Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations 1839103256, 9781839103254

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RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS

RESEARCH HANDBOOKS IN SOCIOLOGY Series Editor: Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Professor of Sociology, University of Bamberg, Germany The Research Handbooks in Sociology series provides an up-to-date overview on the frontier developments in current sociological research fields. The series takes a theoretical, methodological and comparative perspective to the study of social phenomena. This includes different analytical approaches, competing theoretical views and methodological innovations leading to new insights in relevant sociological research areas. Each Research Handbook in this series provides timely, influential works of lasting significance. These volumes will be edited by one or more outstanding academics with a high international reputation in the respective research field, under the overall guidance of series editor Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bamberg. The Research Handbooks feature a wide range of original contributions by well-known authors, carefully selected to ensure a thorough coverage of current research. The Research Handbooks will serve as vital reference guides for undergraduate students, doctoral students, postdoctorate students and research practitioners in sociology, aiming to expand current debates, and to discern the likely research agendas of the future. Titles in the series include: Research Handbook on the Sociology of Education Edited by Rolf Becker Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Family Edited by Norbert F. Schneider and Michaela Kreyenfeld Research Handbook on Environmental Sociology Edited by Axel Franzen and Sebastian Mader Research Handbook on Analytical Sociology Edited by Gianluca Manzo Handbook of Sociological Science Contributions to Rigorous Sociology Edited by Klarita Gërxhani, Nan Dirk de Graaf and Werner Raub Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations Edited by Mary Godwyn

Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations Edited by

Mary Godwyn Professor of Sociology, History and Society Division, Babson College, USA

RESEARCH HANDBOOKS IN SOCIOLOGY

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Mary Godwyn 2022 With the exception of any material published open access under a Creative Commons licence (see www.elgaronline.com), all rights are reserved and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Chapter 2 is available for free as Open Access from the individual product page at www. elgaronline.com under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Unported (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/) license. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2022934526 This book is available electronically in the Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781839103261

ISBN 978 1 83910 325 4 (cased) ISBN 978 1 83910 326 1 (eBook)

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Contents

List of figuresviii List of tablesix List of contributorsx Acknowledgmentsxiii Introduction to the Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations1 Mary Godwyn PART I

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONS

1

The organization of higher education: an overview of sociological research into universities as organizations Klarissa Lueg and Angela Graf

2

Decisional organization theory: towards an integrated framework of organization30 Michael Grothe-Hammer, Héloïse Berkowitz and Olivier Berthod

3

A critical management studies approach to big data Carl Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard

4

Carceral goals: the role of corrections officers in organizational goal attainment 73 Madeline McPherson and Danielle S. Rudes

5

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test Jean-Pierre Chanteau

6

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths Martijn Boersma

7

Dialectical network analysis: a critical approach for researching networks in management and organization studies Martha Emilie Ehrich

125

8

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations: why there is so little, and why we need more Fiona Meechan, Leo McCann and Sir Cary Cooper

145

9

Where words speak louder than actions: values, strategy and action in globalizing education – how successful IB schools are made Alexander Gardner-McTaggart and Tony Bush

164

v

13

54

87 107

vi  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations 10

Exploring the connections between critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture Dustin Garlitz

11

Entrepreneurial hybridity: concept and context in creative and cultural organizations208 Jaleesa Renee Wells

12

Theory, practice and bricolage: recombobulating agencies and reorienting resistance to neoliberalization of the (post-) welfare state Christopher N. Walker

221

13

A world polity view on reorganization and institutional change in natural resources management Mohammad Al-Saidi

242

14

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making on stop, question and frisk Muneeba Azam, Christine Sim and Danielle S. Rudes

260

PART II

188

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH: WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES AND CASE STUDIES

15

Rationalizing work through occupational communities in independent games development Adrian Wright and Dorota Marsh

16

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox Mark Read

293

17

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations Dinara Tokbaeva

311

18

Organizations and power: a critical evaluation of the rise of performance measurement Guy Redden

19

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands Meghan Elizabeth Kallman

347

20

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment Simon I. Singer and Stuti S. Kokkalera

367

21

Professionalization and the politicization of civil society organizations in Sierra Leone Michelle Reddy

384

22

Getting real about research: lessons learned from a worker training evaluation project Deborah B. Smith

399

276

329

Contents  vii 23

Career development opportunities: a sociological and practitioner exploration of organizational commitment factors, theories, and outcomes Patricia Sullivan, Andrew Creed, Ambika Zutshi and David C. Lane

24

Resistance and resilience among tattoo workers David C. Lane and Jacob T. Foster

417 434

PART III ORGANIZATIONS AS MESO-LEVEL MEDIATORS OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL OUTCOMES 25

Synergies between school leaders and communities in challenging urban schools: a review of organizational dynamics and the urban schools’ continuum Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz

26

Critical realist metatheory and the sociology of organizations: using contrastive explanation to explain personal internet use at work Julie Monroe, Steve Vincent and Ana Lopes

27

Exploring relations of power in Quakers’ alternative forms of organizing Stephen Allen

28

The dialectic of changing corporate masks: from profit maximizers to predators to socially responsible global leaders Yon Jung Choi and Connie L. McNeely

29

Organizing values: the principles of rationalization and individualization Hannah Mormann, Raimund Hasse and Nadine Arnold

457

475 491

509 528

Index547

Figures

2.1

Degrees of entitative organizationality

40

2.2

Organizationality within and outside organizations

43

2.3

Layering of organizations

46

5.1

Range of legal statuses of firms and degrees of freedom with respect to profit

90

5.2a

Social construction of a firm’s raison d’être (initial projects)

101

5.2b

Social construction of a firm’s raison d’être (ex post norm)

101

5.3

Systems of rules to be analyzed in order to characterize an organization’s structure

103

9.1

Research design: integrating and developing evidence for successful international schools’ leadership

171

17.1

Conditions for the genesis of charismatic authority

314

21.1

Map of field sites

387

21.2

Sierra Leone organizations: measures of professionalism and politicization

392

23.1

CDO links conceptual map

423

viii

Tables

2.1

Entitative and structural organizationality

39

5.1

Three approaches to the issue of a raison d’être

91

5.2

Two ideal-type rationales working in the differentiation of firms’ raisons d’être 97

13.1

Overview of the global water paradigms and actors

251

13.2

Selected results from the global IWRM survey on SDG Target 6.5

252

25.1

Challenging urban schools: category continuum

461

26.1

Four possible comparisons

480

27.1

Summary of presences and absences from the application of three views of power

498

ix

Contributors

Stephen Allen is a Lecturer in the Sheffield University Management School at the University of Sheffield, UK. Mohammad Al-Saidi is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of International Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at Qatar University, Qatar. Nadine Arnold is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Theory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. Muneeba Azam is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, USA. Héloïse Berkowitz is a Researcher in the Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Aix Marseille University, France, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Spain. Olivier Berthod is an Associate Professor in the Human Resources and Organizational Behavior Department at ICN Business School, France. Martijn Boersma is an Associate Professor of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Tony Bush is a Professor of Educational Leadership in the School of Education in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham, UK. Jean-Pierre Chanteau is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Economics at the Université Grenoble Alpes, France. Yon Jung Choi is a Policy Fellow and Research Associate in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, USA. Sir Cary Cooper is a Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health in the Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester, UK. Andrew Creed is a Lecturer in the Department of Management in the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University, Australia. Martha Emilie Ehrich is a Postdoc in the Department of Media Studies and Digital Media Culture at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany. Jacob T. Foster is a PhD student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, USA. Alexander Gardner-McTaggart is Academic Lead for Flexible Learning at the University of Manchester Worldwide. He is academically specialized in (international) Educational x

Contributors  xi Leadership within the Manchester Institute of Education, and is Associate Editor of the scholarly journal Educational Management Administration and Leadership (EMAL). Dustin Garlitz is an independent scholar. Mary Godwyn is a Professor of Sociology in the History and Society Division at Babson College, USA. Angela Graf is a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) and a Senior Lecturer at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Michael Grothe-Hammer is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Maricela Guzmán is a Research Professor in the School of Community Science at the Autonomous University of Coahuila, Mexico. Raimund Hasse is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. Meghan Elizabeth Kallman is a Professor of International Development in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. Stuti S. Kokkalera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University, USA. David C. Lane is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences at Illinois State University, USA. Ana Lopes is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management in the Newcastle University Business School at Newcastle University, UK. Klarissa Lueg is an Associate Professor of Organizational Communication in the Department of Design and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. Dorota Marsh is a Senior Lecturer in the Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Leo McCann is a Professor of Management in the York Management School at the University of York, UK. Connie L. McNeely is a Professor of Public Policy in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, USA. Madeline McPherson is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, USA. Fiona Meechan is a Doctoral Researcher and Executive Education Associate in the Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester, UK. Julie Monroe is a Doctoral Researcher in the Newcastle University Business School at Newcastle University, UK.

xii  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Hannah Mormann is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. Leonardo Oliver Ortíz is a PhD student of Latin American Studies in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico. Mark Read is an independent researcher of religion and work, UK. Guy Redden is an Associate Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at The University of Sydney, Australia. Michelle Reddy is a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations and Comparative Politics in the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, France. Carl Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard is a PhD student in the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. Danielle S. Rudes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, USA. Christine Sim is a Graduate Student in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, USA. Simon I. Singer is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, USA. Deborah B. Smith is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, USA. Patricia Sullivan is a Manager of Talent Management at MEGT (Australia) Ltd, Australia. Dinara Tokbaeva is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Media, Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping University, Sweden. Steve Vincent is a Professor of Human Resource Management in the Newcastle University Business School at Newcastle University, UK. Christopher N. Walker is a Doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education at the University of New England, Australia, and an educator and researcher affiliated with the University of Sydney Business School and UTS Business School. Jaleesa Renee Wells is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration in the Department of Arts Administration at the University of Kentucky, USA. Adrian Wright is the Director of the Institute for Research into Organisations, Work and Employment (iROWE) and Deputy Head for Business Development & Partnerships in the Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Ambika Zutshi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management in the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University, Australia.

Acknowledgments

With sincere gratitude to Camille Osumah, Lily Forrester, and the internship program at Wellesley College. The editorial assistance of Ms. Osumah and Ms. Forrester was invaluable to the publication of this volume.

xiii

Introduction to the Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations Mary Godwyn

Sociology is the study of human interaction within groups. Social change and social order are the dual axes around which sociological inquiry revolves. Sociologists study small, intimate groups including couples, families, and business partners, as well as large, unwieldy groups such as nations, religious followers, and crime syndicates. Sociology of organizations is a distinct field within sociology that examines how the structure of the group influences, limits, and defines human interactions within a given organizational context. The literature and schools of thought within sociology of organizations are vast and diverse. In this introduction, I focus on the origin of the field and the continued tension between rational bureaucratic and relational approaches. Historically, the prioritization of organizations with rational bureaucratic structures directed the field to analyses of large organizations such as governments and corporations. In “Bureaucracy” (1924), Weber introduced a rational-bureaucratic perspective on organizations and created a vehicle to apply sociological theory and methods. He postulated that the efficiency and objectivity of formal, bureaucratic organizations was the cornerstone of modernity: Weber writes: Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as its special virtue by capitalism. The more complicated and specialized modern culture becomes, the more its external supporting apparatus demands the personally detached and strictly objective expert, in lieu of the lord of older social structures who was moved by personal sympathy and favor … (Weber, 1924/1978, pp. 214–216)

The emphasis on instrumental means-end calculation, the idea of decisions structured to maximize benefit and minimize costs, and the assumption of an impersonal, non-emotional, and therefore objective, basis for organizational structure implies a logical integrity and resonates with the cultural assumptions of modern societies to such a degree that these ideas feel familiar and seem commonsensical. Additional support for rational legitimacy comes from the undeniable shortcomings of the other types of authority Weber discusses: traditional and charismatic. Traditional authority emphasizes habit, convention, and established beliefs, all anathema to the notions of individualism, progress, and mobility. Charismatic authority, the adoration of a specific heroic individual, focuses on blind devotion and emotional rather than cognitive assessment. The variability of traditional and charismatic authority precludes universalization and replicability and therefore neither types can be systematized. Rather than usher in modernity, traditional and charismatic authority evoke shadows of antiquity. However certain Weber was that rational bureaucratic authority was the ultimate means of control, the prospect left him pessimistic and on the verge of despair. Indeed, Weber had 1

2  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations serious concerns about rational-bureaucratic legitimacy. One was that rationality is a contested term. Weber writes: It is a question of the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture. Now by this term very different things may be understood … there is, for example, rationalization of mystical contemplation, that is of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life, is specifically irrational, just as much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of scientific research, or military training, of law and administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized in terms of very different ultimate values and ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be irrational from another. (Weber 1958/1904, p. 26)

Given the various definitions and meanings of rationality, Weber created a typology to capture what he saw as two different, and opposing, kinds of rationality. Means-end rationality, characteristic of formal and practical rationality (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009, p. 126), is associated with bureaucracies and similar to instrumentality: it is the means-end calculation of how a result can be quickly and efficiently achieved (Collins, 1992, p. 5). Substantive and theoretical rationality are holistic, reticular, value-driven rather than results-driven, and recognize the interdependency of a wide range of objectives and perspectives (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009, p. 127). Weber’s deep ambivalence about modernity is routinely de-emphasized as the association between bureaucracy, modernity, and efficiency is consistent with the generally positive and uncritical view of industrial progress during the early twentieth century. Similarly, Weber’s distinction among types of rationality is often set aside by those who champion the superiority of rational-bureaucratic organizations. Referring to Weber’s three types of authority (rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic) Clegg and Lounsbury argue that though “Weber is commonly construed as a theorist of authority … in terms of the three types of Herrschaft … they are, in fact, types of domination” (2009, p. 131). Therefore when rational-legal authority is accepted as legitimate in its own terms, necessarily deriving its legitimacy from the ruled not from the ruling, then it is “legitimated domination” (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009, p. 130). Clegg and Lounsbury argue that far from celebrating this conclusion, Weber believed that bureaucratic organizations “would transform human interaction and behavior into a dreary, quasi-mechanization, bereft of sensuality, spirit, and culture” (Clegg and Lounsbury 2009, p. 119). Weber bitterly lamented the de-emphasis of the non-rational, spiritual origin of capitalism and the seemingly inexorable rationalization and bureaucratization that came to define this economic system and its influence on social interactions: But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations needs its support no longer … For this last stage of this cultural development, it might truly be said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.’ (Weber 1958/1904, pp. 181–182)

Many scholars in organizational studies cite Weber as the lead architect of the field, and, despite his ambivalence, typically draw on the authority of his assertion that bureaucracy is the superior organizational form. However, at most, Weber saw bureaucracy as emblematic of a stage of cultural development associated with a particular population, and a stage he felt could well lead to “purely mundane passions” and “mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance” (Weber 1958/1904, p. 182).

Introduction  3 The rational-bureaucratic organizational model actively neglects the relational and emotional aspects of organizations. In contrast to this rational paradigm, interactionist approaches view organizations, including formal, corporate organizations, as associations that provide members with a sense of connection, meaning, and identity. Mary Parker Follett, a contemporary of Weber, uses the concept “circular behavior” (1925b, p. 105) and makes a distinction between “power-with” and “power-over” (1925b, p. 101) to reject the ideas that hierarchy and domination are inherent aspects of organizations and that efficiency is the primary goal. Her interactionist approach perceives organizations as spaces of ongoing and emerging relationships wherein people negotiate and construct mutually defined reality and interdependent self-identities (Follett, 1925a). She writes: The group must always dictate the modes of activity for the individual … The seeing of self as, with all other selves, creating, demands a new attitude and a new activity … the fallacy of self-and-others fades away and there is only self-in-and-through-others, only others so firmly rooted in the self and so fruitfully growing there that sundering is impossible. (Follett, 1918, p. 7)1

The common elements among interactionist perspectives are a qualitative approach that stresses the subjective experience of actors, an acknowledgment of an emerging, negotiated reality, and the idea that there is no pre-social self, but a self that is continually constructed through interactions with others. That is to say, a self that is “reflexive, that can be both a subject and an object, and that can be an object of [study to] itself” (Collins, 1992, p. 256). “As Goffman puts it, social interaction is a circular process in which everyone gives another an ideal self and receives back in turn their own self from other people” (Collins, 1992, p. 256). Follett posits a circular response at all levels of interaction, that “we are creating each other all the time” (Follett, 1924/1995, p. 41). This mutuality of self, central to Follett’s interactionist perspective and evident later in the work of Mead and Goffman, serves as a basis to deny that hierarchy and domination are superior methods of achieving control in organizations. Moreover, Follett also rejects the dualistic construction of self and other, and she explains how a non-coercive and progressive integration of ideas can be reached on an organizational level. Her concepts of “a third way” and “integration” replace the dichotomy of domination and subordination. Follett therefore embraces conflict and conflict resolution as creative and constructive forces in organizations: Integration involves invention, the finding of the third way, and the clever thing is to recognize this and not to let one’s thinking stay within the boundaries of two alternatives which are mutually exclusive. In other words, never let yourself be bullied by an either-or situation. Never think you must agree to either this or that. Find a third way. (Follett, 1949/1995, p. 189)

Both Weber and Follett concentrated on formal organizations. Michael Handel acknowledges that the very definition of the term organization is disputed. Organizations are commonly perceived as deliberately planned groups with specific goals that are designed to outlive the participation of any one individual operating with a set of rules and a determined structure (Handel, 2003, p. 1). The rational-bureaucratic approach to the study of organizations resonates

1 For those interested in more detail, the contrast between the rational and interactionist paradigms in sociology of organizations is expounded upon in Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships (Godwyn and Gittell, 2012).

4  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations with such a definition and may perhaps, inadvertently, neglect or devalue organizations that do not fulfill those conditions. Moreover, the valuation of formal organizational structures that manifest the rational bureaucratic approach might miss the informal, highly fluid, social interactions that reflect the variability of power and perspectives among members, which in turn complicates the definition and achievement of organizational goals. Handel refers to the social interactions as a “shadow structure that has a life of its own” (2003, p. 3), but theories undergirded with an interactionist approach hold that the informal social interactions are not secondary to or subsumed under the formal organizational structures: instead each realm equally defines and contributes to the other. As in the field at large, the research in this volume represents a wide variety of ways of studying organizations. Most contemporary researchers use an array of methodological and theoretical approaches in their scholarship that situates current studies in sociology of organizations far from the original dichotomy of rational and relational. In all organizations from spontaneous pickup basketball games to highly bureaucratic governments, the complex processes of making decisions, setting goals, and establishing organizational strategy are often influenced by a combination of technical rational principles and relationship considerations that transcend reductionist, two-dimensional models. By applying mesa-level analyses, contemporary sociologists examine how organizations create sui generis cultures that affect and are in turn affected by individuals and the larger social context. The durability of social facts such as the gender and race pay gap can be investigated, and potentially remediated, through examination of the institutional structures that develop and preserve inequality. For instance, as part of her description of the challenges women face in the workplace, Arlie Hochschild analyzes the power dynamics at play in the larger organization of the paid labor force. She writes, “In increasing numbers women have gone into the workforce, but few have gone very high up in it … the career system inhibits women … by making up rules to suit the male half of the population in the first place” (Hochschild, 1989, p. x). Here Hochschild refuses to submit to the purportedly objective, market-driven rational authority governing organizations and instead interrogates bureaucracies on how the rules reflect and maintain gender inequality. Similarly, sociologists Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan investigate sexual assault on college campuses using what they call an “ecological model” (2020, p. xi). Through analysis of extensive qualitative interview data, they conclude that inadequate sex education and lack of party spaces controlled by women, queer, and younger students are among the organizational factors that make the high incidence of sexual assault a predictable aspect of college life (Hirsch and Khan, 2020). These researchers recognize that rational authority and the declaration of objective and impersonal processes, can be the screen that protects domination manifest in subjectivity and prejudice, characteristics that are allegedly limited to organizations governed by traditional and charismatic authority. Organizations can be, but are not necessarily, structured and bureaucratic, long established and resilient, with a predictable set of rules, traditions, and norms. Though sociology of organizations has historically focused on formal organizations, contemporary researchers have expanded the field by studying grassroots and transitory communities, which are often casual, informal, amorphous and rapidly changing. Organizations can be tools of change, of stability, or an emergent combination of both. In this volume, authors examine labor relations, ethical and sustainable environmental practices, race, gender, class, leadership, alternative economic models, politics, criminal justice systems, and the media. Reflecting the large and diverse field of sociology of organizations, the

Introduction  5 research presented here is a veritable cornucopia and overlaps a range of academic disciplinary fields of inquiry such as organizational behavior, economics, management, philosophy, and social psychology. This Handbook is organized into three sections: Theory, Empirical Research, and Organizations as Mediators for Individual and Societal Outcomes. Authors represent a diversity of international scholars at different phases of their careers who explore an expansive range of research topics. To guide readers, each section has a short introduction describing key elements and contributions of subsequent chapters. For use by academics, practitioners, and students, this volume emphasizes cutting-edge research that has evolved far past founders such as Weber and Follett, yet continues the tradition of examining the interplay between individuals and the organizational systems that influence their social interactions and are, in turn, influenced by them.

PART I: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONS In this section, authors focus on exploring, extending, critiquing, and applying various sociological theories of organizations. Focusing on how theory defines organizational sectors, Klarissa Lueg and Angela Graf open this section with “The Organization of Higher Education: An Overview of Sociological Research into Universities as Organizations.” This chapter provides an historical overview of sociology of organization theories and how they have been applied to higher education that will inform those interested in the evolution of organization theory as well as those wondering how theoretical frameworks can direct and underwrite the development and contextualization of institutions. Extending the existing literature on Social Network Analysis (SNA) in her chapter, “Dialectical Network Analysis: A Critical Approach for Researching Networks in Management and Organization Studies,” Martha Emilie Ehrich reviews and critiques SNA. She suggests a combination of SNA with a grounded understanding of inter-organizational networks as material-discursive entities in a critical political economy perspective. Ehrich advances SNA through re-introducing the long-neglected Dialectical Network Analysis and thereby captures four essential dimensions of inter-organizational networks in business environments: state-industry relations, labor-capital relations, technology, and cooperation and competition. In “Decisional Organizational Theory: Towards an Integrated Framework of Organization,” authors Michael Grothe-Hammer, Héloïse Berkowitz, and Olivier Berthod, go beyond theory extension to forge a new theoretical account of the role of decisions in the emergence and continuation of organizations. Their integrated, decisional, organization theory constitutes an important advance in that it allows analyses of the complexities of social order within and outside organizations. Applying a critical analysis, in “Organizational Legitimacy and Legitimizing Myths,” Martijn Boersma explores the reliance on market forces as a justification for corporate actions that are not consistent with the public good. After examining legitimacy theory, he uses social dominance theory to suggest that myths uphold the idea that market forces can and do balance social, environmental, and financial interests. Furthering a critical perspective, in “A Critical Management Studies Approach to Big Data,” Carl Stefan Roth-Kierkegaard, argues for supplementing Big Data Analytics (BDA) with approaches informed by critical management studies. He advances the position that

6  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations BDA alters the exercise of power inside organizations. Roth-Kierkegaard concludes that by acknowledging and accounting for power and resistance within an organization, the oppression caused by BDA can be mitigated. Christopher N. Walker’s chapter, “Theory, Practice, and Bricolage: Recombobulating Agencies and Reorienting Resistance to Neoliberalization of the (Post-) Welfare State,” contributes to and integrates insights from community development, organizational sensemaking, and critical humanist literatures to claim that managerialized governmentalities have ruptured the community sector’s capacity for advocacy and resistance by reorienting welfare services and their workers within irreconcilable ideals. He concludes that new shared paradigms for sensemaking grounded within Marshallian citizenship ideals will be crucial to realizing meaningful resistance. Walker proposes new directions for developing more reliably emancipatory modes of practice-based resistance. Jean-Pierre Chanteau combines a critical and an interactionist lens in his chapter, “Do Organizations Have a Purpose? The Symbolic Constructivism Test.” Chanteau questions the tendency to essentialize organizations by assuming they have a stable, immutable “raison d’être.” Instead, he posits that power relations drive this process of believing in a unified reason for being. As an illustrative case, he demonstrates that the orthodox notion that the reason for the firm is to generate profit does not stand up to theoretical or empirical scrutiny. Chanteau claims that the symbolic institutionalism approach will show why this widespread idea has managed to become implanted for the greater benefit of managerial power. Authors Fiona Meechan, Leo McCann, and Sir Cary Cooper also use an interactionist approach in their chapter, “The Importance of Empathy and Compassion in Organizations: Why There Is So Little and Why We Need More.” These authors challenge the tendency to privilege technical, commercial, and procedural considerations and neglect the emotional needs of organization members. This neglect leads to dehumanization, work intensification, and suffering. They find that organizations that do employ empathy and compassion are associated with positive individual and organizational outcomes. Meechan, McCann, and Cooper conclude that despite durability in organizational culture, there is reason to be optimistic that compassion and empathy can be increased. Inviting entrepreneurship into meso-level analysis in her chapter, “Entrepreneurial Hybridity: Concept and Context in Creative and Cultural Organizations,” author Jaleesa Renee Wells examines the meaning of entrepreneurship within the creative industries and how each culture affects the other. She posits meaning as being influenced by and emerging from a grounded context and specifically explores the idea of the “female gaze” as a construct for women’s entrepreneurial activity within the craft industry. Wells concludes that a “community-market logics model” highlights the implications of entrepreneurial hybridity as a method for developing sustainable communities of practice. Two chapters in the theory section investigate aspects of the criminal justice system. In their chapter, “The Influence of Organizational Structures on Police Decision-Making on Stop, Question, and Frisk,” authors Muneeba Azam, Christine Sim, and Danielle S. Rudes study how both formal and informal structures influence various decisions of organizational members, in this case, police officers’ decision to implement stop, question, and frisk practices. In “Carceral Goals: The Role of Corrections Officers in Organizational Goal Attainment,” Madeline McPherson and Danielle S. Rudes document the unique role of line-level corrections officers’ discretionary decision-making in achieving the stated goals of carceral settings.

Introduction  7 Mohammad Al-Saidi interrogates World Polity Theory (WPT) as part of sociological neo-institutionalism. Using WPT, he mines insights into institutional changes and similarities among national organizations. In his chapter, “A World Polity View on Reorganization and Institutional Change in Natural Resources Management,” Al-Saidi focuses on the standardization and homogenization of national water organizations. Al-Saidi finds that on the one hand, the application of universal principles has promoted certain best practices in sustainability management, but on the other hand, WPT can also hinder nimble responses in solving locally specific water issues. Using authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu, Dustin Garlitz demonstrates the historical relationship between aspects of philosophical and sociological theory. His chapter, “Exploring the Connections between Critical and Contemporary Social Theory and the Sociology of Culture,” is a reminder that theoretical and methodological approaches in sociology of organizations offer a range of insightful analysis that can be applied to virtually any issue. Finally, in “Where Words Speak Louder than Actions: Values, Strategy and Action in Globalizing Education: How Successful IB Schools are Made,” authors Alexander Gardner-McTaggart and Tony Bush elucidate the leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) schools as these schools play an important role in representing the values of peace, interculturalism, and collaboration in various influential global cultures. Gardner-McTaggart and Bush conduct six qualitative case studies on IB directors across successful international schools in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. They found that school leaders strategize with a clear vision rooted in global-mindedness and internationalism deploying emancipatory and intersubjective rhetoric to enforce strategic action. This study shows that there is a clear professional identity of the global senior educational leader outlining the values, strategies, and actions employed in this challenging school context. Leaders emerge as highly savvy market agents complicit in the reification of terms to deliver success in a liberalized competitive educational space.

