1992: 8) in order to reveal the ongoing struggles involved in ordering and organizing processes. Law sees this network ordering as essentially a dynamic process and argues that 'this is better seen as a verb—a somewhat uncertain process of overcoming resistance—rather than as the fait accompli of a noun' (ibid.: 2). The advantage of Law's approach over say Sandelands' and Drazin's account of the organizing process is that, whilst the latter assumes the individual or actor as a discrete entity which acts in place of the reified concept of organization, this very notion of an individual is itself explained in interactional terms within the actor-network frame of reference. Thus: ... what counts as a person is an effect generated by a network of heterogeneous, interacting materials.... People are who they are because they are a patterned network of heterogeneous materials. (Law 1992: 5)

By offering this way of explaining actors and actions. Law avoids the problem of reifying individuals as the basic units of organization and society the way Sandelands and Drazin were unable to do so because of their unquestioned commitment to methodological individualism. Clearly, what this entails is a radical reconceptualisation of the notion of human agency. Star (1992), following anthropologists such as Hutchins (1986) and Lavé (1988), proposes the view that actions, which appear to be the product of individuals, 'are in fact distributed and collective, especially cognitive tasks which have traditionally been represented solely as "mental"' (Star 1992: 3). This view has come to be known as distributed cognition. Distributed cognition, as a way of accounting for social action, is extensively explored in Jean Lavé's Cognition in Practice (1988): There is reason to suspect that what we call cognition is, in fact, a complex social phenomenon. The point is not so much that arrangements of knowledge in the head correspond in a complicated way to the social world outside the head, but that they are socially organized in such a fashion as to be indivisible. "Cognition" observed in everyday practice is distributed—stretched over, not divided among—mind, body, activity and culturally organized settings.... (Lavé 1988: 1)

Hutchin's (1986) study of Trobriand's methods of navigation provides a good illustration of how distributed cognition works. Knowledge of the elongated route around the islands was held in bits and pieces (in other

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words, distributed) amongst many people. These bits of knowledge were transmitted to each other whenever the occasion warranted in the course of the journey. Thus, at each localized site during the route a particular combination of the knowledge bits enabled the islanders to navigate the islands successfully. Such forms of knowledge need, therefore, to be understood not as residing in the domain of the 'mental', but rather as forms of material practice 'no less so than building a house or baking a cake' (Star 1992: 3). Knowing is both situated and distributed and cannot be abstracted out of the context of the situation. Likewise, Maturana and Varela (1980) have distinguished between what might be called 'observer knowledge' (i.e., abstracted knowledge) and the form of material (or practical) knowledge previously discussed. They use the example of building a house to explain the differences: Let us suppose that we want to build two houses. For such a purpose we have two groups of thirteen workers each. We name one of the workers of the first group as the group leader and give him a book which contains all the plans of the house showing, in a standard way the layout of walls, wateφipes, electric connections, windows, etc.... The workers study the plans and, under guidance of the leader, construct the house, approximating continuously the final state prescribed by the description. In the second group, we do not name a leader, we only arrange the workers in a starting line in the field and give each of them a book, the same book for all, containing only neighborhood instructions. These instructions do not contain words such as house, pipes, or windows, nor do they contain drawings or plans of the house to be constructed; they only contain instructions of what a worker should do in different positions and in the different relations in which he finds himself as the positions and relations change.... The end result in both cases is the same, namely, a house. (Maturana and Varela 1980: 54)

The workers of the first group constructed something the appearance of which they knew all the time, while the workers in the second group had no fmal view of what they were building, nor was it necessary to have such knowledge even when they had finished. The instructional coding is, obviously different, in both cases. In the case of the second group, they code a process: ... that constitute a path of changing relationships which if carried through under certain conditions, results in a system with a domain of interaction which has n o intrinsic relationship with the beholding observer. That the observer should call this system a house is a feature of his cognitive domain, not of the system itself (Maturana and Varela 1980: 54)

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This is the self-referential or autopoietic view of the organizing process which Maturana, in particular, has proposed as a way of understanding emergent social systems as organization. But why is it that social entities, such as individuals or organizations, seem to appear to us as unified entities? Law's (1992) explanation is that the apparent disappearance or concealment of such networks which make up what we call an actor or organization is the result of simplifying operations which he terms punctualisations. All phenomena are made up of heterogeneous networks. In practice, we are not able to cope with the endless relational ramifications of these heterogeneous networks which make up an actorworld, hence, punctualisations provide a means of simplifying the problem of network complexities. However: ... much of the time we are not even in a position to detect network complexities ... if a network acts as a single block, then it disappears, to be replaced by the action itself and the seemingly simple author of that action. For instance, for most of us most of the time a television set is a single and coherent object which we take as essentially unproblematic. However, when it breaks down, it rapidly turns into a network of electronic components and human interventions. (Law 1992: 6)

Thus, the appearance of unity is a result of network packaging or routines which lead us to think in terms of the self-identity of such unities rather than the networking relationships which constitute them. Clearly, we can see that Law's 'punctualisation' is comparable to March and Simon's notion of bounded rationality which, as we have seen earlier, serves as a simplifying operation in reducing equivocality in information. Punctualisation, like bounded rationality, is an effect of what, in Chapter 4, we called the translation process in which the bits and pieces, which make up the effects that we call organization, are 'borrowed, bent, displaced, distorted, rebuilt, reshaped, stolen, profited from and/or misrepresented to generate the effects of agency, organization and power' (Law 1992: 8). Such translation strategies contribute to create the appearance of unity and self-identity in social phenomenon. Once we recognize that these are effects of substitution, abbreviation, displacement, and strategic embodiment in durable materials, we also recognize that identity and presence are explicit manifestations of these processes of difference, absence, trace and emergence. They represent the condensed and momentary instances which, like snapshots for most of us most of the time, are adequate for practical purposes, but fail to account for the totality of an emergent and processual reality. Another way of understanding how this heterogeneous process of a diversity of elements grow together into a coherent unity, and to thereby

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appear self-identical, is offered by Whitehead's (1929) use of the term 'concrescence' in his discussion of process and reality: "Concrescence" is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquire an individual unity in a determinate relegation of each item of the "many" t o its subordination in the constitution of the novel "one".... Each instance of concrescence is itself the novel individual "thing" in question.... An instance of concrescence is termed an "actual entity". (Whitehead 1929; 299, emphasis original)

For Whitehead, writing from a processual view of reality, what we call 'things' or 'substances' are essentially 'events', happenings which occur when the process of many diversities, growing together, develop into new unities which are, thus, construed as concretized 'things' or entities in their own right. Thus, what is implied by his process cosmology is that process and growth are intrinsic to reality. Accordingly, we can no longer entertain the realist notion of an enduring stuff which exists independent of our subjectivity. Beyond these events or happenings, there is nothing—no space nor time, no matter nor laws of nature nor material substances. The 'event' provides the 'nexus of actual occasions inter-related in some determinate fashion in some extensive quantum' (Whitehead 1929: 111). What we call nature is, essentially, a complex of such events occurring in the flow of our experiences. Whitehead's treatment of nature as a network of events is reminiscent of actor-network theory which has been discussed earlier. However, one of his most important and original contributions is his view that the characteristic property of 'events' is to extend over other events, so that the large-scale events are, in effect, systems of atomic events called actual entities or actual occasions. Such actual entities or prehensive occasions arise when one entity grasps some aspect or part of another entity and appropriates it in the formation of its own nature. What we call a thing is, therefore, a creative synthesis of its relations to other events to produce a centre of experiencing, characterized by the way it 'feels' other events. Concrescence is, therefore, a process involving a succession of phases in which 'new prehensions arise by integration of prehensions in antecedent phases' (Whitehead 1929: 35). In these integrations: ... "feelings" contribute their "subjective forms" and their "data" to the formation of novel integral prehensions.... The process continues till all prehensions are components in the one determinate integral satisfaction. (Whitehead 1929: 35)

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When this happens, the process is said to have attained its final phase in which it is fully determinate as to its 'genesis', 'objective character' and 'prehension of every item in the universe' (ibid.: 35). Understood thus, nature is to be viewed as an interwoven network of events, each event in the network conditioning all the others. However, it must be emphasized that what we have here is not a network of static linkages, but rather a complex emergent process of becoming, of growing in which actual entities arise out of their prehension of each other. This Whiteheadian view, which is called the Philosophy of Organism, is concerned solely with articulating the 'becoming, the being, and the relatedness of actual entities' whereby "relatedness" dominates over "quality", so much so that such relatedness is founded 'in the relatedness of actualities' (Whitehead 1929: viii). It is this prioritizing of relational becoming over essential qualities which marks Whitehead's distinctive contribution to our understanding of the formative processes underpinning social reality. Whitehead's notions of 'concrescence' and 'prehension' are comparable to Law's concepts of 'punctualisation' and 'translation' respectively. Both punctualisation and the process of concrescence (i.e., to concretise or bring together) are significant events which make possible the identity of actors and situations such as what we find in the study of organizations. Likewise, the notion of translation involves grasping or appropriating other events or entities in order to reinforce the actor-network making it more durable and 'solid'. This is also what is meant by Whitehead's idea of prehensions, as we have seen. What is more important, however, is the similarities in modes of thinking which privilege the emergent and processual nature of organization as events-structuring moments in the fluxing and transformation of our life-world. In this sense, we can think of Whitehead as having preempted the current postmodern mode of thought. Like contemporary postmodern thinkers in general and Foucault, Latour, Law and Böhm in particular. Whitehead, in Process and Reality, saw the importance of thinking 'beyond' the familiar categories of knowledge which have come to dominate modem knowledge and to see these as always already linguistic 'outcomes' of organizing processes. Hence, it was not surprising that this dense and extraordinarily difficult book invited a barrage of criticisms following its publication. For instance, Stebbing (1930), in a review of the publication, noted the 'obscurity' of Whitehead's style resulting from his 'queer choice of words' such as 'God', 'feeling', 'prehension' and 'concrescence' and concluded with the following remark:

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That it is obscure no one can doubt. That it is worth pondering, I am convinced. Whether it is the product of thinking that is essentially unclear but capable of brief flashes of penetrating insight; or whether it is too profound in its thought to be judged by this generation, I do not know. Reluctantly, I am inclined to accept the first alternative. (Stebbing 1930: 475)

Clearly, Stebbing did not heed Whitehead's insistence that language is essentially 'unfit' for the purposes of metaphysics. Therefore, common words and phrases: ... must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap. (Whitehead 1929: 4)

Language, in its ordinary usage, 'penetrates but a short distance into the principles of metaphysics' (Whitehead 1929: 234). Therefore, the function of philosophical thought is essentially to 'redesign language in the same way that, in a physical science, pre-existing appliances are redesigned' (Whitehead 1929: 14). Well before Böhm (who acknowledges his indebtedness to Whiteheadian thinking). Whitehead, in Process and Reality, was already experimenting with language in order to make it more adequate to his processual view of reality. Interestingly, this way of thinking had also begun to penetrate the consciousness of Western poets by the tum of the century.

Thinking Proœssually: The Linguistic Organization of Reality The poet, Ernesto Fenollosa (in Pound 1969), writing at the tum of the century, noted that poetry is essentially a 'time art' similar to music, 'weaving its unities out of successive impressions of sound' (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 360). The roots of poetry, however, are in language and Fenollosa further observed that the structure of Western languages are shaped by a mediaeval form of logic whereby thought is conceived of as a 'brickyard': According to this European logic, thought is a kind of brickyard. It is baked into little hard units or concepts. These are piled in rows according to size and then labeled with words for future use. This use consists in picking out a few bricks, each by its convenient label, and sticking them together into a sort of wall, called a sentence, by the use either of white mortar for the positive copula "is", or of black mortar for the negative copula "is not". In this way, we produce such admirable propositions as "A ring-tailed baboon is not a constitutional assembly." (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 380)

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Fenollosa's point, again, reminds us of the fragmented and atomistic tendency in Western thought which Böhm observed. Take, as an example, a row of cherry trees. We find that, from each of these we proceed to 'abstract' a certain common collection of qualities which we then express by the label 'cherry' or 'cherry-ness'. We can then go further by placing in a second table several such characteristic concepts: 'cherry', 'rose', 'ironrust', 'flamingo'. From these: ... we abstract some further common quality, dilatation or common denominator and label it "red" or "redness". It is evident that this process of abstraction may be carried out on indefinitely and with all sorts of material. (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 380)

Fenollosa's point is that the characteristic process of Western logical abstraction is one in which long lists of nouns and adjectives are formed since these are naturally the names of classes. What gets left out in this process is the attention devoted to the verb. Verbs, in effect, become transformed into participles and gerunds so that 'to run', for example, becomes a case of 'running'. Action verbs are transformed into what Sandelands and Drazin (1989) identified as 'achievement verbs'. Thus, instead of thinking directly 'the man runs', it becomes 'the man is running' whereby the quasiverb 'is' is called into use. Like Böhm, Fenollosa is particularly concerned to bring in a wealth of action verbs in place of the 'is/is not' couple. The maimer in which this couple has 'colonized' much of modem thought has, according to Fenollosa, led to language becoming thin and cold because we think more and more through it and less and less into it. Thus, we do not say a tree 'greens itself, but 'the tree is green' or that 'monkeys bring forth live young' but that 'the monkey is a mammal'. As such, verbs like 'live', 'see', 'walk' and 'breathe' are generalized into states so much so that 'these weak verbs are ... reduced to the abstractest states of all, namely bare existence' (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 369). Fenollosa contrasts this state of the English language with the Chinese language which, in his view, embodies movement and process. He uses the example of the verb 'to shine' as a comparison: In English, we call "to shine" a verb in the infinitive, because it gives the abstract meaning of the verb without conditions. If we want a corresponding adjective, we take a different word "bright". If we need a noun, we say "luminosity" which is abstract, being derived fi-om an adjective. To get a tolerably concrete noun, we have to leave behind the verb and adjective roots, and light upon a thing arbitrarily cut off from its power of action, say "sun" or "moon". (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 372, my emphasis)

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This process of 'nounizing' is essentially an abstraction so that nature, in this instance, is cut off by the structure of this particular form of language. In contrast, the Chinese have one word ming or mei ( ) for the meaning 'to shine'. Its ideograph is the sign of the sun together with the sign of the moon. It serves as verb, noun and adjective all at once. Thus, one writes literally 'the sun and moon of the cup' (^^Ji') as a description of the cup's brightness. Or, when used as a verb, 'the cup sun-and-moon' Hence, the etymology of the Chinese words are constantly visible so much so that, after thousands of years, 'the lines of metaphoric advance are still shown, and in many cases, actually retained in the meaning' (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969:379). I have, in Chapter 5, demonstrated the gradual process of abbreviation in the case of the Chinese word for 'door' as one instance of this etymological 'trace'. However, it is helpful here to cite other instances to substantiate Fenollosa's observation that the Chinese written character embodies movement which is based upon the operations of nature. In reading Chinese, therefore, 'we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching things work out their own fate' (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 363). This is because, whilst the algebraic figure and the spoken word does not display any natural connection between thing and sign and, hence, are 'arbitrary' but conventional, the Chinese notation is based 'upon a vivid shorthand of the operations of nature' (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 362). One instance of this is cited by Fenollosa: Suppose that we look out of a window and watch a man. Suddenly, he turns his head and actively fixes his attention upon something. We look ourselves and see that his vision has been focused upon a horse. We saw, first, the man before he acted; second, while he acted; third, the object towards which his action was directed. In speech, we split up the rapid continuity of this action and of its picture into three essential parts or joints in the right order, and say: Man

Sees

Horse

It is clear that these three joints, or words, are only three phonetic symbols, which stand for the three terms of a natural process, but we could quite as easily denote these three stages of our thought by symbols equally arbitrary, which had no basis in sound; for example, by three Chinese characters:

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Man

Sees

Horse

V Figure 8: Action in Chinese Characters (Fenollosa in Pound 1969: 362)

In this Chinese case, we can first see a figure of the man on his two legs. Next is a bold figure represented by running legs under an eye (i.e., eyes in motion). Finally, we see a character depicting a horse on its four legs. For Fenollosa the thought picture: ... is not only called up by these signs as well as by words, but far more vividly and concretely. Legs belong to all three characters: they are alive. The group holds something of the quality of a continuous moving picture. (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 363, emphasis original)

Hence, the 'untruth' of even pictures and photographs is that, in spite of their apparent concreteness, the elements of movement and natural succession are obscured. Another example which Fenollosa uses to illustrate process and movement in the Chinese language is shown below: Sun

0

Rises (in the)

/

East

A

Figure 9: Movement in Things/Things in Movement (Fenollosa in Pound 1969: 363)

In this case, we see first the sun, then this is followed by the sun appearing above the horizon as depicted by a horizontal line with what appears to be the semblance of distant trees. This is, finally, followed by an ideograph of the sun amidst the branches of trees close to us. What is important to note is that the Chinese character for 'rises' retains the sun character as a part of it. Thus, the noun is contained in the verb; thing and action are inextricably linked to one another. Like nature, the Chinese words are plastic and alive. 'Thing' and 'action' are not formally separated since the Chinese language has no grammar in the English language sense. Chinese characters are shorthand pictures of

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actions or processes, not things. The ideograph meaning 'to speak' looks like a mouth with flames coming out of it ( g ) . The ideographic roots, therefore, carry in them a verbal idea of action so much so that the notion of an isolated thing, which forms the basis for a 'noun', is not deemed to exist naturally. Instead, things are 'only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross-sections cut through actions, snapshots' (Fenollosa in Pound 1969: 364). We are here reminded of Whitehead's notion of things as 'events' or happenings occasioned by the concrescence of actualities. However, not only are things (and hence nouns) non existent, but also the idea of a 'pure' verb is also meaningless since there are only things in motion and motion in things. It is this language of movement and process which enables Chinese thought to move from the seen to the unseen through a process of metaphorization in which material images are used to suggest immaterial relations. Such metaphors, however, do not arise from arbitrary subjective processes. Instead, they are made possible because they follow objective lines of relations in nature herself: Relations are more real and more important than the things which they relate. T h e forces which produce the branch-angles of an oak lay potent in the acorn. Similar lines of resistance, half curbing the out-pressing vitalities, govern the branching o f rivers and of nations. Thus, a nerve, a wire, a roadway, and a clearing house are only varying channels which communicate forces for itself.... Nature furnishes her own clues. Had the world not been full of homologies, sympathies, and identities, thought would have been starved and language chained to the obvious.... Metaphor, the revealer of nature, is the very substance of poetry. The known interprets the obscure, the universe is alive with myth.... It is a mistake to suppose, with some philosophers of aesthetics, that art and poetry aim to deal with the general and the abstract.... Art and poetry deal with the concrete of nature, not with rows of "separate" particulars. (Fenollosa, in Pound 1969: 377)

Fenollosa's insights here is reminiscent of FoucauU's discussion in The Order of Things where he suggested that Renaissance thought ordered the world in terms of relations of resemblances which appear in the four principal forms of'convenience', 'emulation', 'analogy' and 'sympathy'. As discussed previously, this mode of ordering meant that both the system of language and the system of nature had the same essential structure. This is typically true of the organization of the Chinese language.