PART II: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH – WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES AND CASE STUDIES The empirical research featured here is largely qualitative and explores a diverse range of organizations and communities. In the first chapter, “Rationalizing Work through Occupational Communities in Independent Games Development,” authors Adrian Wright and Dorota Marsh elucidate the exploitation in the work experience of digital game developers. Using self-accounts of developers, they examine how the collective values of two occupational communities shape the beliefs and behavior of developers. The findings reveal that the community acts as a route to further self-exploitation as the unintended consequences of shared values of sociality, altruism, and enterprise contribute towards the acceptance and normalization of self-exploitative practices. In his chapter, “Religion at Work: The Quaker Paradox,” Mark Read explores religion as lived in the twenty-first century work organization. This qualitative case study is based on interviews with twenty British Quakers. Typically, the interviewees believed that their worldly intentions are aligned with the espoused ambitions of their work organizations. But outlying cases show a discrepancy in this alignment. By applying an institutional logics lens

8  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations to analyze these narratives, Read argues that Quaker aspirations are situated within and by the organizational processes. Workplace organizations set out and police the terms upon which these Quakers sought to improve the world. This was further highlighted in discordant contexts. In these outlying examples, tensions between religion and work became explicit as the organizational process intimately shaped Quakers’ beliefs and social practices. Weberian charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational authority are familiar constructs in sociology of organizations. In her chapter, “Charisma and Charismatic Leadership in Organizations,” Dinara Tokbaeva discusses the organizational settings and contexts in which charismatic leadership is likely to manifest. She argues charismatic leadership is more effective in organizations operating in chaotic economic and legal environments such as those found in countries transitioning from one form of economy to another. Tokbaeva recommends more studies into charismatic leadership to shed light on how companies are managed, how leaders’ decision-making practices are perceived by employees, and how these practices present themselves in different economic and cultural settings. Guy Redden offers a critical perspective on the quantification of performance in his chapter, “Organizations and Power: A Critical Evaluation of the Rise of Performance Measurement.” Redden’s chapter traces the emergence of performance measurement in the 1980s and 1990s and shows how developments in management accountancy and strategic management led to a demand for better information. However, since performance measurement is a pragmatic accountancy enterprise that has never been validated as quantitative social science, he argues that performance measurement actually arose not because it was accurate or fair, but because it facilitated the economization of organizations in line with increasingly influential neoliberal economic theory. Redden then assesses how this impacts shareholder-value capitalism, marketization of the public sector, and labor politics. In her chapter, “Autonomist Leadership and Organizational Practice in Leaderless Street Bands,” Meghan Elizabeth Kallman challenges the focus of the sociology of organizations on hierarchical, professional organizations citing the neglect of organizational practices and insights that emerge from other sites of organizing. Using ethnographic and qualitative data from nine US street brass bands, Kallman analyzes shared leadership practices within leaderless, democratic groups. Specifically, she theorizes that these practices qualify as autonomist leadership that seek to understand the political and ideological values that inform group processes and that those processes enable the bands to meet both their functional and interpretive needs in the absence of a single leader. Kallman concludes that autonomist groups are enabled by prefigurative organizational practices based in political principles. Similarly, in their chapter, “Resistance and Resilience among Tattoo Workers,” authors David C. Lane and Jacob T. Foster explain how tattooists create and sustain their social world. Importantly, tattooists employ an anachronistic form of social organization in a modern capitalist system. Lane and Foster interpret tattoo work as a form of resistance to the characteristics of credentialism and formal education. They also demonstrate the resilience of workers to develop forms of social organization that adapt to change. Finally, of importance, this work shows how tattooists grapple with the tensions of increasing popularity and sustaining their forms of social organization. Actors socially organize tattooing through a localized, grassroots form of craft production. These characteristics conflict with the modern, rational, and impersonal nature of production in capitalist systems. In “Contemporizing the Social Organization of Parole: A Critical Assessment,” authors Simon I. Singer and Stuti S. Kokkalera evaluate the practice of discretionary release decisions

Introduction  9 by highlighting the case of juvenile lifers. They draw on organizational theory to relate how a state’s discretionary release practices are tightly coupled to the severity of the offense. Singer and Kokkalera illustrate the decision-making by detailing expectations for a parole candidate’s expression of remorse, responsibility, and redemption (the 3Rs). For a segment of juvenile lifers, they find that parole boards act less as an autonomous decision-making unit and more on reproducing prior judicial sentencing decisions. After every humanitarian crisis there is a call for closer collaboration between international and local organizations. Yet, based on claims that local organizations lack technical capacity and are overly political, international organizations are reluctant to fund them. In her chapter, “Professionalization and the Politicization of Civil Society Organizations in Sierra Leone,” Michelle Reddy draws on sociological institutionalism and quantitatively codes interviews with fifty-four civil society organizations in Sierra Leone. She creates measures of organizational professionalism and politicization. Reddy found that organizations receiving international funding during Ebola in the capital were both highly professionalized and highly political. Therefore, professionalism does not necessarily indicate de-politicization, at least not in heavily aid-dependent countries. Deborah B. Smith presents a reflective case narrative describing and analyzing the experience of an evaluation research project for a social service worker training initiative. In her chapter, “Getting Real about Research: Lessons Learned from a Worker Training Evaluation Project,” she seeks to demystify the “black box” of social science research project execution by offering researchers possible strategies to successfully adjust approaches, actions, and assessments when circumstances require, which typically happen at the least convenient moments. Smith hopes that continued sharing of reflections on the execution of research projects by seasoned scientists can assist organizational and other scholars to persist through the unavoidable highs and lows of the social science research process. Finally, in their exploratory research project, “Career Development Opportunities: A Sociological and Practitioner Exploration of Organizational Commitment Factors, Theories, and Outcomes,” authors Patricia Sullivan, Andrew Creed, Ambika Zutshi, and David C. Lane investigate employee perceived valence of a broad range of organizational career development opportunities (CDO) and the impact that a subjective CDO, CDO valence and CDO consultation have on job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The results reveal that self-efficacy, valence, and outcome expectations tend to impact choice of action. There is also a linkage between CDO perceived valence and consultation. The chapter proposes a new conceptual map linking subjective CDO, CDO perceived valence, CDO consultation, subjective career satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

PART III: ORGANIZATIONS AS MESA-LEVEL MEDIATORS OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL OUTCOMES Chapters in this third section of the Handbook focus on organizations and social change. In “Synergies between School Leaders and Communities in Challenging Urban Schools: A Review of Its Organizational Dynamics and the Urban Schools’ Continuum,” authors Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortíz argue that a culturally responsive school policy enables the agency of subjects considered deficient, which allows the association between the teaching staff and urban communities based on shared goals: the improvement of academic

10  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations achievement and that of stressful urban environments. Likewise, the strengthening of a shared vision and a sense of belonging reinforce trust between both actors, which alludes to the leader’s importance as a channel for plural demands to avoid the atomization of interests. Guzmán and Ortíz develop a continuum based on the educational change frames that have shaped the category of challenging urban schools. Since these frames tend to overlap, school leaders can rely on Complexity Leadership Theory tools to trigger innovations and promote informal leadership. Authors Julie Monroe, Steve Vincent, and Ana Lopes apply a critical contrastive explanation in their chapter, “Critical Realist Metatheory and the Sociology of Organizations: Using Contrastive Explanation to Explain Personal Internet Use at Work.” They use contrastive explanation to describe personal internet use at work (PIUW) and address the question: how is social theory developed from contrastive evaluation? Monroe, Vincent, and Lopes demonstrate how to develop novel insights about gender and class from in-group and between-group contrasts. They argue that contrasts can be used to facilitate theoretical explanation of causal processes, in this case about PIUW. In his chapter, “Exploring Relations of Power in Quakers’ Alternative Forms of Organizing,” Stephen Allen considers relations of power in Quakers’ alternative (i.e. non-hierarchical, non-managerialist, and non-capitalist) forms of organizing. The overriding principle in Quaker organizing is that nobody is “in charge,” which includes processes of roles being rotated every three years, and formal procedures for collective decision-making. By taking a relational perspective to power to appreciate social and material interactions, Allen explores how three different views on power can help to develop understanding of how things get done within Quaker organizing and offer insights about how to consider relations of power within this alternative form of organizing, in particular drawing upon and developing ideas of presence and absence. In a challenge to the standard rationalist view of corporations as maximizing profits for shareholders, Yon Jung Choi and Connie L. McNeely investigate shifting and competing corporate identity claims ranging from profit maximizing and wealth-seeking to socially aware, concerned, and responsible leaders, along with the emergence of alternative organizational forms such as “benefit corporations.” Central to their chapter, “The Dialectic of Changing Corporate Masks: From Profit Maximizers to Predators to Socially Responsible Global Leaders,” is the development of an analytical framework delineated in terms of ontology, structure, and legitimacy as basic dimensions for examining corporate identity assertions in relation to actual performance and social impact in the world polity. Finally, in “Organizing Values: The Principles of Rationalization and Individualization,” authors: Hannah Mormann, Raimund Hasse, and Nadine Arnold show that organizational responses to value issues can have far-reaching external effects of transforming the meaning of these values leading to surprising field dynamics. These effects are far from arbitrary because organizations tend to shape the meaning of societal values by aligning them with the organizational principles of rationalization and individualization. Mormann, Hasse, and Arnold illustrate rationalization- and individualization-based organizational responses and their societal effects by looking at two cases: the professionalization of human resource experts that resulted in the reinterpretation of equal employment opportunity as a business case for diversity, and the marketization of notions of fairness in status markets. They conclude that the organizational principles of rationalization and individualization trace a corridor for the

Introduction  11 processing of values in organizational contexts that profoundly shapes the meaning of these values.

REFERENCES Clegg, S. and Lounsbury, M. (2009). Weber: Sintering the Iron Cage: Translation, Domination, and Rationality. In P. S. Adler (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies (pp. 118–145). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, R. (1992). Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Follett, M. P. (1918). The New State: Group Organization, the Solution of Popular Government. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Follett, M. P. (1924/1995). Circular Response. In Creative Experience. New York: Longmans, Green, Chapters 3 and 4. Reprinted in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, A Celebration of Writings from the 1920s, edited by Pauline Graham. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Follett, M. P. (1925a). Constructive Conflict. In Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett (pp. 30–49). New York: Harper and Brothers. Follett, M. P. (1925b). Power. In Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett (pp. 95–116). New York: Harper and Brothers. Follett, M. P. (1949/1995). Co-ordination. In Freedom and Co-ordination: Lectures in Business Organization by Mary Parker Follett (pp. 77–89). London: Management Publications Trust. Reprinted in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, A Celebration of Writings from the 1920s, edited by Pauline Graham. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Godwyn, M. and Gittell, J. H. (eds) (2012). Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press/Sage Publications. Handel, M. (2003). Introduction. In P. Handel (ed.), The Sociology of Organizations (pp. 1–4). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hirsch, J. S. and Khan, S. (2020). Sexual Citizens. New York: W. W. Norton. Hochschild, A. (1989). The Second Shift. New York: Avon Books. Weber, M. (1924/1978). Bureaucracy. In Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Volume 2. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weber, M. (1958/1904). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Introduction by Anthony Giddens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

PART I SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONS

1. The organization of higher education: an overview of sociological research into universities as organizations Klarissa Lueg and Angela Graf

INTRODUCTION: CHANGES IN GOVERNING AND RESEARCHING UNIVERSITIES In recent decades, numerous higher education systems worldwide have been undergoing fundamental changes. We have observed a distinct shift towards organizational economization and a transformation of universities into “entrepreneurial universities,” mimicking private for-profit organizations. In light of these trends, often associated with labels such as “academic capitalism” (Münch, 2014; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004) or “academic neoliberalism” (Bottrell and Manathunga, 2019; Frickel and Hess, 2014), universities face increasing national and international competition for status and financial resources; and they have responded with various policies, measures, and strategic organizational developments. These changes go along with the idea that production of internationally salient top-level research and teaching is best stimulated by market-based competition and is to be professionally managed. Though the notion of research and higher education being manageable “products” is not entirely new, discourses on this managerialist developments are being framed as novel. They do contrast with the traditional, arguably often romanticized “Humboldtian ideal of the university” that is strongly linked to the idea of a university maximizing professorial autonomy and self-administration (for a critical approach towards the romanticized Humboldtian narrative, see Lueg et al., 2021). Since the 1970s the rationales of the Humboldtian university have been questioned due to “a considerable loss of confidence in the capacities for self-governance of the academic community” (Krücken and Meier, 2006, p. 244) and decreasing financial resources. Hence, public and political claims for more efficiency and effectiveness in academics triggered structural transformations at universities. “New Public Management” quickly became a field-wide notion to describe the improved (“new”) way of dethroning old authorities at state financed organizations (“public”),1 allegedly responsible for slow organizational decision-making (“management”). In light of these developments we speculate that universities are in the process of becoming “organizational actors” (Krücken et al., 2009; Krücken and Meier, 2006). That means that they are adjusting their management regarding external positioning in an organizational environment – the emerging university market – and that they are modifying their internal organizational structures and processes in view of the changing requirements. This change

1 These developments have been part of a larger shift towards demanding a more efficient use of public finances, not only concerning the higher education sector, but also other public organizations, such as hospitals, in which “New Public Management” was widely implemented.

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14  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations is relevant to the view of universities being a research object. While universities have been somewhat neglected as a research object within sociology of organization, they have gained more and more attention recently because of the aforementioned developments. In this chapter, we will outline an overview of universities as a research topic from a sociology of organization perspective. Historically, universities had been primarily investigated within a broader societal context, embedded in “grand theories”; however, over time, “middle-range theories” with a special focus on inner organizational processes, structures, and governance are used as analytical tools. This shift in theoretical focus gives deeper insights into universities as organizations, but might neglect other issues, such as power relationships inherent in social and racial inequality.

UNIVERSITIES AS ORGANIZATIONS Academia, higher education, and universities are subject to various realms of research in sociology and other social sciences. To name three such research areas: sociology of education does focus on students and on aspects of teaching and learning, sociology of science places research and the production of scientific knowledge at the center of their investigations, and a sociology of organization perspective highlights universities as operations hinged on human coordination, social practices, and expectations. Against this backdrop, we can roughly differentiate between two theoretical levels: there are theoretical approaches that consider universities as being one variable in explaining broad, (nearly) all-encompassing societal contexts (grand theories), and there are those theoretical approaches that zoom in closer on the university as an organizational entity itself, its constituents, and its peculiarities (middle-range theories). Before describing these two conceptual vantage points and giving an overview of selected central concepts concerning universities, we will briefly outline how we define organization and university as an organization. Even though organizations are objects of several academic disciplines that frame organizational phenomena quite differently, here, we will refer to the “classical” sociology of organizations perspective and discuss universities against the concept of “bureaucratic organizations” (Blau and Page, 1956). From this angle, organizations are understood as a collective, that is, initiated by persons for realizing and archiving one or multiple specific goal(s). These collective ventures are relatively durable, characterized by an internal division of labor and a hierarchical structure in order to reach their specific purpose(s) (e.g. Etzioni, 1961; Weber, 2019). Therefore, the organization is carried and pervaded by specific social norms and values. In this vein, from a sociological perspective, a bureaucratic organization equals an “institution” in the Durkheimian sense; all belief and behaviors “instituted by the collectivity” (Durkheim, 1893/2004, p. 46) are institutions, with the most famous examples of this being social classes and castes (Durkheim, 1895/2004, p. 37). More broadly, all social associations exert social control over both society at large and the individual (Goffman, 1961, p. 168). Akin to the institution, an organization builds on specific long-lasting and socially sanctioned formal and informal rules (Senge and Graf, 2017). Following this perspective, higher education and academia can be viewed as a vital societal institution producing certain actions and aiming to impart and train socially relevant knowledge and skills. Moreover, these processes of knowledge production are embedded in a relatively stable and permanent structure of norms and rules themselves. The institution of academia is realized and coordinated in

The organization of higher education  15 organizations like universities. However, universities are a special kind of organization (see the fourth section in this chapter) as they have a double purpose – research and teaching – and they consist of very different disciplines, practices, and work cultures, making them, in their entirety, a highly complex research object. Universities, as organizations, are being explored by means of numerous concepts and theoretical frameworks. This leads to questioning what, from a basic epistemological view, researchers are referring to when doing sociological research on universities. We suggest to approach and understand, admittedly diagrammatically, the conceptual differences by on one hand grouping together the perspectives that look at universities as being one variable in a larger societal context, and on the other hand, grouping together the approaches that look at universities as organizations in themselves. This division, again diagrammatically, corresponds with the classification of sociological theories into so-called “grand theories” (Mills, 1959) and “theories of middle-range” (Merton, 1968). We apply this distinction as a heuristic approach in order to locate and describe universities as organizations within the manifold theoretical contexts. Aware of the various entanglements, interconnections, and commonalities of ideas or premises embedded in the respective approaches, we hope to further develop and refine this distinction as a tool of thought.

GRAND THEORIES AND THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES “Grand theories” postulate universal explanations and have been criticized for lack of empirical examples and verification (Mills, 1959). Many sociological endeavors to include higher education, especially universities, into considerations of societal phenomena make reference to such a universal explanations: Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Pierre Bourdieu, and other prominent sociologists attempted to explain large societal interrelations through grand theories. Universities, from a sociological point of view, and what is more, a grand theoretical perspective, have received much, however not widespread attention: detailed investigations on the role of universities, and subsequent theorization, are restricted to some schools of thoughts. Accordingly, universities and education generally have often played a conceptual role in grand theories. In the following, we outline how sociologists – grand theorists – have regarded higher education in their attempts to explain larger societal interrelations. Thus, we attempt to show how the role of universities within such grand ideas is being reflected in other, subsequent conceptual and empirical considerations. To Karl Marx, often considered a founder of sociology and a major contributor to social theory, universities were part of the “Überbau” (superstructure) and thus were only another tool for maintaining the capitalist status quo of society (Marx, 1970). In his grand theory, all social relations are rooted in economic relations, in particular, in the oppositional relations of the owning and ruling class (Bourgeoisie) and the dependent class (Proletariat), in a larger class system (Marx, 1922; Marx and Engels, 1977). The Überbau, as the state’s apparatus, comprises, initially, all legal and political state institutions. Thus, state-owned universities can be regarded as part of this apparatus as these institutions could impact the ideology and consciousness of citizens – mainly in a way that supports the status quo, thereby legitimizing the Überbau (Engels, 2020). Universities, thus, were one part of the problem Marx and Engels saw in a state-owned and state-ruled education system. Marx asked for education for all people, instead of for privileged classes only. What is more, education was to be

16  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations acquired autonomously from state ideology. Consequently, social change towards equality could not be reached by means of education, but by a change in ownership of the capitalist means of production. This idea, that the state is not to educate the people, but the people are to educate the state (Marx, 1875/1973) is still being discussed and impacts political and scholarly discourse on changes in the university sector. Later, Althusser, and Bowles and Gintis, expanded the idea of the educational system being harnessed by capitalism. Althusser proposed that children were coerced, by use of ideology, into obeying the capitalist system (Althusser, 1971), a thought that can be recognized in many works of contemporary critical management scholars on how university management education is an ideological and elitist system (e.g., Engwall, 2007; Grey, 2016; Thrift, 2005). Bowles and Gintis suggested (Bowles and Gintis, 1976), with their “correspondence principle” that the educational system serves to reproduce, intergenerationally, “socialized inequality via the linkages among the authority relations experienced by fathers at work, transferred to childrearing styles, and replicated in school interaction with teachers” (Howell and McBroom, 1982, p. 40). The idea of universities functioning as reproductive vehicles for power imbalances is also advocated and pushed forward by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction (e.g. Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Bourdieu et al., 1979). Bourdieu’s fundamental idea of class structure, forms of capital, and habitus shaping human interaction (Bourdieu, 1989, 1991, 1998) has drawn attention to the idea of universities functioning as class-reproducing vehicles of oppression and securing power structures (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu et al., 1977). He states: by converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies, the educational system fulfils a function of legitimation which is more and more necessary to the perpetuation of the ‘social order’ as the evolution of the power relationship between classes tends more completely to exclude the imposition of a hierarchy based upon the crude and ruthless affirmation of the power relationship. (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 74)

Agents from different classes have varying relationships to practices in higher education, and the offspring of the dominant, higher classes are favorably positioned to meet the requirements of the educational system (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990, p. 200). Universities are a central force in shaping and legitimating habitus, by rewarding cultural capital as inherited from the family (incorporated cultural capital), and in rewarding graduates with diplomas (institutionalized cultural capital) necessary for social success, job-seeking, and earning an income (economic capital). These mechanisms are vital to constituting the social space in which individuals strive for and compete with each other regarding ideal social positioning (Bourdieu, 2011). The Bourdieusian perspective is still very present in manifold research endeavors on the university as an organization (e.g. Lueg and Lueg, 2015). Another early example for embedding (higher) education in broader societal contexts is Émile Durkheim, with his theory of moral regulation. As an advocate of structural functionalism, he argued that society as a whole functions because a shared set of values and beliefs draws people together to trusting communities. These values, from the normative Durkheimian perspective, were meant to be mediated by school (Pickering, 1979). Equally functionalist, sociologists such as Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (Davis and Moore, 1945; Lueg, 2017), or Talcott Parsons (Parsons and Halsey, 1968) also assigned a mediating role to the education system; in a functionalist perspective, schools and universities are responsible for building a workforce highly different in capability and skills. Achievement

The organization of higher education  17 in school corresponds necessarily and legitimately with functions of individuals in society. Social inequality as the outcome of the education system is appreciated rather than summarily condemned since it is interpreted as functionally contributing to the stability of society. Obviously, the Marxist and the functionalist grand theories clash with a view of the education system as a legitimate social divider in society. Universities as organizations are used as illustrations for the legitimacy of rewarding, e.g. medical doctors with high salaries after their university studies: “a medical education is so burdensome and expensive that virtually none would undertake it if the position of the M.D. did not carry a reward commensurate with the sacrifice” (Davis and Moore, 1945, p. 244). Parsons and co-authors also draw attention to universities and the higher education sector (Parsons, 1971a, 1971b; Parsons and Platt, 1973). Parsons considers the university to be of particular weight for social change and modern society as a whole, when stating, “the university has already become the most important distinctive structural focus of modern society, and is likely to become still more important in the future, superseding even the business firm and the governmental structure” (Parsons, 1971a, p. 244). In their study on the American university, Parsons and Platt (1973) analyze the development of the American higher education system after the Second World War and how the social value systems are connected to societal changes. Parsons’ theoretical perspective inspired the criticism towards grand theories (Mills, 1959) and indirectly led to more focused theories gaining prominence. Max Weber, another early founder of sociological theory, can be viewed as a progenitor of grand theories or a generator of encompassing and interlinked micro-concepts that do not necessarily describe the overall features of society (Mommsen, 2000). Weber was a significant influence on the development of sociology of organizations. From his point of view, organizations are understood as rational in a rationally legitimized social order, which is closely entangled with his ideal-type of bureaucracy. In his grand theoretical considerations of organizations (Weber, 2002, 2019), Weber pays attention to rituals, mechanisms, and effects in and by higher education. Education, along with religious, economic, and political institutions, fosters the stahlhartes Gehäuse, the “iron cage” of a bureaucratized society (Weber, 2002). The consequence for higher education is the loss of autonomy and academic freedom. This perspective resurfaced in middle-range theories conceptualizing changes in higher education (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Another approach that has been labeled (and criticized) as grand theory is critical theory (Gregory, 2009), a socio-critical approach towards society and culture arguing that social phenomena hinge upon societal structures rather than on individual, natural, or psychological factors. Liberation from power imbalances can be maintained by maintaining that ideology. Critical theory was established by the Frankfurt School theorists; among the better known are Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Universities, and university research especially, are criticized for being “traditional” in their theoretical outlook, which was criticized for being biased by positivism – taking social facts for granted and neglecting to consider the power of social construction. Social injustice impacts on social “facts,” but traditional research disciplines treat the social akin to science and therefore contribute to reproducing social injustice (Horkheimer, 1937). This outlook inspired and still inspires critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), a perspective that attempts to apply insights from critical theory and apply them to university teaching settings. Social problems are an initial focus in teaching concepts – social inequalities are considered in teaching practices in order to offer the best possible learning context for all students. This inclusion of political goals is

18  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations meant to ensure that moments of oppression and abuse of power are being eradicated from universities. Amongst issues considered are racism, classism, sexism, and minority rights. The Marxist idea of state-sanctioned oppression that benefits privileged social groups is central to activists of the critical pedagogy movement (hooks, 2014). With the goal of equal access to educational opportunities and representation, and the intended outcome of social, political, and economic privilege, critical theory, and its applied counterpart critical pedagogy, can be found in feminist theory, postcolonialism, gender and queer studies, critical race theory, and the concept of intersectionality (Tate, 1997; Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995). Very different from most other aforementioned grand theorists, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) emphasize individualization and the “risk-society” (for Beck as a grand theorist see Outhwaite, 2009; Sørensen, 2017). Beck articulates a societal shift towards a more uncertain and insecure society that would appear to be spreading in recent years despite the fact that we are generally living longer and better than ever before. According to Beck, “risk-society,” an increasing globalization, and what he calls “individualization” are vital aspects of modernity. As class and religious structures decline, individuals are increasingly required to construct their own lives – this entails both risks and chances. The theory of individualization brought about the term “elevator-effect.” Since all members of society are being elevated, over time, in their prosperity and living standards, members of society are being alienated (freed) from their traditional social contexts, in particular from social classes. New forms of social inequality then occur. This theory relates to higher education in that many more are entering university for the first time. However, such a social upscaling does not necessary imply social success, as, at the same time, corresponding study degrees and programs might be devalued. Empirical connection and conceptual relation to Beck from within sociology of organizations is lagging in the consideration of higher education.

THEORIES OF MIDDLE RANGE AND UNIVERSITIES AS A SPECIFIC TYPE OF ORGANIZATIONS Critics point to a lack of empirical rigor in grand theories. Encouraging a turn towards smaller, more focused concepts, Goldthorpe calls grand theories “second-rate philosophy,” “socio-cultural punditry” (Goldthorpe, 2013, p. 419), and merely “fanciful” (Goldthorpe, 2007, p. 103). The term “middle-range theory” has been brought forward to describe (and legitimate) analytical sociological research. Middle-range theory is thus a special within-discipline distinction, though it has found its way into cross-disciplinary considerations. Robert K. Merton (1968) suggested the notion “theory of middle range” in order to describe such ideas “that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization and social change” (Merton, 1968, p. 39). Middle-range theories are apt to “guide empirical inquiry” (Merton, 1968, p. 39). This empirical research may build on a “relatively simple idea” (Merton, 1968, p. 43). Middle-range theories may, but do not have to be, consistent with grand (axiomatic) narrative assumptions, and they function independently from them. Consequently, middle-range theories can be employed by combining them with different, even

The organization of higher education  19 paradigmatically opposing grand theories without losing their explanatory power for a limited subject (Merton, 1968). For example, manifold micro-concepts developed by Max Weber helped to explain macro-interrelations in society. His thoughts on people trusting in scientific rather than religious ideas (rationalization) and inflexible bureaucratic organizations are related to his thoughts on status groups and social inequality. Social groups maintain their privileges by means of exclusion, often played out via institutions of higher education (Weber, 2019). Neo-Weberian theorists extend Weberian grand theory on society, status groups, inequalities and social closure, and argue for the central role of the higher education system. Parkin (1979, pp. 121–142) emphasized a social tendency towards excluding people on the basis of seemingly achievement-based and individualistic rules. He problematized “credentialism”, an institutionalized belief in certificates of higher education. This belief, however, masks the previous exclusion of social groups from entering universities in the first place. Parkin thus moved a certain aspect of Weberian theory towards a middle-range theory, however not towards an organization-centered perspective. Similarly, in Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion (1988), Murphy pronounced rationalization a mechanism of exclusion to which universities contribute. Formal rationalization is what Murphy calls the state-sanctioned socially exclusive access to certain resources of education (e.g. by requiring knowledge of Latin for medical practitioners) (Murphy, 1984). Randall Collins, another neo-Weberian, added the concept of honor or prestige as generated through rituals (Collins, 1984). These rituals are often celebrated by and in universities. For instance, priests, medical practitioners, and professors generate their status via rituals and symbols (ceremonial robe, Hippocratic oath, doctoral hat), and these rituals contribute to masking intentional practices of exclusion. In line with and as an enhancement of this perspective, neo-institutionalism emerged and paid attention to how contextual values, rules, and practices, and the desire to reach legitimacy as an agent amongst other organizations, impacted on organizational phenomena. John Meyer and associates also took on the acceptance of credentialism, and note that the educational system has been expanding worldwide (Meyer et al., 1992; Meyer and Rowan, 1977, 2008). However, this expansion is not working in congruence with the actual workforce or labor market demands. The authors propose that the democratic belief in educational value per se legitimizes higher education expansion. The notion of “loose coupling” describes the expansion of the education system mismatching the actual (economic) need. Universities are often studied from the middle-range theory of sociological neo-institutionalism. A middle-range theory such as neo-institutionalism is apt to guide empirical investigations into the social institution and its basic assumptions are abstract enough to be applied to several different settings (e.g. from automotive industry to universities). A theory of middle-range does not claim to be an “all-encompassing general theory” (Merton, 1968, p. 64). It is an intermediate theory to understand and explain specific empirical settings, and it is apt to show similarities in human sense-making and behavior across manifold fields of action. Neo-institutionalist approaches to higher education and universities have helped to explore differences and similarities in university practice and change in comparison to other organizations (corporations, entrepreneurial settings, etc.). To explore the methodological implications of naming an approach middle-range theory, Boudon proposes that “a ‘scientific theory’ is a set of statements that organize a set of hypotheses and relate them to segregated observations. If a ‘theory’ is valid, it ‘explains’,

20  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations ‘consolidates’, and federates empirical regularities that on their side would otherwise appear segregated” (Boudon, 1991, p. 520). That is, higher education can be explored, empirically, with several different measures, using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods data, as long as the data can be consolidated. While in context of grand theories, universities are considered important elements for society and social development, middle-range theories focus more closely on universities themselves and try to understand their functioning as an organization. To characterize a university as an organization, we have discussed several different concepts, each emphasizing specific aspects and attributes.2 Subsequently we will focus on three well-known concepts that situate universities in a sociology of organization perspective: (1) universities as loose coupled systems (Weick, 1976), (2) universities as organized anarchies (Cohen et al., 1972), (3) universities as professional bureaucracies (Clark, 1983; Mintzberg, 1979). Despite all the differences among these concepts, the reference to the fact that universities deviate from the ideal-typical rational-bureaucratic model of organizations (Weber, 2019) unites them. Universities as Loosely Coupled Systems A rational-bureaucratic concept of organizations, characterized by rational processes of planning, deciding and doing aligned with the organizational goals and tight linkages between the organizational elements, is, according to Weick “rare in nature” (1976, p. 1). He argues that large elements of organizations are often just loosely and frequently coupled – and this is especially true for educational organizations, such as universities. Although these loose couplings within organizations were already discussed within the “rationalist paradigm”, Weick’s contribution is not to take it as a negative deviation of ideal organizational structure that has to be abolished, but instead he considers it as a potential advantage for organizations. Regarding coupled elements in organizations, Weick differentiates two main coupling mechanisms: “the technical core of organization and the authority of office” (1976, p. 4). While the former is “task-induced” and couples elements like technology, task or role along the organizations’ function, the latter aims to hold the organization together by coupling the elements of hierarchy and authority. Moreover, he argues, “that neither of these mechanisms is prominent in educational organizations” (Weick, 1976, p. 4). Following Weick’s perspective, universities can be characterized as having loose technical couplings due to highly autonomous units (disciplines, subjects) that “do not need one another to get on with work, either in teaching or research or service” (Clark, 1983, p. 14). Moreover, universities have a loose coupling of authority structure as well, depending on the highly specialized knowledge that is person-related and thus hardly controllable in terms of inspection (“how well is the work done” (Weick, 1976, p. 11)). In contrast to loose technical coupling of universities, we can find gradual differences of the weakness or tightness of coupling of authority depending on the very types of universities and national university systems. This aspect in particular is currently being discussed in the context of structural reforms. The idea of universities as loosely coupled (or: decoupled) organizations is tightly linked to the idea of organizations seeking legitimacy in trying to adapt to broader societal expectations. According to Meyer and Rowan (1977), when organizations are pressured into adjusting to certain societal rationales,



2

For an overview, see also Hüther (2010, pp. 127 ff.).

The organization of higher education  21 they might face efficiency challenges: not every practice considered legitimate by society equals an efficient practice for the respective organization. In consequence, and as a coping mechanism, organizations decouple their actual practices from those practices they publicly advertise – Meyer and Rowan exemplify this mechanism of seeking survival by adjusting to prevailing societal institutions in referring to universities (Meyer and Rowan, 2008; see also “organizational hypocrisy” in Brunsson, 2002). Paradoxically, a rationale such as managerialism or new public management might not have the desired effect: instead of making the organization more efficient, a double-poly, a “talk” and a “walk” might be established by employees and other agents, thus only formally adjusting to the new regulations. The perspective on universities as loosely coupled systems emphasizes issues of organizational integration or non-integrability as well as governability as they consist of a conglomeration of different relatively autonomous units. Currently, studies tending to educational organizations explore the subject of “re-coupling,” as a process where organizations start to actually implement measures corresponding to the myth they officially subscribe to (Hallett, 2010; Lueg and Rennstam, 2020). Universities as Organized Anarchies While the concept of “loosely coupled systems” primarily focuses on questions of organizational integration, the concept of “organized anarchies” centers on decision-making processes within the organization. In their well-known paper, Cohen et al. argue that in universities decision-making processes often do not follow rational choices but a “garbage can model,” thus they describe universities as “organized anarchies” (Cohen et al., 1972). They claim “[u]niversity decision making frequently does not resolve problems. Choices are often made by flight or oversight” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 11). To characterize organized anarchy within organizations, the authors single out three factors: “The first is problematic preferences” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1). This problem arises when either an organization has more than one (incompatible) goal or the goals are too abstract to serve as reasonable basis for decision-making. Both apply to universities. Due to their double role of research and teaching (and several emerging conflicts on the level of sub-goals, like between self-actualization and employability of students) tradeoffs are unavoidable and these goals leave much room for interpretation in decision-making situations. The second aspect mentioned is “unclear technology” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1) which means that because of missing information and overview of the number of processes to be managed, decisions are made by “simple trial-and-error procedures” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1). This is particularly true for research processes that are generally subject to a certain unpredictability as there is no rational procedure for producing new knowledge. The third and last property of organized anarchies is “fluid participation” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1), indicating that “[p]articipants vary in the amount of time and effort they devote to different domains” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1). These remarks are also applicable to structures of academic self-government. With their concept, the authors focus primarily on the highly complex decision-making processes in organizations. Even though organized anarchy is part of decision-making situations in any type of organization, the authors state that “[if] the implications of the model are applicable anywhere, they are applicable to a university” (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 11).

22  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Universities as Professional Bureaucracies The third concept examined here regards universities as professional organizations or professional bureaucracies. Referring to Weber’s concepts, this perspective highlights primarily the normative structure within an organization and stresses questions of control and administration. Scott defines professional organizations as those “in which members of one or more professional groups play the central role in the achievement of the primary organizational objectives” (Scott, 1965, p. 65). Professionals (e.g. lawyers, doctors, professors), in this vein, are not only highly skilled experts but also they are distinguished especially by a specific ethical code of conduct orientated to public welfare. Moreover, usually professionals constitute professional associations that are responsible for controlling access and ensuring the members’ compliance with the code of conduct. Universities, from this perspective, are professional organizations in a twofold sense: it is the place where future professionals are educated and trained, and it is an organization run by professionals. Thus, according to Mintzberg, “the Professional Bureaucracy relies for coordination on the standardization of skills and its associated design parameter, training and indoctrination. It hires duly trained and indoctrinated specialists – professionals – for the operating core, and then gives them considerable control over their own work” (Mintzberg, 1979, p. 349). However, in literature we find a long lasting discussion on academics as professionals, e.g. questioning if academics build one profession or if each discipline has to be considered as its own profession. Even though academics may reasonably be regarded as one profession, we can find very different cultures and self-images between the various disciplines as mentioned before in context of the concept of loosely coupling. In this vein, Clark argues: “universities are indeed professionalized organizations, and academic systems are professionalized systems, with control and coordination highly influenced by the presence of professionals, but the professionalism is heavily fragmented” (Clark, 1983, p. 36).

EMERGING OF UNIVERSITIES’ ORGANIZATIONAL ACTORHOOD: EMERGING QUESTIONS AND BLIND SPOTS Even if the concepts outlined above show several differences and highlight different aspects, they all emphasize the specific and peculiar character of universities as organizations in contrast to regular for-profit organizations. However, these concepts are mainly used to define and accentuate the character of organizations ex negativo. In contrast to this perspective, we can observe a shift in academic discourse, discussing universities in light of and against the background of private sector companies. Since the 1970s, professorial self-governance and structural heterogeneity of universities as depicted in the concepts of universities as a specific type of organizations has been increasingly questioned. For manifold reasons, “there is a considerable loss of confidence in the capacities for self-governance of the academic community” (Krücken and Meier, 2006, p. 244). Decreasing trust and lower financial resources available raised political and public claims for more transparency and audit as well as for more efficiency and effectiveness in academic governance (Engwall and Scott, 2013; Enders, 2013; Weingart and Maasen, 2007). Hence, politically initiated, structural transformations at universities ensued. Resulting from several political reforms in the sector of higher education in different countries, stratification among universities was pushed forward

The organization of higher education  23 and thus universities increasingly face a severe competition for status and financial resources on a national as well as on an international level. To be able to “survive” and succeed in this competition, institutions of higher education have been under pressure to transform themselves into “entrepreneurial universit[ies]” (Clark, 1998; Davies, 2001; Maasen and Weingart, 2006; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), and approximate “full organizational actorhood” (Krücken and Meier, 2006, p. 253), which means that they become “an integrated, goal-oriented entity that is deliberately choosing its own actions and that can thus be held responsible for what it does” (Krücken and Meier, 2006, p. 241). As mentioned in the beginning, that means that they have to both improve their external management and position themselves best in an organizational environment – the emerging university market – and modify their internal organizational structure and processes in view of the increasing requirements. Since the late 1970s the course for this development was set with the implementation of “New Public Management”, originally a management concept developed for the private economic sector and then applied to higher education. Universities were encouraged to attend to the “three E’s” – more Efficiency in terms of organizational processes, more Economical aptness in terms of value for money, and more Effectiveness in terms of societal responsibility and impact (Foltin, 2005; Lange, 2008). At the same time, discussions emerged on how universities were to cope with the new requirements and how accountability should be organized and managed. Universities responded to these increasing expectations with different, but not necessarily aligned policies, measures, and strategic organizational developments, e.g. mission statements, strategic communication plans, or specific branding strategies (Graf and Lueg, 2019). These processes of professionalizing bring about renewed organizational structures, processes and management practices. The manifold, heterogeneous, and asynchronous deployments of these processes have increasingly attracted scholarly interest from within the sociology of organizations. The number of publications investigating universities as organizations has grown significantly in recent years (e.g. Boer et al., 2007; Bungarten and John-Ohnesorg, 2015; Grande et al., 2013; Heinze and Arnold, 2008; Heinze et al., 2011; Hirsch and Weber, 2001; Hohn, 2011; Jansen, 2007; Kehm and Fuchs, 2010; Khalifa and Quattrone, 2008; Lange, 2005; Lüde, 2012; Musselin, 2009, 2013; Salter and Tapper, 2002; Simon, 2014; Weingart et al., 2007). Most of these studies can be assigned to middle-range theories as they focus on universities and try to understand the ongoing changes pertaining to those, and their organizational field, specifically. Moreover, these investigations dominantly focus on governance questions concerning e.g. the implementation of new public management, the internal structural reorganization or the universities’ performance and its (side‑)effects. Even though this research on governance of university uses different theoretical concepts and approaches, the perspectives are united by a fundamental interest in governance and coordination of organizational processes. One way or another, they are mainly interested in critically examining how academia, and universities in particular, are to be organized in order to be able to cope with rationalized societal myths in the best way possible. Therefore, this corporate governance research approach is searching for solutions for the fundamental problem of control, regulation, and coordination of universities as organizations and the intended as well as non-intended effects of the transformation processes. Albeit these investigations undoubtedly having great analytical potential and provide insightful findings, they tend to having some limitations and blind spots, in part due to the focus on middle-range theories and governmental issues.

24  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations For one, these rising numbers of research studies almost exclusively focus on universities when investigating scholarly organizations. Only a few studies exist on non-university research institutes and lower level higher education organizations such as colleges or universities of applied sciences. This might lead to a distorted picture of the academic organizational realm and the ongoing transformations. Moreover, another critical point can be seen in the fact that recent empirical as well as theoretical considerations of universities as organizations focus on single country settings. There are few studies that include a systematic, international comparison. Thus, these studies run the risk of generalizing, prematurely, aspects specific to national politics or national social conditions. In addition, due to the research focus on the governance perspective and on questions of “problem solving” (Mayntz, 2001, 2004), phenomena of power and domination remain largely unconsidered. However, these transformation processes towards university actorhood bring about a fundamental, conflict-laden, power shift within the organization. Transformation practices take place in a field of struggles (Bourdieu, 1988) over power and influence (Hüther and Krücken, 2013). These structural and organizational changes produce roughly two groups of agents: those who succeed in the power struggles and those who are being outdistanced. Particular interests and individual (masked) struggles for power and supremacy are not sufficiently taken into account by approaches solely tending to governance aspects. Neglecting power structures and historical field struggles while analyzing these transformations may lead to overlooking effects tied to intersectional inequalities. Even though questions on class, race, gender and sexual orientation in academia are frequently addressed by different social science disciplines, they often play a minor role in an investigation from a sociology of organization perspective. Since it can be assumed that organizational changes do have an impact on sectional belonging of students (Lueg, 2017) and of scientists and professors (Blome et al., 2019; Graf, 2015; Jungbauer-Gans and Gross, 2013), it would be important to include these aspects in research into universities as organizations. Organizational sociologists may find broadened opportunities for theoretical and empirical contributions in exploring organizations within broader societal structures.

WRAPPING UP: UNIVERSITIES AS SUSPENDED IN SOCIETAL STRUCTURES In this chapter, we looked at universities as a research topic from a sociology of organization perspective. We constructed a rough differentiation between two theoretical perspectives: While in context of “grand theories” universities and other organizations of higher education are regarded as embedded in a broader context of society, “theories of middle range” zoom closer in on universities as organizational entities themselves and focus on inner organizational processes and structures. We have argued that from early in the discipline of sociology, several theorists have addressed questions pertaining to the role of universities and higher education for and within society and thus first and foremost take a grand theory perspective. Even though many grand theorists (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Bourdieu, Parsons) ascribe great importance to organized academia for societal integration and development, they differ significantly regarding its exact role. While some emphasize the class- and inequality-reproducing character, others point to its integrating and stabilizing effect on society. Universities

The organization of higher education  25 as specific types of organizations have often been overlooked within this point of view. Since the early 1970s, a growing number of concepts do put universities as organizational entities in the spotlight. These include especially the well-known concepts of universities as “loosely coupled systems” (Weick, 1976), as “organized anarchies” (Cohen et al., 1972) and as “professional bureaucracies” (Mintzberg, 1979; Scott, 1965). Despite the particular differences among these concepts, they all emphasize the specific and peculiar character of universities as organizations in contrast to regular for-profit organizations. However, in recent decades, higher education systems and thus their organizations are undergoing fundamental changes. Along with these changes, the transformation of universities into “full organizational actors” is being diagnosed. Due to the increasing external requirements and expectations in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, universities are to become “entrepreneurial universities” (Clark, 2001) or “enterprising universities” (Weingart and Maasen, 2007). That transition comprises two simultaneous developments: the improvement of their external management and the active positioning in the competitive organizational environment – the emerging university market – and the adjustment of their internal organizational structure and processes. Although universities have been somewhat neglected as a research object of sociology of organization, they have gained more and more attention recently in the course of the ongoing organizational changes. These recent investigations mainly focus on governance of universities. Though this perspective gives deeper insights into universities as organizations, some other issues, as relating to power, domination, or social inequality for example are in danger of being neglected or marginalized. Since universities are gaining importance in knowledge-based societies and especially in light of future grand challenges (Kaldewey, 2018), we advocate for intensifying research on universities from a sociology of organization perspective while simultaneously paying attention to greater societal structures and challenges universities as organizations encounter.

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2. Decisional organization theory: towards an integrated framework of organization1 Michael Grothe-Hammer, Héloïse Berkowitz and Olivier Berthod

INTRODUCTION Decisions are the cornerstone of many perspectives and theories of organization. Classical contributions by Barnard (1938), or March and Simon (1958) and their subsequent work, contributed greatly to develop a view of organizations as systems of bounded rationality, in which managers try to satisfice situations by way of decisions. Eventually, organizational decision-making became an object of study in its own right. The effort to understand what undermines the feasibility of rational decision-making has been a persistent research topic (Brunsson and Brunsson, 2017; Cabantous and Gond, 2011). On the one hand, political models (e.g., Allison, 1971; Etzioni, 1967; Lindblom, 1965) shed light on the role of participation and opposition in organizational decision-making. On the other hand, critical models question whether decision-makers make any attempt at rationality at all (Cohen et al., 1972) and highlight the inherent irrationality of organizations (Brunsson, 1985). As new theories of organization emerged, however, organizational decision-making research became increasingly preoccupied with itself, to the point where it became a topic stuck in “its own lethargy” (Langley et al., 1995, p. 261). Nevertheless, decisions are climbing back to the front seat. In the past decades, various new forms of organization have emerged (Brès et al., 2018; De Bakker et al., 2013; Schreyögg and Sydow, 2010; Taylor, 2000). Organizations are becoming more fluid, latent, modular, temporary or partial, while the classic bureaucratic form of organization is in decline (Ahrne et al., 2016a and 2016b; Brès et al., 2018; Schreyögg and Sydow, 2010). Moreover, research is increasingly recognizing the fact that organizations organize their interactions and relations in network, market, meta-, and macro-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008; Brunsson et al., 2018; Raab and Kenis, 2009). Well-established concepts of bureaucracy, goal orientation, formality, hierarchies, and membership have been identified as ill-suited to grasp this changing empirical reality, confronting organizational studies with severe theoretical challenges (Barley, 2016; Brès et al., 2018; Davis, 2015; Grothe-Hammer and Kohl, 2020; King, 2017). As a result, many scholars see organization theory in an existential crisis because it increasingly loses the capacity to understand its central research object, i.e., organization.

1 This is an open access work distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Unported (https://​creativecommons​.org/​licenses/by​-nc​-nd/​4​.0/​). Users can redistribute the work for non-commercial purposes, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, as detailed in the License. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd must be clearly credited as the rights holder for publication of the original work. Any translation or adaptation of the original content requires the written authorization of Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

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Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  31 To counter this development, some have started to search for new ways of theorizing the phenomenon of organization. One outcome of this is a revival of the idea that decisions are the central element of organization. Against this backdrop, we shall do two things in this chapter. First, we assemble an overview of contemporary theories and perspectives on organizational research that share one commonality: a renewed interest in decisions as a central unit of analysis (Ahrne et al., 2016b; Apelt et al., 2017). This “new decisionism” (pun intended) encompasses perspectives as diverse as the sociological systems theory devised by Luhmann (2018), the partial organization approach introduced by Ahrne and Brunsson (2011), scholarship on meta-organizations (Ahrne et al., 2016a), and the concept of degrees of organizationality (Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015). Second, we use this overview to outline the basic pillars of a unified theory. Ahrne et al. (2016b, p. 99) suggested that a combined perspective rooted in decisions could put “organization studies at the heart of the social sciences” and “offer fundamental insights into the workings of our world.” In this chapter, we submit to this call and want to show how collapsing all four perspectives into one overall theory offers the tools we need to explain what organization looks like in the twenty-first century (Brummans et al., 2014; Schoeneborn et al., 2019; Wilhoit and Kisselburgh, 2015). Specifically, we shall argue that the aforementioned perspectives can be treated as facets of one overarching theory that captures traditional as well as more elusive organizational forms. Such a perspective holds the potential to tackle organization theory’s existential crises by providing a new understanding of organization and its implications for modern society. We shall call this perspective the decisional organization theory, or decisional OT for short.2

PART 1: DEFINING THE NOTION OF DECISION Four Perspectives Under Scrutiny Four perspectives are addressed in this chapter: sociological systems theory, the meta-organization approach, the partial organization approach, and the concept of degrees of organizationality. Sociological systems theory as devised by Niklas Luhmann (2018) builds on the classic works by March and Simon (1993 [1958]) in adopting the view that decisions are central to defining organizations and that organizational structures can be understood as premises for these very decisions. Sociological systems theory then defines organizations as operatively closed processual entities that distinguish themselves from their environments by consisting of recursively coupled decision processes that constantly reproduce this distinction. Building on this view, scholars have, for instance, offered insights into management consulting (Czarniawska, 2017; Mohe and Seidl, 2011), strategic management (Rasche and Seidl, 2017), project-based and temporary organizing (Grothe-Hammer and Schoeneborn, 2019), organizational identity (Seidl, 2005a), agency construction (Blaschke, 2015), and organizational image construction (Kühl, 2021). Drawing partly on Luhmann as well as on March and Simon, Ahrne and Brunsson (2005, 2008) introduced the concept of meta-organizations to capture organizations that 2 We understand a theory as a bundle of statements connecting different concepts, which in turn define specific terms that denote certain phenomena (Turner, 2013, pp. 824–865).

32  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations have organizations as their members. Examples of such meta-organizations are sports federations, such as FIFA, international organizations like the United Nations Global Compact, and national trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute. In defining meta-organizations, the authors also build on the assumption that decisions are the constitutive element of organization (Ahrne et al., 2016a). Subscribing to this view, scholars have shed light on meta-organizations such as multi-stakeholder groups in the oil and gas industry (Berkowitz et al., 2017), the crowd-funding sector (Berkowitz and Souchaud, 2019b), or the World Anti-Doping Agency (Malcourant et al., 2015). Moreover, Ahrne and Brunsson (2011) introduced the notion of partial organization, arguing that organization can be defined as a certain kind of social order, i.e., a social order that is the result of decisions. This type of social order is understood as fundamentally different from other kinds of social order, e.g., institutions. Applying this notion, scholars have inquired into a broad variety of social phenomena. Scholars, for instance, have studied romantic relationships (Ahrne, 2015), membership-less collectives (Grothe-Hammer, 2019a), social movements (Den Hond et al., 2015), and markets (Ahrne et al., 2015) as instances of organization. Finally, some researchers have started to integrate a decision-based view of organization with the “Communication as Constitutive of Organization” (CCO) perspective (Brummans et al., 2014; Schoeneborn et al., 2014). In this regard, Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) developed the concept of degrees of organizationality, thereby partly drawing on sociological systems theory and partial organization theory. They introduced the idea that collectives can be seen as more or less organizational as long as they feature at least instances of interconnected decision-making. All four perspectives build on and go beyond March and Simon’s (1993 [1958]) seminal work in three crucial aspects. First and foremost, in contrast to March and Simon (1993) who looked at individual decision behavior, newer works build on a communication-based understanding of the notion of decision (Ahrne et al., 2016b Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019; Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2018; Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Second, while the classic works by March and Simon offered a hybrid perspective between Organizational Behavior (OB) and Organization Theory (OT), newer works are merely concerned with developing OT. Third, while March and Simon (1993) declared that decisions were the “central construct” of their theory (p. 3), they in fact did not treat decisions as the constitutive element of organization (pp. 2, 23). In contrast, the newer works explicitly build on the assumption that decisions are the constitutive elements of organization (Ahrne et al., 2016b; Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011; Apelt et al., 2017; Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015; Luhmann, 2018, p. 2; Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Nevertheless, these four debates remain largely fragmented so far. For instance, while the notion of partial organization has offered new understandings of the organizationality of social phenomena, like intimate relationships (Ahrne, 2015) or markets (Ahrne et al., 2015), it lacks a connection to a theory of organizations as entities (Apelt et al., 2017; Ahrne et al., 2017). Modern systems theory (see Luhmann, 2018) on the other hand offers an elaborated theory of organizations as processual entities, one that is embedded in a complex grand theory with a multi-level perspective. Nevertheless, this theory tends to remain silent when it comes to understanding new forms of organization that, for instance, do not rely on membership (Grothe-Hammer, 2020).

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  33 Despite this fragmentation, the four perspectives share the common ground that decision-making is not just something that happens in the context of organization. Instead, organization is seen as consisting of decisions. We see this radical “organization as decision” view as the conceptual core of all four aforementioned perspectives. Building on this insight, we will in the following pages derive an integrated theory perspective in which the four research streams can be treated as facets of an integral whole. What is a Decision? To lay the ground for an integrated decisional organization theory, we need to clarify what decisions are. Authors often define a decision as “making a choice between alternative courses of action or positions” (Cunliffe and Luhman, 2013, p. 45; similarly Bruch and Feinberg, 2017). This line of work puts the emphasis on psychology and intention, posing challenges for theorizing organization on a sociological level (Andersen, 2003; Luhmann, 2003; Seidl, 2005b). For on a sociological level, a focus on cognitive processes does not provide a sufficient account of how decisions happen. Individuals often make decisions without even noticing it, a decision of omission, if you will, which others can then consider a decision all the same. Hence, decisions can also be understood as social constructions (Abend, 2018); an emergent, social phenomenon that occurs only when several persons get in relation with each other (Luhmann, 2018). Classically, Herbert Simon (1997 [1945]) treated decision-making as a social event. Specifically, he described a decision as the instance when an individual selects one particular course of action out of a multitude of possible actions. However, as he made clear, a decision does not necessarily imply a “conscious or deliberate process” (p. 3) and can also mean a simple “reflex action” (p. 3). In their seminal monograph Organizations, March and Simon (1958, 1993) built on this understanding of decision-making. According to them, organizations emerge because of the bounded rationality of individuals in decision-making. In their view, organizations and their structures allow for reducing uncertainty in decision-making and can incentivize individuals to make certain decisions instead of others. March and Simon’s perspective allows for analyzing the process of how individuals and groups reach certain decisions and what elements can influence those decisions. They solved the problem that came with the psychological implication of intentionality (Andersen, 2003) and hence bridged the disciplines of OB and OT by combining an individual with an organizational view. March and Simon inspired a whole research stream of “organizational decision-making” which covers a broad variety of works around individual and group decision-making in organizations (Shapira, 1997). However, in March and Simon’s understanding of decisions as mere selections, virtually everything that someone does becomes a decision. While we do not want to deny the analytical worth of this understanding of decision-making (and particularly for the process of reaching certain decisions), this notion is rather arbitrary and provides no insights into certain social peculiarities and consequences of the phenomenon of decision itself. Against this backdrop, we assert that the newer works that can be considered decisional OT employ a significantly different understanding of the notion of decision. Instead of treating decisions as a psychological event or as a mere selection out of theoretically possible options, decisional OT defines decisions as a subtype of communication. As, e.g., Ahrne and Brunsson formulate:

34  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Organizational decisions are communications about the way people should act or the distinctions or classifications they should make. (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019, p. 7; see also Ahrne et al., 2016b; Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2018; Schoeneborn et al., 2014)

Defining decisions as a certain type of communication, moreover, emphasizes that decisions have specific characteristics that differ from other social events: What is particular about decisions is that they are ‘compact communications’, which communicate their own contingency (‘contingency’ here in the sense of ‘also possible otherwise’). In contrast to an ordinary communication, which only communicates a specific content that has been selected (e.g., ‘I love you’), a decision communication communicates also – explicitly or implicitly – that there are alternatives that could have been selected instead (e.g., ‘I am going to employ candidate A and not candidate B’). (Seidl, 2005b, p. 39)

As a result, decisions are inherently paradoxical (Luhmann, 2005; Rasche and Seidl, 2017). Using Chia’s words, decisions are “acts of punctuating the flow of human experiences in order to facilitate sense-making and to alleviate our Cartesian anxiety” (1994, p. 781). A decision tries to select one certain course of action – one particular meaning – while always communicating non-selected options and their (ir-)relevance simultaneously. In other words, decisions always fix and open up meaning at the same time (Grothe-Hammer and Schoeneborn, 2019) – thus they “dramatize uncertainty” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, p. 90). Consequently, decisions usually provoke contestation, because options are always visible. Ahrne and Brunsson described decisions accordingly as “attempts” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008, p. 50) because they try to select a certain course of action, but often fail in doing so. What is Organization and Why is it Relevant? Despite being inherently paradoxical, decisions offer specificity, potential immediateness, and accountability that no other kind of social operation can provide (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019). Decisions offer the possibility of extremely specific instructions, especially once they start building on each other. Moreover, decisions can be made and changed immediately. Finally, decisions produce the need to attribute responsibilities, so that someone – an individual or organization – can be held accountable for them. Our modern society crucially relies on decisions to function, which is significantly different from pre-modern societies (Apelt et al., 2017). Pre-modern societies could rely primarily on institutionalized social order in the form of traditions and authorities that emerged organically. Of course, decisions existed and were relevant, but unlike today, they did not provide the crucial structural grounds for society to function. Political leaders usually were not chosen but imposed by birth order and/or by the “will of God.” Occupation and status usually were not chosen but assigned. Law was not positivized but figured as the law of nature (Luhmann, 2012, 2013). And so on. This began to change in the seventeenth century. Present-day society relies on myriad decisions that both produce and cope with modernity’s enormous complexities (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011; Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2013). Without decisions, modern air travel, the internet, and energy production would not be possible. This does not mean that decisional OT scholars should neglect the importance of institutionalized social order in modern society. In this respect, sociologists have repeatedly emphasized the relevance of institutions for modern society and organizations (Greenwood et al., 2017).

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  35 However, in contrast to such institutional perspectives, decisional OT scholars point out the crucial importance of the interplay between institutionalized social order on the one hand, and decision processes and decided social order on the other (Ahrne, 2015; Ahrne et al., 2016b; Apelt et al., 2017; Laamanen et al., 2020). While the emphasis is put on the notion of decision to highlight the decisionality of organization, decisional OT scholars are also very aware that many phenomena cannot be reduced to decisions and that decisions can be made only in the context of myriad non-decisional processes and orders – such as spontaneous order (Goffman, 1966), institutions (Ahrne, 2015), or culture (Luhmann, 2018). Nevertheless, only decisions can – in combination with institutionalized and elementary forms of social order – provide the complex structures needed in any area of modern society (Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2018). However, while decisions are so important for modern society to function, they remain inherently paradoxical, as we showed earlier. Because of their paradoxicality, decisions tend to provoke contestation, i.e., if one does not accept the certain chosen alternative (Seidl, 2005b). Hence, decisions often fail to gain approval and remain mere attempts, without becoming premises for ensuing actions. As a consequence, society depends on mechanisms that de-paradoxify the inherent paradox of decisions to a certain degree. In other words, society relies on certain ways to fix the selection of specific possibilities while remaining open to change these very fixations. In this respect, we discuss here two main mechanisms of de-paradoxification of decision-making, which can be understood as two special forms of social order. First, organizations have emerged as a certain type of social order in the form of processual entities that feature decisions as their main mode of operation, e.g., enterprises, schools, public agencies, and voluntary associations. Organizations are processual entities whose constitutive elements take the form of decisions. Organizations are a new phenomenon that did not exist in pre-modern societies (Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2020). They are, on the one hand, a product of modern society and were, on the other hand, a precondition for the development of this very society (Luhmann, 2012, 2013; Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Both organizations and modern society have co-constituted each other. Second, modern society has created differing manifestations of another kind of social order that is accepted as the premise for further decisions and actions, i.e., certain structural elements that were created by decision and remain decidable in the process (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Following Ahrne et al. (2007) we call these organizational elements. Such organizational elements can be found in all domains of modern society, for instance, in the form of hierarchies, rules, memberships, monitoring instruments, and sanctioning mechanisms (Ahrne et al., 2016b). In contrast to organizations as decision-based entities, this other kind of organization can be understood as a certain state of being organized, or as a certain kind of social structure – decided instead of institutionalized – that can be found within and outside organizational entities. Thus, we use here the term “organization” for an important phenomenon in modern society, i.e., that of de-paradoxifying decisions by creating decision-based social orders. We use the term social order in the broad sense of fixing one certain meaning beyond a single event (Morgner, 2014). Successfully creating decision-based social orders means achieving specific, elastic social structures or processual entities that de-paradoxify decisions by increasing the likelihood that decisions will be accepted as premises for further actions and decisions. Below, we outline the characteristics of these two facets of organization. The distinction we make here is a crucial step because it makes explicit what many other organization theorists had

36  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations tried to capture when using the gerundive “organizing” instead of the noun or the verb only. Both facets can be, and empirically are, layered and combined in multiple ways, which allow for further increasing possible complexities. In this respect, decisional OT offers a perspective for analyzing a broad variety of phenomena as combinations of layers and/or facets of organization.