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Conclusion We can now begin to understand why Böhm speaks of the need for a new mode of language in which movement becomes a primary aspect of our thinking and also why important thinkers, like Whitehead, and more recently, Lacan (1986) and Derrida (1976, 1978), are particularly concerned to use language in such a way as to cause it to slide and move so that the very meaning of words are shown to be insecure and unstable. When organizational writers, such as Sandelands and Drazin (1989) and Van Maanen (1989) allude to the problem of language in organizational discourse, they intuitively appreciate the fragmentary and static nature of the language of traditional science and react strongly towards it. However, they do so in very different and uhimately limited ways. Whilst, Sandelands and Drazin advocate seeking out and eliminating words with 'dubious denotations' and warn us to beware of achievement verbs which provide only an illusion of process. Van Maanen, calls for a recognition of the importance of writing in organization studies. Rejecting the common assumptions that organizational research reports are convincing because of their facticity or because of the theory they propound. Van Maanen argues a case for acknowledging the crucial role of language and writing in such research reports. However, what both Van Maanen and Sandelands and Drazin have not adequately examined is the fundamental structuring of the English language which organizes organizational discourse. What I have attempted to do in the preceding sections has been to examine the structure of the English language in comparison to the Chinese language and to show the tendency of the former to objectify linguistic constructs so that reality is thereby conceived of as static and fragmentary and hence, representable in a straightforward manner. Thus, verbs which purport to describe organizational processes, turn out to be achievement terms describing states rather than movement and action. The structure of the English language, as traditionally used, necessitates a subject-verb-object distinction which, in doing so, objectifies both the subject and object. It is this organizing of the language of organization theory which upstream postmodern thinkers are particularly concerned with since the notion of organization as a discrete and static entity becomes no longer acceptable.

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Chapter 7: Logocentrism and Deconstruction

Introduction Upstream thinking, as I have tried to show thus far, emphasizes the adoption of a critical attitude towards taken-for-granted linguistic categories used in the analysis of organization. These include established oppositional terms deployed in the organizational discourse such as: theory/observation, myth/ reality, agency/structure, qualitative/quantitative, rational/nonrational, formal/informal, conflict/consensus, differentiation/integration, structure/culture, organization/environment, closed/open system, decision/non-decision, strategic choice/environmental selection, fiinctionalist/interpretivist, etc., all of which provide a common language for academic theorizing. However, as indicated in earlier chapters of this book, some recent organizational writers have begun to emphasize the importance of language and examined its effects on the theorizing process itself. Thus, Sandelands and Drazin (1989), van Maanen (1989) and Gergen (1992), amongst others, direct our attention to the problems of language in organizational analysis. They write: ... the problems of organization theory are essentially problems in the use of words. (Sandelands and Drazin 1989: 474) ... the shameful truth of our organization research is that we traffic in communication, and communication implies that we intend to alter the views held by our readers. In large measure, our task is rhetorical, for we attempt to convince others that we've discovered something of note, made unusual sense of something, or, in weak form, simply described something accurately. In essence, we try to persuade others that we know what we're talking about and they ought therefore to pay attention to what we are saying. We do this by means of text—the written word, (van Maanen 1989: 27) ... our theories of organization are, first and foremost, forms of language. They are guided by existing rules of grammar, and constructed out of the pool of nouns and verbs, the metaphors, the narrative plots, and the like found within the linguistic context. (Gergen 1992: 207)

This 'tum' to language in organization studies can be traced to a heightened awareness of the way linguistic rules, conventions and practices, affect the formulation of organization theory and hence its substantive claims. In other words, an appreciation (albeit limited) that the organization of Ian-

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guage significantly influences the development of organization theory as an academic discipline. Of the three organizational writers cited above, however, only Gergen (1992) specifically directs attention to the linguistic form of theories of organization and allude to the constitutive make-up of organization theories. Sandelands and Drazin, on the other hand, are comfortable enough about the capabilities of literal language as a representative medium to insist on a more rigorous use of words in descriptive accounts of organizational processes. This contrasts with van Maanen's advocacy of more imaginative use of linguistic tropes in writing organizational research which implicitly acknowledges the limits of literal language but nevertheless relies on a more adequate representation of organizational reality through the use of metaphors and narrative accounts. For both Sandelands and Drazin and van Maanen, language is essentially an obstacle to the provision of accurate accounts and thus a methodological 'problem' which needed to be taken into consideration in attempts to describe organizational reality. In this regard, they remain trapped in a modernist view of representation and reality. Gergen, on the other hand, adopts a postmodern posture in recognizing that it is the grammatical aspects of language which effectively shapes the discourse on organization including especially its object of analyses. In this chapter I shall pursue Gergen's line of thinking upstream to show that the analysis of the organization of language, and more specifically the organization of writing, in its most generic sense, is a plausible and fi^itíul substitute for the more conventional understanding of organization studies. Upstream deconstructive analysis, therefore, implies a radical questioning of organization, not as part of the project of organizational 'theory-building', but as the essentially interminable intellectual practice of dismantling the logic and language of organization in order to reveal the necessary tensions, 'aporias' and contradictions, inhering the literature on organization. Since 'organizations', 'individuals' and 'society' are clearly shown to be theoretically reified entities with imputed characteristics and hence not really 'discoverable' or 'verifiable' through traditional empirical research, it follows that as we move fiirther upstream in our analyses, we begin to realize that our attention must be redirected towards examining the manner in which language and writing organizes our thoughts and perceptions. In the sections that follow I shall begin by discussing first the organization of language and in particular the organization of writing and its effects on our thought processes. It will be argued that a logocentric attitude associated with phonocentrism prevails in much of Western thought. This is

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shown to orient thinking in specific and distinctive ways that make the dominant priorities of academic theorizing appear immediately familiar and necessary. Through the strategy of deconstructive analysis such 'arbitrary' priorities can be made more transparent and hence effectively questioned. I then argue that within the postmodern style of thought, organizational analysis is better understood as a form of deconstructive practice.

Language, Writing and the Organization of Society Our knowledge of the world is inextricably shaped and conditioned by the language we use. This is the claim that the structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made at the tum of this century. Far from providing a 'window' on reality, language brings with it a whole intricate network of significations which actively constitutes a particular version of reality. Moreover, following Foucauh's (1970) seminal study of the development of Western systems of thought, our knowledge of things is essentially structured by the prevailing linguistic codes and conventions which alone enable us to classify and organize the flow of our lived experiences. For both Saussure and Foucauk, language is fimdamentally a differential network which generates and sustains the meaning of any singular term. Contrary to the common representationalist view of language, there is no self-evident one-to-one link between the signifier and the signified. Thus, the word as spoken or written is, 'arbitrarily' but conventionally, linked to the concept it serves to evoke. Signs are defined, not by essential properties, but, by the differences which distinguish them from other signs. Therefore, they are not 'positive entities', but the negative effect of differences. The meaning of a sign is, therefore, never present in itself but is instead the outcome of a 'rebound' from other terms. Saussure's insistence that there are no positive terms in the linguistic system has been used by the French writer Jacques Derrida, to launch a critique on what he (Derrida) calls logocentrism: the orientation of much of modem Westem thought towards 'an order of meaning—thought, truth, reason, logic, the Word—conceived as existing in itself, as foundation' (Culler 1983: 92). This logocentric 'bias', which characterizes Western thought, and which is inextricably linked to the idea of 'simple location' discussed in Chapter 1, assumes the possibility of attaining a pure self-authenticating knowledge through the ability to be fully present to oneself in the act of knowing. Meaning, for the logocentric theorist, resides in the consciousness of the perceiver in the immediate act of apprehending an

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externality. It does not arise from an appreciation of the manner in which socio-cultural and historical contexts help to identify and define our е?фепences. This immediacy owes itself to our commonsensical understanding of language as medium. Speech, in particular, has the tendency to reinforce this 'metaphysics of presence' since when one speaks one is able to hear oneself and, hence, is able to immediately grasp the sense of one's own utterance. Norris puts this point across most succinctly: Hearing/understanding oneself talk is a de facto truth in our experience of language that appears so massively self-evident as almost to brook no question. (Norris 1987: 71)

However, logocentrism is not only expressed in this privileging of speech over the written word but it acts at the very core of thinking by privileging presence over absence. This brings with it a whole network of ramifications regarding the nature of this 'bias'. In Derrida's Of Grammatology, for instance, the first chapter is entitled 'The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing'. Derrida's point here is to raise the question regarding the widely-held notion that a 'book' exist as some self-enclosed systems of meaning and reference. This follows the traditional idea of the book as a piece of writing which is held together by the author's sovereign presence manifested by his/her intention in writing the book. The idea of a book is, thus, the idea of a totality defined within particular limits by the author of the text. The very idea of a book is linked to a whole chain of metaphysical assumptions held together under the rubric of logocentrism: Thus a whole metaphysics of'the book" is closely bound up with the logocentric will to privilege a self-present (spoken) truth above the endless duplicities of written language. (Norris 1987: 63)

According to Derrida, this logocentrism is inextricably tied to a phonocentrism which privileges speech to writing and treats the latter as a representation of speech and, hence, secondary to the spoken word. Aristotle, for example, viewed spoken words to be the symbols of mental experience and written words to be the symbols of spoken words. Thus, 'the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind' (Derrida 1976: 11). Writing is always merely a technical and representative activity:

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The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning. (Derrida 1976: 13)

It is this privileging of speech over writing which Derrida sets out to examine in his critique of logocentrism. I shall discuss later the strategy of deconstruction which he employs so effectively in the analysis of the logocentric system of thought which characterizes the Western culture. For now, I shall return to the initial observation that theories of organization are, essentially, linguistic products and more specifically technological effects of writmg. Ong (1986), maintains that writing is a technology which restructures thought in a fundamental way. According to him: Functionally literate persons, those who regularly assimilate discourse such as this, are not simply thinking and speaking human beings but chirographically thinking and speaking human beings (latterly conditioned also by print and by electronics). (Ong 1986: 24)

The fact that we are not aware of the influence of writing on our thoughts shows that we have in fact interiorized the technology of writing so deeply that we are often unable to recognize its presence and its pervasive influence on our thinking processes. Ong notes that the invention of writing was an intrusion (albeit an invaluable intrusion) into the early human lifeworld. However, writing or script is different jïom speech in that while the latter is inevitably learned by virtually all cultures, this is not necessarily the case for writing since only the 'tiniest fraction of languages have ever been written or ever will be' (Ong 1986: 26). Nonetheless, the breakthrough into new worlds of knowledge was achieved when a coded system of visible marks was invented whereby: ... a writer could determine, in effect, without limit, the exact words and sequence of words that a reader would generate from a given text ... a true writing system will reduce ambiguities to a negligible minimum and make those that occur readily clarifiable. (Ong 1986: 34)

Once established, writing interacts extensively with all sorts of social structures and practices in a bewildering variety of ways. Ong cites Stock's (1983) analysis of the effects of literacy in Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to show that: Sooner or later, and often very quickly, literacy affects marketing and manufacturing, agriculture and stock-raising activities, religious life and thought, family

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structures, social mobility, modes of transportation (a literate communication system laid the straight Roman roads and made the ancient Roman Empire, as Innis long ago pointed out), and so on ad infinitum. (Ong 1986: 36)

Writing creates a number of generalizable effects the most crucial of which Ong identifies as 'separation'. Writing is diaeretic. It divides and distances, and it divides and distances all sorts o f things in all sorts of ways. (Ong 1986: 36)

For Ong, this separation is expressed in a whole range of different ways. Firstly, writing separates the imown from the knower. All writing systems do this. However the alphabetic system does so most of all since it most thoroughly dissolves sounds into spatial equivalents. Secondly, whereas oral cultures make no distinction between interpretation and data, literate cultures separate these two aspects of knowledge. Thirdly, writing 'distances the word from sound, reducing oral-aural evanescence to the seeming quiescence of visual space' (Ong 1986: 39). Fourthly, writing distances the writer from the reader, both in time and space so much so that it is as easy to read a book written several centuries ago, or several thousands of miles away, as to read something written by a friend sitting next to you. Fifthly, writing distances the word from the context within which they are spoken. When spoken, words form part of a context which extends far beyond the verbal. By contrast, the immediate context of written words is, simply, other words. Sixthly, and related to the fifth point, writing enforces a verbal precision which is not experienced in oral cultures. In the latter, context always includes much more than verbal output, so that less of the meaning conveyed by words rest in the words themselves. In literate cultures, on the other hand, written texts are made to bear more weight, to 'develop more and more precisely "defined"—that is "bordered" or contrastive meanings' (Ong 1986: 40). Seventhly, writing separates past from present. By freezing verbalization, writing accentuates a distant past which 'is frill of puzzles because it can refer to states of affairs no longer effectively imaginable' (Ong 1986: 40). Eightly, vmting separates 'administration' from other forms of social activities. Administration, here, refers to the overseeing and managing of a social collectivity in a more or less abstractly structured fashion. It comes into being with the development of written documentation and scribal expertise. Such administration is relatively unknown in oral cultures. Ninethly, writing facilitates the separation of logic from rhetoric. According to Ong the invention of logic:

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... is not tied to any kind of writing system but to the completely vocalic phonetic alphabet and the intensive analytic activity which such an alphabet demands of its inventors. (Ong 1986: 41)

Tenthly, writing separates academic learning from wisdom. It makes possible the conveyance of highly organized and abstracted thought structures. When cultures assimilate writing, wise sayings are committed to texts. However, by so doing, these wise sayings are 'denatured' and as such, do not function the way they do in oral cultures. Eleventhly, writing divides society by giving rise to a special kind of 'diglossia' in which a 'high' language, controlled by writing, is differentiated from a 'low' language controlled by speech to the exclusion of writing. Thus, the Classical Chinese language (which is also the 'official' language), for example, is given a different status from the dozen or so spoken Chinese 'dialects' commonly used by the 'illiterate' community. Twelfthly, writing has a tendency to 'colonize' low language dialects and tum them into national languages. Ong terms these 'colonized' dialects 'grapholects' and cites the standard English language as one example of a grapholect. Thirteenthly, writing divides or distances more evidently and more effectively as its form becomes more abstract. The more removed from the sound world the more abstract the written form is said to be. Ong notes that the alphabetic system is the most abstract written form existing. Finally, the most crucial and momentous of separation effected by writing is the separation of being from time. This according to Ong, is what sets up the Heideggerian project of rejoining the two. However: Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is written in the alphabet in a far-gone print culture, and whether it has fully achieved what it set out to do is in the minds of many open to question. (Ong 1986: 45)

Ong's discussion of the effects of writing on thought and social structures and practices, reinforces the belief that the organization of writing has a pervasive influence on the organization of cultures and societies and consequently on the knowledge bases they generate. This has obvious consequences for our understanding of organization theory as a cultural product. However, whilst his discussion of the effects of writing are illuminating, he withdraws from examining the intricate workings of writing as a technology of organization. Other writers on lexicography, such as McArthur (1986), have identified writing with a basic human impulse to order, classify and organize. Writing in this more general sense extends beyond the narrower concerns of Ong's discussion of writing. McArthur calls this basic

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human impulse the 'taxonomic urge'. It is this taxonomic urge which has made civilization possible. As Goody observes, it is generally accepted amongst most anthropologists that 'man = language'. However: ... a pervasive relativism blinded them to the possibility that changes in the means o f communication subsequent to the adoption of speech may have important implications for the structure of ideas as well as for the structure of society. (Goody 1987: 261)

Thus, a second equation exists which runs as follows: 'civilization = writing'. Preoccupation with the material changes in writing and their immediate effects have diverted the attention of anthropologists away from the broader implications of writing for the 'organization of higher psychological functions' (Goody 1987: 261). For, despite the fact that in each culture the technological medium for writing imposed its own special limitations—clay in Sumer and papyrus in Egypt for example—there are universal factors common to all such technologies including ordering, listing, display, hierarchy of arrangement, edge and margin, sectioning, spacing and contrasts. Writing, therefore, is a technology of organization and representation which makes possible the civilizing process. Writing understood in this more generic sense, is any form of material inscription or incision from which primary categories (such as that discussed in Chapter 5) are generated. It is not so much about the meaning and content of messages as it is about the structuring and organizing of the flux and flow of the world in temporal and spatial terms. It is this aspect of writing that Derrida (1976) is particularly concerned with when he refers to a 'science of writing' or grammatology, defined as: Ά treatise upon Letters, upon the alphabets, syllabation, reading, and writing.' (Derrida 1976: 323). In announcing the project of grammatology, Derrida acknowledges the contribution of Gelb (1952) to his formulation of this science of writing.