PART 2: CONNECTING ORGANIZATION AND DECISION Organizations as Decision-Based Entities Decisional OT offers a fresh view as to how organizations emerge and continue to exist, i.e., by decisions. By organizations we mean a special kind of social system, i.e., a system that consists mainly of interconnected processes of decision-making (Ahrne et al., 2016b; Luhmann, 2018). As such, this kind of system forms a processual entity that is distinctive from its environment. Hence, we refer to such a system as “an organization” – or “organizations” in plural – in contrast to the above outlined umbrella term “organization” without an article and without a plural. An organization can be, e.g., an enterprise, a school, public agency, or a voluntary association. The special feature of such organizations is that they rely on decisions as their constitutive elements. This peculiarity has certain effects on how these social systems work: Organizational processes … are conceptualized as processes of decisions, whereby one decision calls forth ensuing decisions, resulting in a self-reproducing stream of decisions. Together, this leads to a radical view of organizations as systems of decisions. (Ahrne et al., 2016b, p. 95)

By this monopolization of decisions as the main mode of operation, every event in an organization can be understood as a decision. As a result, decisions trigger ever new decisions. That is not to say that there would be no other elements or events in organizations. Obviously not everything going on within an organization qualifies as a decision. The crucial point is that organizations can treat every event that happens within them as a decision: in organizations … practically all behavior – even machine operation, dealing with enquiries, or coming late to work – can, in the event of problematization, be thematized as decisions. (Luhmann, 2018, p. 45)

In this respect, decisional OT significantly differs from the established distinction between decision and action in the organizational decision-making literature. In these works, the underlying idea is that decisions are first made and then implemented (or not) into action (Cyert and March, 1963). One crucial insight from this line of theorizing was that many decisions remain merely talk and do not lead to any further actions (Brunsson, 1982; March, 1994, pp. 192–198). However, decisional OT reaches another conclusion. Within organizations, the fact that a decision does not end up in a corresponding action can be considered another decision. This decision can in turn lead to yet another decision if, for instance, the organization decides that a certain rule is useless and therefore needs to be changed or if monitoring instruments and possible sanctions are adjusted.

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  37 Let us consider Luhmann’s example of coming late to work. Usually, this case would be interpreted as an instance of some initial decision (about when work is supposed to start) that did not lead to a corresponding action (the employee did not show up at the predetermined start of work). From the perspective of decisional OT, we would argue that, in most cases, the organization would treat the instance of coming late de facto as a decision (inferring that the employee could have come on time) and would react accordingly with another decision, e.g., reprimanding or dismissing the employee. The implications of this conceptual insight are wide-ranging. First, it implies that the non-following of a certain decision is not a failure of prior organizing as such – as implied by the conventional view – but an ordinary occurrence that keeps a wide variety of decision processes (and therefore the organization) going. Within an organization, decisions produce decisions. This process leads to a self-reproducing stream of decisions that constitutes and reproduces the very organization (Grothe-Hammer and Schoeneborn, 2019). Second, it also implies that within an organization even the rejection of a decision constitutes a decision. In contrast to situations outside organizations, inside an organization, decisions can usually only be contested, rejected, refused or altered by another decision. Third, the decisional OT perspective implies that accepting a prior decision as a premise for further action (e.g., accepting the decision concerning working hours) can also be considered a new decision, i.e., the decision to follow the earlier decision (one could have decided not to follow the rule). This latter aspect leads us to the second form of organization that we will discuss in the following section. Organization as Decided Structures: Organizational Elements Organization, without the article, is more than organizations; more than an ongoing stream of ever-changing decisions. Often, decisions are being made, which turn into premises for further decisions, thereby producing stable social structures that are always changeable but remain accepted for some time. In particular, it is possible to decide on member recruitment and placement (membership), vertical and horizontal hierarchies, behavioral if-then programs and goals (rules), monitoring instruments, and positive and negative sanctioning mechanisms (derived from Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011; Ahrne et al., 2016b; Apelt et al., 2017; Luhmann, 2018). Such organizational elements can be found within, but also outside organizations. From this perspective, organization theory is not only a theory of organizations, but also an organization theory of society. Within an organization, these kinds of decided order can be understood as organizational structures (Apelt et al., 2017) – sometimes referred to as the “organization of an organization.” Organizations are typically pictured as employing all five elements. The conventional organizational form is traditionally said to feature memberships, i.e., decisions on who belongs to the organization or not. Based on membership, hierarchy is usually instituted among the members of the organization, i.e., members gain rights to issue certain decisions (Child, 2005) over others who, on the contrary, are compelled to obey said authority (Weber, 1921; Williamson, 1975). Membership and hierarchy normally lead to the definition of rules (March et al., 2000; Weber, 1921) that members have to follow. These rules set a shared understanding among members about the objectives of the organization, the means to achieve these objectives, and appropriate behaviors (Nielsen, 2018). The existence of rules moreover

38  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations typically implies monitoring systems, like accounting systems, to assess members’ compliance but also members’ performance with regard to those rules (Nielsen, 2018). Sanctions are then implemented: they can be either positive, to reward a good behavior, or negative, to sanction a poor performance (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). However, as Ahrne and Brunsson (2019) have pointed out, nowadays many organizations deviate from this conventional understanding and renounce one or several of the elements. Some organizations, for example, do not employ memberships and instead use substitutes to manage organizational contributions (Grothe-Hammer, 2019a). Others do not make use of sanctions or avoid deciding on hierarchies (Ahrne et al., 2016b). Hence, many organizations can be considered to be partially organized, since they do not feature the “complete” spectrum of possible organizational elements. These organizational elements as a form of decided social order can be distinguished from so-called emergent or elementary forms of social order (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011; cf. Luhmann, 2020). Elementary social order can be characterized by the fact that it does not communicate other possibilities that could have been selected instead. In this sense, elementary order is not decided but just happens to be. Examples for elementary social order are pure networks – i.e., “non-decided structures of relationships linking social actors” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019, p. 21) – and institutions – i.e., social structures that are merely taken for granted and develop slowly (Czarniawska, 2009; Jepperson, 1991). Elementary social order can be found in any realm of society and structures many aspects of our lives. Institutions help us coordinate social interactions without explicitly deciding everything all the time. For instance, we usually do not treat the fact that we sit on chairs in front of desks as an instance of decision. And although some replace the chair with a sitting ball, they nevertheless do not question the general concept of sitting on something in front of a table unless back pain prompts a reflection about their options. Such elementary social order is also prevalent and important in organizations. Organizations rely on a broad variety of institutions that they do not decide on but merely happen to make use of – take the chair in front of a desk as an example once again. There is much non-decided order within organizations that nevertheless structures the ongoing process of decision-making and unfolds its significance in the interplay with the decided order (Kühl, 2021; Laamanen et al., 2020; Luhmann, 2018). In contrast to institutionalized order, organizational elements are a precarious phenomenon. On the one hand, they outlast a single decision event, and on the other hand remain decidable in further decision events. In other words, organizational elements achieve a fragile state of holding the selection of a certain way to act in suspense, without becoming a mere attempt, while at the same time remaining changeable in the future. Organizational elements have to be produced and maintained in ongoing social processes (Grothe-Hammer and Schoeneborn, 2019). An unanswered but crucial question remains how organizational elements outside organizations achieve and remain in this fragile state (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019). Indeed, they often do not. Organizational elements often morph into institutionalized order. That which was once a decision often becomes taken for granted – accepted by others as social order that is what it is ‘because it is so’ and reproduced through mimicry – thereby limiting possibilities of social change and complexity. Against the backdrop of this discussion, we propose to think of an organization and organization not as clean classifications, but rather two entangled continua.

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  39

PART 3: ORGANIZATION AS CONTINUA: DEGREES OF ORGANIZATIONALITY In this section, we conceptualize the two identified forms of organization as continua. We notably distinguish between “entitative organizationality” as being constituted of a set of characteristics (interconnected decision-making, actorhood, and identity) that define a collective as an entity in the sense of an organization, and “structural organizationality,” to describe the varying degrees of combination of organizational elements (membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring and sanction). Table 2.1 synthesizes these dimensions. Table 2.1

Entitative and structural organizationality

Entitative organizationality

Structural organizationality

(at the level of the entity)

(combination of organizational elements)

Interconnected decision-making process

Membership

Actorhood

Hierarchy

Identity

Rules Monitoring Sanction

Source:

Inspired by Grothe-Hammer (2019b, p. 329).

Degrees of Organizationality on an Entity Level: Entitative Organizationality Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) argue that organization can be treated as a gradual phenomenon. In particular, they assert that a broad variety of social collectives with clear or unclear membership can be understood as “organizational” to varying degrees, at the level of the entity itself, despite its inherent fluidity. We call this “entitative organizationality.” Building on Dobusch and Schoeneborn, we propose that entities, i.e., collectives in the sense of being an autonomous system, can reach three degrees of organizationality: first, interconnected decision-making processes; second, actorhood; and third, identity. According to Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015), entities can become more or less organizational depending on certain features. Referring to Ahrne and Brunsson (2011) as well as Luhmann, they see interconnected processes of decision-making as the basic level of organizationality, which mirrors the above outlined idea of organizations as decision-based entities. In other words, a first degree of what we call entitative organizationality can be assumed when there is evidence of a system of decision-making. In many cases, organizations reach a state in which they are externally perceived and addressed as actors that make decisions and to which decisions can be attributed. Accordingly, Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) identified actorhood as a second possible degree of organizationality that comes with additional characteristics and consequences. Actorhood implies that a collective is constituted as a collective person that is addressable by others and that can act as an author of actions and utterances. These characteristics have great implications. Once a collective acts and communicates as an actor, it can make decisions in its own right and it can be held accountable for decisions attributed to it (Krücken and Meier, 2006).

40  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations As a third possible degree of organizationality, Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) identified “identity.” This degree implies that a collective starts to produce self-descriptions communicating what it stands for. Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) illustrate this, using the collective “Anonymous,” which is an online hacker collective with unclear memberships and no legal status but capable of producing speech acts such as “We, the collective super-consciousness known as Anonymous” (p. 1023). Therefore, semantics are produced that are used by the collective to refer to itself – a decided identity – to address external demands (Kühl, 2021; Seidl, 2003). These self-descriptions are decided upon and must not be confused with the overall collective identity, which can have many facets (cf. Seidl, 2003). However, as soon as an entity starts to produce self-descriptions, part of its identity becomes a matter of decision and therefore acquires the paradoxical characteristics of a decided order. Such self-descriptions even affect internal decision processes because these processes begin to take into account the self-descriptions (Christensen et al., 2013; Kühl, 2021). According to Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015) a social collective can then be treated as more or less organizational, depending on the presence and extent of these characteristics. We refer to this as “entitative organizationality” because each degree refers to certain characteristics of a social collective. Based on these insights we derive Figure 2.1, which pictures the three different degrees of organizationality as grey circles. The arrows indicate the interconnected decisions constituting the organization as an entity on a basic level.

Figure 2.1

Degrees of entitative organizationality

Degrees of Organizationality in Terms of Organizational Elements: Structural Organizationality Inspired by Dobusch and Schoeneborn (2015), Ahrne et al. (2016b) have suggested applying the general idea of organizationality to the concept of organizational elements as well. Hence, we refer to this version of organizationality as “structural organizationality.” The basic assumption underlying structural organizationality is that the use of organizational elements means the production of some degree of expectability. For instance, if hierarchies are accepted

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  41 as premises for further decisions, it becomes expectable (but not predetermined) that decisions issued by a hierarch are accepted; and, if rules are accepted as premises, it becomes expectable (but not predetermined) that these are followed. This expectability can be thereby considered scalable. The more elements are used and the more elaborated they are, the more expectability and therefore the more complexity are generated.3 Thus, organizational elements can also be understood as a continuum that is scalable in two respects. First, it is possible to use varying combinations of the five organizational elements. It is possible to decide on only one, or more, or up to all five elements (Ahrne et al., 2016b). Accordingly, in many organizations as well as outside organizations only a few or even one element may be used to structure decision processes. For instance, in certain friendship groups we can often find only one organizational element. While in such a group, we may not find decided membership (who belongs to the group is probably elementary), decided hierarchies, decided sanctioning instruments, or decided monitoring devices, there might be a set of rules like the decision that every Wednesday evening, it is Poker Night. In nuclear families, we can usually find institutionalized hierarchies (parents in charge), institutionalized memberships (children belong to parents and vice versa), and institutionalized behavioral monitoring (parents and children live together). However, we typically can also find a set of decided rules (e.g., teenager child has to be back at home before 10 p.m.) and decided sanctioning instruments (children can be grounded for the violation of certain rules). In other social relations, it is even possible to identify the existence of all five organizational elements even if these do not constitute an organization, as in some markets (Brunsson et al., 2018). Second, the degree of decidedness within certain organizational elements can vary significantly (Berkowitz and Bor, 2018). For instance, membership may be used as an administrative tie only, but it can also be coupled to certain decision rights and/or certain expectations, and cover varying time spans (Grothe-Hammer, 2019a, 2020). Hierarchies can be flat and nevertheless feature an elaborated horizontal differentiation, or only a vertical one, or a combination of both. And so on. Organizations as well as other social settings outside organizations can be analyzed as more or less organized with respect to the number of possible elements used and in respect to how elaborated these elements are. Why is this important? At this point, our basic remarks on the characteristics of decisions become relevant again. Decisions and social structures based on decisions have certain characteristics and consequences. A social setting that is highly structured by decisions, features a high degree of paradoxicality. Accordingly, we can understand certain social phenomena better by analyzing these in terms of their structural organizationality and the related effects. Let us take the example of scientific journal rankings in the field of business and management studies. A few decades ago, the ranking of journals was an institutionalized social order. As Barley (2016, p. 3) remembers, “everyone knew that publishing in ASQ, AJS, or ASR was a feather in one’s cap, but journals weren’t explicitly ranked.” In other words, the existing reputation of journals was something that had organically emerged over time and that was not decided in the form of an explicit ranking. Nowadays, myriad journal rankings exist. They are decided orders in the form of decided monitoring systems. Those rankings include and rate journals based on certain, decided factors such as impact factor and 3 It is important to note that expectability is not deterministic. Decided order can be designed to be quite flexible and can change quickly in the decision process.

42  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations peer reputation. As a decided order, journal rankings immediately triggered what decisions always trigger: rejection (Seidl, 2005b). As a matter of fact, the literature is full of examples in which scholars complain about these rankings (e.g., Willmott, 2011). However, these journal rankings are produced by organizations – certain academic associations or universities – that endow these rankings with some degree of legitimacy. The effect is such that rankings are in every case partly accepted as premises for further decisions by at least some organizations. As a consequence, the rejection of these rankings has not led to a dropping but to the creation of ever more rankings – a phenomenon that can be explained through the basic characteristics of decisions: Decisions provoke rejection, but if certain decisions are accepted as order, a rejection of this order facilitates only new decisions. For instance, the German VHB-JOURQUAL ranking was explicitly created because scholars of the German Academic Association for Business Research rejected the existing rankings as inadequate and inaccurate (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). As this example shows, analyzing certain phenomena as organizational phenomena can allow for fresh and novel understandings of a large variety of social phenomena. In addition, more potential research questions come up and can be addressed in future studies. How can such settings make sure that some decisions are accepted so that expectability is achieved? Where are those decisions made? Who is responsible for decisions and who can be held accountable? All those questions come up with the introduction of decisional elements into a social setting and in which decisions begin to counteract the “natural”, or elementary, order of things. So far, this approach has been used in qualitative case studies (Grothe-Hammer, 2019b) to inquire into the complexities of organizational phenomena. However, it remains an open question if this structural organizationality can somehow be measured in quantitative terms to allow for large-scale comparative studies of organizational populations. Combining the Two Facets of Organization(ality) Although both understandings of organizationality loosely draw on each other (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011; Ahrne et al., 2016b; Dobusch and Schoeneborn 2015), corresponding debates have remained largely fragmented so far. Scholars turn to either the entitative or the structural view of organizationality but only seldom combine both aspects (Grothe-Hammer, 2019b). However, we argue that, based on an integrated decisional OT, we can fruitfully combine both views to gain deeper insights. Empirically, every organization needs at least some decisions on organizational elements, while organizational elements outside organizations are mostly produced by organizations or at least in organizational contexts, as Figure 2.2 represents. In Figure 2.2, the large circles and circular arrows adapted from Figure 2.1 depict processual entities consisting of and reproduced by decisions. The smaller, two-directional arrows illustrate that organizations decide on organizational elements whereas the organizational elements simultaneously shape the decisions (large arrows) of the organizations. By combining both notions of organizationality, one can gain a differentiated analytical perspective on social phenomena. Any degree of entitative organizationality can feature any degree of structural organizationality. As mentioned above, it becomes possible to analyze any phenomenon in terms of organizationality. Take markets, for example. While markets are often seen as the opposite of organizations (Williamson, 1975), decisional OT allows us to see that some markets are more strongly organized than many organizations. For instance, certification

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  43

Figure 2.2

Organizationality within and outside organizations

and accreditation markets in the European Union are completely organized in the sense that all organizational elements are present but they of course do not constitute organizations (Brunsson et al., 2018). Hence, these markets are an example of a low degree of entitative organizationality but a high degree of structural organizationality. On the other hand, there are organizations that achieve actorhood and produce decided self-descriptions of their identity – and therefore have a high degree of entitative organizationality – but that feature only a few organizational elements at a very low level of decidedness. One example would be the Global Business Initiative for Human Rights, a formal association of companies that builds members’ capabilities on human rights’ respect and performance, but has almost no decidedness upon hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions (Berkowitz et al., 2017). In other words, while the markets from our example do not constitute organizations, they are organized like strongly structured ones and, while some organizations feature all organizational entitative characteristics, they can be surprisingly little organized on the level of organizational elements. Hence, it becomes possible to analyze how organizational organizations and other social settings are in structural terms. How high is the degree of organizationality in terms of organizational elements? In this respect, the decisional OT perspective opens up the possibility of organizational comparisons. One can, for instance, ask how organized certain organizations, types of organizations, or other forms of social collectives are in comparison to each other. This view, for instance, could shed more light on the relevance of actorhood and self-descriptions of organizations. For instance, what can low-structured organizational actors achieve in comparison to other social settings that are perhaps strongly structured in terms of organizational elements but do not constitute organizations? Are these aspects even

44  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations functionally equivalent to some degree? Can an organization substitute the lack of certain organizational elements by achieving actorhood and decided self-descriptions? From such a processual view, a combination of the entity notion of organization with the organizational elements perspective allows for a systematic analysis of the complex interplay of both over time (see Grothe-Hammer, 2019b). The complexity of organizational elements only unfolds through decision processes. These processes produce, reproduce, and alter these very elements, and are guided by them as well. Such a view prompts a wide variety of research questions, such as: How do different organizational elements relate to each other in organizational processes? Which effects do which kinds of organizational elements have on decision processes of and between organizations? How do organizational elements change in the process through time and how does the effect of certain elements mutate over time? How do decisions relate to elementary types of social order and how do decision processes relate elementary order to decided order? Layering Organizations: Meta-Organizations These theoretical considerations apply to a wide variety of phenomena and help to capture even wider degrees of organizationality, including organizations of individual members, as well as organizations whose members are organizations – i.e., meta-organizations. The basic idea of meta-organization theory is that organizations can be layered. Many, if not most, organizations are members of other organizations. Hence, the constitution of such meta-organizations requires a certain degree of organizationality. Specifically, meta-organizations rely on the organizational element of membership since they have organizations as members. Moreover, meta-organizations are organizational entities that are constituted by decisions – otherwise an inter-organizational collective would constitute only a non-directed network with little decision capability at the network level and therefore significantly different characteristics. Finally, the organizations that become members of a meta-organization must be identifiable as distinctive actors (i.e., being the recipient of an externally attributed actorhood) by other organizations to become the object of a membership decision. Therefore, such a layering of organizations onto each other already implies certain minimal degrees of organizationality. Against the backdrop of decisional OT, the layering of organizations entails certain consequences. A meta-organization centralizes some degree of decision authority. The organizational element of membership generally implies that members accept, or pretend to accept, that their organization has the right to issue decisions in their name. When it comes to meta-organizations, this means that a member organization must be willing to accept that decisions are made in its name by the meta-organization. As a consequence, “a meta-organization and its member organizations compete for identity, autonomy, and authority” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008, p. 61). However, the distribution of rights to issue certain decisions is also a matter of decision on both organizational levels. The member organizations participate in the meta-organizational decision processes, and thereby participate in decisions on the distribution of decision rights as well. Moreover, meta-organizations typically grant decision rights to certain member organizations to make decisions for the meta-organization (see, for instance, Berkowitz and Souchaud, 2019b). When an organization joins a meta-organization, another organizational order is placed on top of its own order. By gathering organizations as members, meta-organizations turn part of

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  45 their external environment into an internal (organizational) environment (Berkowitz and Bor, 2018). As a consequence, meta-organizations and their member organizations are somehow simultaneously internal and external to each other. Hence, meta-organizations produce challenges in terms of organizational boundaries and accountability. So far, scholars have struggled to understand this basic meta-organizational characteristic and the wide-ranging implications it entails. For example, Ahrne and Brunsson (2008, p. 64) have argued that meta-organizations place a new boundary “around” the boundaries of its member organizations. However, this understanding would imply that member organizations become subsystems of an overarching member organization as in a relation between subsidiaries and a parent organization. Obviously, this is not the case. No one would assume that the German Football Association is a subsidiary of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), or that an intergovernmental organization owns or controls its member states. Other scholars have argued that organizations remain outside their meta-organizations and that both levels only relate to each other. However, this view tends to neglect the fact that meta-organizations and their members directly interfere internally with each other. For example, the FIFA makes decisions for its member organizations and the member organizations directly participate in these very decision processes. Hence, how can we better understand the basic workings of this interrelation? What does it mean when we write that organizations belong (only) partly to a meta-organization? One could argue that, already in individual-based organizations, the individual members are always simultaneously internal and external as well. In this sense, members are always only partially included (Bencherki and Snack, 2016). However, in the case of meta-organizations, there are crucial differences. A single person can be seen as a psychological entity that participates in social processes but does not consist of social elements. Hence, a person can participate in social processes but these social processes are different from psychological ones (Grothe-Hammer and Schoeneborn, 2019). As a consequence, individual members can be seen as internal in the sense that they participate in the internal processes of the organization. They also remain external in the sense that they remain distinctive entities that operate using a different logic. However, in the case of meta-organizations, both the member organizations and the meta-organization are organizations and hence both feature the same kinds of social processes and elements that begin to overlap as soon as the one joins the other. In this respect, we argue that our integrated decisional OT framework offers a better understanding of basic elements of meta-organization theory. Building on our former groundwork, we can understand an organization as a processual entity based on ongoing decision processes. In principle, distinctive organizations always have their distinctive decision processes and organizational structures. As such, it is relatively easy to distinguish, for instance, the car manufacturer BMW from Daimler Benz. However, when applying the notion of processual entities to the phenomenon of meta-organizations, it immediately becomes obvious that the usual distinctiveness of organizations is not present. While it remains easy to distinguish the meta-organization from its member organizations in general, on a processual level both become intertwined. While organizations can be characterized as an ongoing stream of interconnected decision-making processes that construct their boundaries by these very decisions, a meta-organization implies that another stream of decision-making comes in that directly interferes with the first one. In meta-organizational constellations, many decision processes that occur on one level also belong simultaneously to another level as well. For example, Grothe-Hammer (2019b) showed that decisions on a meta-organizational

46  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

Figure 2.3

Layering of organizations

level can be treated as member-organizational decisions as well. Decision processes on the meta-organizational level are connected partly to decision processes on the member level. Because both levels of organization feature the same kind of social process (decisions) and overlay each other, the meta-organization can make decisions directly in the name of its member organizations and vice versa. Many meta-organizations thereby become members of even higher levels of meta-organizations, i.e., meta-meta-organizations and more, adding more organizational layers that interfere with each other. Figure 2.3 illustrates this multiple layering of organizations as processual entities that partly internalize each other. Layering organizations does not only imply multiple distinctive decision processes that interfere with each other, it also implies multiple layers of organizational structures, i.e., organizational elements. Meta-organizations and their member organizations each have their own internal organizational elements structuring their decision processes. Those organizational elements become interrelated. Typically, meta-organizations provide some organizational elements for their members, thereby producing the organizational structures of their member organizations. This is, for instance, the case in sport associations such as the FIFA – actually a meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-organization. FIFA issues rules for soccer matches employed by every layer of member organizations as organizational structures. However, the degree of structural organizationality can thereby vary significantly (Berkowitz and Bor, 2018). While FIFA is an example of a relatively “strong” meta-organization that features all five organizational elements, other meta-organizations may be quite “weak” and enjoy little autonomy to make decisions for their members, thereby featuring few more

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  47 organizational elements than basic memberships. For example, a United Nation Security Council resolution needs the votes of nine members, and can be vetoed by a single permanent member (USA, Russia, China, France, UK). Whether strong or weak, most meta-organizations have the feature of joint decision-making in common (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2005). Since their decisions interfere directly with the decision-making autonomy of their member organizations, meta-organizations ensure the legitimacy of decisions often through inclusive decision-making (cf. March, 1994, pp. 167–168). For instance, in FPF, a meta-organization that gathers not only crowd-funding platforms, but also civil society organizations, all participants have an equal weight in the board votes, whether they are platforms or civil society (Berkowitz and Souchaud, 2019b). By doing so, these meta-organizations cope with the inherent paradoxicality of decisions, which implies the likelihood of the contestation of decisions. When the meta-organization integrates member organizations as actors into the process of reaching certain decisions (and creating decided order), the attribution of responsibility for those decisions is distributed among all members. As a result, a member organization is more likely to accept such decisions, since it participated in its making. This is particularly visible in cases where member organizations agree to self-regulate, for instance in the VPSHR, a meta-organization dedicated to human rights protection in the extractive industry (Berkowitz et al., 2017). Interorganizational collaboration is often said to emerge where single organizations cannot address a problem on their own. This understanding implies that participating organizations need to develop a new solution together. Instead, we propose that layering organizations allows for expanding the reach of internal organizational processes and decided orders to levels far beyond the possibilities of single organizations. For instance, by bringing together businesses and NGOs, some meta-organizations like the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), enable members – here extractive firms – to internalize their environment while neutralizing conflict with certain stakeholders – here NGOs (Berkowitz and Dumez, 2015). Further, most organizations join multiple meta-organizations: the French oil and gas company Total, for instance, is part of a national trade association, the UFIP, of international trade associations including the International Oil and Gas Producers association, of cross-sectoral associations including the Global Business Initiative for human rights, and so on and so forth (Berkowitz and Dumez, 2015). As a consequence, organization becomes extremely complex, combining multiple distinctive decision processes and multiple decided orders into one unifying entity that provides its members with coordination capabilities that other forms of social collectives do not provide.