Derrida and the Logic of Writing Derrida begins with the assertion that the history of writing in the Western world shows it to be always subordinate to speech. Speech, as we indicated in the previous section, is widely believed to be always prior to the written word and, hence, takes on a privileged status with respect to writing. The real significance of writing is, therefore, necessarily suppressed and assigned a secondary function in linguistic analyses. This 'prejudice' against

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writing goes back all the way to Plato's condemnation of writing in the Phaedrus. For Plato, writing is seen as an intrusion on the artful technique of speaking; a bastardized form of communication involving: ... a forced entry o f a totally original sort, an archetypal violence: eruption o f the outside within the inside, breaching into the interiority of the soul. (Derrida 1976: 34)

In Plato's mythical account of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus, Theuth, a loyal servant of King Thamus, brings his 'invention' to his king as a gift to assist the people of Egypt to become wise and to improve their memory. But the king rejects the gift insisting that writing will not serve as a cure for memory nor increase the wisdom of the people. Instead, it will teach people to rely on alien, external marks and, in so doing, cause them to forget the true knowledge already written in their souls. Writing, therefore, is a technique which 'poisons' the souls of the people. Derrida finds this same tendency to privilege speech over writing in the work of a number of later writers such as Rousseau. For Rousseau, writing is a technique added to speech. Speech is the originary form and the healthiest and most natural condition of language. Writing, on the other hand, is foreign to the nature of language itself Rousseau, therefore, regarded writing with curious distrust viewing it as a merely derivative and somehow debilitating mode of expression: Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining o f the image than to the object. (Rousseau, Fragment inédit d'un essai sur les langues, quoted in Derrida 1976: 27)

Rousseau's attitude to writing can be attributed to his conviction that mankind had degenerated from a state of pure and natural grace into the bondage of civilized existence. Language, in general, and writing in particular, becomes for him an index of the extent to which nature has been corrupted and undermined by culture and civilization. Writing therefore, was an 'addition', a 'supplement' to speech since languages are made to be spoken only, according to Rousseau. Derrida traces this pervasive logocentric practice of privileging speech over writing to subsequent writers on language including Husserl, Saussure and Lévi-Strauss. More recent writers on language, including Ong (1986) whose work we have previously discussed, continue to adopt this hierarchical order in their discussions on the origins of writing. In each of these instances, speech is taken to be the original and, hence, the truest form of

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communication. Derrida, of course, recognizes that the 'event' of writing follows from the 'event' of speech, however, he nonetheless asserts that the idea of speech depends upon the idea of writing. This distinction is crucial for understanding the Derridean project. Speech, as a conceptual category, can only be understood in terms of its contrast with an 'other' term on which its meaning depends. This 'other' is writing so much so that speech acquires its meaning and significance and is thereby thinkable only in contrast to this oppositional concept of writing. It is the use of this logic of supplements in thinking through the relationship between speech and writing which allows Derrida to come to the conclusion that speech is, in fact, a particular manifestation of a generalized writing. Accordingly, Derrida denies that the original form of a thing is also necessarily its truest form; an assumption we ordinarily make without much thought. In fact, it is more true to say that in many instances, in our experience, the search for the truest form, by tracing all later developments of phenomena back to their rudimentary origins, have often proved illusory. Thus, in our upstream/downstream analogy, we have shown that the truest form a river takes is more evident the fijrther we move downstream. As we trace the river back to its source we realize that the absolute origin we seek is, in fact, an unattainable myth. Harland (1987), uses a different analogy to emphasize this point: (C)onsider another analogy, somewhat closer to home: the history of the "language" of mathematics. We might expect to arrive at the "truest" form of mathematics by tracing all later developments back to the most rudimentary origins—back to actual counting operations with sticks or stones or beads or whatever. But such actual operations in the real world have been curiously supplanted and left behind in modern mathematics. Most famously, the square root of minus one does not exist in realworld terms at all. In order to allow for the viability of concepts such as the square root of minus one, modem philosophers of mathematics have had to propose an idea of mathematics as a kind of play or game, where rules are made up and followed through to their conclusions regardless of any applicability to the real world. The idea of actual counting operations appears as only a secondary and as it were accidental offshoot of this logically fundamental idea of mathematics as a whole. In a sense, mathematics reveals its "truest" form in its latest, most "unnatural", most supplementary developments. (Harland 1987: 130, emphasis added)

These two complementary points—that the idea of speech must depend upon the idea of writing and that the truest form is most unnatural and supplementary—flies against the logic of origins or logocentrism, which, as we have noted earlier, is a pervasive feature of Western culture. Derrida, therefore, proposes a radical separation of the historical and conceptual priorities

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pitching a logic of supplementarity against the logic of origins. This unorthodox logic of supplements emphasizes the necessity of noting that what is added on later is always liable to predominate over what was there in the first instance. We have discussed this tendency quite extensively in reference to the 'forgetting' which takes place when one thought style is replaced by another in the literature on organization studies, and also in Woolgar's (1988) discussion of the inversion which takes place in scientific discoveries. Thus, what comes later is deemed to be more right and more truly appropriate to the focus of analysis. Derrida's logic of supplementarity, thus, provides the pivotal base for his deconstructive reading of language and philosophy. One outstanding example is his close reading of LéviStrauss' oppositional category nature/culture, which the latter uses in his anthropological studies. For Derrida, this opposition between nature and culture, is at least as old as the Sophists and it has been relayed to us in the form which opposes 'nature to law, to education, to art, to technics—^but also to liberty, to the arbitrary, to history, to society, to mind and so on' (Derrida 1978: 283). Derrida notes that from his first book The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Lévi-Strauss had found it simultaneously necessary to use the conceptual opposition nature/culture and also the impossibility of using it. Thus, LéviStrauss begins by defining nature as that which is universal and spontaneous and not therefore dependent upon cultures or norms. Inversely, culture is that which depends upon a system of norms that are used to regulate a particular society and which therefore are liable to vary from one social structure to another. However, a curious thing happens in the very first pages of the Elementary Structures when Lévi-Strauss encounters what he describes as a scandal in the form of a phenomenon which no longer obeys the nature/culture opposition which he (Lévi-Strauss) had given credence to. This is the phenomenon of incest prohibition which seems to require the predicate of both nature and culture. This incest prohibition is, as far as Lévi-Strauss is concerned, a universal feature, hence it was a natural phenomenon. But it is also in practice as system of prohibition reinforced by norms and interdicts. In this sense, therefore, it could be thought of as cultural. Derrida observes that the idea of a scandal is tied to the system of concepts which 'accredits the difference between nature and culture' (Derrida 1978:283). Hence: By commencing his work with the factum of the incest prohibition, Lévi-Strauss thus places himself at the point at which this difference, which has always been assumed to be self-evident, finds itself erased or questioned. For, from the moment when t h e

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incest prohibition can no longer be conceived within the nature/culture opposition, it can no longer be said to be a scandalous fact, a nucleus of opacity within a network of transparent significations. (Derrida 1978: 283)

The incest prohibition becomes something which escapes these concepts and may probably be the very condition of their conceptual possibility. This leads Derrida to observe that the whole of philosophical conceptualization, which is systemic with the nature/culture opposition, 'is designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the very thing that makes this conceptualization possible: the origin of the prohibition of incest' (Derrida 1978: 284). He, therefore, concluded that language necessarily bears within itself its own potential for critique. This realization has the effect of creating two paths for which the critique could be undertaken. One consists in: ... conserving all these old concepts within the domain of empirical discovery while here and there denouncing their limits, treating them as tools which can still be used. No longer is any truth value attributed to them; there is a readiness to abandon them, if necessary, should other instruments appear more useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy is exploited.... This is how the language of the social sciences criticizes itself (Derrida 1978: 284)

Derrida notes that this is the choice taken by Lévi-Strauss when he (LéviStrauss) argues that this distinction between nature and culture, while not being of any historical significance, could be fully justified in its use as a methodological tool in modem anthropology and sociology. Lévi-Strauss, therefore, believes that in this way he could separate method from truth. Derrida, on the other hand, opts for a more 'daring way' of 'deconstituting' these oppositions in a systematic and rigorous way without being 'swallowed up' in the metaphysics of discourse. This has come to be called deconstruction.

Deconstruction We have seen that linguistic oppositional terms are invariably structured in such a way as to privilege one term over. This privileging of one term over another does not result in a 'peaceful coexistence'. Instead, we are dealing with 'a violent hierarchy' in which 'one of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand' (Derrida 1981: 41). Derrida's deconstructive moves therefore consist in dismantling conceptual

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oppositions and taking apart the hierarchical structures of thought in order to reinscribe the conceptual terms and situate them differently. Deconstruction is, therefore, an activity of reading which is attuned to seeking out those 'aporias' or blind spots within which a text involuntarily contradicts itself and, hence, betrays the tensions existing between its logic and rhetoric. Contrary to commonly held views, deconstruction is not a technique or method or even a species of literary criticism. It is not particularly concerned with meaning and inteφretation or even philosophy or ideology but: ... especially and inseparably (of) tneaningftil frames, institutional structures, pedagogical or rhetorical norms, the possibility of law, of authority, o f representation in terms of its very market. (Derrida in Montefiore 1982: 44)

Deconstruction is never concerned only with signified content but especially with the conditions of possibility of discourse, with frameworks of inquiry and the institutional structures governing our practices. As a textual practice it is, among other things, a patient and stratified reading of texts with a view to identiiying the 'grafts' in the texts it analyses; the points of juncture and undue stress where one line of argument has been forcefully 'spliced' with another producing the blind spots, tensions and contradictions previously mentioned. Central to a deconstructive reading is the concept of iteration. Any word, because of the essential instability of its meaning, acquires a slightly different sense each time it is used in a new context. Meaning is therefore contextbound. However, the distinctions between text, context and the boundary circumscribing the context itself, are notoriously ill-defined and unstable. In other words, since context is boundless, infinite contexts invade and permeate the text, shaping and reshaping its meaning regardless of authorial intention. Texts are necessarily constructed through an iterative process and indeterminacy inhere in writing's very essence. One classic example of this indeterminacy in texts is revealed by Derrida in his 'close reading' of Rousseau's Confessions. Rousseau's work is well suited to Derrida's project because his thought is emphatically expressed through a series of 'strong' dualisms; nature/culture, animal/human, speech/writing, etc. In each case the upper term is privileged and the second term reflects a 'fall' from the purity of nature. Through a rigorous and iterative reading of Rousseau's text Derrida shows that this attempt at purification is fundamentally misguided because the idea of a 'lost origin' which Rousseau hankers after, is itself an illusion.

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In Rousseau's Confessions, the term 'supplement' is used as a euphemism for masturbation. For Rousseau, sex is natural, good and healthy. However, since he is constantly tormented by a deep fear of women and the possibilities of contracting venereal disease, he constantly finds it necessary to resort to the 'supplement'. Likewise Rousseau denounces writing but finds it necessary to do so with written texts. He longs for nature, but finds that the latter is deficient in itself and hence advocates education (i.e., culture). Ordinarily, we tend to think of the term supplement as something which is superfluous and which is added on to what is in itself already fiill and selfsufficient. However, Derrida's deconstruction of Rousseau's text shows that the supplement (in its broader sense) is in fact that which allows the privileged term to be conceived and constituted in the first place. The ideal of a pristine 'original' which is self-defining and privileged and which therefore precedes other terms turns out to be a myth, albeit a necessary one. According to Derrida, therefore, every text will have a 'silent' concept that ñinctions to legitimize and give meaning to the main text just as the supplement does in Rousseau's text. The supplement or 'other' is the outcome of a kind of'self-folding' which is required to provide the text with the means to constitute the differences which, in tum, gives it its meaning. The 'fold' is therefore a way of creating an illusory origin. Once in place, however, all subsequent differences can be claimed to derive from this original difference marked by the fold. Derrida thus observes fi-om this and other similar tensions he identifies in other writers on writing in particular that writing can be secondary and derivative as Rousseau and others claim, only on one condition: ... that the "original", "natural" etc., language never existed, was never intact or untouched by writing, that it has itself always been a writing. An arche-writing whose necessity and new concept I wish to indicate and outline here; and which I continue to call writing only because it essentially communicates with the vulgar concept of writing. The latter could not have imposed itself historically except by the dissimulation of the arche-writing, by the desire for a speech displacing its other and its double and working to reduce its difference. (Derrida 1976: 56)

This strategic reversal produced by applying the 'logic of supplementarity', reveals the impossibility of speech without writing. Indeed, it now transpires that language is itself, always already, a form of writing or 'archewriting' which 'cannot and can never be recognized as the object of a science. It is the very thing which carmot let itself be reduced to the form of presence.' (Derrida 1976: 57). This Derridean 'arche-writing' is not now

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writing as understood in its ordinary sense, but as the general operation of any and every form of marking, punctuation, inscription, incision, etc.. Speech as the material act of punctuating silence with sound-bites, is therefore a necessary form of this arche-writing. Derrida's logic of supplementarity is another way of expressing Spencer Brown's demonstration of the necessity of the triadic structures created by the act of making a primaiy distinction. Deconstruction, therefore, operates by 'exhausting' the very logic contained in a text through the use of a 'counter-logic' which Derrida terms a 'logic of supplements'. This movement of deconstruction does not attempt to destroy the structure from outside, but from within through inhabiting the very categories and structures of normal discourse and using them in a particular way so as to expose and accentuate the tensions inherent in them. Again, to reemphasize the crucial feature of deconstruction, Derrida writes via negativia: Deconstruction does not consist of moving from one concept to another but o f reversing and displacing a conceptual order as well as the nonconceptual order with which it is articulated. (Derrida 1982: 195)

As always Derrida remains alert to the 'silent' and 'suppressed' aspects of conceptual ordering and continually remind us of the violence entailed in creating a particular hierarchical order. What deconstruction, therefore, accomplishes is an iterative gesture which traces the fault-lines in the multiplicity of folds that serve to obscure the groundlessness of texts and to provide them with the illusory origin required for the stabilizing of meaning. To summarize one might say deconstruction is an activity of reading texts in a particular way with an eye to their conceptual order and logic. In particular, deconstruction focuses on key oppositional terms such as cause/ effect, presence/absence, space/time, speech/writing, literal/metaphorical, nature/culture, conscious/unconscious, origin/supplement, rational/irrational, intentional/accidental, etc., with a view, not to destroying them, but to undo and displace them so that their organizational effect on texts can be exposed. Culler (1983), suggests that this deconstructive activity comprises a number of distinguishable moves. Firstly, one demonstrates that the opposition in question is a metaphysical or ideological imposition. This is done by drawing out the underlying presuppositions which support the use of these key oppositional terms and to reveal their role in the system of metaphysical values. Simultaneously, however, the oppositional terms are retained in one's own argument against it. In the second moment, the oppositions are reinscribed in a process involving the reversal of privilege

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SO as to give each of the opposing terms a different status and impact. This now creates an initial uncertainty which dislodges the hierarchical order and shows it to be arbitrary but conventionally established. Finally, these uncertainties are emphasized and revealed to be intrinsic to the process of conceptual formulation. Thus, when speech and writing are shown to be merely two versions of an 'arche-writing', the opposition between speech and writing no longer retain the force of its legitimacy and, hence, do not have the same implications as when writing is seen essentially as a technical and secondary representation of speech. Likewise, the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical works differently when the deconstructive process resituates literal language as metaphors whose metaphoricity has been forgotten. Instead of treating metaphors as essentially deviants of literal language they are now recognized to be the very pre-conditions of literal language. Deconstruction, as a textual strategy involving the 'close' reading of texts, takes as its prime focus the logic and rhetoric of language. This being the case, it needs to be particularly sensitive to the implications of attempting to define itself in terms of the established categories of logo-centric thought. Hence, Derrida has good reasons for actively resisting any attempt to define deconstruction in terms of a concept or methodology or even a philosophical posture. This is because to do so would be to reinforce the logocentric assumption that the meaning of terms can be fully grasped in and of themselves. This is precisely what Derrida is at pains to deny. Derrida's reluctance comes across clearly in his 'Letters to a Japanese Friend' where he writes in response to a request for some approximate definitional equivalent of deconstruction: All sentences of the type "deconstruction is X" or "deconstruction is not X" a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false. As you know one of the principle things at stake in what is called in my texts "deconstruction", is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all of the third person present indicative: S is P. (Derrida in Wood and Bernasconi 1985: 4)