PART 4: OUTLOOK AND FUTURE RESEARCH POTENTIALS In this chapter, we have argued for and developed an integrated framework, called decisional OT. Decisional OT draws on different perspectives that share the assumption that decisions are the central component of organizations. Bringing together sociological system theory, partial and meta-organization theory and the concept of degrees of organizationality, our framework accounts for the varying roles of decision in the emergence and continuation of organization. This leads us to conceive of organization as both a system of decisions and decided structures. We distinguish between “entitative organizationality,” i.e., degrees of organizationality at

48  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations the entity level, and “structural organizationality,” i.e., the combination of organizational elements. Through this analysis, we have shown that organization is layered at different levels and intertwines different, multiple social orders. This work has various implications for theory, which open future research potentials to be developed hereafter. Nested Organization? First of all, while the layering of organizations already offers an unprecedented level of decidable complexity, the possibilities of increasing organizational complexities go even further. Organizational entities do not only layer on each other, they also produce myriad decided orders for their external environments. We call this phenomenon the nesting of organization. Individual-based and meta-organizations produce organizational elements for themselves, each other, and others; and they are in turn embedded in a broad variety of such settings of organizational elements as well. These highly interrelated arrangements of organizations and organization may constitute what Brunsson et al. (2018) call macro-organizations – a highly complex set of layered organizations and organizational elements. By nesting organization, organizational complexities are elevated even more to an extreme level and may create new co-dependence relations among unexpected actors (Berkowitz and Souchaud, 2019a; Nielsen, 2018). Decision processes and decided orders grow so highly interrelated that they become hard to imagine. In crowd-lending, for instance, the nesting of organization enables the engineering of collective wisdom but implies a co-dependence of decision between crowd-lending platforms, the crowd of investors, entrepreneurs and chartered accountants (Berkowitz and Souchaud, 2019a). Nevertheless, organizations retain their decisional characteristics – immediateness, specificity, accountability – and therefore their fragile state of decidedness. So far, it is unclear how these settings maintain their stability and elasticity at the same time. Research questions regarding how decisions are accepted as premises for further decisions in these settings and how they change are yet to be answered. Maintenance of Boundaries? These highly complex settings of layered and nested forms of organization raise organizational boundaries issues. Usually, we can use membership and members as an indicator of organizational boundaries (Luhmann, 1996). However, in complex layered and nested settings, memberships become multiplied and neglected at the same time. We have mentioned earlier the weakening of membership as an explanatory tool for understanding organizations. In contemporary societies, organizations multiply memberships in many different meta-organizations, meta-meta-organizations, and more. At the same time, some organizations seem often to refrain from deciding on individual memberships – some do not even have members of their own (Grothe-Hammer, 2019a). Organizations and meta-organizations moreover typically belong to partially organized settings structured through organizational elements, e.g., markets, fields, and networks, in which memberships are also not decided. Nevertheless, these settings are highly organized and nested into each other. Membership, therefore, is no longer suitable for explaining the nesting of organizationality in multi-level decided orders. Conversely, degrees of organizationality tend to show that organizational boundaries are more or less defined depending on the strength of organizationality. On a basic organizational

Decisional organization theory: an integrated framework of organization  49 level, organizational boundaries can be seen as constituted by the organizational decision processes. While these processes become interrelated in layered and nested settings, decision processes within an organization usually still connect to its own decisions. However, in some cases it might be an empirical question whether there are still distinctive decision processes which are identifiable or whether one organization got somehow absorbed by another. Actorhood – as another degree of organizationality – is also a marker for organizational boundaries. Which decisions and decided orders are attributed to an organizational actor and which are not? Moreover, a collective identity – as the third degree – will produce specific organizational boundaries that differ from mere membership or decision processes in the case of organizations without actorhood for instance. Accountability and responsibility toward the external environment also tend to produce specific organizational boundaries. All in all, the participation in and creation of multiple decided orders show the permeability of organizational boundaries between the member-organization and the multiplicity of other decided orders to which it belongs. As such, the layering and nesting of organizationality contributes not only to the complexification of collective action, but also to an extension of a field of responsibility for decisions. If organizational boundaries are permeable, one organization may become responsible for decisions by “capillarity.” This has many implications for organization theory as well as organization behavior and raises several issues that may constitute potential venues for future research. The Relation between Decisions and Non-Decisions The real complexities of organizational phenomena unfold only in the combination of decisions and decided order with non-decisions and non-decided order. Organizations typically rely on myriad institutionalized social orders on which they build their decisions. Organizations usually do not have to decide that they need offices, desks, chairs, or computers – instead they build on these institutions and decide on how many offices they need, where these have to be located, how large these have to be, and from whom they will rent these. They decide which chairs, desks, and computers they buy, and so on – without having to decide that they need these things in the first place. Without the underlying institutional orders, organizations would be lost in complexity. In this respect, Ahrne (2015) has pointed out that organizational elements can be contrasted with other, non-decided forms of social structure. On a more generalized level, he identified affiliation, expectations, power, visibility, and consequences as the overarching elements of social relationships. Organizational elements describe the decided kinds of these elements but any of these categories feature myriad self-emergent social structures. These non-decided elements of social order are highly relevant in all areas of society – inside and outside organizations – and decisions and decided elements occur only in relation to these kinds of order. Organizations also rely on many kinds of non-decisions. Decision-makers often rely on and refer to other forms of communication, to certain facts, like for instance research results or business reports, on the basis of which they try to rationalize decisions. The more elaborated the facts referred to, the more complicated the decision process becomes. Decisions are always embedded in a larger setting of highly interrelated social processes. Take the weather forecast as an example. Many organizations like restaurants, beach bars, sports clubs, or schools rely on the weather forecast – a communication about the probable future weather – to make their

50  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations decisions. Similarly, physicians rely on all kinds of information they can gather to reach decisions. And so on. The real complexities of social phenomena unfold only in the complex interplay of decisions and non-decisions, and decided and non-decided order (Laamanen et al., 2019, 2020). In this respect, decisional OT argues that scholars have too often focused on only one of these sides (Ahrne et al., 2016a and 2016b; Apelt et al., 2017). However, for understanding social phenomena in their whole complexity, it is important not to favor one side over the other and instead to take both adequately into account. Future studies might explore how the peculiarities of the one relate to and rely on the peculiarities of the other, and vice versa.

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3. A critical management studies approach to big data Carl Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard

INTRODUCTION Big data technologies have become “the new black” for organizations in recent years, promising increased efficiency and innovation by generating new and more valid insights on which to base managerial decisions (McAfee et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2012). Following this line of thinking, mainstream organizational literature on big data analytics (BDA) has explored different modes of implementing and applying BDA in order to reap the benefits of efficiency and innovation in organizations (Davenport, 2006; Harris et al., 2011; Isson and Harriott, 2016; Côrte-Real et al., 2017; Levenson, 2018). In recent years this literature has been met with critical questions (Angrave et al., 2016; Gandomi and Haider, 2015; Madsen and Stenheim, 2016; Ward and Barker, 2013; Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015). Although still within the mainstream of the literature, scholars question whether BDA really has the promised efficiency effects, or if it is better understood as a management fashion that offers more symbolic value than actual gains in efficiency and innovation. This is indicated, for instance, in the rapid growth of markets for BDA technologies (Madsen and Stenheim, 2016). Concurrently with these debates, the so-called socio-material perspective has drawn attention to the various ways BDA can be useful to human actors (Leonardi, 2011; Faraj and Azad, 2012; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Robey et al., 2013). This has helped to explore how elements of BDA can be combined in organizations to support the goals of individuals. Despite these research innovations, none of the above mentioned approaches contain a critically normative perspective on BDA. One critical approach to BDA can be found in critical data studies (Boyd and Crawford, 2012; Iliadis and Russo, 2016; Crawford et al., 2014; Bronson and Knezevic, 2016; McCarthy and Thatcher, 2019). However, critical data studies has tended to focus on the societal effects of BDA in the relationships between the state, corporations, citizens, and consumers. In recent years, a critical-normative perspective has also emphasized the role of BDA inside organizations. Here the focus is on power asymmetries and the oppression of employees. However, critical-normative perspectives on the role of BDA inside organizations are still relatively underexplored compared to the other approaches. This chapter aims to present four current approaches to BDA and subsequently suggests a critical management studies perspective that offers resources for critical investigations into how BDA can alter the exercise of power inside organizations and condition the relationship among subjects inside the organization. This can contribute to improve our understanding of power asymmetries and mitigate the oppression that BDA can enable in organizations. The chapter has three sections. The first section introduces prevailing definitions of BDA, the technical and practical elements BDA might contain (such as types of technologies and their possible applications), and examples of its use in organizations. The second section contains a literature overview of the four current approaches to the study of BDA. First, 54

A critical management studies approach to big data  55 the position of organizational efficiency investigates how BDA can bring about increased organizational efficiency. Second, the skeptic position questions BDA’s efficiency potential and suggests that it can instead be understood, in part, as a management fashion. Third, the socio-materiality approach highlights individuals’ capacity to use BDA elements according to the specific technology’s affordances and individual goals. Fourth, critical data studies explore the societal impact of BDA as new modes of surveillance and capitalism. Against the backdrop of this literature overview, the third section of the chapter explores how the resources of critical management studies can contribute to the current literature by drawing more attention to how BDA affects power and resistance inside the organization. This section explores the tradition of critical management studies and how its concepts of power and resistance can be used to further illuminate the dynamics of BDA inside organizations. This perspective can give researchers a better understanding of how BDA can be used to oppress subjects by limiting their capacity to maintain autonomy in work practices and their influence on organizational decision-making as well as reducing their control of organizational narratives and their own subjectivity in organizations. It also brings into focus how new forms of resistance from subjects seek to maintain autonomy, influence on decision-making as well as organizational narrative and subjectivity constructs in organizations in reaction to these new expressions of power. The approaches discussed are very wide-ranging and diverse, and divisions of academic literature are seldom clear-cut. Therefore, the following sections should be read as an introductory note on the different focus areas of present approaches rather than an exhaustive account, as well as an attempt to present some possible resources found in critical management studies in order to raise awareness, and enable more exploration, of a critical perspective on BDA in organizations.

BDA IN ORGANIZATIONS As information technology has proliferated over the past century, so have the opportunities to obtain management information (Clarke, 1988). Management information systems are assumed to contribute to optimizing output and productivity of organizations. One of the more recent innovations in the development of management information systems is BDA. BDA offers advanced data techniques, increased possibilities for data analysis, and increased capacities for producing organizational and business data (McAfee et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2012; Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013). BDA has increasingly come to be seen as a significant element in organizations’ struggles for effectiveness and competitiveness (Davenport and Harris, 2017). While the application of BDA is still evolving, empirical evidence suggests that BDA can indeed improve the effectiveness of organizations, for instance by optimizing business performance and processes and identifying causal relations that support business strategies (Fuchs et al., 2014; Côrte-Real et al., 2017). The academic assessment of BDA is still in its early stages but has seen an explosion of interest, especially within computer science and technology journals. One consequence of this is a great many attempts to define the concept of BDA, but many of these definitions remain rather ambiguous (Ward and Barker, 2013). An oft-suggested definition proceeds

56  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations from the three V’s of big data: volume, velocity, and variety.1 Here, BDA brings to analytics large amounts of data, high-speed data production and consumption, and a wide range of data sources. Ward and Barker discuss definitions of BDA and mention an encompassing definition based on Google trends analytics that includes a large volume of data, that has complexity, and is stored or analyzed by specific (but not specified) analytics technologies, such as cloud analytics, dashboard visualization, statistical programming, and machine learning. Most definitions contain elements of the three V’s and highlight increased capacities for data collection and storage, data analysis, and data availability made possible by different technologies. Each of these capacities entails different technologies and possible uses of the analytics. As regards data collection and storage, much attention has been drawn to the possibility of tracking and measuring markets, consumer habits, production, and employees (Ball, 2010; Swan, 2013). Digital media such as internet search patterns and social media such as Facebook and Twitter provide one set of new platforms for observing communication and consumer decisions (Hofacker et al., 2016; Bello-Orgaz et al., 2016). For spatial tracking, the use of GPS, but also video data and infrared movement sensors, can be used to obtain data on consumer activity or employees’ whereabouts (Erevelles et al., 2016; Esposti, 2014; Gunarsekaran et al., 2017). In terms of data analysis, data mining and machine learning are labels expressing advanced statistical analysis and modeling of data. The professional literature emphasizes moving from descriptive analysis of data (what a situation is like now) to predictive (how a situation will develop) (McAfee et al., 2012; Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015). The aim of the statistical analysis is to provide more valid knowledge and discover relationships that can prescribe new organizational actions. For example, this could mean exploring the relationship between the sales figures in a specific market and the employee turnover in the marketing department responsible for this market. Such knowledge can suggest that a main challenge for the company in the specific market is caused by human resource circumstances in the marketing division. In terms of data availability, cloud technology and dashboards are especially significant parts of BDA. Cloud technology makes data available across organizations in real time (Fazio et al., 2015), even if this technology is still being developed (e.g. Hashem et al., 2016), while data visualizations such as dashboards can visualize organizational data trends on graphs in internet browsers and make them understandable for top and middle managers without prior experience in working with data (Ali et al., 2016). Dashboards can also be used to make simple data such as sales numbers or employee work hours instantly available to managers. The emerging exploration of BDA has led to theoretical approaches that highlight different aspects of the phenomenon. To explore how a critical management studies perspective might supplement the under-illuminated critical attention on BDA within organizations, we first turn to exploring these current approaches to BDA. This section will start by highlighting the four current approaches to BDA.

1 More V’s are continuously suggested for inclusion in the definition; however, I will focus on the three V’s listed above as the core of the definition.

A critical management studies approach to big data  57

FOUR APPROACHES TO BDA The four current approaches to big data analytics that will be described here are: ● ● ● ●

BDA and organizational efficiency Skepticism about BDA BDA and socio-materiality Critical data studies and the societal impact of BDA.

These four approaches help to show the current focus of the field and in turn illuminate how a critical management approach may provide other resources for the study of BDA which enable scholars to be more sensitive to the power that BDA enables as well as the practices of resistance that arise from the introduction of BDA in organizations. The fourth approach – “critical data studies” – shares the critical perspective of critical management studies but is more concerned with broader social issues and highlights the need for a comparative critical focus on the effects of BDA on power and resistance within organizations. BDA and Organizational Efficiency The first approach – “BDA and organizational efficiency” – arises out of the exploration of the potential beneficial effects of BDA on organizations. Such effects include the ability to predict consumer demands, tailoring products to these demands, and setting the right price level of a product. Predictive analytics aims not only to understand consumer demands but also to predict future developments of these demands so that companies can invest in specific production or supplies to adapt accordingly. It also includes optimizing organizational processes to reduce resource-spending and production time by identifying waste and unused resources, improving suboptimal delivery routes, or preventing unexpected breakdowns in transport (Davenport, 2006; Fecheyr-Lippens et al., 2015; Harris et al., 2011). Thus, this approach explores BDA as a competitive differentiator (Davenport, 2006). While this research is still relatively new, initial empirical evidence suggests that BDA has the capacity to improve the effectiveness of organizations and provide organizational learning (e.g. Côrte-Real et al., 2017; Fuchs et al., 2014). The assumption that BDA is beneficial to organizations has led to a focus on understanding the implementation barriers to reaping the benefits of BDA (Galbraith, 2014; Gunasekaran et al., 2017; Janssen et al., 2017; Alharthi et al., 2017). Scholars working in this field have aimed to provide frameworks for overcoming barriers and securing optimal organizational value of BDA implementation. As an example, within the subfield of BDA in human resource management, frameworks include examples of improving the efficiency of BDA (Cascio and Boudreau, 2010; McIver et al., 2018), evaluating the barriers to and conditions of making BDA contribute more to organizational efficiency (Angrave et al., 2016; Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015), how BDA can create more profitability (DiClaudio, 2019; Harris et al., 2011), improving the relation between BDA and business insights and strategy execution (Levenson, 2018), and ways of using BDA as a strategic competitive advantage (Falletta, 2014). This approach to BDA has sought to identify generalized frameworks for benefiting from and avoiding the barriers of BDA. Meanwhile, given BDA’s diffuse nature – its many forms and applications combined with differences between the resources and practices of different organizations – some scholars have suggested that these frameworks should be sensitive to

58  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations the fact that successful implementation might vary according to the characteristics of the individual organization and the goal of application (Janssen et al., 2017; Angrave et al., 2016). An example of this is resource-fit (Ghasemaghaei et al., 2015), which examines how different implementations might fit different organizations. A significant factor that varies across applications is the necessary size of the investment (Gupta and George, 2016). Another significant factor is the amount of human resources, such as data specialists, needed to ensure production of insights, translating them, and making them actionable (Vidgen et al., 2017; Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015; Mikalef et al., 2018). This approach leads to a move toward a more disaggregated view of BDA, while maintaining a focus on assessing the efficiency of BDA as a whole system across different organizational contexts. One example of the efficiency perspective is Grover et al. (2018) conceptualizing BDA efficiency as realizing strategic business value, which leads to a competitive advantage. In examining how BDA can create strategic business value, they note how value can take different forms. They find that value can be both business process improvement and output value (such as better customer service and competitive advantage). However, they also include the notion that symbolic value, i.e. what adoption of BDA signals to the environment, itself can be of strategic value to ensure competitiveness. The other major contribution is an attempt to identify the instruments that can help attain this strategic value. The authors describe the infrastructure and capabilities of BDA and model how BDA infrastructure and capabilities can display data faster, help realize specific business processes or outputs, or contain symbolic value. As one example, they highlight eBay’s use of unstructured and structured big data to personalize the shopping experience of costumers by suggesting new products based on purchase history. Another example is the use of BDA tracking of medical and social histories to recommend personalized treatments for cancer patients and thereby streamline processes, improve treatment, and create symbolic value in the form of a high degree of satisfaction among physicians and patients. While proponents of the efficiency perspective might include reflections on the challenges and barriers in applying BDA, it has not critically questioned BDA’s general capacity to improve organizational efficiency. The perspectives of “skeptics” have questioned the capacity of BDA to do so. What the efficiency perspective is being criticized for is its reliance on the assumption that BDA in general entails notable improvements within organizational functions such as marketing practices, production optimization, and human resource management; even if such an assumption has not yet been sufficiently investigated. Skepticism about BDA The skeptics’ perspective questions the conceptual clarity of what is being evaluated when examining BDA; this suggests that the impact of BDA technologies is currently under-illuminated and that BDA implementation challenges persist. According to this view it is premature to claim that BDA in general will become a significant competitive differentiator in areas such as marketing, human resource management or process improvement. Other contributions within this perspective stress the symbolic function of many managerial innovations (Abrahamson, 1991). According to these contributions, the symbolic resources gained from implementing BDA technologies signal an organizational capacity for adaptability and innovation, and that the organization is “at the forefront of managerial progress” (Abrahamson, 1996, p. 267), despite the general absence of impact of BDA on organizational

A critical management studies approach to big data  59 efficiency, such as better understanding of consumer demands and optimizing resource spending. A contribution emerging from this perspective is Gandomi and Haider’s (2015) work on the “hype” of BDA. They suggest that the content of ideas and definition of BDA is at present very vague (Gandomi and Haider, 2015, p. 137). They examine specific data sources in the form of texts, audio, videos and social media, and discuss to what extent these can be leveraged to improve decision-making, while highlighting the current limits on individual combinations of data sources and analytics. Their conclusion is that BDA’s potential to create value for organizations is uncertain due to the heterogeneity, noise, and size of the data involved in big data analytics, and that BDA technologies need to be both more developed and more investigated in order to be properly understood. This subsection of skeptics who highlight the need for further specification and research is not incompatible with the efficiency perspective. Where the two approaches differ is whether they consider the current definitions and quantity of empirical analyses sufficient indication of the efficiency potential of BDA. The “management fashion” thesis takes such critique further. It entails a more social constructivist approach by viewing BDA as a developing and changeable phenomenon. In drawing on institutionalist literature, scholars have suggested the BDA technologies may be a management fashion (Abrahamson, 1991; Angrave et al., 2016; Madsen and Stenheim, 2016; Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015). Management fashions are exciting new ideas about how to manage. The ideas get attention but do not persist because, while they typically represent symbolic value for the organization, they are not adapted to the actors that might use them and therefore do not influence actual practice. In this view, while BDA does not provide improved efficiency, it does provide symbolic functions for organizations due to isomorphic pressures. These pressures push organizations to adopt technologies and managerial concepts in order to obtain symbolic legitimacy from the surrounding environment (Abrahamson, 1991; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Marler and Boudreau, 2017). An isomorphic pressure to adopt a technology might be sustained for a time by the discourse of powerful commercial interests and actors, which has been found in the market of BDA (Madsen and Stenheim, 2016; Angrave et al., 2016). Leary puts this somewhat polemically: Because data is ostensibly neutral and the technological applications that create and manage it are so complicated to the layperson, the politics of its use can be obscure. This is especially true of “Big Data,” an ambiguous and often capitalized term … (Leary, 2019, p. 58)

An illustration of the management fashion analysis of BDA is provided by Madsen and Stenheim (2016). They show empirically how BDA have soared in popularity as a management concept and consultant commodity, and suggest how it can serve as a buzzword with symbolic functions in organizations. According to this analysis, management fashions can be used by management to support authority, legitimize organizational change, and abrogate responsibility (Madsen and Stenheim, 2016, p. 13). A hypothetical example of the management fashion perspective on BDA could be the adoption of BDA in a textile organization that wants to signal innovation and progressiveness to customers and stakeholders without using BDA insights in actual practice. In this organization the actual BDA analysis of market conditions, resource spending on textile production, and development of new product lines would not inform new organizational practice but remain as an organizational element that signals progressiveness to stakeholders. However, the symbolic value could be leveraged in other ways as well. In the case

60  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations of offshoring the textile production, the need for change perceived by management might be unpopular with stakeholders, employees, and customers. Here BDA could be used to provide legitimacy for the decision to offshore production by referring to BDA analysis, thereby claiming authority on the basis of objective data insights while displacing responsibility from management for an unpopular decision to the data systems despite the fact that such offshoring might not necessarily represent the most efficient structure of production. BDA and Socio-Materiality Another prominent approach to the use of BDA within recent years is based on the ideas of socio-materiality. It focuses on how human and technological actors interact and how this interaction can drive and condition organizational practice (Faraj and Azad, 2012). While socio-materiality has some overlaps with some proponents of the efficiency approach both the efficiency and the skeptical approaches in general tend to focus more on methods of aggregate evaluation or implementation of BDA. Socio-materiality takes a more deconstructive approach which does not necessarily aim at assessing BDA in general. Here the interplay between different structures of organizations and different possibilities of use of each of BDA’s technologies leaves room for a range of different applications (Leonardi and Barley, 2008). This is also reflected in socio-materiality’s ontological orientation. In contrast to the efficiency perspective’s aim of finding stable and objective assessments of BDA and its impact on organizational efficiency, the approach of socio-materiality highlights possible uses of BDA which are always subject to change by human actors. A key concept in more recent developments of the socio-materiality perspective is technological affordances (Leonardi, 2011; Faraj and Azad, 2012; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Robey et al., 2013). “Affordances are action possibilities and opportunities that emerge from actors engaging with a focal technology” (Faraj and Azad, 2012, p. 238). Central to affordance theories is that technologies are designed to provide possibilities of different types of uses by humans. Simultaneously, humans have different viewpoints and see different possibilities of use in the same technologies. Consequently, affordances are dependent on specific elements of BDA but also on the viewpoints and capacities of different humans in the organization (Evans et al., 2017; Leonardi, 2011). This means that different configurations of technological properties, human routines, and human goals can yield different affordances and practices of BDA. The socio-materiality approach focuses on the different ways in which BDA elements and human agency can be combined. This does not mean that human actors are not driven by goals of efficiency but, in contrast to much of the work based on the efficiency perspective, that it is not always the case, and that perceptions of efficiency might differ between human actors. Neither is there always a direct corresponding relationship between goals and practice according to socio-materiality. Unintended consequences of the use of technological affordances can run counter to human goals, which can lead to new practices (Orlikowski, 2000). In one example, Dremel et al. (2020) show how the interplay of human actors and technology has made four affordances of BDA available in automotive manufacturing. One is data-driven vehicle services. Here, BDA provides the affordance of onboard data collection and remote prediction of maintenance demands, which enabled a reduction in time of repair and cost. This supports the human goal of providing services that reduce vehicle breakdown

A critical management studies approach to big data  61 and maintenance costs. Another study, by Lehrer et al. (2018), explores the use of stream analytics in insurance. Here the human goals of reducing risk and insurance cases is supported by the BDA affordance of real-time data procurement. This real-time data procurement allows automated trigger-based services such as the detection of forced entry in a house from a range of data sources such as video and sensors. They act in real-time as a “connected protective shield” and can message a security company and activate an alarm upon intrusion. To exemplify the socio-material perspective we can look again at the hypothetical example of a textile organization mentioned in the skepticism section above. The skepticism position highlights that BDA technologies can signal progressiveness and innovation or be used to legitimate unpopular changes to production. The socio-material approach would instead focus on how particular affordances in BDA and human goals would make different practices possible. This perspective might observe how some functions of BDA within the organization could provide better affordances for improving marketing, which requires a higher degree of technical expertise, specific organizational routines and know-how, by keeping the domestic marketing department, while affordances of BDA as real-time production information and control along with the price and competences of labor abroad could provide better affordances that could be realized in offshoring production. In this way the socio-materiality position highlights how different properties of the technology in combination with human routines impact organizational practice, rather than focusing on its symbolic and legitimizing significance. According to the socio-materiality position, human goals can be more diverse than a mere focus on efficiency. However, human goals in organizations are often shaped by organizational goals, which makes the approach gravitate towards an emphasis on efficiency. In this sense socio-materiality often share the focus on the question of efficiency of BDA with the efficiency approach. In turn, this tends to marginalize and suppress critiques that question the interplay between efficiency-biased immediate goals of organizational actors and technological properties (Mutch, 2002). Therefore, while supplementing research on BDA with a sensitivity to the different ways that BDA properties and human routines can be combined socio-materiality often does not express a more critical perspective towards BDA. Critical Studies and the Societal Impact of BDA Critical data studies is a fourth approach to BDA and shares the critical perspective of critical management studies described later. But where critical management studies focus on management, critical data studies mainly focuses on BDA in society (Boyd and Crawford, 2012; Iliadis and Russo, 2016). Two significant and intertwined strands within this perspective are general critical data studies and surveillance studies. Critical data studies dig into the possible issues of power asymmetries, oppression, and discrimination embodied in BDA (Crawford et al., 2014). One significant line of critique in critical data studies is the ethical issues related to individual protection of personal data, civil liberties, and privacy. This explores the dangers of storage and control of access to sensitive personal information, data leakages, and potential misuse (Oboler et al., 2012; Currie et al., 2016; Metcalf and Crawford, 2016). It enables an analysis of the ways in which individuals become subject to new forms of risk that arise from the data produced about themselves. Such risk can entail both economic and social consequences when data fall into the hands of companies that sell them for illicit or exploitative use. This approach also incorporates studies

62  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations of data systems and gender, focusing among other things on how data produces discriminatory categorizations of sexual orientations (Ruberg and Ruelos, 2020) and discrimination on online media platforms (Hoffman, 2017). One such example is the Ruberg and Ruelos (2020) study that indicates how sexual orientations, such as for queer people, are more fluid than typical data categories allow for. This means that the fluidity of these sexual orientations is suppressed by internet companies and social media using stable data categories to inform for example communication, search algorithms or marketing. Critical data studies also relate BDA to criticisms of capitalism. One notable work is Zuboff’s (2019) on the relation between BDA and the economic system of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff’s thesis highlights an economy of technology companies functioning by obtaining behavioral surplus data (big data) from individuals to serve as raw material for predictive analyses. These predictive analyses are used in turn to prescribe manipulations which will be effective for changing the behavior of consumers and political subjects. This can be for example using behavioral surplus data of social media users to predict which advertisements will be effective for changing consumer behavior. This sheds light on the forms of power arising from consumers using products that generate data on this use without consumer knowledge. An example of this is smart home solutions, including security solutions mentioned above, where many devices link up to provide affordances for consumers such as voice-activated remote control of appliances, out-of-home remote control of heating, or triggering of a home invasion alarm via the internet. Companies harvest a large quantity of data on appliance use which can be sold to advertising agencies, which in turn predict the individual consumer’s demand and target advertisements for additional products, like the example where eBay suggests additional products which is mentioned in the section on the efficiency approach. Surveillance studies have thematized many of the issues brought up by the surveillance capitalism diagnosis (Ball, 2019). Bilić (2018) explores how algorithms can be understood as tools of algorithmic capitalism which oppress labor both inside and outside the company. Firstly, through the use of flexible labor (putting increasing demands for flexibility and performance on employees), and secondly through audience labor (which contribute to profits for digital platforms but is unpaid). Ball et al. (2016) highlight how big data analysis creates surveillance and knowledge that promote competing normativities (or manipulations) for how subjects’ lives should be lived and suggest that subjects will increasingly begin to value that which can be surveilled by BDA; for example a subject understanding her health and mood from the data on health and mood proxies on her mobile phone. Together surveillance studies and surveillance capitalism suggest that BDA work with capitalist structures to remove influence and choice from the individual and store the power and the ability to influence choice in the hands of algorithms owned by business conglomerates and public agencies with very far-reaching power. This strand of approaches to BDA supplements the other approaches to BDA with resources for critique and exploring how subjects become exposed to power in new ways. However, many of the forms of critique leveraged here focus on the societal level, i.e. countries, citizens, and especially consumers (Evangelista, 2019, p. 247). These critical diagnoses, while intersecting and conditioning the critical analysis of BDA within organizations, are still only partly applicable to BDA within organizations. This is because power relations within organizations have different conditions. Subjects within organizations already accept larger power asymmetries compared to the state or civil society sphere (Townley, 1994; Fleming

A critical management studies approach to big data  63 and Spicer, 2007). Thus, one might expect subjects within organizations to more readily and openly accept the collection of personal and activity data related to them, as opposed to private organizations surveilling citizens in the public sphere, and to larger extent accept changes to their activities not based in democratic political decisions but on managerial inclinations. So, while discrimination, infringement of privacy and behavioral manipulation happen to both individuals as subjects in organizations as well as political, public, or economic subjects, they play out differently. Therefore, there is a need for more focus on critical approaches to BDA within organizations from the normative standpoint of enhancing freedom from oppressive power.

A CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES PERSPECTIVE ON BDA One way to increase the critical engagement with BDA within organizations is through the resources of critical management studies. Critical management studies is a combination of theoretical approaches within organizational studies with an emphasis on seeking to enhance freedom from oppressive power (Fleming and Mandarini, 2011). Within critical management studies, Spencer (2017) calls for a critical analysis of how BDA is used in organizations to exert specific kinds of power, that is, which opportunities BDA provides for managerial power and how these are enacted in organizations. By also invoking later poststructuralist insights, such endeavors might focus not just on how organizational power is enabled by BDA , but also on the BDA interplay between specific BDA technologies and worker subjectivities in structures, and subsequently how this might be related to acts of resistance, both from workers and other actors subject to the power of BDA (Spicer et al., 2009). Following this, the resources explored here within critical management studies will proceed from the concepts of power and resistance. This analysis of power within organizations aims to explore how the oppressive capacities of BDA expressed in critical data studies, such as the manipulation and the production of managerially desirable subjects, function within organizations, and subsequently, how practices of resistance might form around these kinds of power to enhance freedom in the face of new circumstances for oppression. Power through BDA Critical management studies is a heterogeneous resource for studying power asymmetries and forms of oppression. One framework for bringing together some prevalent conceptions of power within critical management studies is “the four faces of power” explored in an organizational setting by Fleming and Spicer (2014), among others. This approach has the advantage of drawing on both overt forms of power as force and the more subtle forms of power that affects individuals’ ideas and interests. The framework proposed below incorporates a new, fifth face of power which explores the nudging power of statistical technologies. The focus of critical management studies on both traditional power and poststructuralists’ forms of power draws attention to the fact that this framework spans both more subjectivist and objectivist approaches to theorizing (Burell and Morgan, 2017). However, the framework is not meant as a research agenda with a coherent philosophical grounding, but as a possibility of showing resources along the different faces of power all relevant for understanding BDA.

64  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The five faces of power presented here are: coercing, manipulating, dominating, subjectifying, and controlling (Foucault, 1991; Fleming and Spicer, 2014; Evans and Kitchin, 2018). These help to explore many of the forms of power suggested by critical data studies and how they might function within organizations. On the one hand, they illustrate how BDA technologies can be used as a new means of forcing employees into specific actions, in conflicts with management. On the other hand, they show how employees might lose autonomy by being unconsciously manipulated or oriented toward different, and from a managerial perspective more desirable, ideas and interests. This reduces the capacity of employees to form their own subjectivities and exert freedom from managerial demands. Coercion is the use of threats and deterrence to alter others’ actions. For BDA, analysis of the coercive face of power entails exploring how BDA technologies extend earlier forms of control in the organization. It shows how the power capacities afforded by BDA of automating labor processes through algorithms and automating surveillance with threats of termination or deskilling are deployed to discipline the workforce in companies. Manipulation is the act of shaping decisions through agenda setting. The manipulation face of power shows how in particular the use of information (or the expectancy of such information) from advanced statistical analysis that is not accessible to other organizational actors can shape agendas for discussion and promote specific decisions. This can lead employees to be unable to voice resistance to managerial decisions or view it as futile because they don’t have access to the information. This could also explore the changes to organizational politics between actors with access to BDA capacities and actors without. Domination is the naturalization of hierarchies and power relations. Dominating power through BDA explores how actors come to see BDA-produced information as a correct, legitimate, or even scientific basis for decisions and contrast it with an exposed account of the algorithmic and calculative choices made by actors in using BDA, which are not natural but contingent. Subjectification explores how power changes actors’ views of themselves and their identities. This face of power entails exploring how knowledge from BDA analysis and algorithms contributes to shaping actors’ identities in organizations. For example, knowledge produced by BDA can increase the awareness of good and bad managers, worker performances, or be used in recruitment situations to produce narratives on new candidates. Control is small manipulations of incentives or circumstances for large groups of subjects to reap aggregated effects. It is based on statistics of large groups. This concept explores how and to what extent BDA is used to plan production in ways that nudge actors’ actions in large groups without individual knowledge of the control forcing new behavior without actors’ knowledge by changing, for example, the layout of a shop floor or the length of the line at the lunch table. One recent study on BDA can shed light on the relevance of the analysis of power. Evans and Kitchin (2018) explore how a modern retail store relies on big data systems for performance management, finding that the subjectification of the previous surveillance system has, to an extent, been replaced by control by algorithms. This control takes the form of data collection and planning systems that do not visibly show surveillance to the employees but seek to control the labor by planning the layout of the retail store and movements of employees, or by designing specific routes for deliveries. According to Evans and Kitchin, this newer form of power cannot ensure symbolic and service labor functions such as customer handling in retail stores. This failure of control must be supplemented by coercive power with instruction

A critical management studies approach to big data  65 by managers on customer handling, possibly on the basis of BDA collected performance measures on customer satisfaction. The already described functions of BDA could exacerbate these existing patterns; for example, performance metrics related to feedback from customers in the form of instant surveys using smileys can generate a big amount of data to function as a disciplinary device that managers can use for scoring employees (Leslie, 2019). Going back to the hypothetical example of a textile organization using BDA and contemplating the unpopular decision of offshoring part of its production can help illuminate some of the other faces of power. Along the lines of the “management fad” argument, manipulation and domination help to repress alternatives: there is no space for alternative decision-making because the data analysis has indicated an objective decision. Manipulation can entail that managers have a secluded space to make managerial decisions that is tied to the use of BDA systems, for example, the communication and meetings between a business intelligence unit and top management on offshoring without employee representation. Domination can entail that the insights on the profitability of offshoring generated in this space are viewed as objective and not questioned because they stem for advanced statistical analysis that is hard to question. The coercive capacities of BDA can come into play as data-informed criteria for which employees of the organization should be let go and which it should keep in the restructuring of the organization based on performance or other data. This can be supplemented by subjectification which oppresses employees and promotes the desired change by generating information on employees as good or bad performers and enabling acceptance of decisions regarding dismissal or restructuring. Lastly, control can be used to plan the new activities surrounding the production lines of the new textile offshoring production as well as domestic marketing. In this way, the analysis of the faces of power draws attention to how employees can become oppressed by losing influence over the change process, their work, how they are manipulated and dominated into agreeing to changes, and controlled largely without their knowledge. The above example is illustrative of the faces of power through BDA, but underemphasizes a highly relevant dimension for the present exercise of power. This dimension is identity, which includes questions of gender, sexuality and race (Halford and Leonard, 2001; Kelan, 2009). The faces of power relating to domination and subjectification are particularly relevant to these struggles. As regards gender, reflecting the works in critical data studies and surveillance studies, Martin underscores that people routinely use gender categories and cause oppression without being reflexive about it. This can be aggravated by BDA’s capacity for domination and subjectification through seemingly objective categories of data to unreflexively support practices of using gender categories (Martin, 2006, p. 260) such as selecting job candidates based on masculine biased personality traits. In this vein, Monahan (2009) argues that modern surveillance systems can extract masculine biased data that are imposed back on the context to subjectivize the surveilled citizens or employees to orient towards these data as noted by Ball et al. (2016) above. Martin supports this by underscoring that men hold larger parts of organizations’ power and therefore control how to use BDA. Such power asymmetries might contribute especially to suppressing women’s freedom and autonomy in organizations. Similar issues might be found in the use of racial and other identity categorizations.

66  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Resistance and BDA In the previous section we have seen how BDA can contribute to increase suppression of freedom and autonomy for subjects within the organization. This leads us to explore the measures of resistance that might be taken to mitigate such oppression. Resistance was initially explored in critical theories of organization as a reaction to power. Meanwhile, the poststructuralist development articulated a critique of this unidirectional relationship and suggested a more complicated interplay (Mumby, 2005). This suggested that resistance is not just reactions to specific acts of power, but is also a more subtle shaping of the interaction and identities related to the exercise of power. Based on Foucault’s work, descriptions of resistance have, for example, argued that actions which are neither directly opposed to nor in direct compliance with power can be seen as acts of resistance (Bogard, 2006; Foucault, 1991) For instance, acts of resistance can be worker strikes or blockades, but can also be cynicism and irony (Fleming and Spicer, 2007) or subjects’ self-narratives (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2009). This shows that poststructuralist theorizing of resistance in particular tends to see resistance as more fluid and harder to reify in specific framework categories. No overarching framework for resistance similar to that of “faces of power” has been widely accepted. However, to provide an overview of some possible resources for analyzing and informing resistance to BDA, I will highlight forms of resistance that can be at least loosely related to the above-mentioned faces of power, and suggest one specific resource, that of data literacy, which might inform future forms of resistance to BDA in organizations. Forms of resistance related to the first face of power as coercive capacities of BDA entail forms of strategic surveillance avoidance and obstructions to data collection or challenges to the managerial interpretations of data in BDA in order to deprive the manager of this coercive capacity.2 Another dimension of this is collective struggles. Here workers advocate for legal and organizational limits that inhibit the worst kinds of coercive measures of BDA, such as algorithmic based recommendation to fire badly performing workers seen, for example, in Amazon (Lecher, 2019). Such coercive measures can also be mitigated by whistleblowing and communicating work conditions to the broad public to generate public support against companies coercing employees through BDA. In relation to manipulation, resistance might be more difficult in organizations because manipulation gives management a secluded space for gathering organizational data and making organizational decisions. A possible measure undertaken by subjects as resistance to manipulation is to map and understand the secluded spaces and decision-making structures for BDA that enable manipulation. This can be recurring manager meetings producing and using BDA information. Proactive struggles for representation in such decision-making forums as well as subjects’ collective historical accumulation of experiences with manipulation are key resources for mitigating this form of power through BDA. In terms of domination and subjectification, the conditions for resistance are different given that the immediate consequence is to change actors’ beliefs and identities and therefore alter the capacity and inclination for resistance. For these types of power, a kind of preventive resistance or attention to the possible effects of power might be more appropriate. For domination and subjectification such preventive resistance measures are not just engaging with managerial decision-making structures but entail a preventive awareness



2

This is shown by the analysis of Anteby and Chan (2018) described later.

A critical management studies approach to big data  67 of how BDA systems can contribute to subjects’ own ideas, assumptions and identities. Ball and Olmedo (2013) suggest some strategies to resist subjectivizing power by promoting irresponsible actions that protect the employees from readily accepting the identities proposed by management and BDA systems. These include employees actively producing and holding on to their own narratives of performance and work values in the face of BDA systems producing statistics and figures on, for example, work speed, customer satisfaction, and product quality, but also holding on to their own gender categories in the face of BDA systems imposing specific categories. Such narratives enable subjects in the organization to mitigate subjectivizing and dominating exercised through BDA. One example of an approach to resistance of BDA is Anteby and Chan’s (2018) exploration of surveillance. They find that employees engaged in transportation security in the aviation sector experienced increased surveillance through BDA of transport security work practices in the form of video surveillance. This illustrated the potential to produce a self-fulfilling cycle of increased surveillance and hiding practices. Here, the coercive face of power in the form of ever-present surveillance stimulates resistance practices of employees actively avoiding the zones of surveillance and the creation of zones of privacy that reduce the transparency of managerial information. These were found by Anteby and Chan to be practical spatial reactions of occupying small spaces without surveillance, pointing to the non-technological forms of power and resistance that retain relevance in the academic analysis and understanding of BDA. Anteby and Chan also emphasized that the surveillance had a subjectivizing dimension by increasing employees’ attention to “not standing out” in the gaze of management, thereby both conforming to management expectations but also reducing risky behavior that might benefit the organization but could make the employee look bad in the eyes of management. As such, the interpretation and resistance of employees produce a different kind of employee subjectivity and attention than management might have wanted. This example suggests that this relationship between power and resistance in BDA leads to an intensification in both power and resistance practices, as management struggles to fulfill their need for controlling employees through data and employees feel the need to escape this control. While forms of resistance are harder to pin down into specific frameworks and specific categories of action, some resources and forms of action might in general be more potent and encompassing in inhibiting power through BDA than others. While the aim of the chapter is not to single out one decisive strategy I will point to the fact that many modes of resistance to BDA are contingent on some form of data literacy (Sander, 2020; Bhargava, 2019; Markham, 2020). Data literacy entails the ability of those subjected to power through BDA to decode the data systems and their analysis on a technical basis, understand how analyses are constructed and their limitations, the purposes they serve, and the validity of their claims. This enables resistance against forms of domination and subjectification by questioning the validity of the narratives exerting the power and producing counternarratives based on, for example, the benefits of employee welfare or organizational diversity of race, gender, or sexuality. It also enables resistance against control and manipulation if data literacy leads to specific attention to how the individual organization employs data systems, that is, which secluded spaces and small organizational changes are promoted on the basis of BDA. This is a form of resistance along the lines argued within the critical data studies approach, and also voiced by Zuboff (2019). However, resistance based on data literacy in organizations often requires a collectivity of oppressed organizational subjects to pool resources and technical know-how in order to gain knowledge and be able to use the understanding of the BDA’s systems. This

68  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations is harder given that management often have ownership and can limit the dissemination of knowledge in the organization. Thus, future resistance to BDA involving data literacy might to a large extent be characterized by a complex struggle for controlling and accessing information across management and different oppressed subjectivities. Drawing also on data literacy, Ettlinger (2018) explores resistance to BDA from an activist perspective. She suggests a focus on activism-based forms of resistance to BDA within critical data studies. Translated into a critical management studies agenda a focus on hacking can promote access, distribution, and circulation to improve data literacy and resources for resistance. While resistance might not entail traditional hacking, employee hacktivists, in parallel with civil hacktivists, might use data produced or presented by management to force alternative interpretation and analysis (see e.g. Koss Hartmann, 2014). In the hypothetical example of a textile organization choosing to offshore activity based on BDA analysis, the analysis of expected productivity increase and cost-cutting opportunities might be met with a counter analysis suggesting adverse effects on employee well-being and engagement or the disruption of vital employee culture and skill accumulation as well as selection on the basis of discriminatory categories.

CONCLUSION The previous sections have explored the present approaches to BDA, argued for a critical management studies approach to BDA inside organizations, and shown how this could explore forms of power and resistance made possible by BDA in organizations, in order to provide knowledge of how managerial power functions through BDA and how subjects can resist managerial oppression of subjects within the organization based on the exercise of power through BDA. This is in line with critical management studies on emancipation, i.e., increasing the freedom and autonomy of subjects within capitalist or bureaucratically structured organizations (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). The analysis of power through BDA and resistance to BDA is important, because, as the chapter has illustrated, BDA capacities to exercise power can come to have significant impact on the future freedom and autonomy of subjects, both in organizations and in society in general. Critical management studies, across different critical theoretical orientations and ontologies, can provide theoretical resources for exploring categories of power, resistance and strategies of emancipation. The section on critical data studies shows that BDA poses challenges to freedom both in society at large but also inside organizations. If the accounts of surveillance studies and surveillance capitalism are correct, then the power asymmetries in both society and especially in the workplace will increase drastically. This means that the need to expose this power and find resources to support countertendencies and liberation of individuals will become even more important. The resources of critical management studies explored above can play a part in supporting the continuing struggles for emancipation within organizations.

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4. Carceral goals: the role of corrections officers in organizational goal attainment Madeline McPherson and Danielle S. Rudes

Goal setting is a priority for both employees and administrators within organizations. Employees, both line-level and managerial, often struggle to achieve a promotion or pay increase if they do not perform well. At the same time, administrators are beholden to higher-level priorities set by organizational executives or external stakeholders and must manage expectations for both their own positions as well as for the larger institution. Much of the research on goal setting in organizational sociology focuses on business, industry, or education (Locke et al., 1981; Latham, 2004; Schuttenberg et al., 1979). Scholars rarely apply theories of goal setting to the field of criminal justice, including corrections. Yet, carceral goals are unique, even among other criminal justice subfields, and are thus worthy of study. In the context of this chapter, goals related to the operation of prison and jail facilities are referred to as “carceral goals,” representing what success looks like for corrections staff. Leaders in corrections manage the daily activities of staff and residents1 while also navigating the larger fabric of societal expectations surrounding corrections and responses to crime. As such, corrections staff regularly contend with multi-purpose goals, developing unique ways of meeting expectations for a diverse set of stakeholders (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). Above the facility level, state systems and corrections administrators formulate big-picture goals for their agencies and institutions. Achieving those goals, however, falls mostly to line-level employees like corrections officers (COs) as they execute daily duties and perform tasks related to the care, custody, and control of residents. While corrections staff manage both custodial (e.g., taking count, supervising resident movement or transport, performing searches) and non-custodial tasks (e.g., overseeing treatment, programs, meals, and other services), custodial practices are particularly important for achieving the most important goal in corrections – to maintain the security of a facility and the residents and staff within it. To date, corrections scholars have not fully assessed the role conflict COs navigate as they balance expectations of incapacitation with those of rehabilitation for the individuals under their care. Using discretionary decision making, organizational commitment, and role conflict as organizational mechanisms, this chapter situates the conflicted role of the American CO within a goal setting framework. As such, this chapter illuminates how COs achieve some organizational goals successfully, but have difficulty achieving all institutional goals. In essence, we suggest that the current organizational structure in corrections, with its rigid hierarchy and competing priorities within staff roles, is insufficient for achieving all necessary goals. Furthermore, corrections organizations currently place immense stress on line-level staff, like COs, to achieve organizational goals without providing the organizational or systemic support necessary for sustained success. In the present era of justice reform, better 1 In keeping with the growing and important person-first language tradition, we opt to use the term “residents” to refer to individuals confined within corrections facilities.

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74  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations understanding how and why COs contribute to goal achievement within corrections settings opens the door for organizational, and thus operational, improvements.

THEORIES OF GOAL SETTING Defined simply by sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1964), a goal at the organizational level “is a desired state of affairs which the organization attempts to realize” (p. 6). More generally, a goal is “what an individual is trying to accomplish; the object or aim of an action” (Locke et al., 1981, p. 126) or “what the individual is consciously trying to do” (Locke, 1968, p. 159). Different types of organizations boast different types of goals, which direct employees toward the organization’s bottom line. For example, the goal of a for-profit business includes generating revenue, while the goal of a government agency involves serving constituents. For corrections agencies, a broad goal is to incapacitate people sentenced by the court to a period of incarceration. Organizations set goals with a broad outcome in mind, such as to directly benefit the organization or to improve society through benefiting clients of the organization. Goal outcomes may be generally categorized into four types: (1) productivity (how well the organization is achieving its stated purpose); (2) integration (how well the organization balances its needs with the needs of its members); (3) organizational health (the extent to which an organization is poised to survive), and (4) feedback (the extent to which an organization examines its processes and products for improvement) (Immegart and Pilecki, 1970; Schuttenberg et al., 1979). Note that organizations will set a number of goals that vertically and horizontally span an organization’s structure and outcomes of stated goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Organizational goals address what an organization does (productivity), how it improves over time (feedback), and how it endures (integration and health). Within corrections agencies, executives may set goals to determine whether programs and services positively affect the residents of the facility. For example, a jail warden may set an organizational goal that a residential substance use treatment program will reduce future offending by addressing a root cause of criminality for certain residents. In measuring outcome data for such a goal, the warden is addressing productivity – how well the jail program reduces criminal behavior, part of its purpose as an organization – and also feedback – examining whether there may be better ways to address substance use treatment. Goal setting practices first originated around the turn of the twentieth century in the management strategies of corporate industrialists such as US Steel’s Andrew Carnegie, General Motors’ (GM) Pierre DuPont, and IBM’s Thomas Watson Sr. (Odiorne, 1978). These entrepreneurs focused on increasing company profits and improving employee performance through new approaches where managers highlight performance objectives to guide employees’ work. Similarly, John Henry Patterson, head of the National Cash Register, is credited with creating the “quota system” to bolster sales of his redesigned cash register (Odiorne, 1978). Patterson’s setting of sales quotas and training of employees was the first marketing attempt to create a quantitative goal for employees to measure and achieve (Friedman, 1998). Similarly, DuPont and his management team were the first in the business world to adopt a strategy (in practice, if not by name) called “management by objectives” (MBO) whereby managers set specific productivity standards for employees to increase company profit (Sloan, 1963). MBO

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  75 became an established managerial strategy extensively studied and evaluated in executive management and business literature throughout the twentieth century (Odiorne, 1965, 1978). The theoretical underpinnings of MBO derive from Second World War era operations research in the military whereby organizations are systems that include inputs, activities, outputs, and feedback (Odiorne, 1978; Schuttenberg et al., 1979). Put simply, managers realized it was unrealistic to expect employees to achieve desired outputs if they were not first instructed on company performance objectives. This logic follows for any organization that depends on employee performance to reach organizational milestones, including corrections agencies. In the corrections context, maintaining secure facilities relies on high-performing COs who are able to translate the organization’s broad commitment to order maintenance into daily tasks and functions. Framed around individual employee characteristics, the predecessor to objectives-based management was ineffective and inefficient in promoting organizational goal achievement. Traditionally, managers evaluated employee performance based on preferred character traits such as drive, integrity, or initiative rather than on qualities specific to a task. Perhaps unsurprisingly, personality-based management techniques lacked empirical support and received criticism (Odiorne, 1978; Whyte, 1956). Next, managers transitioned to “standards of performance” management, which somewhat resembled MBO (Odiorne, 1978, p. 20). The standards of performance involved clearly established objectives and required managers to identify targets to evaluate employee performance. Unlike the more systematic MBO, however, standards of performance focused largely on activities rather than outcomes and were not sustainable over time (Odiorne, 1978). Though personality-based management was ineffective in organizational goal achievement, it did recognize the significance of the role of individual employees. Identifying the ways in which MBO failed to incorporate the motivations and qualities of task performers themselves, sociologist Edwin Locke (1968) combined organizational scholarship (Taylor, 1911; Odiorne, 1965, 1978; March and Simon, 1958; Simon, 1979, 1997) with psychology (Ryan, 1970; Miller et al., 1960) to form a seemingly comprehensive theory on goal setting. Locke recognized the need to bridge the gap between organizational guidance and individual decision making in employee performance. Locke’s goal setting theory (GST) explains how set goals translate into desired outcomes. Over the years, scholars used GST to explain goal achievement through employee performance (Latham and Saari, 1979; Locke et al., 1981), organizational commitment (Locke and Latham, 2002), and employee satisfaction (Latham, 2004). What differentiates GST from MBO and psychology is the way GST links goals to outcomes by accounting for human action. GST asks, how is human action initiated in response to goals; to what extent is it impeded by internal or external factors; how much error is involved; can different approaches increase performance, etc. (Locke, 1968, 1969; Locke et al., 1981). While cognitive psychologists considered human action as a simple response to a stimulus (i.e., a goal), Locke argued this perspective was insufficient to explain internal processes that link goals to human action, such as goal acceptance or the intensity with which a person works to achieve a goal (Locke, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977; Locke et al., 1981). Researchers evaluated different aspects of GST, and it quickly solidified its place as an effective means for organizations to set conscious goals and then reap the benefits of the process (Odiorne, 1978; Locke and Latham, 2002, 2006; Latham, 2004). GST has three main components. First, setting conscious goals is effective in directing employee performance to specific tasks (Locke, 1968). Second, there are four mechanisms

76  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations by which goals affect performance: (1) goals direct the action and attention of the individual performing the task; (2) goals mobilize energy expenditure and effort toward the task; (3) goals lead to a persistence of individuals’ effort over time; and (4) goals motivate individuals to develop relevant strategies for goal attainment (Locke et al., 1981). The third component of GST focuses on how goals affect performance and identifies seven primary ways this occurs (Locke et al., 1981; Locke and Latham, 2002, 2006; Latham, 2004). First, as it relates to the range and types of goals, GST holds that more challenging goals lead to better performance than easier goals (Locke, 1968; Latham, 2016). There is also evidence that nesting multiple goals, such as setting monthly goals as well as daily goals, improves performance (Bandura and Simon, 1977). Second, goal specificity is critically important for improving performance – offering a specific and quantitative goal is more effective than an ambiguous goal. Telling employees to assemble ten pieces of furniture in a day is better than merely encouraging them to “do their best” (Locke et al., 1981; Locke and Latham, 2002). Third, goals must be attainable or at least approachable for individuals (Locke et al., 1981). When goals are unattainable or perceived as unreachable, effort and performance may be complicated by surreptitious and even unconscious attempts to cut corners to achieve the goal (Barsky, 2008; Bazerman and Gino, 2012; Van Rooij and Fine, 2018). Fourth, “knowledge of results” or providing feedback to individuals allows them to work to improve over time if they become aware and understand the outcomes of their effort (Locke et al., 1981). This is important if employees are to improve their performance over time. Fifth, offering monetary rewards for good performance in conjunction with setting goals may be an effective way to improve performance. One study by Locke et al. (1980) showed median performance improved by 40 percent when monetary rewards combined with goal setting. Sixth, participation in the goal setting process by those who will perform the task links with higher performance (Slate and Vogel, 1997). Separately, supportiveness by an authority figure during the goal setting process also associates with better performance (Latham and Saari, 1979; Locke et al., 1981). Seventh, goal acceptance and choice are necessary for optimal performance. As individuals buy into the set of established goals, performance improves. While GST is the prevailing theory on goal setting, it is not without limitations (Latham, 2016). GST focuses on the effects of consciously set goals. Psychologists established that subconscious ideas, motivations, and thought processes are always at play in the human mind (Kahneman and Tversky, 1982). As subconsciousness relates to goal setting and achievement, social psychologist John Bargh (1994) developed a model of “automaticity” that provides a theory on subconscious motivations on performance, a concept left unaddressed by GST. Bargh’s automaticity model discusses goal “priming.” Primed goals relate to external cues or processes where individuals subconsciously connect the goal with the task, ultimately connecting the goal with the outcome as well. Theoretically, primed goals improve performance more than unprimed goals (Bargh, 1994). An example of goal priming in a corrections setting may involve placing a brightly colored poster above the COs’ desk featuring a message reminding them to keep their keys secure while working on a residential housing unit. When COs on all shifts report to this desk, they see the poster and repeatedly process a key-security message, both consciously and subconsciously. As a result, COs become more aware of their keys while on the unit, without dedicating conscious mental effort to the awareness. The value of a primed, rather than conscious, goal is that an individual’s response to a primed goal remains independent of their individual interests and motivations (Bargh, 1994; Latham, 2016). If a particular CO does not buy into the idea

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  77 that key-security should be their focus at work, our poster example still suggests COs to protect their keys despite having differently ranked priorities than the organization. While Bargh’s automaticity model has prompted several important and relevant critiques such as issues with experimental replication (Harris et al., 2013; Latham, 2016), combining goal priming with conscious goal setting provides additive effects on task performance (Latham, 2016). Additionally, Latham (2016) found that when a primed goal is specific to the context of the task, rather than vague or loosely related, employees performed better. This is consistent with findings in GST research.

GOAL SETTING APPLIED TO CORRECTIONS ORGANIZATIONS In corrections facilities, organizational goal setting is more complex than within for-profit businesses where the primary goal is to generate revenue. Importantly, carceral goals involve multiple diverse stakeholder groups, each with their own unique, and often strongly held, interest(s) in corrections agencies’ success. Corrections stakeholders include the residents of facilities who wholly rely on staff to fulfill their basic needs. Other stakeholders include the public who have a vested interest in maintaining public safety through the incapacitation of particular individuals, the protection of victims of crime, and even the provision of employment opportunities in communities with corrections facilities. Additionally, there are also stakeholders such as industry executives that generate profit from corrections agencies. These include telecommunications providers, food and healthcare contractors, and the small proportion of corrections facilities that are for-profit businesses. Carceral goals are also indelibly linked to public policy steeped in the nation’s broader sociopolitical context. In practical terms, this means that corrections systems and administrators balance daily custodial practices involved in managing carceral residents with the larger expectations of society. Though the validity of historical public opinion polls regarding attitudes on crime are somewhat controversial (Thielo et al., 2016), the public supported punitive crime policies more between the early 1980s and mid-2000s (Lynch, 2011; Thielo et al., 2016; Pickett, 2019). Later, as corrections budgets ballooned and societal ills resulting from decades of mass incarceration became apparent, rehabilitation and reform took center stage in bipartisan calls for justice (Cullen et al., 1999; Lynch, 2011; Thielo et al., 2016; Drakulich and Kirk, 2016). The metaphorical pendulum swings back and forth between punishment goals (Goodman et al., 2017). Despite efforts by reform-minded corrections officials, the field continues to uphold the inherent conflict between achieving the custodial bottom line – maintaining security – and creating meaningful change within individuals to reduce criminal behavior (Kifer et al., 2003). Furthermore, corrections agencies operate with a rigid structure and formal hierarchy. An example of one of Scott and Davis’s (2015) rational systems organizations, prisons rely heavily on written policy and procedure, where staff and residents are well-versed in organizational expectations. The paradox of the rationality of the carceral space is that plenty of external organizations and advocates create priorities that dictate both explicitly and implicitly acceptable goals for corrections agencies to set and achieve. Indeed, despite the attempt at rigidity and formality, the pressures and input from the public influence carceral goals; making corrections facilities an open systems organization as well (Thompson and McEwen, 1958; Scott and Davis, 2015).

78  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations As stated, the most important carceral goal is to maintain security at all times, which includes the safety and social and physical control of both staff and residents, respectively (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021; Rudes et al., 2021; Poole and Regoli, 1980a; Cressey, 1959; Sykes, 1958). Given the purpose of corrections facilities to lock down individuals sentenced to incarceration, a prison or jail that does not properly contain its residents fails the first test of corrections “success.” At the same time, the US and most other countries adhere to international human rights laws that require corrections agencies to provide proper care for residents, including physical, psychological, and emotional care. From a broader perspective, prisons and jails are institutions tasked with carrying out the four well-known goals of sentencing in the criminal justice system: incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Which of these goals takes precedence often depends on the particular values of an agency within a state or region and at any given time. For example, in some US states, the principle guiding organizational success is rehabilitating people to reenter society. In contrast, other, more punitive states define success by the strictness of institutional rules or by the rate of state incarceration. Whatever the ideology of a facility or corrections system, staff members receive nearly all goals, objectives, and actions in the form of written policies and procedures (Ross, 2009). Organizational success is measured against specific and finite goals that form the majority of the custodial work in corrections (Cressey, 1959). These facility- or position-specific goals determine corrections staff training, mobility, promotions, and discretion (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021; Cressey, 1959; Poole and Regoli, 1979). Middle managers generally help identify and specify organizational goals. At the system-level, this may be a state-level secretary or superintendent of corrections. At the facility-level this includes both upper management like wardens and middle managers such as deputies, sergeants or lieutenants (Cressey, 1959; Lambert et al., 2006). Even residents can play a role in setting or enforcing organization goals, such as those who have leadership roles within the social fabric of resident life (Kreager et al., 2017; Berk, 1966). Rule enforcement and order maintenance are necessary elements to achieve carceral goals. Managing compliance and ensuring residents remain under control is a critical part of maintaining security, though the mechanisms for achieving compliance sometimes conflict with enforcement duties, especially for COs (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021; Cressey, 1959; Poole and Regoli, 1980a; Toch and Klofas, 1982; Whitehead and Lindquist, 1989). Carceral goals at the organizational level tend to be broad, such as “reducing recidivism,” which can make it difficult for middle managers and line-level corrections staff to translate goals into tasks in the effective ways suggested by GST (Locke and Latham, 2006). As such, the high-level goals of corrections systems or mid-range goals of facility administrators may be disharmonious with the individual goals of corrections staff (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). High-level system goals, such as lowering a jurisdiction’s prison population, may seem out of reach for COs who engage in custodial tasks, leading them to further focus on their respective areas of control (Poole and Regoli, 1979). In recent years, carceral goals experienced an ideological shift. Whereas the field of corrections was once heavily punitive and focused on crime control (Pfaff, 2017), today’s society has moved toward a more humanistic, social work approach to reforming carceral residents. With the pendulum-like shift in ideology over decades, administrators reassess and change carceral goals (Kras et al., 2017b). When administrators then task existing staff with carrying out new or revised goals, especially when the pressure to do so comes from a source external to the

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  79 corrections system like a court or legislature, conflict may arise among staff, both vertically and horizontally across the organizational hierarchy. To accomplish carceral goals, top-down communication from administrators to front-line officers is critical. Much like other formal, rigid organizational structures like the military or police agencies, corrections systems adhere to hierarchical structures that require respect for authority and delineate who is responsible for which tasks at which times. While recent reforms in public safety yielded an ideological shift in policing and corrections toward a community focus, research suggests that para-militaristic structures endure even when training academies teach recruits a prosocial, community-based curriculum (Chappell and Lanza-Kaduce, 2010). Regardless of specific facility goals, employee buy-in and perception of participation in goal setting may be more important in corrections settings than in other organizations. When staff feel included and appreciated, they experience lower job stress, less burnout, and increased commitment to their institution or agency (Lambert et al., 2006). In carceral environments where the risk of manipulation by residents and misconduct among staff is often high, participatory management with employees is critical to goal achievement (Slate and Vogel, 1997). Separating long-term goals from short-term goals explains some of the distinction between overarching organizational goals and CO’s daily regimen of working toward those goals. Whereas long-term goals act as guiding principles governing organizational actions for many years or throughout the tenure of an agency-head, short-term goals are more direct, specific, and measurable as they translate to more immediate goal achievement (Schuttenberg et al., 1979). However, long- versus short-term goals are not the only way COs experience conflict. Carceral goals also present a natural schism for COs between what is formal and known (custody) and what is needed but may not be formally instructed (rehabilitation).