For Derrida, the difficulty of defining and, hence, translating the word deconstruction, stems from the fact that 'all the defining concepts, all the lexical significations, and even the syntactic articulations, which seem at one moment to lend themselves to this definition ... are also deconstructed or deconstructible' (Derrida in Wood 1985: 4). Norris (1987), notes that the attempt to think of deconstruction in terms of what it 'is' or 'is not', is to pull it back into the descriptive orbit of the traditional concepts and categories which Derrida maintains has been the organizing force behind Western

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thinking. Like Spencer Brown (1969), Derrida is particularly concerned to meditate on the workings of what the former calls the marking of the 'primary distinction'. It is this primary distinction or, in Derridean terms 'différance', which produces the oppositional couple 'is/is not' which then in tum provides the basis for structuring thought. In his deconstructive reading of texts, Derrida arrives at a point where he finds it necessary to coin the neologism 'différance' to capture the sense of the energy and work as well as violence involved in the establishment of the conceptual categories that support and reinforce logocentrism. Différance, unlike the Saussurian notion of 'difference' which makes meaning possible, implies an active and ongoing process of differing in space and time in order to enable terms to achieve some (albeit precarious) stability of meaning. Meaning is, therefore, the outcome of a violently enforced demarcation which is continuously at work within the text. Deconstruction therefore, seeks to expose the 'warring forces of signification within the texts itself (Johnson 1980: 5), so as to show them for what they are. It should be by now clear that upstream deconstructive thinking requires a thought style that is entirely at odds with modernist representational thinking. Moving upstream involves the vigilant uncovering and subsequent dismantling of the key conceptual oppositions which serve to sustain the project of logocentrism in Western thought. As a social sciences discipline, organization studies, in so far as it remains trapped in modernist preoccupations, contributes to sustaining this logocentric tendency. It is, therefore, the search for a 'non-site' beyond such preoccupations which has led Derrida to formulate the textual strategy of deconstruction in order to shift the focus away from preoccupations of origins and truths to an analysis of the linguistic micro-practices which define and shape the modernist discourse. It is this linguistic organization of our thought processes which legitimizes the focus on reason, meaning and truth as the ultimate objects of intellectual inquiry. Deconstruction, on the other hand, is first and foremost a critical intellectual activity whose primary focus is the analysis of this linguistic organization of our experiences. It is an activity involving the analysis, or 'undoing', of the organizational features of writing which provide the frames of reference for logocentric thought.

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Conclusion Organizational analysis as traditionally understood assumed 'organizations' to be the legitimate object of its focus. We saw in chapter 5 that acceptance of the postmodern critique of organizations implies the necessity to refocus on the micro-practices of organizing and to view organizations as relatively stabilized effects of such micro-practices instead of objective entities in their ovra right. In this chapter thus far, I have attempted to show that it is more specifically the organization of writing which constitutes the postmodern problematic. What deconstruction offers, therefore, is an alternative way of understanding organizational analysis as a form of deconstructive practice intended to resist the seductions of using readily available concepts and categories that provide the intellectual bases for traditional knowledge formation. The value of deconstruction lies, not in what is claimed, but, in what is denied. As an intellectual strategy it forces us to reconsider our assumptions by problematizing what appears as self-evident and, hence, surprises us with what it reveal. Johnson (1987) puts the value of this intellectual process of 'surprising' very succinctly: If I perceive my ignorance as a gap in knowledge instead of an imperative that changes the very nature of what I think I know, then I do not truly experience. The $ифГ18е of otherness is the moment when a new form of ignorance is suddenly activated as an imperative. (Johnson 1987: 16)

In the next chapter I shall attempt to demonstrate the surprising effects of adopting this postmodern deconstructive approach to the analysis of key concepts in contemporary organization studies.

Chapter 8: Organizational Analysis as Deconstmctive Practice

Introduction In the previous chapter the logic of deconstruction and the central maneuvers of a deconstmctive analysis were made more transparent. This chapter is devoted to demonstrating the practice of deconstruction in organizational analysis and its consequences for understanding the process of organizational inquiry. Since deconstruction is primarily aimed at dismantling key conceptual categories, and demonstrating the problematical nature of the oppositions generated, I have, within the vocabulary of organizational analysis, chosen to focus on the concept of 'decision' to demonstrate how a deconstmctive reading helps to throw new light on the fundamental nature of the decision process. Organizational decision-making remains an attractive notion which is widely deployed in the organization theory discourse. By focusing on this established concept I hope to show how its sense and meaning can be deepened and enriched by a deconstmctive reading.

The Case of'Decision' in Organization Theory Decision-making is still widely regarded as a central concept in management and organization theory. Despite the ambiguities surrounding its usefulness as a conceptual category, organization theorists, by and large, continue to use it as part of their descriptive vocabulary in the analysis of managerial action. Beginning with Bamard (1938), the concept of decision-making with its associated notions of discretion and choice provided a model of executive work which departed substantially fiom what was perceived to be the overly deterministic principles of scientific management. These insights were further developed and elaborated in the works of Lindblom (1959), March and Simon (1958) and Simon (1960). In The New Science of Management Decision, Simon (1960) maintained that the decision-making process is synonymous with the task of managing. He identified three principle phases which he claimed defines this decision-making activity:

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Finding occasions for making a decision; finding the possible courses of action; and choosing the course of action. These three activities account for quite different fractions of the time budgets of executives. (Simon 1960: 1)

In this classical description, decision-making is fiimly tied to the notions of discretion and choice. The decision process is portrayed as 'intentional, consequential, and optimizing' (March 1988: 1). These are the well established canons of a theory of choice which has attracted and continues to attract a significant amount of academic enthusiasm amongst writers on decision-making. As an academic product, the theory of choice reinforces and extends the dominant ideologies which glorify the role of purposefulness and reason in human affairs and presents itself as a 'modem classic of truth, beauty, and justice' (March 1988: 2). So much so that detractors of decision-making theory, even while rejecting important features of the theory itself, nonetheless, for the most part, treat the basic framework of decision analysis as compelling. Despite substantial transformations in the theories on decision-making over the past fifty years, the issues of choice and the intentionality of action remain central assumption embedded in the intellectual priorities of writers on decision. This assumption of the intentionality of action is reinforced by a predisposition towards the use of linear causal thinking in the explanatory scheme of things and towards a subtle privileging of the conscious over the unconscious in accounting for decisional 'events'. Together, these form an interlocking and self-sustaining web of beliefs which help to uphold the notion of choice, intentionality, consequence and optimization in the decision theory literature. For a period particularly from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, decisionmaking came to be increasingly viewed as a form of 'satisfícing' action (Simon 1957) associated with the notion of bounded rationality (March 1978). Contrary to the then prevalent belief that organizations sought to maximize their efforts through a painstakingly rational and systematic decision-making process, March and Simon (1958) argued convincingly that organizations in fact engaged in satisfícing rather than in maximizing their needs. This was because, in practice, all the information required for making a fully rational decision was never readily available and that, in any case, the limitations of human beings as information processors necessitated the 'bounding' of such information so as to remove equivocality in a specific situation in order to make it more manageable. Hence the decision-making process is more accurately represented as one characterized by bounded rationality. Other writers such as Allison (1969) elaborating on the notion of

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bounded rationality, suggested that decision-making is better conceptualized as a bureaucratic and political process often characterized by uncoordinated and/or negotiated outcomes. Hence decisional 'choices', particularly in large organizations, were better understood as outputs of a mixture of routinised patterns of behaviour and bargaining games played out by significant members of the organization. The notions of bounded rationality and process rationality came to dominate the discourse on decision and were further elaborated in Cohen et. al's (1972) 'garbage can' model of decision-making in which actions, decisions and outcomes are deemed to be randomly mixed in the flow of events. What eventually comes together to form an event, according to Cohen et. al., bears very little resemblance to any concept of deliberate rational action. In Weick's (1976) terms such decisions, actions and outcomes are said to be 'loosely coupled'. More recently, these images of decision-making have come to be seen as being conceptually unhelpful and several attempts have been made to shift the theoretical focus away from 'decisions' to other concerns such as 'action' (Mintzberg and Waters 1985, 1990) and 'change' (Pettigrew 1990). Despite these more recent attempts to disengage from some of the underlying assumptions mentioned previously, their theoretical preoccupations leads to a glossing over of the fundamental ontological character of the decisional act. It is this aspect of the concept of decision that I shall explore in this deconstructive reading of decision theory. In so doing I shall attempt to point the way towards a radical reconceptualization of decision that is more in accord with its inherently ontological character.

Deconstructing Decision-Making In a recent series of exchanges on the study of decisions, Mintzberg and Waters (1990), Pettigrew (1990) and Butler (1990), offered differing perspectives on the way forward to understanding organizational change and action. March (1988) has also offered a useful re-evaluation of the advances in decision theory in his book Decisions and Organizations. In this section I shall attempt to deconstruct some of these influential contributions and to show how each fails it its attempts to articulate a coherent theory of decision because of a reluctance to address the ontological character of decisionmaking.

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Mintzberg and Waters: From Decisions to Actions Mintzberg and Waters (1990) maintained that the concept of decision sometimes gets in the way of understanding organizational action by serving to confuse issues through imputing a commitment to action. For Mintzberg and Waters, action is often not preceded by commitment. Alternatively, 'the commitment that does precede action can be vague and confusing' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 5). This creates a problem for the traditionally assumed link between intention (or commitment) and action. Mintzberg and Waters began by noting that there is a universal acceptance that organizations make decisions which thereby determine the course of their actions. Using this assumed premise the authors proceeded to study the process of strategy-formation based on the notion of strategy as comprising 'a pattern in a stream of decisions'. However, in the course of their research they came to realize that: ... we were in fact not studying streams of decisions at all, but of actions, because those are the traces actually left behind in organizations (e.g., stores opened in a supermarket chain, projects started in an architectural firm). Decisions simply proved much more difficult to track down. (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 2)

Decisions are difficult to uncover because, contrary to the well-held belief that they invariably preceded action, they sometimes 'don't exist, in other words ... the relationship between decision and action can be far more tenuous than almost all the literature of organization theory suggest' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 2). Then again, decisions, like strategies, can emerge 'inadvertently'. Or else, the 'environment can sometimes "decide" too'. Given the ambiguities involved, Mintzberg and Waters ask: 'Must there be always a clear point as well as a clear place of commitment?' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 3). To this question, they argued that, frequently, in complex organizational settings where commitment needed to be collective, the problems associated with identifying the point where a decision is taken would be enormous. Moreover, such a commitment may have preceded some six months before the actual 'decision' was recorded or announced when, for instance, the president of a company visited a site and made up his mind. In this case, there is a need to trace the decision to 'someone's mind, indeed perhaps even to that person's subconscious' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 4). All this can make research on decision-making extremely problematic. Mintzberg and Waters therefore maintained that: Given that an action was taken, and that broad support preceded it, we must find out when and where consensus emerged—for that must be the real "point" of decision.

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Unfortunately, it may not be a point at all, but a gradually unfolding and subtle process. (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 4)

They therefore conclude that excessive preoccupation with trying to find out the point of decision 'runs the risk of imputing a direct relationship between the abstraction of mental intention at the individual or small group level and the concreteness of realized action at the organizational level' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 4). For them, a great deal of insight into 'realworld behaviour' can be lost in the process. On the basis of this argument, Mintzberg and Waters decided that strategy should be redefined in terms of 'a pattern in a stream of actions' instead of as a series of discrete decisions. For them, it made more sense 'to study streams of actions, and then go back and investigate the role of decision, if any, in determining these actions.' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 5). In Mintzberg and Water's view, therefore, priority should be accorded to the study of concrete actions or events such as the opening of a store or the starting of a project because these are observable events and hence more amenable to empirical research. Mintzberg and Water's eschewal of the concept of decision in preference for 'action' can be compared to Rousseau's condemnation of culture, writing and the 'supplement'. This process is best illustrated by the term 'kettlelogic' which Derrida borrows from Freud to describe the condemnation of writing in Plato's Phaedrus. Freud coined the term 'kettle-logic' to describe the rationalizing behaviour he occasionally came across in his work on dreams, jokes and their relationship to the unconscious. Thus, the subject of psychoanalysis may attempt to defend or excuse a particular action by advocating a whole barrage of often wildly contradictory claims such as: ( 1 ) 1 never borrowed your kettle; (2) it was in perfect condition when I gave it back to you; (3) it already had those holes in the bottom when I borrowed it. (Norris 1987: 39)

Thus, in the case of Mintzberg's and Waters' argument: (1) decisions sometimes don't exist; (2) they have to be traced to someone's mind; (3) they are often temporally remote from the point of formal expression; (4) they emerge inadvertently; (5) the environment sometimes 'decides'; (6) they emerge as an unfolding process rather than as a series of discrete points; (7) the relationship between decision and action is very tenuous. Clearly, Mintzberg and Waters use a version of this 'kettle-logic' to make a case for privileging 'action' over 'decision' in explaining strategy formation. This reversal, which is comparable to what we have earlier termed 'ontological gerrymandering', enables Mintzberg and Waters to thereby argue for a

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reversal of the traditionally held view that decisions are the causal mechanisms providing suitable explanations for the adoption of particular courses of action. Hovifever, this reversal is attempted without thinking through the underlying assumptions associated with the priority given to decisions over actions. For, underlying this traditional view, which sees action as a consequence of decision making, is the assumption of the priority of thought over action and more importantly of the separability of the two. According to this theoretical framework, thought is the initiator and controller of action; action is that which is intended and hence the effect or the realization of thought. The one follows the other in a pre-established hierarchical order associated with logocentrism. This logocentric view is reinforced by a causal mentality which sees thinking as 'cause' and action as 'effect'. The principle of causality asserts the logical and temporal necessity of cause over effect. However, as Nietzsche has persuasively argued, this concept of causality is essentially a product of a precise tropological or rhetorical operation involving a chronological reversal. If, for instance, I am groping for a pencil in the drawer and feel a pain in my fmger this would cause me to look for a cause of the pain. I then see a pin and make the necessary connection, pain ... pin. This produces a causal sequence involving the reversal of experience. Thus, pin ... pain. Nietzsche writes: The fragments of the outside world of which we become conscious comes after the effect that has been produced on us and is projected a posteriori as its "cause". (Nietzsche, Werke, vol. 3, p. 804, quoted in Culler 1983: 86)

Thus, the cause is 'imagined' after the effect has occurred. Applying this insight to Mintzberg and Waters' treatment of decision, we can see that although they wished to give priority to action over decision, they are nonetheless unable to dispense with the idea of decision being necessarily a prior condition of action and to recognize what might be termed the actionality of decision and the decisionality of action. This becomes evident when they state: 'Given that an action was taken, and that broad support preceded it, we must find out when and where consensus emerged—for that must be the real "point" of decision.' (Mintzberg and Waters 1990: 4). Action is, therefore, still necessarily preceded by an 'intention' or 'commitment' to act. Hence, it remains a secondary 'representation' of the latter. If, however, we think of decision as an 'explanatory principle' which is conceived as a consequence of attempting to rationalize our actions rather than as a pre-condition for actions, then decision no longer has an ontological priority over action. Action is all there is. But this action is also

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ontologically speaking itself the making of an 'incision' (decision) into the flow of our experiences, punctuating it and creating 'events' in the process of reality construction. Thus, we can begin to glimpse what I called earlier the decisionality of action and the actionality of decision. The meaning and implications of these terms will become clearer when I discuss Whitehead's (1929) view of decision a little later in this chapter. Additionally, both terms 'decision' and 'action' are positive terms which implicitly privilege activity over passivity and the conscious over the unconscious. One can hardly be said to have acted or decided without being conscious of such action or decision. However, as Freud (1975) has pointed out, it is the unconscious which is the primary source from which our consciousness arises. Likewise Böhm (1980) argues persuasively that the explicate is but a momentary expression of an underlying implicate order. The privileging of'decision' over 'non-decision', 'action' over 'non-action', therefore, reflects a deeply embedded desire to suppress the primacy of those unconscious implicate forces which shape and drive our thought processes even as we yearn for 'freedom of choice' and 'autonomy of action'. It is this refusal to acknowledge the power of the suppressed that prevents Mintzberg and Waters from realizing they had been in fact 'driven' to 'decide' to replace the concept of decision with the concept of action and this by the imperative of the logic of supplementarity ever present in their texts. Thus, they remain confined to discussing the semantics of 'choice' rather than more froiitfiilly exploring the real reasons for the difficulty of researching decision.