THE ROLE OF THE CORRECTIONS OFFICER AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS COs operate within a unique role in corrections environments (Toch and Klofas, 1982). They interact most directly with residents, usually operating the same post, position, or assignment for weeks or months. For example, a CO who is posted at a security desk on a housing block is responsible for opening cell doors, keeping logbooks for the residents, and responding to questions. Their official duties rarely change or expand unless some critical incident occurs. However, a CO’s job cannot end with the custodial tasks required by their post. Rather, COs must also maintain a professional working relationship with carceral residents. Rapport-building is an intuitive task that facilitates general resident rule-compliance, and it is also protective for COs should there be breaches of security or threats of violence in the future. In addition to focusing on building relationships with residents, the choices a CO makes at work also affects relationships with other COs and corrections staff (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). The art of corrections work lies in a CO’s ability to navigate these personal relationships without crossing professional boundaries that may lead to official staff misconduct. While CO duties are typically consistent across corrections systems, how COs view their role in the job varies greatly (Poole and Regoli, 1979; Kifer et al., 2003; Conover, 2010). Literature detailing the impressions COs have of their work emerged most heavily in the latter part of the twentieth century. Since that time, demands on corrections staff increased with

80  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations mass incarceration, yet more recent scholarship of COs’ experiences, ideologies, and roles is relatively scarce (Stohr et al., 2000; Kifer et al., 2003; Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). Much of the literature in the last twenty years focuses on job stress and officer burnout (Slate and Vogel, 1997; Lambert et al., 2006, 2009). Commonly, articles on corrections job stress deal with dissatisfaction, role ambiguity, and role conflict (Cullen et al., 1985; Slate and Vogel, 1997), but the organizational pieces emerge as independent variables rather than the primary focus of the work. COs do not burn out in a vacuum. Rather, the organizational role COs play in carceral spaces continually and dynamically interplays with job stress. One way to begin to understand CO roles is to look at how they approach and appreciate their work. While administrators are more likely to view deterrence and rehabilitation as priority goals in corrections, COs consider goals related to custody and incapacitation as their primary responsibility (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021; Rudes et al., 2021; Cullen et al., 1993). While some level of differentiation between position type is expected in organizations, disagreement between upper management and line-level staff may harm organizational culture. For instance, if COs are indifferent to rules that promote safety and security, such as taking count of residents at regular intervals, and decide to cut corners, the chances of security breaches or assaults on staff increase. As such, differences in COs’ buy-in to goals and objectives (Jacobs, 1977; Poole and Regoli, 1980a, 1980b) can present a potentially harmful situation for jails/prisons. In corrections settings, weaknesses in the organizational structure also manifest in other areas. One study by Jacobs and Retsky (1975) finds COs who felt ill-equipped to achieve rehabilitative goals often over-committed to custodial tasks. In that study, COs became more custodial as a way of balancing the job stress and confusion they felt regarding what was expected of them. As a result, these COs filed more disciplinary reports, making them unintentionally more punitive – a fact that affected the critical, but tenuous, relationship between COs and residents (Jacobs and Retsky, 1975). Achieving and maintaining line-level buy-in of goals is an important part of goal setting for corrections agency heads who plan to implement new practices in an organization (Viglione et al., 2015; Kras et al., 2017a). If there is a perception by COs that the warden does not understand their needs and role in the organization, implementation is challenging (Hall and Loucks, 1977; Poole and Regoli, 1980a). Given these internal ideological challenges, three main mechanisms exist by which COs contend with and work to achieve organizational goals: organizational commitment, discretionary decision making, and role conflict. First, organizational commitment deals with the extent to which COs are loyal and committed to their employer, namely the facility or corrections agency where they work. Research shows that job retention for COs depends on a range of factors, including, but not limited to, how valued they feel by their employer or the extent to which COs perceive that their work offers benefits outside the workplace (Griffin and Hepburn, 2005). Job-related stress and burnout among COs is another well-studied angle on organizational commitment (Griffin et al., 2010; Lambert et al., 2006). While the bulk of the literature on organizational commitment is dated, its implications for organizations retain relevancy today (March and Simon, 1958; Porter et al., 1974; Hall, 1977). For example, Katz (1964) explains that a “functioning organization” has members who are both recruited and retained, behavior is prescribed by the organization by way of an outlined role, and members of the organization are capable of being innovative and going beyond the designed role. One of the most oft-cited components of employee commitment to an organization is a person’s desire to be there (Barnard, 1968; Angle and

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  81 Perry, 1981; Meyer and Allen, 1991). In corrections, researchers find that altering or removing that desire affects the amount of care taken to complete tasks, the level of job stress, and the desire to quit (Slate and Vogel, 1997; Lambert et al., 2006, 2009). The second mechanism by which COs contend with their role in a corrections organization is discretionary decision making. In this way, corrections work is akin to policing, social work, and other fields that require employees to be intuitive and innovative in addressing client concerns (Lipsky, 1980; Van de Luitgaarden, 2009). Research on discretion is extensive, spanning multiple subfields of criminal justice, including policing (Smith et al., 1984; Mastrofski, 1981), courts (Kress, 1976; Jacoby, 1980; Albonetti, 1984), and corrections (Klofas, 1986; Poole and Regoli, 1979; Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). In corrections organizations, it can sometimes be undersold just how much the success of the organization depends on the collective of individual discretionary decisions made by COs (Gilbert, 1997; Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). In this context, using discretion is differentiated from rote enforcement of the rules. The more discretion COs use, the more they use the context of a situation to define and determine subsequent action (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). Hammond (1988) outlined a continuum of cognition, arguing that tasks determine the type of decision making and level of discretion. A CO may use broad discretion in one situation and none in another depending on what each task requires. While research is limited, some scholars parse differences in discretionary decision making by COs. There have not been any significant findings to suggest that COs’ race, age, or prison setting (i.e., urban or rural location) significantly affects CO discretion (Klofas, 1986). However, the length of time a CO spends on the job significantly correlates with an increased likelihood of using discretion on the job (Poole and Regoli, 1979; Klofas, 1986). Yet, intuitively, COs who are on the job longer are also more likely to experience burnout and job stress. Both findings together suggest that individual approaches to handling CO job duties are complex (Lambert et al., 2006, 2009; Haggerty and Bucerius, 2021). Third and finally, line officers contend with role conflict and role ambiguity in their daily work. Role theory generally explains the relationship between a member or employee and an organization (Katz and Kahn, 1966). When the needs or wants of the organization do not match with an individual’s needs or wants or are miscommunicated, role conflict may occur (Kahn et al., 1964). In such a situation, Gross et al. (1958) suggest that undesirable outcomes arise, such as lower performance or productivity, job-related stress, tension, anxiety, and employee turnover. Additionally, role ambiguity may occur when an employee has unclear expectations regarding their role or they do not have all the necessary information to carry out the role (Rizzo et al., 1970). As a natural coping mechanism, role ambiguity may lead employees to circumvent the formal organizational structure in an attempt to self-address problems (Kahn et al., 1964). In corrections settings, role conflict and ambiguity are embedded within the organizational structure. Role conflict occurs when a corrections agency head views resident rehabilitation as the overall goal, but COs view their main goal as maintaining security. Role ambiguity occurs when discretionary decision making is the hallmark method of problem-solving and COs are encouraged to wield discretion without receiving appropriate training on how to do so. The double-edged sword of discretion denotes that when COs do not receive adequate orientation or training to achieve organizational goals, they struggle to use discretion in productive ways. Role conflict and role ambiguity also manifest poor outcomes for COs as both lead to increased stress and burnout (Garner et al., 2007).

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DISCUSSION The twenty-first-century call for improvements to American corrections is for those who work in carceral settings – the practitioners – to rehabilitate justice-involved people and to decarcerate the nation’s prisons and jails (De Giorgi, 2013). Though it is an ideologically optimistic goal, it is not well-executed in practice. Still, many believe a rehabilitative corrections system follows the natural evolution of society (Cullen and Gendreau, 2000; Cullen, 2007). Before rehabilitation may be earnestly and absolutely achieved as a carceral outcome, the gap between practice and research requires bridging (Pesta et al., 2018). Both practitioners and academics who contribute to corrections scholarship must contend with the inherent breakdown between what it takes to rehabilitate residents and how to secure prisons and jails. For COs, current training focuses heavily on tactical responses to residents, conducting safety and security checks of spaces and people, report-writing and logging information, and various state and jurisdictional legal requirements. COs and other custodial staff do not receive adequate training in social work or humanistic approaches to interacting with residents despite the closeness of their professional relationships with residents (Gilbert, 1997). In American corrections, COs often struggle to create and maintain meaningful human interactions with residents because of the preoccupation with care, custody, and control in the CO role (Rudes et al., 2021). GST notes that to improve effectiveness, goals should be specific and consciously set with involvement from line-level staff and support from middle and upper management (Locke and Latham, 2006; Lambert et al., 2006). For prisons and jails to be successful in goal setting, they must consider revamping their hierarchical organizational structure. Positive outcomes occur when positive working relationships exist between COs and upper management. Stress, burnout, and turnover will likely decrease in these reformed environments while job satisfaction, performance, productivity, and loyalty to the organization will likely increase. History demonstrates that mere ideological commitment to rehabilitating carceral residents is not enough to make it happen. Though some COs with longer tenure use discretion to engage in a more human services-oriented role (Klofas, 1986), relying on CO discretionary decisions to act in a rehabilitative role is both unrealistic and illogical given the existing role conflict. High-level goals may work well as guiding principles, but COs require specific, rehabilitative goals designed explicitly for that role. In the policy sphere, the biggest challenge involves striking the right balance between custodial duties and humanity in prisons and jails. Too often, corrections facilities and systems focus on one or the other when a hybrid approach is needed. To properly bridge the gap between custody and genuine care, line-level COs require thorough training on evidence-based practices (practices backed by scientific evidence). This training would include proper support and mentorship rather than apathetic commitment to a rigid structure. Where some may be critical of stripping US corrections agencies of their para-militaristic components, many other countries oversee prison systems with much less violence, lower recidivism, and better outcomes for individuals. Notably, much of the scholarship in these areas is outdated and struggles to fit the current landscape of the American criminal-legal system. Scholars should work to provide updated empirical research that assesses how to better serve corrections staff and carceral residents. Researchers must evaluate how to apply goal setting theory strategies

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  83 to institutional corrections settings, including process and outcome evaluations, for the betterment of corrections systems and the broader communities within which they reside.

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84  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Goodman, P., Page, J., and Phelps, M. (2017). Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle over Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Griffin, M. L. and Hepburn, J. R. (2005). Side-Bets and Reciprocity as Determinants of Organizational Commitment among Correctional Officers. Journal of Criminal Justice, 33(6), 611–625. Griffin, M. L., Hogan, N. L., Lambert, E. G., Tucker-Gail, K. A., and Baker, D. N. (2010). Job Involvement, Job Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment and the Burnout of Correctional Staff. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 37(2), 239–255. Gross, N., Mason, W. S., and McEachern, A. W. (1958). Explorations in Role Analysis: Studies of the School Superintendency Role. New York: Wiley. Haggerty, K. D. and Bucerius, S. M. (2021). Picking Battles: Correctional Officers, Rules, and Discretion in Prison. Criminology, 59(1), 137–157. Hall, D. T. (1977). Conflict and Congruence among Multiple Career Commitments as the Career Unfolds. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Academy of Management, Orlando, Florida. Hall, G. E. and Loucks, S. F. (1977). A Developmental Model for Determining Whether the Treatment Is Actually Implemented. American Educational Research Journal, 14(3), 263–276. Hammond, K. R. (1988). Judgement and Decision Making in Dynamic Tasks. Colorado University at Boulder, Center for Research on Judgment and Policy. Report. Harris, C. R., Coburn, N., Rohrer, D., and Pashler, H. (2013). Two Failures to Replicate High-Performance-Goal Priming Effects. PloS One, 8(8). Immegart, G. L. and Pilecki, F. J. (1970). Assessing Organizational Output: A Framework and Some Implications. Educational Administration Quarterly, 6(1), 62–76. Jacobs, J. B. (1977). Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jacobs, J. B. and Retsky, H. G. (1975). Prison Guard. Urban Life, 4(1), 5–29. Jacoby, J. E. (1980). The American Prosecutor: A Search for Identity. Michigan Law Review, 79, 919–920. Kahn, R. L., Wolfe, D. M., Quinn, R. P., Snoek, J. D., and Rosenthal, R. A. (1964). Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity. New York: John Wiley. Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1982). The Psychology of Preferences. Scientific American, 246(1), 160–173. Katz, D. and Kahn, R. L. (1966). The Social Psychology of Organizations. New York: Wiley. Katz, F. (1964). The School as a Complex Social Organization: A Consideration of Patterns of Autonomy. Harvard Educational Review, 34(3), 428–455. Kifer, M., Hemmens, C., and Stohr, M. K. (2003). The Goals of Corrections: Perspectives from the Line. Criminal Justice Review, 28(1), 47–69. Klofas, J. M. (1986). Discretion among Correctional Officers: The Influence of Urbanization, Age and Race. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 30(2), 111–124. Kras, K. R., Portillo, S., and Taxman, F. S. (2017a). Managing from the Middle: Frontline Supervisors and Perceptions of their Organizational Power. Law & Policy, 39(3), 215–236. Kras, K. R., Rudes, D. S., and Taxman, F. S. (2017b). Managing Up and Down: Community Corrections Middle Managers’ Role Conflict and Ambiguity during Organizational Change. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40(2), 173–187. Kreager, D. A., Young, J. T., Haynie, D. L., Bouchard, M., Schaefer, D. R., and Zajac, G. (2017). Where “Old Heads” Prevail: Inmate Hierarchy in a Men’s Prison Unit. American Sociological Review, 82(4), 685–718. Kress, J. M. (1976). Progress and Prosecution. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 423(1), 99–116. Lambert, E. G., Hogan, N. L., and Allen, R. I. (2006). Correlates of Correctional Officer Job Stress: The Impact of Organizational Structure. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 30(2), 227–246. Lambert, E .G., Hogan, N. L., Elechi, O. O., Jiang, S., Laux, J. M., Dupuy, P., and Morris, A. (2009). A Further Examination of Antecedents of Correctional Staff Life Satisfaction. The Social Science Journal, 46(4), 689–706. Latham, G. P. (2004). The Motivational Benefits of Goal-Setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 18(4), 126–129. Latham, G. P. (2016). Goal Setting: A Possible Theoretical Framework for Examining the Effect of Priming Goals on Organizational Behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 12, 85–88.

Carceral goals: corrections officers in organizational goal attainment  85 Latham, G. P. and Saari, L. M. (1979). Importance of Supportive Relationships in Goal Setting. Journal of Applied Psychology, 64(2), 151–156. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3(2), 157–189. Locke, E. A. (1969). Purpose without Consciousness: A Contradiction. Psychological Reports, 25(3), 991–1009. Locke, E. A. (1972). Critical Analysis of the Concept of Causality in Behavioristic Psychology. Psychological Reports, 31(1), 175–197. Locke, E. A. (1977). The Myths of Behavior Mod in Organizations. Academy of Management Review, 2(4), 543–553. Locke, E. A., Feren, D. B., McCaleb, V. M., Shaw, K. N., and Denny, A. T. (1980). The Relative Effectiveness of Four Methods of Motivating Employee Performance. In K. Duncan, M. Gruneberg, and D. Wallis (eds.), Changes in Working Life (pp. 368–375). New York: Wiley. Locke, E. A. and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. Locke, E. A. and Latham, G. P. (2006). New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265–268. Locke, E. A., Shaw, K. N., Saari, L. M., and Latham, G. P. (1981). Goal Setting and Task Performance: 1969–1980. Psychological Bulletin, 90(1), 125–152. Lynch, M. (2011). Mass Incarceration, Legal Change, and Locale: Understanding and Remediating American Penal Overindulgence. Criminology & Public Policy, 10(3), 673–698. March, J. G. and Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. Paris: Dunod. Mastrofski, S. (1981). Policing the Beat: The Impact of Organizational Scale on Patrol Officer Behavior in Urban Residential Neighborhoods. Journal of Criminal Justice, 9(5), 343–358. Meyer, J. P. and Allen, N. J. (1991). A Three-Component Conceptualization of Organizational Commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1(1), 61–89. Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., and Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the Structure of Behavior. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Odiorne, G. S. (1965). Management by Objectives: A System of Managerial Leadership. London: Pitman Publishing. Odiorne, G. S. (1978). MBO: A Backward Glance. Business Horizons, 21(5), 14–24. Pesta, G. B., Blomberg, T. G., Ramos, J., and Ranson, J. A. (2018). Translational Criminology: Toward Best Practice. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 44(3), 499–518. Pfaff, J. (2017). Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform. New York: Basic Books. Pickett, J. T. (2019). Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy: Theory and Research. Annual Review of Criminology, 2, 405–428. Poole, E. D. and Regoli, R. M. (1979). Race, Institutional Rule Breaking, and Disciplinary Response: A Study of Discretionary Decision Making in Prison. Law & Society Review, 14, 931–946. Poole, E. D. and Regoli, R. M. (1980a). Role Stress, Custody Orientation, and Disciplinary Actions: A Study of Prison Guards. Criminology, 18(2), 215–226. Poole, E. D. and Regoli, R. M. (1980b). Work Relations and Cynicism among Prison Guards. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 7(3), 303–314. Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., and Boulian, P. V. (1974). Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover among Psychiatric Technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59(5), 603–609. Rizzo, J. R., House, R. J., and Lirtzman, S. I. (1970). Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Complex Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 15(2), 150–163. Ross, J. I. (2009). Resisting the Carceral State: Prisoner Resistance from the Bottom Up. Social Justice, 36(3), 28–45. Rudes, D. S., Magnuson, S., Portillo, S., and Hattery, A. (2021). Sex Logics: Negotiating the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) against its Administrative, Safety, and Cultural Burdens. Punishment & Society, 23(2), 241–259. Ryan, T. A. (1970). Intentional Behavior: An Approach to Human Motivation. New York: Ronald Press.

86  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Schuttenberg, E. M., McArdle, R. J., and Thomas, W. S. (1979). Goal Setting in Educational Organizations: A Systems Perspective. Peabody Journal of Education, 56(4), 272–278. Scott, W. R. and Davis, G. F. (2015). Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Simon, H. A. (1979). Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations. The American Economic Review, 69(4), 493–513. Simon, H. A. (1997). The Psychology of Administrative Decisions. In H. A. Simon, Administrative Behavior (pp. 92–139). New York: Free Press. Slate, R. N. and Vogel, R. E. (1997). Participative Management and Correctional Personnel: A Study of the Perceived Atmosphere for Participation in Correctional Decision Making and its Impact on Employee Stress and Thoughts about Quitting. Journal of Criminal Justice, 25(5), 397–408. Sloan, A. P. (1963). My Years with General Motors. New York: Doubleday. Smith, D. A., Visher, C. A., and Davidson, L. A. (1984). Equity and Discretionary Justice: The Influence of Race on Police Arrest Decisions. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 75, 234–249. Stohr, M. K., Hemmens, C., Kifer, M., and Schoeler, M. (2000). We Know It, We Just Have to Do It: Perceptions of Ethical Work in Prisons and Jails. The Prison Journal, 80(2), 126–150. Sykes, G. M. (1958). The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Routledge. Thielo, A. J., Cullen, F. T., Cohen, D. M., and Chouhy, C. (2016). Rehabilitation in a Red State: Public Support for Correctional Reform in Texas. Criminology & Public Policy, 15(1), 137–170. Thompson, J. D. and McEwen, W. J. (1958). Organizational Goals and Environment: Goal-Setting as an Interaction Process. American Sociological Review, 23(1), 23–31. Toch, H. and Klofas, J. (1982). Alienation and Desire for Job Enrichment among Correction Officers. Federal Probation Journal, 46, 35–44. Van de Luitgaarden, G. M. (2009). Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work: Lessons from Judgment and Decision-Making Theory. British Journal of Social Work, 39(2), 243–260. Van Rooij, B. and Fine, A. (2018). Toxic Corporate Culture: Assessing Organizational Processes of Deviancy. Administrative Sciences, 8(23), 1–38. Viglione, J., Rudes, D. S., and Taxman, F. S. (2015). Misalignment in Supervision: Implementing Risk/ Needs Assessment Instruments in Probation. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 42(3), 263–285. Whitehead, J. T. and Lindquist, C. A. (1989). Determinants of Correctional Officers’ Professional Orientation. Justice Quarterly, 6(1), 69–87. Whyte, W. H. (1956). The Organization Man. New York: Simon & Schuster.

5. Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test Jean-Pierre Chanteau

The issue of purpose is a standard and key one to understanding organizations: The concept of social group may include organizations and non-organizations. […] To be an organization there must be four things: 1. a goal in mind; 2. a leader or committee making the decision; 3. action involved; 4. communication and members. [Whatever their importance, sometimes enormous] non-organizations […] lack an organization’s purposive activity. Among the more conspicuous ‘non-organizations’ are races and ethnic groups (they have no programs), social classes (their collective identities are not unequivocal and their rosters not exact), cliques and play groups (they lack a collective identity) … (Grande, 1970, p. 164)

But why, within an organization, do personal behaviors align with a shared norm? Does the ultimate mission that ranks the actions of participants in an organization by order of priority result from personal decisions or from a coercive institutional effect? Given the epistemological debates in the social sciences (Della Porta and Keating, 2008) and given what is at stake in terms of power with respect to this normative issue, a few methodological points need to be cleared up before attempting an answer to the issue of the purpose of an organization. In this chapter, the firm is a particularly interesting case of an organization for illuminating these issues. Why does it not have any predetermined purpose when everyone believes it exists to make a profit? And why is profit such a predominant ultimate mission? The approach proposed in answer to this is that of symbolic institutionalism (Chanteau, 2017) applying critical structurism1 (Vandenberghe, 1998).

FROM “PURPOSE” TO “RAISON D’ÊTRE”: AVOIDING THREE MAJOR RISKS OF ERROR IN THE ANALYSIS An Organization’s “Purpose” Cannot Be Spoken of as if It Were a Fact of Nature Questioning the firm’s purpose will be deemed pointless by those who essentialize organizations: they believe a firm’s ultimate mission is by nature written in its genes as it were. Public opinion holds that by essence or by nature its purpose is profit; similarly, the

1 “I use the term ‘structurism’ to refer to various attempts to integrate the sociology of action and sociology of structure [that] are inspired by or compatible with Marx’s famous phrase – ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please […] but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ […]. I am thinking specifically of the work of Anthony Giddens, Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer, and Pierre Bourdieu” (Vandenberghe, 1998/2008, p. 283).

87

88  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations mainstream academic literature draws on the “nature” of the firm2 to argue that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profit” (Friedman, 1970). But neither the law nor the social sciences support this idea. Why, then, is this such a firmly held belief? This “common but mistaken belief [is] almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court’s 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co,” says Stout (2007). In this lawsuit, brought against Henry Ford by two of his shareholders, the Michigan Supreme Court held that “[a] business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. […] The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end” (Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 [Mich. 1919]). But at the same time the Court allowed Ford to pursue his managerial policy (higher wages, lower selling prices, self-financing of investment instead of dividend payouts) that the shareholders were challenging, because the Court took the view that Ford thereby best served the interests of the firm as an entity.3 Shareholder primacy in corporate management decisions is therefore not so clear a legal principle as it seems (Sjåfjell et al., 2015). This point is borne out by the recurring debate about what corporate social responsibility (CSR) should be. Therefore the idea of a “nature” of the organization, which suggests that the organization’s goals are predetermined and universal, is not up for discussion – and the term “purpose” often associated with it is then problematic. To understand the historicity of organizations, constructivism therefore provides an essential framework of analysis. “Purpose” Suggests an Intention, as if an Organization Could Be Likened to a Person The “common but mistaken belief” that the purpose of the firm is to make a profit arises from another sociological failing in the analysis: failing to make a distinction between the organization and the people who contribute to it. There is notably a frequent confusion between a firm and its shareholders4 although the business is run by an entity that has a legal personality of its own5 and the rights of its shareholders are rule-bound.6 It is obviously not a matter of disregarding the power some shareholders wield, but on the contrary of being able to correctly

2 A Google Scholar search (April 29, 2020) on the terms “nature,” “purpose” and “goal” of the firm/ of the corporation produced 992, 170, and 70 responses, respectively. 3 The UK Companies Act runs along the same lines: “A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefits of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard (among others) to: (a) the likely consequences of any decision in the long term, […] (d) the impact of the company’s operation on the community and the environment” (art. 172). Similarly, no case of the kind is reported in France where Article L. 225-35 of the Code du commerce has stipulated since 2019 that a corporation (société commerciale) is managed “pursuant to its intérêt social, taking into consideration the societal and environmental effects of its activity.” A study of 26 national jurisdictions concludes likewise (Sjåfjell et al., 2015). 4 By definition, profit is just the bottom line accounting balance that forms the shareholders’ remuneration. 5 Even the academic literature on management and economics speaks of the “firm” (or “enterprise”) without always properly distinguishing it from the legal concept of “incorporation”: 1. A firm is not always a corporate body (cf. self-employed businesses); 2. Large firms are groups of several integrated incorporations (parent and affiliates) or networks of firms also encompassing independent corporations (contractors; corporations controlled by means of licenses, patents, etc.). 6 Shareholders for that matter have no statutory power to manage the firm or make use of its assets.

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  89 characterize the resources it commands so as to understand the power relations structuring an organization.7 Deconstructing this error is therefore both a matter of sociological knowledge and a matter of political and economic power. The idea that the firm acts of its own volition – as conveyed by the terms “purpose” or “goal” – appears to be shored up by the legal doctrine of corporate personality established through a series of judgments since the nineteenth century.8 True, as a symbolic institution, the legal personhood9 of a corporation produces very real effects (Blair, 2013; Winkler, 2018). But beyond that, personhood does not mean a corporation is a human being. Whatever they may be, these confusions – as in mainstream economics – indicate that the firm is not really understood as an organization. A distinction should be drawn in particular between action (of people) and institutional effects (of the organization) by articulating them in an internormative process as proposed for example by symbolic interactionism (Goffman, 1974). When “Purpose” or “Goal” Reduces the Organization to Its Material Outcomes Lastly, the academic literature on management often reduces the goal or purpose to a single type of outcome (financial performance), or even to a managerial tool for motivating employees (Osterloh and Frey, 2013).10 This is all the more objectionable since this literature claims to theorize “the” firm as a homogeneous category. But again such essentialism is contested both in law11 and in practice (Figure 5.1). At this stage, on the contrary, an historical analysis shows that the corporation arose as an organization specializing in economic activities (i.e., activities a society deems useful for its material reproduction) as distinct from other social organizations (Castoriadis, 1975) – a family or religion also engage in economic activities but it is acknowledged they are not formed for that. And from a comprehensive perspective, no prior judgment is made as to the pattern by which these activities are organized technically or socially within the context of a firm, or as to the means by which they are regulated, or the criteria by which they are evaluated. The sociological framework of analysis must therefore also be able to explain the great diversity of firms and the freedom they have with respect to some supposed obligation to make a profit (Figure 5.1). It is all the more necessary to suspend normative judgment when inquiring into the organization because the organization necessarily constructs itself in social fields of different types. This is an additional difficulty in understanding the purpose of a firm. The firm is affected by interactions among at least three social spheres or orders in which it develops: the legal order (corporate law, corporations’ charters and bylaws, contracts); the industrial order (organization of labor – including subcontractors – engineering and commercial choices, etc.); and the social order (share-out of value added and social justice; accumulation of power

See Veblen (1899) for example. Including, in the USA, various Supreme Court decisions granting corporations the protection of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. 9 “Personne morale” in French; “persona juridica” in Spanish. 10 Some authors speak of “mission,” but also reduce it to a utilitarian end (Morris and Hodges, 2020). 11 See non-profit corporations especially: France (loi ESS 2014); USA (Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Act; etc.). 7 8

90  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

Note: Examples of legal statuses: companies and corporations (US: JSC …, LLC; France: SA, SAS, SARL …); non-profit companies (US: cooperative …; France: SCOP, SCIC, ESUS …); “hybrid” or “not-for-profit” companies (US: low-profit LLC; benefit corporations, flexible purpose corp, B-corp …; France: sociétés “à mission”); proprietorship (US: autoworkers, partnerships…; France: auto-entrepreneur, artisan …).