Pettigrew: Decisions as a Process of Change in Context Whilst Mintzberg and Waters sought to orient our thinking towards 'actions' rather than 'decisions', Pettigrew thinks it more useful to focus on 'change' rather than 'choice'. He criticizes decision theorists for paying too much attention to the 'front stage of visible decisions' and ignoring the 'back stage of non-decision making' (1990: 8) which can often prove to be extremely illuminating in terms of explaining how decisions come to be influenced by the ongoing mobilization of bias that goes on backstage. Pettigrew's central point, however, is to offer the notion of change as an alternative concept in strategic analysis. Through the displacement of 'decision' by 'change', Pettigrew hopes to move to a 'contextualist' approach in change analysis which 'draws on phenomena at vertical and horizontal levels of analysis and the inter-connections between those levels through time' (Pettigrew 1990: 9). For him contextualism offers a meta-level analytical approach capable of exploring several content areas of change in

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multifarious contexts. This approach, according to him, has the advantage of keeping in perspective the historical situatedness of both the object and subject of analysis while at the same time capturing the changes occurring in the process of transformation. While there are some useful insights in Pettigrew's reformulation of the problem of decision, it is not difficult to show how limited this perspective is in relation to a deconstructive reading of decision. To his credit, Pettigrew identifies 'non-decision making' as being a crucial dimension in our understanding how decisions actually occur. However, it would probably be more appropriate to understand this aspect of decision-making as obscured activity rather than non-activity as is implied by the term 'non-decision'. By making this point, however, Pettigrew intuitively brings into focus the inclusion/exclusion process that is continuously going on underneath the overt and often diverse expressions of the decisional activity. However, what he does not dwell upon is the formative nature of this process in the very constitution of social reality. He does not recognize that the creation of this overt/covert distinction is itself a decisional act. In short, he does not see the ontological and epistemological consequences of thinking decision in these more radical terms. Moreover, Pettigrew argues for an expansion of decision analysis to include the broader context within which decisions are made. Thus: If the analytical choice is between the decision episode or event as the unit of analysis and decision-making as a continuous process in context, the latter must be the preferred option. (Pettigrew 1990: 8)

The strange thing about adopting this position is that it contains a paradox which is by now a familiar feature of modernist discourse. This is that, in referring to the process of investigating decision, Pettigrew indicates a preferred 'choice' for contextual analysis over an analysis of the decisional 'episode' as an isolated event. Now, this preference itself forms a part of the problematic of decision theory, since it is essentially a decision about how to proceed in decision analysis and, hence, this 'meta-decision' is precisely the act of 'delimiting' or 'decontextualising' the focus of study. Thus, it turns out that in order to assert the preference for a contextualist orientation, Pettigrew, in effect, decontextualises and hence excludes the context of 'episodic' analysis thereby ironically isolating his preferred mode of analysis. To make matters even more complicated, Pettigrew clearly does not view the meaning of 'context' as being in any sense problematic to define. However, just as decisions can be argued to take place within contexts and hence

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have meaning in relation to these contexts, contexts themselves need to be circumscribed and defined in order for meaning to be possible. As Culler puts it succinctly: 'Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.' (Culler 1983: 123). Therefore, context is unmasterable and meaning always incomplete. Hence, attempts to give a fuller meaning to decisions by analyzing them 'in context' only serves to yield a different and not necessarily fuller picture of the decision process as is implied by Pettigrew's assertion. Finally, Pettigrew's attempt to substitute change for choice suffers the same fate as the case of 'action' in Mintzberg and Waters analysis of strategy formulation. Like Derrida's deconstruction of Lévi-Strauss's nature/ culture opposition, the oppositions decision/change or decision/action, can be shown to suffer from the same problems encountered by Lévi-Strauss. Decision, action and change are all terms can be better understood as convenient conceptual 'substitutes' for a deeper underlying 'incisional' process which operates at an obscured primordial level and which hence escapes the attention of most decision theorists. It is this ontological character of decision as incision, which will be dealt with in a later section. Of all the writers on the nature of decisions, it is perhaps James March of who has come closest to appreciating the complex and ambiguous nature of the concept of decision. March: From Choice to Ambiguity and Interpretation March (1988), begins by providing a useful chronology of the history of decision-making. In his view speculations about organizational decisionmaking have moved substantially away from a rationalist perspective embracing the idea of anticipatory, consequential and optimizing choice to: ... a recognition o f the limits on rationality, then to a concern for internal conflict, then to a history dependent conception of human action, and finally to an awareness of the profound ambiguities suaounding action in organizations. (March 1988: 15)

For March, ambiguities in decision-making relate to, issues about preferences, the question of relevance, the influence of history, and the question of inteφretation. According to March, preferences or 'intentions' are treated in decision theory as being essential but unproblematic. Thus, decision makers are assumed to have preferences that are 'consistent, stable and exogenous to the choice process' (March 1988: 12). However, this assumption is not borne out in practices in organizations according to March's observations. Instead, organizational preferences are frequently adjusted

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partly as a result of external pressures and as a consequence of both positive and negative feedback to their actions. Hence: Aspiration levels adapt to experience, and the dimensions of desire are transformed through the experience of deciding among actions, implementing them, and observing their consequences. (March 1988: 12)

Thus there is no stable and enduring preference or intention with which decisions can be 'anchored' to as an explanation for organizational action. By raising the problematic nature of this assumption, March approaches the realization that the orthodox privileging of intentions over actions, in terms of a causal sequence widely accepted in the decision theory literature, is a questionable one. Ambiguity about relevance refers to the pervasive assumption in classical decision theory that a logic of causality connects 'policies to activities, means to ends, solutions to problems, and actions in one part of an organization to actions in another part' (March 1988: 13). For March, this assumption is quite untenable since events in organizations appear to be much more 'loosely coupled' than the literature often suggest. Often, there are 'deep ambiguities in the causal linkages among the various activities of an organization, between problems and their "solutions", and between how managers act and how they talk' (March 1988: 13). It is with this concern in mind that March and his associates (Cohen, March and Olsen 1972; March and Olsen 1976) proposed the alternative idea of a 'garbage can model' of decision-making which, in their view, more accurately captures the goingons in organizations. In this garbage can model of decision-making, problems, solutions and decision makers are not so much connected by their causal relevance as by their 'simultaneity'. As we have shown previously, causal thinking, which assumes a temporal and logical sequence that privileges cause over effect, is the product of a tropological operation whereby the cause is 'imagined' after the effect has been felt. This being the case cause can be claimed to be an effect of effect thereby rendering the distinction between the two problematical. What March and his colleagues are proposing here is to situate the issue differently so that 'simultaneity' becomes the unifying feature which connects one event with another instead of cause. In this sense, therefore, March is far and away a more imaginative and rigorous thinker than either Mintzberg or Pettigrew. For March, ambiguity about history refers to decision theories which use history as a basis for expectations about the future. History, however, is

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'clearly and notoriously ambiguous' (March 1988: 13). Our earlier discussion of Tolstoy's attempts to 'rewrite' history suggests that much of what passes for history is often slanted towards particular vested interests. Yet historical clarity is vital for these theories to be effective. Thus, like the ambiguity surrounding contextual relevance, ambiguities about historical causality lie at the heart of decision theories which sought to argue a case for historically based models of decision-making. Finally, March identifies the fourth ambiguity as relating to the question of interpretation. He writes: Thinking about life in terms of choice introduces systematic bias into interpretations of decision processes.... The fundamental presumption of virtually all theories o f decision-making is that decision processes are organized around the making of decisions and understandable in terms of decision outcomes. (March 1988: 14)

The result is that any information obtained is viewed in relation to decision outcomes even though it may not have been provided in relation to the decision in question. For March, participants in the decision process often: ... enter the decision arena and leave it as a ftinction of the importance of the issues involved, (however) they also enter the decision arena and leave it as a fiinction o f the rest of their lives within which any particular organizational decision often is relatively unimportant. (March 1988: 14)

He therefore concluded that decision-making is a 'highly contextualised, sacred activity, surrounded by myth and ritual, and as much concerned with the inteφretive order as with the specifics of particular choices' (March 1988: 14). Interpretation rather than rational choice is what is distinctively human according to March. The myth of rational choice is an invention and justification of the modem scientistic mentality. These four irresolvable ambiguities surrounding the concept of decisionmaking leads March to contend that ambiguity is not just a fact of life, but a 'normatively attractive state' of affairs. This is because each of these ambiguities have positive consequences. For example, ambiguities about preferences enable 'goals' to develop through experience while ambiguity about interpretation allows communication to 'evoke more than a communicator knows' (March 1988: 15). In this way March surprises us by reversing the traditional view of ambiguity as being something to be 'coped' with, hence, implying it to be a negative or undesirable state of affairs. Clearly March's ideas are a significant advance in our understanding of the decision process. His questioning of the idea of 'preferences', his dis-

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placement of the logic of causality, and his emphasis on the positive value of ambiguity are a refreshing change from the highly deterministic and dominant literature on decision-making. However, he overly restricts his theoretical explorations to a much too narrow context of 'decisions in organizations'. By so doing he invariably overlooks the wider ontological significance of decision as an ontological act of reality-creation. In this sense, it can be argued, March's contributions do not create a necessary discontinuity from the common view of decisions as something which either 'individuals' or 'organizations' do in relation to unproblematically available options. This is despite the fact that he raised important questions about the efficacy of notions of causality and choice. It can, therefore, only be concluded that March is unwilling to think through the important question of the structure of ambiguity and its relation to the decisional act which he has identified as a crucial feature of decision analysis. In this sense March, like Mintzberg and Pettigrew, opts for a more conservative approach to the critique of decision theory. In conclusion, Derrida's (1978) observation of the less productive route Lévi-Strauss chose to take in encountering the ambiguities of the scandal of 'incest prohibition', can be similarly used to describe March's approach to decision making. As Derrida points out, this approach consists in: ... conserving all those old concepts (of decision) within the domain of empirical discovery while here and there denouncing their limitations, treating them as tools which can still be used. No longer is any truth value attributed to them; there is a readiness to abandon them, if necessary, should other instruments (such as "action", "change", "interpretation") appear more useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy is exploited. (Derrida 1978: 284)

This reluctance to think through the concept of decision in a systematic way in order to reveal the constitutive nature of the concept itself reflects the limits of the frames of reference adopted by all three writers on decisionmaking. A more critically rigorous approach to understanding decision is afforded us by Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality and in G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form.

Rethinking the Concept of Decision Although the concept of decision has had a relatively short history in management and organization theory, the humanities have grappled with the

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more fundamental nature of decision for a considerably longer period of time. In Process and Reality, Whitehead (1929), offers us a refreshingly different approach to understanding the meaning of decision. He writes: 'Every decision expresses the relation of the actual thing, for which a decision is made, to an actual thing by which that decision is made' (Whitehead 1929: 58). Etymologically, the term 'decision' has traceable links with the word 'incision' which means to make a 'cut'. For Whitehead, this operation has great significance for what he calls the notion of 'givenness'. A decision is an operation of 'cutting off whereby 'what is "given" is separated from what for that occasion is "not given"'(Whitehead 1929: 58). Henceforth, what is given is suppressed or relegated to form the backdrop of context against which what is not given forms the problematic. This element of 'givenness' therefore implies the effect of an incisional operation which is designed to facilitate and procure a form of limiting so that what is subsequently apprehended as reality appears 'manageable'. This is what making a decision accomplishes: it acts to delimit the scope of our attention by punctuating our phenomenal experiences, removing equivocality and thereby helping to configure a particular version of reality to which we subsequently respond. Ontological acts of decision operate according to a general principle of economy by serving as attention-focusing devices. Decisions, therefore, are primary ontological acts of carving out a plausible and coherent reality. Hence the actionality of decision and the decisionality of action. Decision, therefore, cannot be merely construed as an unproblematic event existing 'out there' for the decision theorist to observe, describe and explain because this assumption, this 'given' is itself the outcome of a prior decisional operation. It is not a casual adjunct to the actuality we seek to describe. Instead, it constitutes the very meaning of that actuality: 'An actual entity arises from a decision for it, and by its very existence provides decisions for other actual entities which supersede it.' (Whitehead 1929: 58). What we apprehend and seek to 'discover and describe' are always already constituted by our very decision to configure a phenomenon for investigation. To decide is to engage in the act of 'cutting off. Hence, there is no 'ghost' of intentionality residing behind the act of decision making. Every act is a decisional inscription involving this cutting off and every decision involves this action of inscribing. Like Whitehead, Spencer Brown (1969) views this action of decision as essentially the making of an inscription or primary distinction thereby creating what is subsequently referred to as the internal and the external. This primary distinction is expressible as a cleavage of an initially indistinguishable space resulting in the production of the oppositional couplet is/is not. Spencer Brown finds that the very making of this primary distinction is, by itself, sufficient to generate the logical structures of rational thought and the

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complex of perspectives associated with it. Crucially, these logical structures in terms of which phenomena are apprehended, can be located 'neither in an internal or subjective world nor in an external of objective world' (Herbst 1976: 85). This is because key oppositional terms such as internal/external, is/is not, subjective/objective, etc., are themselves already products or outcomes of decisional operation. The 'original' state prior to a distinction being made, is therefore 'neither finite nor infinite, neither something that exists nor something that does not exist. It is entirely fi-ee of any distinguishing characteristics' (Herbst 1976: 90). Herbst (following Spencer Brown) argues that the primary distinction reflects the moment of our insertion (incision, inscription) into conscious awareness in which the very organizational structures of understanding are generated in the form of a triad of elements through which we then think decision-making. Thus, as discussed earlier in chapter 5, the triad is the irreducible atomic element of any conceptual system. This means that no single conceptual category such as 'decision' or 'action' can exist in isolation. Instead, the bounding or framing caused by the incision is a 'structure which produces two mutually defining points of view' (Cooper 1986: 303). Thus, action/non-action, texfcontext, is/is not, and system/environment, are all produced by decisional operations. It is this same ontological gesture of framing or bounding which preoccupies Cooper's critical exegesis Organization/Disorganization. Like Whitehead and Spencer-Brown, Cooper is primarily concerned with the 'decision operation' or framing process which produces oppositional couplets such as inside/outside, organization/disorganization and system/ environment. Three such triadic sets are illustrated below:

inside

boundary

finite

boundary

1

being (is) boundary

outside

infinite

non-being (is not)

Figure 10: The Triad: Irreducible Atomic Elements of Any Conceptual System (From Herbst 1976: 89)

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What this means is that decision is the ontological act of inserting a boundary and as such is the 'archetypal' decision-making activity which separates and hence 'brings forth' the domains of the internal and the external, the subject and the object, action and intention, text and context, constancy and change, cause and effect, as well as choice and non-choice. These are the key categorical distinctions underpinning the modes of reasoning adopted by mainstream decision theorists. These conceptual categories are assumed to be isolatable and, hence, unproblematic in character. Decision-making is the ontological act of cutting off that which has hitherto been an indistinguishable space. It is the making of a primary distinction, a cleavage of an empty space, an active insertion or inscription of a boundary thereby creating sets of bounded oppositional terms which subsequently provides the logical frames for understanding organization and decisionmaking. For Cooper (1986), this 'framing' or inscribing of a boundary must be conceived 'not as a static concept, subservient to either term (i.e., inside/ outside, system/environment, etc.), but as an active process of differentiation which serves system and environment equally' (Cooper 1986: 303). Ontological acts of decision-making are what makes possible such distinctions in the very first place. Contrary to commonly held views, decision-making is not so much about 'choice' or 'change' or even 'action events'. Rather, it is an ontological gesture, a bringing forth of a reality to the exclusion of other possible realities. It is the arbitrary and 'violent' separating of that which is deemed to be significant from that which therefrom is perceived as 'given' and hence insignificant. To think to substitute the concept of decision by 'action' or 'change' or even 'inteφretation' is to fail to appreciate that decisional acts are essentially expressions of the 'taxonomic urge' to organize and structure human experiences and to thereby render them thinkable. In short, decision, in this ontological sense, is better understood as another way of expressing what Derrida means by the neologism 'différance'. For Derrida 'différance' is neither a concept nor a word since it cannot be couched in the orthodox representational conceptions of language. It is what yields language and linguistic concepts and consequently is 'older than' any attempts at linguistic description: Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to one another. This spacing is the simultaneous active and passive (the "a" of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, which cannot be governed or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" term would not signify, would not ftinction. (Derrida 1981: 27)

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Différance answers to an economical question. It is the most generalized economic structuring which enables all other subsequent economical concepts such as 'decision', 'action', 'change', 'organization' etc., to be articulated and made to work. Put into more concrete terms, différance is a notion whose meaning can never be fully grasped. It is the 'non-fiill, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences. Thus, the name "origin" no longer suits it.' (Derrida 1981: 11). At best we can say that it generates the primordial decisional act which produces the cleavage between self and other, between the internal and external, and between the given and not given. 'Différance' like 'Tao' and like the 'primary distinction' is what achieves the violent 'cutting oflT that produces the actuality of what we apprehend. It is the non-originary origin of decision-making. Clearly we have moved a substantial theoretical distance away from the more traditional preoccupations of decision theorists such as Mintzberg, Pettigrew and March. Decision operates at the core of our thought processes, as understood in Whiteheadian and Derridean terms. Understood as such, decision takes on a new meaning, one totally unfamiliar to the modernist discourse on organization. My use of 'decision' as a way of illustrating an upstream deconstructive approach to organizational analysis is intended to show the potential of upstream thinking for rethinking the meaning of organization as well as other familiar key concepts associated with it. Instead of thinking of organization studies as essentially about the analysis of organizations or even about the analysis of 'paradigms' of organizational theorizing, adopting a deconstructive mode implies that we view organization as an accomplishment resulting from the ongoing inter-actions of complex linguistic and social micro-practices that are inextricably associated with the taxonomic urge to order our life experiences. This is essentially the idea of organizational analysis as deconstructive practice. From the traditional idea of organization studies as the analysis of concrete entities called organizations, the debate shifted to a meta-theoretical level whereby the various theories of organization came under paradigmatic scrutiny. This was then followed by an increasing awareness of the crucial role that language plays in organizational theorizing. Finally, we have arrived at a point where the organizational effects of writing as inscription have become the central problematic of a postmodern view of organization studies. All throughout this journey, I have continued to move 'upstream' from the dominant preoccupations of 'mainstream' or downstream organizational theorists in order to show what a deconstructive view of organization analysis might look like if we seriously attempt to think through the problems and contradictions of modernist discourse. My central argument has been that a

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postmodem, deconstructive approach to the analysis of organization offers vast potential for enriching our understanding of organization as essentially precariously balanced human accomplishments. Organization is always incomplete and always participating in the process of transforming itself to become something other than its present state. It is the stimulating of such a movement-conscious understanding of organization that undeφins the intellectual agenda of deconstructive analysis. If we accept this as a viable approach, then a new intellectual orientation towards the discipline is required and a new pedagogy for the teaching of organization theory must be developed which is able to remain sensitive to the core concerns of deconstructive thinking. In the concluding section of this chapter, I shall briefly examine the consequences of embracing the idea of deconstructive practice in organizational analysis.

After Deconstmction: Subtle Knowing and Supple Minds In An Introduction to Metaphysics, the French process philosopher Henri Bergson made an invaluable distinction between two profoundly different ways of knowing. His insights, succinctly articulated nearly a century ago, are instructive in our understanding of the underlying puφose of deconstructive analysis as a potentially fertile form of human inquiry. We rely on the point of view at which we place ourselves and on the symbols through which we express ourselves, in the first instance of knowing. For Bergson, this kind of knowing, because it is essentially dependent on symbolic representations, stops at the relative. A second kind of knowing, however, is possible which 'neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbols' (Bergson 1911: I). This latter kind of'intuitive' knowing, according to Bergson, attains the absolute as compared to knowing through symbolic representations. ReUance on symbolic representations as a mediimi for knowing, places us 'outside' the phenomenon we are attempting to investigate. This is what essentially characterizes much of academic analyses. All such traditional forms of analyses is, thus, a form of 'translation' which essentially entails reducing the object of inquiry to conceptual elements already known in-advanced and by which we use to apprehend our phenomenal experiences. Analysis is the systematic casting and encasing of an object of inquiry into more familiar symbolic representations for the purpose of facilitating a detached scrutiny. In that very process it generates an irretrievable loss in that it never really achieve fiill possession of its object of attention. As Bergson perceptively notes:

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In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of view in order t o complete its always incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it may perfect the always imperfect translation. It goes on, therefore, to infinity. (Bergson 1911: 7)

Analysis seeks the original through its representations and finding it not there mistakenly concludes that none really exists. It thus settles for a relative understanding of its experiences. In contrast to analytical knowing the act of intuitive knowing is a simple one. By intuition is meant the kind of 'intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible' (Bergson 1911: 6). It is this intuitive form of knowing, which eschews the use of symbolic representations, that Bergson insists gives us an absolute understanding of reality. If there exists any means of possessing a reality absolutely instead of knowing it relatively, of placing oneself within it instead of looking at it from outside points of view, of having the intuition instead of making the analysis: in short, of seizing it without any expression, translation or symbolic representation—metaphysics is that means. (Bergson 1911: 8)

Metaphysical inquiry, then, is essentially that form of rigorous inquiry which attempts to dispense with symbols. It posits the possibility of knowing without the aid of symbolic representations. The idea that the only form of legitimate knowledge is knowledge gleaned from a rigid adherence to representationalist axioms is one that has held the modem world captive for several centuries now. Deconstructive analysis, by systematically challenging this logocentric assumption and destabilizing the conceptual categories around which such representationalist knowledge has been organized, demonstrates unequivocally that such assumptions are unwarranted and unnecessarily restrictive. It is precisely this task of sifting through the ossified layers of symbolic representations, which make our modem world appear so immediately necessary and familiar, that defines the essential purpose of any form of critical inquiry. Deconstruction must, therefore, be understood in this positive light as an attempt to resist symbolic closure and to thereby emancipate the human imagination. It would be unhelpfiil to mistake this as a form of intellectual mischief-making. Deconstructive analysis, following in the true spirit of metaphysical inquiry, is not anti-empirical as is commonly perceived. Instead, as Bergson convincingly demonstrates, it is a truer form of empiricism. For him a 'true

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empiricism is that which proposes to get as near to the original itself as possible, to reach deeply into its life, and so, by a kind of intellectual auscultation, to feel the throbbing of its soul' (Bergson 1911: 31). It is this truly empirical orientation which defines deconstructive analysis as a legitimate and fertile mode of inquiry. It takes as given the necessarily 'mobile' character of a brute reality continuously changing and transforming itself Deconstructive analysis, as such, sets itself this task of refamiliarising us with the essential mobility of nature. It is movement that we must accustom ourselves to look upon as simplest and clearest, immobility being only the extreme limit of the slowing down of movement, a limit reached only, perhaps, in thought and never in nature. (Bergson 1911: 44)

What traditional forms of analysis has done is to first render stable and static this intrinsic mobility and then attempted to reconstruct its motion using symbolic representations. In this way mobility is conceived and expressed as a function of immobility. This urge to render static an essentially mobile reality, is a natural predisposition of the human intellect as Bergson observed. The upshot is that we end up 'only obtaining in this way a clumsy imitation, a counterfeit of real movement' (Bergson 1911: 45). A reversal of intellectual priorities is thus necessary if we are to achieve a true empiricism. To do this we need to invert the habitual direction of the work of thought and through this deliberate process to reengage with mobile reality. It is precisely this ultimate objective which deconstructive analysis seeks to achieve.

Implications: Deconstructive Analysis and the Educational Process Organization Studies as an academic discipline is increasingly perceived as a 'subject' with a specific content field of knowledge that forms a part of the curriculum of university Business and Management Schools. It is believed that a knowledge of organizations, their characteristic features and how they function is crucial for those who aspire to work in, for, or manage organizations. Thus, the organization studies literature carves up the field of study in such a way as to divide it in terms of levels of analysis, perspectives of analysis, and the scope and content of the discipline. That this process itself involves a more pervasive and generalized mode of organizing which is characteristic of the human condition, often escapes the attention of ardent proponents of the field of study. Such a way of organizing the field of study

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reflects unexpressed assumptions about the status of theories and knowledge, what learning is and how it is accomplished, as well as the role of the academic discipline in the university educational process. In this section, I shall explore the question of university education, in particular, and attempt to defend a view which argues for a deconstructive approach to organizational analysis as integral to the academic ideals of tertiary education. I maintain here that it is this educational process of symbolic delayering which provides an adequate raison d'être for the university life of students. It is also what characterizes the emancipatory aspirations of a liberal democracy. What is the role of higher education in a liberal democracy? This is the question Allan Bloom sets out to address in his thesis on the state of American higher education and which he concludes by lamenting the impoverished state of the souls of today's students. Bloom (1987) argued forcefully a case for returning to the Socratic style of teaching in which the persistent asking of important questions in pursuit of lasting values becomes a dominant feature of university education. For him, the teacher's standpoint is not arbitrary: It is neither simply dependent on what the student thinks they want or happen to be in this place or time, nor is it imposed on him by the demands of a particular society or the vagaries of the market. (Bloom 1987: 19)

Instead: Midwifery—i.e., the delivery of real babies of which not the midwife but nature is the cause—describes teaching more adequately, (ibid.: 20)

Criticizmg the American higher educational system which, he contends, propagates a form of cultural relativism. Bloom maintains that what is taught is Openness to closedness' since it succeeds in relativising the West's intellectually imperialistic claims by forcing its students to believe that the Western ways are not really better. Paradoxically: ... what they actually do (in attacking ethnocentrism) is to assert unawares t h e superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all claims to superiority. (Bloom 1987: 36)

It is in fact an openness which denies the special claim of reason and which thus causes the degeneration into an openness of 'indifference' instead of an openness which impels us in our quest of knowledge. True

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openness, which for Bloom is what a rigorous educational process provides, is the accompaniment of the desire to know and, hence, an 'awareness of ignorance'. It means being closed to all the charms that make us comfortable with the present. Bloom cites de Tocqueville as showing that the great democratic danger is 'enslavement to public opinion'. For him, it is not feelings or commitment that will render a man free but reasoned thoughts. Much of what characterizes a liberal democracy conduces to the assault on awareness of differences in thought and fimdamental principles. Hence, it is precisely to prevent or 'cure' this peculiar form of 'blindness' that the university may be said to serve a crucial role in a liberal democracy. This is because ironically, the 'deepest intellectual weakness of democracy is its lack of taste or gift for the theoretical life' (Bloom 1987: 252). Bloom concludes by emphatically insisting that the university: ... need not concern itself with providing its students with experiences that are available in a democratic society. They will have them in any event. It must provide them with experiences they cannot have there. (Bloom 1987: 256, emphasis added)

The university as an institution existing within a democracy must 'compensate' for what individuals are deprived of in a democracy by maintaining an autonomy which is often contemptuous of public opinion. Bloom's passionate defense of the traditional ideals of a university education resonates with the deconstructive imperative of insistently 'moving upstream' against the mainstream current of popular views, ready-made symbol systems and dominant ideologies. In his own terms. Bloom can be said to adopt a postmodern deconstructive approach to the question of education in higher institutions of learning. What I have attempted to do throughout this book has been to emphasize the richness and value of this mode of analysis and the intellectual pedigree from which it draws its inspiration. The vehicle by which this upstream journey has been made possible is the academic field of study that we call organization theory. Other vehicles could have been used just as effectively since my primary concern has not been with the content knowledge of what traditionally passes for organization theory, but with the organizational (i.e., forming, framing and delimiting) processes involved in the constitution of modem knowledge. One example of how this upstream deconstructive approach operates, has been shown in the deconstructive treatment of 'decision', which is widely accepted as a central concept in organization studies. From a seemingly obvious term, used far too casually in the context of mainstream organization studies, it is possible, as I have shown, to demonstrate the profundity and

214

Chapter 8: Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice

richness of the meaning of decision. It is possible, indeed necessary, to do likewise with other key concepts and categories in order to continue enriching our understanding of the organizational world we live in. The persistent dismantling of such conceptual categories is not a frivolous activity. Rather it is based on the sound insight that a careful and detailed examination of one apparently small aspect of our overly femiliar world can oftentimes reveal a recursive pattern mirrored in the larger totality. Thus, we can understand the constitution of our modem world through a detailed examination of the smallest part of it. This is precisely what William Blake meant when he wrote those immortal lines: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand And Eternity in an Hour'

Education is the 'drawing out' of these profound insights, of keeping knowledge 'alive' and of cultivating an appreciation for the structure of ideas and the development of a sense of 'style' in dealing with affah-s of the world. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also t h e most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economizes his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind (Whitehead 1932: 19)

For Whitehead, what education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power and beauty of ideas and the development of a cultured mind which has an eye for the bearing of one set of ideas on another: Nothing but a special study can give appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of life. (Whitehead 1932: 19)

For him a mind so disciplined would be both more abstract and concrete at the same time. However, Whitehead warned against the attractions of a 'subject' driven educational curriculum. In his view, the teaching of small parts of a large number of subjects results in the 'passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality' (Whitehead 1932: 2). This is the consequence of education using inert ideas. In the terms of this book, this approach is what is promoted in a downstream, conse-

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215

quential mode of thought. Not only is this process 'useless' according to Whitehead, but 'it is, above all things, harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima.... Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas' (Whitehead 1932: 2). The fatal disconnection of subjects or even topics so commonly a feature of university education today needs to be eradicated before it kills the vitality of the educational process. 'There is only one subject-matter for education' maintains Whitehead, 'and that is Life in all its manifestations'(Whitehead 1932: 11). To see education otherwise is to remain trapped in the 'fragmented thinking' which Böhm (1980) identified and sought to eradicate.

Conclusion The idea that the intellectual practice of deconstruction is what best characterize the intellectual ideals of university education is tied to a new found appreciation that all of life is organization and that the essence of organization is life. Hence the analysis of organization is inextricably linked to the analysis of life in all its complexions. What all this suggests is that we need to begin to understand that the theories and knowledge generated and accumulated in what we call organization studies recursively mirror the systems of ordering prevailing in a particular community and hence, are better thought off as communal artifacts customarily passed on in highly ritualized settings that we call the university. Far too frequently such artifacts are deconstextualised from their social settings and therefore remain silent and inert, unable to signify. They represents the concentrated, condensed and hence unnecessarily suppressed effects of organizational forces. Like the silent tombs of Fatum, they hide stories of tragedy, power, greed, passion, deceit and ecstasy. They are the inert ideas which Whitehead referred to and which needs the breath of life to be revitalized. The task of deconstructive practice is precisely this slow and vigilant, and oftentimes tedious, unpicking of the forgotten threads of thought which have become intimately woven into the fabric of normalized organizational life. It is this giving of life to 'inert' ideas about organization that marks the contribution of a deconstructive approach to organizational analysis. This laborious but hugely rewarding process is what makes a true university education a unique opportunity for genuine self-actualization.

Conclusions ... in this book I have only made up a bunch of other men's flowers, providing of my own only the string that ties them together. Montaigne

Organization Studies, a professed body of knowledge which, for the most part, claims a privileged understanding of organizations and more latterly the paradigmatic commitments of theories of organization, is itself, reflexively, a product of organizational impulses. This organizational impulse is traceable to the logical structuring of language and, more specifically, to a logic of 'writing' understood as material marks punctuating space-time. As such, the study of organization, in its most generalized sense, must take into its central focus the organizational consequences of writing as a widespread taxonomic phenomenon. The ordering effects produced by inscriptional acts of writing generate a logic of organization which is recursively implicated in each layer of social formation. By focusing attention on generic issues such as ordering, listing, hierarchical arrangements, sectioning, spacing and differentiation, etc., deconstructive organizational analysis seeks to render more transparent and hence understandable how a dominant logic of organizing is always already embedded and hence transmitted within a particular set of social interactions including especially interactions involving linguistic exchanges. It is the determined analysis of this 'technology' of writing that forms the central problematic of a deconstructive approach to the study of organization. Organization studies, as such, should not be overly narrowly defined and consequently confined to a problematic which assumes a common-sensical understanding of organization. Preoccupation with the functional and performative aspects of organizations, such as those positivistic accounts frequently found in popular organization and management texts, restrict these accounts to a glossing over of the more fundamental nature of organizing as a collective reality-constituting activity. The result is that crucial features of the underlying social organizing processes are far too frequently overlooked. Even the more academically 'respectable' socio-logical views of organization fail to extend their analyses to the examination of the underlying linguistic micro-practices which collectively contribute to the structuring of organizational discourse. It is this aspect of linguistic organization which this book has been primarily concerned with. Thus, instead of

218

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thinking merely about the language of organization, as some of the more recent writers on organization have drawn our attention to, I have chosen to focus on the organization of language and more generally the organization of writing. I began in Part One, with a review of the common themes and debates found in the field of study. I identified and subjected these well established organizational thematics to a deconstructive reading in order to demonstrate the tensions and contradictions embedded in the epistemological commitments of mainstream organization theory. This involved, initially, exposing the underlying epistemological and ontological commitments which shape and hence organize the discourse on organization and then showing that there are irresolvable logical tensions and contradictions associated with attempting to ground theory on the premises of an epistemological and ontological realism. This modernist state of affairs has come to be called the problem of reflexivity which is endemic to the dominant intellectual practice I label 'representationalism'. Representationalism is an organizational imperative which assumes that the hallmark of all inquiry is the accurate mirroring of an external already constituted reality. As part of its discursive strategy, representationalism 'hides' or 'deflects' inconsistencies and contradictions behind a wall of rhetorical and textual practices. Some of these textual practices include what we have labelled 'forgetting', 'ontological gerrymandering' and 'kettle logic'. These are all facets of rhetorical manoeuvres, which make up what I called the linguistic micro-practices, that create a logic of organization. My puφose in Part 1 was to raise into question the logic of the hierarchical system of thought which supports representationalism and which has guided much of Western thought particularly over the past three centuries. This was necessary in order that the meaning of otherwise selfevident key terms, such as 'truth', 'reality', 'representation' and, within the context of this thesis, 'organization', could be called into question. In Part Two, I explored an alternative way of thinking about organization and organization studies using the metaphor of'upstream thinking'. By this, I intended to suggest that the inherent tensions and contradictions of representationalism, which were revealed in Part 1, could only be better understood and resolved by a radical rethinking of the meaning of key terms in the modernist vocabulary. Thus, when we begin to think of 'truth' as the 'well held collective fictional beliefs of a particular community', or 'reality' as an 'effect' created by the human practice of representing, or organizations as reified 'outcomes' of primary organizing processes, we also begin to open up new avenues for reconceptualizing organization and organizational analysis. Organizations and the entity-like status we attribute to them, are

Conclusions

219

shown to be outcomes of our own self-referential urge to create order and to bring to hand, and make more manipulable and controllable, that which is unwieldy, obdurate, intractable, or remote. Organizations are in fact 'concentrations' or 'concretised' networks of representational practices which, as regularised patterns of interactions, sustain the appearance of the former as unified entities. Representation here, takes on a new sense of 'standing for', instead of the traditional sense of mirroring or copying. Understood thus, all representational practices embody a principle of economy involving 'reduction', condensation and 'concentration' so as to facilitate greater control in affairs of the world. In terms of physical principles, it is the equivalent of what we call 'mechanical advantage', where it becomes possible for a small human effort to move large masses. Representation and organization are therefore two sides of the same coin which issues forth from our primordial 'will to organize'. Part Three elaborated on the significance of a deconstructive approach to organizational analysis. No technology of representation is, however, more potent and pervasive in modem society than writing as a logical system of ordering and organization. The idea that writing originated as an aide memoire is attractive, but this view treats the latter as an appendage to modem life rather than recognizing the centrality of its role in shaping modem consciousness. It hardly does justice to the monumental impact of writing on thought processes. Here again, it is important to remind the reader that we are talking about a generalized understanding of writing; an 'arche-writing' which is not, as Derrida (1976) has shown, secondary to speech. Writing, as the very condition for language, deals essentially with frames, boundaries, spacings and listing etc., as I have continually emphasised. It is the analysis of the very possibility of these technological effects of writing that deconstruction is centrally concerned with. Organizational analysis as deconstructive practice deals, therefore, primarily with examining the organizational operations and effects of writing. The idea of organizational analysis as deconstructive practice emerged in the course of my increasingly recognising the futility of 'grounding' intellectual inquiry. This insatiable yearning for a permanent 'resting place' which plagues all of us, is what fuels the illusions of transcendental metaphysics. It is based on a Parmenidean-inspired cosmology in which reality is construed to be permanent and unchanging and therefore unproblematically representable. This static view of reality is also what underpins the idea and desirability of mainstream organization theory as an established body of knowledge about organizations and their functioning. However, if organizations start to evaporate when we try to get closer to them, if the very idea of

220

Conclusions

'individuals' and 'society' are but fleeting moments of an emerging and changing dynamic of relationships and transactions, and if what we call knowledge are mere artifacts generated by an uncritical commitment to a static cosmology rather than a processual one, what then, is the role for inquiry in general and organizational inquiry in particular, so that it can continue to be regarded as a worthwhile academic activity? One way is to view the process of intellectual inquiry as a journey without a destination. Seen in this light, theories therefore, are but 'vehicles' or modes of transportation through which we embark upon our journey upstream. We are enriched not by the realization that we have somehow 'arrived' at the 'source' of knowledge, but by the rich diversity of insights and 'discoveries' we happen to have encountered along the way. It is through the deliberate strategy of disorientating and disorganizing our familiar styles of thinking that such new insights can be attained on the meaning and effect of organization. Thus, in a less than direct way we end up with understanding that which we first set out to analyse, the true nature of organization. This is not an unfamiliar consequence of embarking on a true intellectual journey as T.S. Eliot discovered: and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time T.S. Eliot

Such an insight can be metaphysically linked to a Heraclitean cosmology which emphasizes the emergent, dynamic and transformational character of of our material and social worlds. Reality is always in process so much so that any enduring knowledge that we claim to have of it, by default, is necessarily incomplete and partial not because there is an existing whole that we might ultimately get to, but because time and temporality is an essential ingredient in our understanding of human experience. Thus far, our modem world has been dominated by spatial metaphors with tune and temporality considered as an appendage or afterthought in our modes of theorizing. Perhaps it is time to reconstruct our understanding along the axis of time rather than of space.

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Index

abbreviation 121; 126; 131; 135; 136; 146; 164; 169 academic grammar 25 accuracy of representation 45; 70 achievement verb 157; 168; 172 act of persuasion 124 action?; 14; 16; 38; 55; 57; 75; 84; 111; 126; 128; 131; 152; 153; 154; 156; 155; 162; 164; 168; 169; 170; 171; 172; 193; 195; 196; 197; 198; 199; 201; 202; 204; 206; 207; 208 actionality of decision 198; 205 actor-network 80 actor-network theory 155; 161; 165 acts of exclusion 18 actual 45; 52; 53; 140; 157; 165; 166; 196; 205 Aldrich, H, 76; 87 algebraic 169 alternative realities 76 Alvesson, M. 82 ambiguity 202; 203; 204 analogy 171; 184 antirepresentational 1 aportas 19; 116; 176 appearance 28; 32; 36; 37; 40; 114; 157; 164; 219 applied grammatology 27 arbitrary 4; 30; 42; 43; 78; 128; 169; 171; 190; 207; 212 Archer, M. 56 Archilochus 103 Aristotle 178 Ashmore, M. 86 Astley, G. 76; 82; 84; 89 atomistic 158; 168 autonomy of action 199 autopoiesis 155 autopoietic 164 awareness of ignorance 213

144

119; 166; 168 Beer, S. 79; 221 being 26; 30; 31; 32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38 45; 47; 54; 56; 57; 58; 67; 68; 70; 71; 72 105; 117; 121; 122; 141; 166; 180; 181; 206 214

115 159 194 205

Benson. J. K. 5; 152; 221 Bentham, T. 136 Berger, P. 65; 222 Bergson, H. 209; 210; 211 Berlin, I. 103; 104; 105; 115 Bhaskar, R. 31; 47; 49; 52; 56 Blake, W. 214 Bloom, A. 212; 213

184;

163;

185;

bacillus 133; 134 back stage 199 Barnard, C. 193 Bateson, G. 101; 118 Baudrillard, J. 98; 105 Baxandall, M. 102; 103 becoming 2; 14; 21; 32; 33; 83; 89; 105; 117;

Böhm, D. 57; 158; 159; 160; 161; 166; 167; 168; 172; 199; 215 Bohr, N. 80 boundary 3; 78; 92; 106; 107; 124; 141; 160; 187; 206; 207 bounded rationality 83; 155; 164; 194; 195 Bourgeois, V. W. 63 brickyard 167 Brown, C. 80; 81; 123; 139; 140; 151; 189; 191; 204; 205; 206 Bryman, A. 67 Buckley, W. 153; 154; 160; 161 building blocks 158 Burrell, G. 1; 34; 58; 68; 76; 77; 78; 83; 98; 99; 101; 102; 103 Butler, R. 195 Calás, M. 17; 68; 83; 84; 89 Callen, M. 115; 135 Calvino, I. 151; 152 Carnap, R. 48 Carter, P. 10 Cartesian split 70; 122 causality 33; 50; 51; 80; 198; 202; 203; 204 centre of experiencing 165 change 32; 34; 52; 97; 107; 117; 163; 195; 199; 201; 204; 207; 208 Checkland, P. 79 Chi 161 chirographically thinking 179 chronological reversal 198 chronologically reversed 77 Clark, K. 102; 103 Classical 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 68; 70; 181

Index

238

Clegg, S. 4; 11; 87

decisional act 195; 200; 204; 207; 208 decisionality of action 198; 205 decision-making 22; 75; 79; 156; 193;

close packing 126; 135 close reading 20; 145; 185; 187 codes 25; 30; 85; 97; 109; 119; 150; 177

194;

195; 196; 200; 201; 202; 203; 204; 206; 2 0 7 ;

208

Cognition in Practice 162 Cohen, M. D. 195; 202

deconstituting 186

collective fate 13 Collier, A. 53 colonized 108; 168; 181 colonizing of thought 27 commensurability 10; 79

deconstruction 10; 11; 18; 19; 22; 106; 145; 146; 179; 186; 187; 188; 189; 190; 191; 192; 193; 201; 215; 219 deconstructionists 18; 54 deconstructive 11; 14; 18; 20; 27; 97; 116;

community of inquirers 2; 13; 14; 16; 30; 6 4 82; 85; 112; 113; 121 competent actors 14 complex adaptive systems 153 Comte, A. 48

210; 211; 212; 213; 215 deconstructive imperative 213 deconstructive organizational analysis 85; 217 deconstructive practice 17; 22; 98; 119; 145;

conceptual categories 7; 12; 14; 18; 30; 31; 99: 100; 102; 119; 146; 149; 191; 193; 207; 2 1 0 214 concrescence 165; 166; 171 condensation 136; 219 Confessions 116; 187; 188 constant conjunction 49; 50 constructionism 14; 15 constructive empiricist 54 constructivism 16; 17; 65 contexts of discovery 46; 59 contexts of justification 46; 59 contextual 111; 153; 200; 203 contextualist 199; 200 contextuality 152 convenience 131; 135; 171 conventionalism 16 Cooper, R, 1; 34; 117; 118; 121; 134; 135; 136; 146; 154; 160; Copernicus 9

146; 177; 192; 208; 209; 215; 219 deconstructive reading 19; 22; 145; 185; 187; 191; 193; 195; 200; 218 de-differentiation 4; 98; 100; 101; 146 deductive struture 46; 59 demarcation 46; 58; 191 denatured 181 dereifying 155 Derrida, J. 1; 10; 14; 19; 21; 71; 72; 101; 116 140; 142; 144; 145; 161; 172; 177; 178; 179 182; 183; 184; 185; 186; 187; 188; 189; 190 191; 197; 201; 204; 207; 208 Descartes, R. 41; 70 Descombes, V. 116 Dewey, J. 110; 153 diachronic 153 diaeretic 180

83; 86; 98; 99; 101; 102; 103 126; 129; 130; 131; 132; 133 137; 138; 139; 140; 141; 142 161; 206; 207

copy 55; 121; 135; 137; 140; 146 correspondence theory of truth 3; 19; 34 cosmology 31 critical realism 52 Culler, J. 9; 10; 18; 19; 73; 177; 189; 198; 201 culture 26; 38; 39; 50; 56; 69; 79; 100; 112; 181; 182; 183; 184; 185; 186; 188; 189; 197; 201 cumulative 2; 35; 46; 51; 59; 61; 112;

158; 176; 186; 189; 190; 191; 193; 208; 2 0 9 ;

119;

140; 142 cutting off 123; 205; 207; 208 decision 13; 78; 123; 155; 175; 193; 194; 195; 196; 197; 198; 199; 200; 201; 202; 203; 2 0 4 ; 205; 206; 207; 208; 213; 214

différence 140; 142; 143; 144; 161; 207; 208 difference 18; 37; 41; 42; 51; 91; 98; 99; 101; 104; 106; 114; 115; 116; 118; 164; 185; 188 differential network 177 differer 142 DiMaggio, P. J. 13 disciplined imagination 17; 82 discursive explanation 137 discursive formations 108; 109 dismantle 19; 145 disorganization 160; 206 disorganize 146 displacement 121; 131; 134; 146; 164; 199; 204 displaying 91; 137 distal 117 distanciation 150 distributed cognition 155; 162 documents 5; 133; 142 dogmatic scientism 87

135;

136;

144;

Index

239

doubling 137; 140; 146

Fatum, silent tombs of 215

Douglas, M. 13; 14

feelings 165; 213

downstream thinking 1; 2; 7; 8; 16; 102

feels 80; 165

Drazin, R. 59; 63; 156; 157; 158;

162;

168;

172; 175; 176

Fenollosa, E. 167; 168; 169; 170; 171 Feyerabend, P. 81

dualism 37; 39; 55; 122; 123

figurational patterns 143

dualistic 8; 101; 122

figurational

dualistic structure of dualism 122

figurations 118; 154

webs 154

Dummet, M. 53

firstness 140; 146

duplicity 137; 140

Fleck, L. 12; 116

durability 97; 131; 132; 144

fold 137; 138; 142; 144 forgetting 5; 6; 7; 8; 37; 105; 218

Eastern thinking 11

Foucault, M . 13; 14; 21; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 6 6 ;

economy of expression 121

105; 107; 108; 109; 115; 135; 137; 138; 1 3 9 ;

edifying 1; 11

149; 166; 171

education 185; 188; 212; 213; 214; 215

foundational I; 11

effemerality 107

fragmented multiplicity 105; 115

egocentric 154

frames of reference 16; 65; 191; 204

Egypt 182; 183

ireedom of choice 199

Elias, N . 117; 143; 153; 154; 160; 161; 225

Freud, S. 10; 11; 49; 197; 199

emergent 1; 11; 20; 21; 57; 93; 116; 143; 1 4 7 ;

functionalist 87; 175

149; 152; 153; 157; 159; 161; 164; 166 emergent relational interactions 117 empirical 5; 12; 16; 52; 53; 58; 60; 62;

garbage can theory 195; 202 176;

186; 197; 204; 210

Gasche, R. 140; 141; 146 Gelb, I. J. 182

empirical verification 46; 48; 49

general economy 21

empiricism 47; 48; 211

general theory of doubling 140

emptiness 11

generalized writing 184

emulation 171

generative mechanisms 26; 49; 50; 51; 52; 55

endogenetic 156

geometric framework 103

Enlightenment 3; 53; 98; 113

Gergen, K. 17; 85; 88; 98; 111; 175; 176

entitative 154

Gergen, M. 85

epiphenomenon 35; 156

Giddens, A. 56; 57

episode 152; 2 0 0

givenness 13; 78; 123; 205

epistemic fallacy 47

goals 3; 26; 42; 55; 69; 112; 113; 152;

epistemological commitments 3; 34; 61; 218 epistemologica! realism 21; 45; 48; 50; 51; 5 4 ; 55; 56; 66

155;

203 Gödel, К. 4 8 Goody, J. 182

epistemological relativism 16; 81

grafts 187

epistemological skepticism 11

grammar of scientism 25

epistemological stances 2

grammatical unity 27

equivocality 155; 164; 194; 2 0 5

grammatology 27; 182

ethnocentrism 212

grand narratives 9; 98

European logic 167

grapholect 181

evocative terms 149

Grint, K. I I ; 76; 226

exogenetic 156

G u b a , E . 47; 64; 229

explanatoiy advantage 126 explanatory device 6

habits of thought 27; 111

explanatory principles 18; 76

Hacking, I. 1; 14; 35; 36; 37; 44; 45; 47; 5 4 ;

explicate manifestation 32; 160 false distinction 64; 123 falsifiability 6 2 falsification 48

63; 9 2 Hall, S. 59; 62; 63 happenings 14; 20; 110; 124; 165; 171 Harland, R. 184

Index

240

Harré, R. 32; 54; 56; 57; 70 Harvey, D. 105; 107; 108; 109; 110; 111 Hassan, 1. 106; 107; ПО Hassard, J. 10 Heidegger, M. 10; И ; 12; 36; 37; 71; 129; 181 Heisenberg, W. 80 Heraclitean cosmology 32 Heraclitus 31; 32 Herbst, P. H. 123; 140; 141; 142; 146; 206 heroic theory of history 104 heterogeneity 115; 135; 143 heterogeneous 31; 97; 101; 104; 117; 118; 131; 162 heterogeneous engineering 112; 114; 161 heterogeneous networks 164 hierarchiztng of knowledge 73; 75 hierarchy of knowledge 15; 75 historical periodizations 8 historical situatedness 200 human agency 162 human condition 11; 15; 26; 99; 110; 115; 122; 211 human imagination 210 Husserl, E. 183 Hutchins, E. 162; 227 hybridization of thought 92 ideal types 100 idealism 53; 81 idealized sociology 117 ideally isolated system 33; 34 ideology of representation 35; 37; 38; 39; 43; 70; 73; 121 immutable mobiles 132 implicate order 57; 159; 160; 161; 199 incest prohibition 185; 186; 204 incision 78; 182; 189; 199; 201; 205; 206 inclusion/exclusion process 200 inconcludability 73; 74 indexicality 73; 74 Infanta Margarita 138 infmite redoubling 140 information processors 155; 194 inscriptions 127; 132; 133 institutional analyses 13 instructional coding 163 intellectual abstractions 30 intellectual posture 7; 89 intellectual predisposition 8; 10; 11; 17; 19; 20; 59 intellectual priorities 1; 2; 26; 29; 34; 47; 61; 69; 80; 86; 115; 116; 194; 211 intellectual rigor 11

intellectual sympathy 210 intelligible narratives 17; 69; 85 intentionality of action 194 interactions 38; 58; 67; 117; 118; 143; 149; 153; 157; 158; 161; 208; 217 interiocking behavior 155 interlocking commitments 21 internal realism 53 inteφenetration 122 interpretive 25; 39; 45; 53; 58; 64; 65; 74; 80; 87; 113; 203 inteφretive communities 111 Introduction to Metaphysic, An 209 intuitive knowing 210 inversion 5; 6; 7; 36; 37; 78; 149; 150; 185 Invisible Cities 151; 223 invisible walls 143; 154 iteration 187 iterative reading 187 Jackson, N. 10 Kant, 1. 15; 35; 38; 70; 92 Keat, R. 56; 57; 228 Kilmann, R. 76 King Philip IV 138 knowledge accumulation 11 Kublai Khan 151 Kuhn, T. 81 Lacan, J. 109; 172 Lamarck, К. 149 language games 107; 109; 115 language of organization 63; 145; 172; 176; 217 language, prisonhouse of 37 Las Meninas 138 Lash, S. 98; 100; 101; 102; 107 Latour, В. 1; 12; 13; 14; 68; 81; 86; 89; 90; 91; 92; 93; 115; 124; 125; 126; 127; 128; 129; 166 Lavé, J. 162 Law, J. 34; 83; 86; 112; 114; 117; 131; 132; 144; 154; 161; 162; 164; 166 Lawson, H. 10; 47; 81; 98 Layder, D. 51; 56; 57 Lemert, C. 98 Levantine language 151 liberal democracy 212; 213 Lincoln, Y. 47; 64 Lindblom, C. 193 linguistic categories 14; 175 linguistic constructions 17; 85; 89

Index

linguistic conventions 100 linguistic tropes 176 listing 74; 137; 182; 217; 219 literal 47; 63; 70; 72; 82; 176; 189; 190 literal language 176; 190 literary criticism 14; 187 literate cultures 180 local determinism 109; 111 localized logic 111 Locke, J. 36 locus of controversy 4 logic of doubling 140; 146 logic of insulation 34 logic of language 158 logic of ordering 5 logic of organizing 217 logic of supplementarity 1; 185; 189; 199 logic of supplements 184; 185; 189 logical abstraction 168 logical coherence 62 logical constructs 54 logical positivists 48 logocentric 22; 176; 177; 178; 179; 183; 190; 191; 198; 210 logocentrism 177; 178; 179; 184; 191; 198 logos 106; 179 loosely coupled 195; 202 Luckmann, T. 65 Lyotard, J, F. 8; 9; 21; 98; 99; 105; 107; 108; 109; 115; 141 Mach, E. 48 mainstream organizational analysis 5 making true 129 Man, P. de 116 management theory 13 Mangham, 1. 64; 68; 89 manipulability 102; 119; 126; 133; 135 Mansley Robinson, J. 32 March, J. G. 155; 164; 193; 194; 195; 201; 202; 203; 204; 208 Marco Polo 151; 152 Mariana 138 masturbation 188 material marks 217 maximal realism 54 McArthur, T. 181 McKelvey, S. 59; 62; 63 Mead, G. H. 153; 161 Merton, R. 12; 37 metaphoricity 190 metaphorization 171 metaphysics 49; 106; 113; 167; 186; 210; 219

241

metaphysics of presence 178 meta-reflexivity 68; 89; 90; 9) methodological individualism 157; 162 miniaturization 135 Mintzberg, H. 195; 196; 197; 198; 202; 204; 208 Mitroff, 1. 158 mobility of nature 211 models 82; 131; 132; 133; 138; 142; modernism 3; 4; 7; 8; 81; 101; 102; 107; 110; 117; 122; 144 modemist project 98; 106; 128 modernity 4 modes of abstraction 34 modes of functioning 68 modes of thought 1; 31; 150 Montaigne 217

158; 159;

199; 201;

203 105; 106;

Morgan, G. 11; 33; 58; 63; 64; 68; 76; 77; 78; 83; 89 morphogenesis 153 multiplicity of folds 189 multiplicity of genres 92 Mumby 83 Nagel, N.113 naive realism 47; 49; 62 Napoleon 104 negative capability 97 negotiated order theory 76 negotiated outcomes 195 network of embedded beliefs 10 network packaging 164 networks of relations 20 Neurath, О. 48 Newton 33; 40; 46 Nieto 138 Nietzsche, F. 10; 15; 71; 150; 198; 230 Nietzschean paradox 82 nihilistic II; 53 Nkomo, S.M. 83 objective 3; 6; 16; 26; 47; 48; 53; 59; 64; 65; 69; 78; 81; 82; 122; 123; 130; 150; 166; 171; 192; 206; 211 objective reality 7 objectivist 49; 64; 80 observable variables 62 observer knowledge 163 Of Grammatology 178; 224 Ong, W. 179; 180; 181; 183 ontological acts 205 ontologica] character 11; 69; 195; 201

242

ontological commitments 1; 31; 45; 69; 98; 117; 218 ontological gerrymandering 76; 78; 79; 197; 218 ontological gesture 206; 207 ontological realism 21; 54; 218 ontological realm 42 ontological status 20; 26; 67; 68; 74 ontology of being 31; 33; 56 ontology of movement 117 operations of nature 169 oral cultures 180; 181 Order of Things 39; 44; 138; 171 ordering 5; 14; 16; 20; 34; 41; 98; 99; 114; 126; 131; 132; 137; 145; 162; 171; 182; 189; 215; 217; 219 organization of writing 176; 181; 192; 218 Organization Studies 2; 61; 65; 82; 86; 211; 217 organization theory 3; 157 organizational impulses 21; 44; 217 organized complexity 5; 13 organizing practices 13; 15; 18; 144 organizing processes 11; 13; 20; 21; 25; 99; 144; 146; 150; 156; 160; 162; 166; 217; 218 original 12; 19; 32; 60; 80; 121; 130; 132; 133; 134; 137; 140; 141; 146; 155; 165; 170; 183; 184; 188; 206; 210; 211 orthodox organization theorists 86 orthodox persuasion 7; 58 otherness 111; 192 Outhwaite, W. 50; 52; 56 Paracelsus 41 paradigm closure 78 paradigm commensurability/incommensurability 79 paradigmatic 26; 68; 69; 77; 78; 208; 217 paradigmatic commitments 217 paradigmatically circumscribed 68 paradigms 10; 67; 76; 77; 78; 80; 81; 100; 208 Parker, M. 11 Parmenides 31; 32 parsimony 62 Parson, T. 117 partial truths 45 Pasteur, L. 133; 134 pedagogy 209 perspectival 26; 53; 68 perspectivism 105 Pertusato, N. 138 Pettigrew, A. 76; 195; 199; 200; 201; 202; 204; 208

Index

Phaedrus 116; 183; 197 phenomenological experiences 29; 30 Philosophy of Organism 166 phonocentrism 177; 178 Piero della Francesca 102 Pinder, С. С. 63 Plato 116; 183; 197 play of differences 142; 207 playful seriousness 17; 85 Plotnitsky, A. 80 politics of explanation 125; 128 Pondy, L. 158 Popper, K. 12; 48 Portuguese East Indies Company 131; 132; 133 positivism 31; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 55; 56 positivistic knowledge 21 postmodern awareness 7; 82 postmodern condition 9; 10; 107 postmodern consciousness 10; 20; 21; 66; 93; 97; 105; 122; 124 postmodern critique of representationalism 16; 121

postmodern postmodern postmodern postmodern postmodern 149

irony 17; 85 pragmatism 21; 110; 111; 113; 114 predicament 10; 81 pragmatism 21; 110; 111; 113; 114 style of thinking 97; 117; 118; 144;

postmodernism 4; 7; 8; 11; 21; 58; 97; 98; 99; 100; 101; 102; 105; 106; 107; 110; 117 postmodemity 4; 97; 100; 110; 146 postmodemization 100; 101; 102 Powell, R. 13 power of explanation 125; 153 power of representation 131 Power, J. 98; 124 pragmatism 14; 15; 16; 17; 19; 21; 110; 111; 113; 114 precise 46; 47; 59; 63; 70; 151; 198 primary distinction 122; 123; 124; 139; 140; 141; 142; 151; 189; 191; 205; 206; 207; 208 primacy of movement 159 primordial 143; 152; 161; 201; 208; 219 primordial decisional act 208 principle of economy 102; 121; 144; 146; 205; 219 prioritizing 137; 166 problem ofrenexivity 7; 9; 17; 21; 68; 69; 74; 83; 85; 86; 87; 89; 90; 93; 218 Process and Reality 159; 166; 167; 204; 205 process cosmology 165 processes of organizing 7 processual 1; II; 16; 17; 21; 57; 147; 149; 154;

Index

159; 164; 165; 166; 167 processual analysis 16 prosthetic devices 131 proximal 117 Pugh, D. 4; 67 punctualisations 114; 142; 164 punctuating 189; 199; 205; 217 puφosefulness 11; 13; 194 Putnam, H. 3; 8; 35; 53; 83 Rapoport, A. 5; 13; 14 ready made science 12 realism 21; 26; 31; 33; 37; 43; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 53; 54; 55; 56; 58; 62; 65; 105; 124; 218 reality, levels of 57 reality of representation 144; 146 reason 15; 31; 32; 98 receding horizon 140; 142 reductive naturalism 53 Reed, M. 76 refamiliarising 211 reflexive awareness 9; 80; 122 reflexive loops 92 reflexive paradoxes 77 reflexive tum 10; 17; 79 reflexivity 7; 9; 10; 17; 21; 37; 66; 68; 69; 73; 74; 75; 76; 79; 80; 81; 82; 83; 84; 85; 86; 87; 89; 90; 91; 92; 93; 218 Regimentó do Astrolabio et do Quadrante 132 regimes of significations 110 registers 142 reifying 6; 69; 143; 154; 159; 162 relational becoming 166 relational networks 112; 144 relational patterns 131 relative understanding 210 relativism 16; 19; 31; 81; 124; 182; 212

243 67; 68; 71; 72; 73; 74; 79; 83; 90; 93; 9 7 ; 118; 122; 123; 149 representationalist injunction 51 representationalist knowledge 7; 20; 75; 210 representationalist scheme of things 9; 70; 90 resemblances 40; 41; 43; 66; 171 rheomode 159 rhetoric 106; 107; 113; 116; 180; 187; 190 rhetorical maneuvers 73; 77 rhetorical ploy 4 Robbins, S. 4 Rorty, R. 1; 14; 35; 70; 110; 111; 112; 113; 11 Rousseau 116; 183; 188; 197 routines 164 Russell, B. 48; 77 Sandelands, L. 59; 63; 156; 157; 158; 162; 168; 172; 175; 176 Sarmiente, Dona Maria Augustina 138 satisfice 155 Saussure, F. de 71; 72; 99; 101; 177; 183 schizophrenia 106; 109 Schlick, M. 48 Schopenhauer, Α. 150; 151 science in the making 12 science of writing 182 scientific knowledge 12; 15; 27; 28; 29; 31; 47; 48; 51; 55 scientific method 15; 27; 47; 48; 50; 112 scientific realism 37; 45; 47; 54; 58 scientism 25; 26; 27; 31; 81; 87; 113 scientistic thinking 27 secondness 140; 146 Sein und Zeit 181 self-reference 7; 73; 75; 76; 79; 83; 92; 101 sequential linearity 146 Serres, M. 1; 18; 92; 145 signification 43; 110; 177; 186; 190

relativist epistemology 81 remote control 121; 131; 132; 133; 135; 136

signified 38; 43; 65; 106; 177; 187 signifier 38; 43; 65; 106; 177

Renaissance 40; 41; 43; 171

signs 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 99; 151; 170; 177

representation 25; 35; 38; 97; 121; 122; 126;

Silverman, D. 5; 64; 75; 152; 153

129; 136; 137; 143; 146; 150 representational abstraction 5; 30; 119; 145 representationalism 2; 8; 9; 14; 15; 16; 26; 31;

Simon, H. 155; 164; 193; 194 simplification 114; 129 simultaneity 202

35; 37; 38; 41; 43; 44; 65; 66; 70; 72; 73; 74;

Smircich, L. 17; 64; 68; 83; 84; 89

75; 84; 86; 88; 92; 99; 110; 121; 122; 128;

social collective 14; 111

137; 138; 218 representationalist 6; 8; 10; 16; 19; 43; 44; 51; 53; 58; 65; 69; 75; 78; 82; 87; 88; 98; 129; 150; 158; 160; 177 representationalist axioms 210 representationalist epistemology 21; 31; 34; 35;

social entities 4; 5; 13; 67; 70; 118; 149; 164 social practices, legitimized 14 social rationality 112 social reifications 5 socially constructed realities 64; 75 sociology of becoming 117

Index

244

sociology of being 117 Socrates Ii space of representation 137; 143; 144 space of seeing 138 spacing 137; 142; 182; 207; 217 speculated objcct 6 splitting and inversion model of discovery, the 5; 6; 150 square root of minus one 184 Star, L. 132; 162; 163 Stebbing, L. S. 166; 167 Steier, F. 17; 64; 65; 84; 85 strategic embodiment 164 strategy of translation 132; 135 Strauss, A. 75; 183; 185; 186; 201; 204 structural regularities 52 structured consciousness 123 structures of representation 122 structures of thought 11; 187 structures of understanding 141; 206 structuring process 123 style ofthinking 2; 3; 33; 97; 111; 117; 118; 144; 149 subjective 16; 48; 78; 122; 165; 171; 206 subliminal 12; 144 substitution 130; 131; 144; 164 Sumer 182 supplement 161; 183; 188; 189; 197 supplemental 105 symbolic interactionist 153 symbolic representations 130; 209; 210; 211 sympathy 171; 210 synchronic 153 system of governance 135 systematic 1; 5; 8; 11; 27; 30; 46; 47; 50; 52; 58; 69; 83; 105; 108; 112; 113; 115; 117; 142; 155; 186; 194; 203; 204; 207; 209 Tao 107; 143; 161; 208 taxonomic urge 207; 208 taxonomy of organizations 63 technologies of representation 119; 129; 131; 132; 136; 146 technology of writing 179 textual codes 25 textual presentation 25 textual strategy 20; 79; 91; 116; 190; 191 Thamus 183 theatres of representation 142 theoretical entities 49; 50; 51; 54; 55; 56 theoretical preoccupations 1; 3; 79; 117; 195 theory-building 1; 20; 34; 35; 45; 46; 72; 76; 83; 98; 176

theory of choice 194 theory of logical types 77 Theuth 183 thingness 72 thought collective 12 thought style 12; 34; 149; 185; 191 time art 167 timetables 142 Tocqueville, A. de 213 Tolstoy, L. N. 104; 105; 108; 115; 203 topological 137 triadic structures 189 transcendental posture 8; 72 transcendental realist 3 transcendental truths 14 translation 126; 131; 132; 135; 136; 164; 166; 209; 210 transorganizational 153 Trenn, T. 12 triadic 36; 124; 141; 142; 189; 206 Trobriand 162 Tsoukas, H. 30 undecidability 160 undo 145; 189 unequivocality 155 unfolding 20; 110; 137; 140; 146; 197 unfoldment 137 unitary view 46; 59 unnamed 141 unreflexive 58; 83 unreflexive dogmatism 69 unthought 161 upstream thinking 1; 8; 9; 11; 14; 18; 20; 38; 65; 143; 208; 218 Urry, J. 56; 57 Van de Ven, Α. 76 Van Prassen, B.C. 54 van Gigch, J. 79 van Maanen, J. 17; 82; 86; 175; 176 Vattimo, G. 1 Velazquez 138; 139 Vienna Circle 48 visibility 137; 138 von Foerster, H. 79 Warriner, C. K. 59; 62; 63 warring forces of signification 145; 191 Waters, J. 195; 196; 197; 198; 199; 201 webs of interdependence 154 Weick, K. 17; 82; 86; 152; 155; 156; 158; 195 whiggish 36

245

Index

Whitehead, Α. Ν. 33; 34; 70; 72; 78; 118; 123; 159; 165; 166; 167; 171; 172; 199; 204; 205; 206; 214; 215 will to know 21 will to order 144; 152 Willmott, H. 10; 78; 83

Wittgenstein, L. 48; 70; 71; 86; 108; 109 Woolgar, S. 5; 6; 7; 35; 36; 37; 39; 43; 73; 74; 75; 76; 78; 79; 81; 86 zero degree of organization 160; 161

de Gruyter Studies in Organization Vol. 74 Héritier, Adrienne/Knill, Christoph/Mingers, Susanne Ringing the Changes in Europe Regulatory Competition and Redefinition of the State. Britain, France, Germany In collaboration with Rhodes Barrett. 1996. 23 X 15.5 cm. XIV, 363 pages Cloth. ISBN 3-11-014765-3 Vol. 73 Staber, Udo/Schaefer, Norbert V./Sharma, Basu (Editors) Business Networks Prospects for Regional Development 1996. 23 X 15.5 cm. XIV, 240 pages With 14 figures and 12 tables Cloth. ISBN 3-11-015107-3 Vol. 72 Alvesson, Mats Communication, Power and Organization 1996. 23 X 15.5 cm. XII, 225 pages Cloth. ISBN 3-11-014622-3, Paper. ISBN 3-11-014897-8 Vol. 71 Palmer, Gill/Clegg, Stewart (Editors) Constituting Management Markets, Meanings, and Identities 1996. 23 X 15.5 cm. XIII, 356 pages. With 11 tables, 9 figures, and 15 exhibits Cloth. ISBN 3-11-014454-9 Vol. 56 Czarniawska, Barbara/Sevón, Guje (Editors) Translating Organizational Change 1996. 23 X 15.5 cm. XII, 284 pages. With 6 figures and 2 tables Cloth. ISBN 3-11-014869-2, Paper. ISBN 3-11-014868-4

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