Figure 5.1

Range of legal statuses of firms and degrees of freedom with respect to profit

through the accumulation of capital, social recognition (as a worker, an engineer, a business leader, etc.). Now, in these various fields, the actors concerned differ as do the rules governing their interactions, the power plays, the resources commanded. Therefore: A Symbolic Constructivist Framework of Analysis of Internormativity to Build a Comprehensive View of the Firm as an Organization For all these reasons, what is at issue here shall be termed “raison d’être,”12 without limiting it to the legal context alone.13 This term does not impose a limited conception of the outcome to be achieved. With respect to the distinction (Seijts et al., 2004, p. 229) between goal setting (“a desired level of performance, a preferred outcome”) and goal orientation (the end aim of actions by people invested in the firm through their labor or their capital), raison d’être lies on the orientation side. It therefore underscores the distinction between intermediate and final objectives14 and above all their rank-order: In prioritizing desired outcomes from multiple possibilities, goals provide a rubric for decisions and actions as well as a basis for assessment of performance. (Simon, 1964)

12 “The most important reason for somebody’s/something’s existence” (Oxford Dictionary Advanced Learner). 13 As in France the Civil Code provides that “The bylaws may stipulate a raison d’être, made up of principles the corporation sets itself and for the observance of which it intends to assign resources in the performance of its activity” (art. 1835). A fortiori the raison d’être is not limited to the corporate object provided for in the articles of incorporation. 14 For example, in Marx’s scheme (Money-Commodity-Money’, with M’ > M), production of C is not the raison d’être of the capitalist venture since the sale of the commodity is only a (necessary) stage in turning a profit (the final objective assigned to this type of firm by speculative shareholders).

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  91 Table 5.1

Three approaches to the issue of a raison d’être Essentialism Utilitarian Essentialism

Constructivism Individualist Essentialism

Critical structurism (Symbolic institutionalism)

Principle determining

Utility

Individual freedom

raison d’être

Not pre-defined but affected by the prevailing norm of the social structure (today that of forms of capitalism)

Organizational test

Productivity

Prevailing normative issue Private accumulation of capital

Rules of governance

Matching of outcomes and expectations

Directors’ discretionary

Economic democracy (with respect to social

power

recognition through retribution and rights within the organization)*

Note:

* Derived from Fraser’s theory of social justice (2008).

Accordingly, in sociological terms, the question is no longer “What is the firm’s goal?” but “How are the priorities for action formed within a firm?” (and how are those priorities ordered in rules and practices of governance, the core business model, business relations, R&D, etc.?). This means that the question of the raison d’être becomes a question of the symbolic articulation15 (Godelier, 1984) between driving mental representations (social values, imagining of projects, etc.) and their concrete implementation in practice (e.g., a particular idea of the relationship with nature inspiring the choice of a material or a manufacturing process with a lower ecological impact even at a higher price). This articulation is not deterministic but it is decisive: it forms the social pattern that ultimately sets an organization “apart” to the extent that it may appear as an autonomous social entity despite its being rooted in the whole social-environmental system and despite its fuzzy and shifting boundaries – when a firm is identified as such,16 everyone takes it into account in developing their projects (applying for jobs, putting savings in shares or bonds, planning industrial or commercial positioning as competitors, becoming suppliers or customers, etc.).17 How and why might raison d’être guide industrial, financial, and social choices materializing decisions and therefore value judgments about these actions? And beyond that what values are thereby reflected in practice? Three approaches can be drawn from academic literature and professional ideologies (see Table 5.1): 1. The utilitarian approach whereby the primary criterion for conducting business is its economic outcome – often limited to its financial dimension alone;

15 For the structural definition of the concept of “symbol,” which articulates both a material and a mental or imaginary dimension, see below. 16 By a (brand) name and the brand image associated with its products, its organizational rules (rules of governance organizing relations between management authorities, executive bodies, instituted checks and balances; operational rules on product quality, etc.) and with regular practices of people associated with the entity (production behavior, sales behavior, etc.) whereas the product is composed of multiple components from other firms, some of which are affiliates and others mere suppliers, etc. Such individuation (form of reification) is also one of the functions of “the legal device of creating separate juridical ‘persons’ for certain business activities” (Blair, 2013, p. 441). 17 See also Biondi et al. (2007).

92  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations 2. The individualistic approach whose primary criterion is free enterprise, decision-making freedom – which CEOs often claim to be a private space for their discretionary power (for better or for worse); 3. The constructivist approach for which a firm does not have any pre-assigned or universal end-purpose: it is constructed by the internormativity of the various constituencies committing to it depending on the diversity of their personal projects and their resources in terms of symbolic power.

RAISON D’ÊTRE OF THE “MARKET” FIRM ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT A MARKET? A THEORETICAL DEAD-END For mainstream economists, the raison d’être of the firm (also referred to as enterprise, group, industry, etc. – the terminology has changed over the years) falls within the realm of ethics or ideology and is said to lie outside the disciplinary field of economics. However, it is important to discuss their position which is marked by a highly functionalist finalism that is congruent with the firm’s capitalistic form. The Firmless Market Economy: A Dead-End for the Perfect Competition Model Economics was under construction in Western Europe during the nineteenth century at the same time as the development of private organizations specialized in the production of goods and services sold on markets – distinct from the domestic, religious and political orders (Castoriadis, 1975). At the same period, up until the mid-nineteenth century, economic crises due to food shortages were a continual threat to the social order. Accordingly the priority for economists was to ensure secure supplies and even material comfort; the idea being that this could be achieved through growing labor productivity and through a system of prices and remuneration allowing everyone access to consumption – a system that seemed fair because proportional to their natural needs or to their contribution to output. The firm’s end-purpose was logically seen as being to ensure this mission of providing material security.18 Mainstream economists came to discuss nothing other than the means to best achieve this and to shape the firm in accordance with this requirement to achieve efficiency. Their benchmark was an archetypal market, that is, the free interplay of competition among economic agents. And they stipulated the conditions under which such competition would maximize welfare (general equilibrium). However, this “perfect competition” model came to grief because of two contradictions: 1. It spoke of supply and demand but … without firms:19 it is a world made up exclusively of instantaneous exchanges (goods, services, labor, capital) whereas firms are also made up of commitments over time, cooperation, personal affects, etc.

Thereby, many critics of capitalism also claim this goal as a priority nowadays. Or, what amounts to the same thing, strictly individual firms are all there is (Starrett, 1978), given decreasing returns. 18 19

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  93 2. It was a model of “pure” economics, that is, without state intervention, but it presupposed that the number of suppliers was set by the academic model-maker, who is nothing but a non-market operator. In other words, for those utilitarians, thinking about the firm’s end-purpose amounted to thinking about either the “end-purpose of markets” (i.e., without personal entrepreneurship projects) or the “end-purpose of the entrepreneur” (i.e., without any collective dimension of organized firms). Their response to this – “imperfect” competition models – made it possible to begin speaking about firms. But their shift toward a sociology of the firm remained wholly inadequate especially as those models referred to market failures defined with respect to a general equilibrium … that cannot come about.20 The Firm’s Raison d’Être as Determined by “Utility”: An A-socialized Overdetermination How, then, do mainstream economists explain that firms are constructed like “non-markets” within a market economy? A first utilitarian rationale for the firm’s raison d’être relates to its functions as a “cost reducer” within a competitive universe: ● For authors like Coase or Williamson the firm is a hierarchical organization because if it is to meet its production schedules it is more efficient for the chain of command, from the employer down to the operator, to set to work each morning without having to negotiate over labor or capital in a market. This avoids transaction costs related to searching for bidders whose quality of work matches that which the firm requires, relating to bargaining over prices and delivery dates, etc. ● But this theory of transaction costs assumes that rules (hierarchy) are introduced for a market economy to be efficient. Hence the development of contract theory, conceived of as endogenous private rules that actors adopt only if they reckon it worthwhile. These private contracts supposedly attenuate market failures by defining a better structure of property rights (Alchian and Demsetz, 1972), providing economic agents with incentives to invest their labor or capital resources to the best effect. However, the proper performance of contracts is threatened by the information asymmetry that opportunistic insiders can use for their personal gain. Agency theory is then used to calculate incentive contracts that would make directors’ opportunism pointless with respect to shareholders (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). The theory is extended by an incomplete contract theory (Hart, 1995) that compares the costs of opportunism and risk-taking with the cost of extending contractual cover.21 Although critical of shareholder primacy, stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) also extends this utilitarian approach (Melé, 2009). The central argument is that, in its own best interest, the firm should not take into account the interests of its shareholders alone, because its financial results also depend on stakeholders (neighbors, ecological activists, etc.) holding “quasi-contracts.” But this analogy of quasi-contracts does not constitute proof because such contracts do not have the legal substance that would make it possible to objectively See Hodgson (2002) for another critical line of argument. A contract (employment, commercial, etc.) stipulates at best the terms of the transaction (prices, quantities, delivery dates, quality) but cannot provide for all future contingencies; taking out insurance contracts is one way to parry them but they entail their own risks. 20 21

94  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations delimit the set of stakeholders.22 In practice, stakeholders are identified under the oversight of the firm’s directors (e.g., using a materiality matrix of actual social and ecological risks) and the stakeholders actually considered are only those wielding economic power over the directors (issuing of “licenses to operate” or credible threats to the brand image, in particular). Apart from some few exemplary cases of strategic integration of NGOs, this often amounts to little more than mere consultations. It is incontrovertible that the motivations thus taken into account are real enough (financial constraints, personal interests, opportunism). But three criticisms invalidate this utilitarian conception of the firm: (1) It is an illusion to invoke individual freedom to enter into a contract, especially an employment contract: the employer–employee relationship is a situation of asymmetrical power between the parties. (2) Why is agency theory instrumentalized for the benefit of shareholders alone23 when their interests do not necessarily correspond to the interest of the firm as a collective entity (see below)? (3) What sociological model would reduce social interactions within an organization to computable contracts or opportunistic competition among entirely selfish individuals? A second line of argument supports the firm’s utilitarian raison d’être, this reasoning being based on the efficiency of the group whose combined output is greater than the sum of the individual outputs:24 ● Work on evolutionary economics (Teece et al., 1994), further to Simon (1964) or March, attributes value to the firm’s capacity to combine the necessary skills for production, including coordination functions – which are especially necessary for manufacturing when the value chain becomes transnational. The skill level (ability to perform missions properly under variable working conditions) is a key factor here but is only revealed in the work situation, contrary to the level of knowledge that can be appraised before recruitment by a qualification or by suitable tests: yet that requires trust, social learning and therefore an organization. ● A further argument concerns productivity gains made by the firm as a “system of stable rules”: routines, instructions and technical standards are all markers that enable individual rationality to be deployed, limiting error and the inhibiting effects of uncertainty. In exchange for fixed wages (employee security), the entrepreneur, so the argument runs, then benefits from the profit and has the right to guide and oversee activities within the firm: “When uncertainty is present, the task of deciding what to do and how to do it [is critical. Hence] the essence of enterprise is the specialization of the function of responsible direction of economic life, the neglected feature of which is the inseparability of […] responsibility and control” (Knight, 1921, pp. 268–271). Within this framework of analysis, especially that of collective efficiency, the enterprise is an oriented organization: productivity cannot be individualized because it depends also on personal interactions and collective rules of organization, that pre-exist any single employee.

Hence the often agreeable but non-robust expressions (“creating value for all stakeholders”). Shareholder value is the management indicator most widely used by these authors for evaluating the principal/agent relationship. 24 An idea already developed by nineteenth-century Socialists, particularly Proudhon’s federalism. 22 23

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  95 However, this organizational dimension remains under-socialized. For some, the firm is just a “nexus of contracts” that each is free to adhere to in order to attenuate market failures; for others, skilled people cooperate for the benefit of all without social conflicts. And, in this utilitarian framework, raison d’être remains aligned above all on financial performance that determines any organizational choice. Now: ● Has an entrepreneur ever set himself the goal of attenuating theoretical market failures? Economically the gap between private costs and social costs is permanent proof this is not so, especially as calculating them remains a very hit-and-miss affair (Carter and Hodgson, 2006); sociologically the social habitus of an economic decision-maker would have to be that of an academic. ● If it is acknowledged that economic efficiency is indeed an issue, why evaluate it by “shareholder value” or profit, as most of these authors do? Efficient organization also depends on other capital provision (see below) and labor supply and on its environment: efficacy of suppliers and public action (network infrastructures, trust in the currency, trust in the justice and police departments making commercial and financial transactions safe, etc.). A utilitarian raison d’être of the firm should therefore be evaluated on a collective scale, at least by means of value added25 (hence the value of research work on measuring social utility). ● Why does this utilitarian framework of analysis continually disregard the point that some firms – such as those in the non-profit sector – set themselves other goals than maximizing their financial performance (e.g., creating economic activity in order to provide social inclusion through employment)? Is there even such a thing as CSR if it is limited to profitable initiatives, which is a mere principle of good management? ● How can we explain what management studies term “slack,” i.e., spending without any particular productive function: the splendor of the head office, the size of the director’s office, etc.? Or how can business failures be explained as being the fault of megalomaniac directors (Bakan, 2004)? Economists and the Purpose of the Firm (2): The Individualistic Unspoken Elements of “Shareholder Value” So a better understanding of the individual and collective factors of the organization’s economic performance is … useful. But asserting that utility is “the” raison d’être of the firm does not stand up to economic or historical scrutiny. So why is this belief still prevalent? Shareholder primacy26 could be sustained: ● if this goal orientation were also in the interests of other actors concerned with the firm (economic argument); ● or if the shareholders were the owners of the firm and ownership entitled them to decide freely about the firm’s purpose (legal argument). 25 In economics, value added is an intermediate accounting balance reflecting the revenue of labor and of capital at a company level. 26 The rationale of the discussion holds for sole proprietorships too in which the entrepreneur is also the only “shareholder” as it were: should the wages paid and the prices charged be only for their personal enrichment?

96  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations But the economic argument is not proven: (i) bank lending is the main source of investment financing; (ii) true, profit may be a source of saving that may finance investment, but there is no guarantee of that.27 This possibility of financing exists only if the company’s general meeting votes not to distribute the book profits (but the serious crisis related to COVID-19 in 2020 shows how reluctant many shareholders are about this) or if the shareholder immediately places the dividend on the liabilities of the company having generated it (which is very unusual). Besides, no direct relationship of cause-and-effect has been shown between a firm’s level of profit or shareholder value and growth of its value added, market share, or level of investment (Aglietta and Rebérioux, 2005; Stout, 2012). The legal argument is mistaken too: 1. Contrary to a widely held belief, shareholders do not own the company28 but just a fraction of its authorized capital: the assets (land, buildings, machinery, etc.) belong to the company and not to the shareholders (Ireland, 1999); and some corporations (associations or mutual societies) have no authorized capital. 2. The share title is a security that does not convey a complete property right.29 It is restricted30 to the right of withdrawal (fructus: dividends distributed and divisible net liabilities in the event of dissolution of the corporation) and a partial right of management (election of directors).31 And these rights are exercised collectively because submitted to voting of the general meeting and framed by regulations and collective bargaining agreements. So a small shareholder has no power to steer the company; while the financial elite that does have that power does not derive it from the right of ownership alone. 3. Authorized capital is constituted at corporate level, which is merely the legal part of a firm – not to speak of a group of firms. However, the firm – as a productive entity – cannot just settle for what the corporation can mobilize in the way of capital and labor. The utilitarian theory of the raison d’être is therefore economically and legally misleading (Millon, 2014). The success of “stakeholder theory” therefore points to (“who stands to gain from the crime?”) another doctrine of the firm’s raison d’être at work in society, which benefits senior executives as much if not more than major shareholders. The contractualist vision of the organization that agency theory maintains in a neo-liberal society delegates authority to the CEO to decide which constituency takes part in the governance of “their” enterprise on the terms they have themselves laid down with their board (Lazonick and O’Sullivan, 2000). This managerial representation of the firm is very widely used for instrumentalizing the current implementation of a CSR (Chanteau, 2011; Marens, 2012). It is part of an ontological conception of the firm’s raison d’être which asserts the primacy of individual freedom – in the case in point the freedom of those who manage to be seen as the legitimate “owners”.

27 This belief arises from the fact that banks ask for collateral (therefore previous savings) from households looking to borrow. But this is about testing their ability to repay, especially as the household is financing consumption and not a productive investment. 28 Unlike the sole proprietorship whose capital remains part of the entrepreneur’s personal estate. 29 See Schlager and Ostrom (1992) for property right as a bundle of rights. 30 E.g., it is a criminal offense of misappropriation of company property for a shareholder to use corporate assets. 31 A shareholder who is not a director is not entitled to become involved in running the business.

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  97 Table 5.2

Two ideal-type rationales working in the differentiation of firms’ raisons d’être

Autocratic ideal-type

Democratic ideal-type

Governing the company by individual authority

Governing the company by implementing a system of rights to

(neo-paternalism, personal discretion).

public deliberation (polity, collective capabilities).

Corporate decision-makers shape the raison d’être, purposes,

Constituencies have the right to deliberate along with corporate

and operational procedures by themselves depending on

decision-makers over strategic priorities and operational

their personal skills and ethics with which they evaluate

procedures, thanks to inclusive rules to access corporate

constituencies’ claims.

governance (but different rules in different firms: cf. workers cooperatives, state-owned companies …).

Note: These are just ideal-type models (each with its pros and cons). In practice, the status of benefit corporation in US law does not change the authority of the directors and officers who operate the business but introduces a statutory requirement to take account of the impact of their decisions on employees, customers, the community, and the local and global ecological environment. Source: Adapted from Chanteau (2011).

The capitalistic organization of firms – since various forms of firm are possible we can no longer use the generic singular of “the” firm – enables the expression of an individualism that has been asserted psycho-sociologically since the eighteenth century (Elias, 1987; Beauvois and Dubois, 2002) and seeks to be materialized here in “free enterprise.” This individual freedom is to be understood as it is by mainstream economists (absence of collective rules32 as to the conduct of business) but above all in the sense of having a free hand: the person’s capacity to be free from constraint in the choice of objectives and the means of achieving them, as if the firm were a “private” space where such discretionary power could be exercised by the boss.33 Two ideal-type rationales of raison d’être can thus be contrasted sociologically (Table 5.2). But this individualistic project extends beyond the institutional framework of the polity or family estate that traditionally regulated economic activity (Castoriadis, 1975): accordingly the enterprise (in the etymological sense)34 must prove its raison d’être to the rest of society. Its virtues are then highlighted by a whole branch of literature (fictional or scientific) portraying a heroic entrepreneur character (heroic in the sociological sense of mythicized individualization of a person’s action; cf. the many success stories of “self-made” entrepreneurs and the CSR business cases).35 Rationalization of this conception logically borrows the utilitarian line of argument from mainstream economists – which explains the company director’s ability to serve his own interest by invoking both the “higher interest of the firm” and that of its shareholders. But this entrepreneurial doctrine has also invested heavily in social entrepreneurship (Petrella and Richez-Battesti, 2014).

32 On the contrary, for the institutionalist economists following on from Commons, rules are conditions enabling individual action – while having a coercive effect too – whether they be public regulations (Supiot, 2005) or private rules (Articles of Association are a good example). 33 French people say “chef d’entreprise.” 34 The term arose in the fifteenth century combining the idea of a personal “undertaking” with that of “spirit of daring,” and comes from the Old French “entreprise” referring to a threatening attack. 35 Ireland (2017) criticizes this depiction by reiterating how much capitalism is a matter of social classes – including the aristocracy of finance.

98  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations This individualistic enterprise must justify itself even more because it requires protective rules36 (cf. company law). This is a double contradiction for ontological individualism of mainstream economics and its ramifications in sociology: in the same way as there cannot be a market without non-market rules, private enterprise could not have existed without public rules (Veldman, 2013). And this is the whole issue today in the debate in law and political sociology over the constitutionalization of the transnational firm: the “constitutional system” is the complex field which actors (of various types: political and economic elites but also organized dissent) occupy to frame the power of directors of transnational firms and above all determine who is empowered with this framing authority.37 Thus the legal rules concerning managerial power in a firm limit the director’s discretionary power as much as they safeguard it. For some twenty years or so, this question has also been the crux of adversarial debates over the “definition” of CSR and its consequences for the mode of governance and business operations in a murky context between greenwashing and exemplary conduct: “voluntary initiatives” for some; for others a requirement of accountability and liability attributed in exchange for economic power (Capron and Quairel-Lanoizelée, 2015).

RAISON D’ÊTRE DOES NOT EXIST “BY NATURE”: ANALYZING THE SYMBOLIC TO UNDERSTAND A FIRM It is not surprising, then, that the debate about the firm’s raison d’être should not be limited to its utility. Friedman argues against those who ask the businessman to take on “such ‘social’ purposes as controlling pollution or training the hard-core unemployed” because it is faster and surer than government action: This argument must be rejected on grounds of principle. What it amounts to is that [those people] have failed to persuade a majority of their fellow citizens to be of like mind and that they are seeking to attain by undemocratic procedures what they cannot attain by democratic procedures. (Friedman, 1970)

Making raison d’être a political issue should be a shared conclusion across the board from the institutionalists – who since Marx have developed a critical analysis of property rights – to the neo-classical economists – who show that a firm’s productivity depends on critical resources (specific assets, personal skills) that make up organizational capital that cannot be individualized (Hart, 1995; Rajan and Zingales, 2001). Thinking of the firm as individual private property or a space in which the director has a free hand results therefore from an effect of domination. This domination is both material and ideated: for the dominant, it is reflected by an income that is unrelated to their productive contribution, through an extended capacity of command because of industrial concentration and of a privatization of public action,

36 Ireland (2017) shows how the creation of a corporation or company as a separate legal entity also serves to pool any financial losses of the firm while limiting the shareholders’ personal liability up to the amount of the shares they hold. 37 See Cata Backer and Teubner in Robé et al. (2016) for the various arguments.

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  99 through social distinctions, etc.; but these material outcomes also owe a great deal to the belief of the dominated in the discourse of the dominant about the firm’s raison d’être.38 Since raison d’être is shifting and varied, the essentialist approaches are invalidated: the firm is not utilitarian or individualistic “by nature” or “in its essence” as Friedman ultimately admits, even if it less widely known: A corporate executive has direct responsibility to his employers [the owners of the business] […] in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible […]. Of course, [they] may have a different objective [such as] an eleemosynary purpose – for example, a hospital or a school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services. (Friedman, 1970)

Thinking about and analyzing these material and ideated dimensions that structure an economic organization and its historicity lies at the heart of the problematic of critical structurism (Vandenberghe, 1998) as does symbolic institutionalism (Chanteau, 2017). This necessitates clarification of a few methodological points. The first point is: “to think social reification while avoiding the trap of [essentialism] is to assume that society is conceived as a relatively autonomous set of emergent causal structures, which significantly limit the autonomy of actors but do not determine their actions, for the causal power of structures is always mediated by actors who realize it in given situations, usually without knowing it” (Vandenberghe, 1998, p. 281). For this, structurism combines two axiomatic positions: the structure/action duality;39 the systematic ideated/ material articulation.40 Conducting a coherent empirical investigation with this set of axioms involves the key concept of symbolic internormativity: ● In anthropology (Geertz; Godelier, etc.), the symbol (symbolon) is a concrete form (object, sign, gesture, discourse, etc.) denoting an ideated relation instituted between two social entities (two people or two organizations), reminding them that each must comply with it even in the other’s absence41 (such as an engagement ring, your employment contract, a banknote, etc.). As Godelier (1984) explains, symbols only produce effects through their dual material and mental42 dimension: a symbol would be no more than an inert object unless it is meaningful for the people affected (visually, verbally, tactilely, etc.) by its

38 On the importance of alienation in the effective character of power of domination, see Lukes (2005). 39 Many strands of thought (Dewey’s pragmatism, Commons’s institutionalism, Baskhar’s critical realism) also contribute to this position whereby a social structure, pre-existing the person, produces normative effects on their conduct; at the same time, these structural effects require interpretative action by everyone and therefore personal action is not wholly determined. This explains the general reproduction of a structure at the same times as alterations to it (see, for example, the diversity and transformations of capitalism over two centuries). 40 Castoriadis (1975) provides an in-depth criticism of both materialism and idealism. 41 Hence, a symbol is not a shallow compensation denying any social recognition (contrary to a popular expression “Mr. Chairman, that is a symbolic gesture, not a real commitment”). 42 This word “mental” could be misread. According to Godelier, “mental representations” are conscious and unconscious, cognitive and non-cognitive, social representations built up by people from their social experiences.

100  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations materiality;43 conversely, your mental activity fails to produce any social effects unless you materialize it44 in a form that others can perceive and that is meaningful to them. ● In social psychology (Vygotsky, Piaget, etc.), symbolization is a socio-cognitive ability you develop, by which you represent yourself with respect to others (individuation), even in their absence, you represent the possible consequences of your and their actions, and you create categories by attributing value judgments concerning those actions, relations, and consequences (good/evil, pleasant/unpleasant, fair/unfair, etc.). This capacity is personal and social, and therefore non-individual, because it is constructed by experiences within structured, normative social frameworks (symbolic orders): the baby in its family circle, the pupil in class, the employee at work, etc. As imitation is the primary driver behind these experiences (Bandura, 1976), personal conduct in an organized situation incorporates a normative pressure that tends to reproduce the existing order identically (cf. the inertia of capitalism for example); but because symbolization is constructed over years through the experiences of varied normative frameworks (value hierarchies are not the same in all families, and they differ from those in an army or a business45) and because the capacities of symbolization mobilized to interpret the situation in which you find yourself vary from one person to the next, a variety of practices and mental representations is also reproduced and any organization is transformed. Accordingly internormativity exerts a framing pressure on personal conducts resulting both from structural effects and personal interactions, in their dual ideated and material dimension. But it is therefore not deterministic and leaves scope for diversity and even social protest. The comprehensive analysis of a firm’s raison d’être can then be taken up again without overlooking either of its two components of the symbolic and without likening the organization to a person: organizations produce effects; people act. The construction of a raison d’être (cf. Figures 5.2a and 5.2b) begins with desire or even rationale, with symbolization driving a person to represent how one might satisfy it (goal orientation towards an end, i.e., a futurity for Commons). The person must then begin to materialize this intention so as to bring together the necessary resources (providers of capital or skills): persuasive or reasoned discourses in the form the person sees fit (verbal appeal, mock-ups and prototypes, draft articles of association, business plans). Then the budding entrepreneur will have to come to terms with the resource providers who have been enrolled (compromises may affect every component of the project: details of the product specification, number of seats on the board of directors, etc.). Eventually the project will be more consistent with what the initiator imagined if it is already shared by others – as in collective undertakings, such as a consumer cooperative – or if the initiators have the symbolic resources to give themselves this instituting power.

43 A banknote is a worthless scrap of paper if you don’t know it is acknowledged by others as a payment method. 44 Hence, a symbol is not just an idea as in Berger and Luckmann (1966). Without materialization in some written or spoken statement and in observable practices, the creator of a maxim or a reasoning cannot pass on the idea, cannot affect you, let alone start a religion, a political party, and so on. 45 Without suggesting that each entity is different because it is supposedly free: it is still socially structured. See, for example, internormativity between patriarchy and business governance or other cultural patterns (Sum and Jessop, 2013).

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  101

Note: * The project is not entirely settled at this point though; ** The proprietorship, even the autoworker, is concerned by this “who” to palliate shortcomings (financial, technical, etc.) and support the business model (e.g. personal business in locally-grown farm produce).

Figure 5.2a

Social construction of a firm’s raison d’être (initial projects)

Note: * Who is entitled to participate in the re-evaluation depends on the history of the project, rules of access to governance (which in turn depend on the raison d’être that is instituted).

Figure 5.2b

Social construction of a firm’s raison d’être (ex post norm)

102  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Figure 5.2b articulates the social psychology of symbolization at the personal level and the anthropology of the symbolic at the collective level to explain, through the structured internormativity of personal social representations, the construction of a collective social representation of raison d’être. The raison d’être of the firm eventually set up is then a composite product whose meaning may remain equivocal, which is both a strength and a threat for its cohesion. In particular, the firm may turn a profit in the books of account without this meaning that it was for profit46 since everyone needs income to live and the firm cannot continue if deficits build up excessively over the years. If not openly stated (in the articles of association and memorandum), the organization’s raison d’être will therefore reveal itself depending on the trade-offs among those who are looking to grow richer (the desire to accumulate capital is one of the behaviors fueling capitalism) and those who are happy with financial gain that ensures their material safety (professional investment is also driven by a passion for engineering, the desire for social distinction, loyalty to a parent’s project or to achieve political goals: social inclusion through work, ecological relocalization, promotion of economic democracy, etc.). And for a firm to survive over time, its organization must successfully maintain a compromise that is meaningful for those who are going to commit their labor or capital to it, or buy its output. For they will judge its outcomes (industrial, financial, ecological and social effects of its activity) against their expectations, that is, the initial symbolization by which each agent represents his/her relationship with the firm – a judgment that bears increasingly on issues of social recognition that are also in play in business activity.47 This then provides a measure of the importance of the symbolic work needed to bring about a structural change in the running of an organization (Lawrence et al., 2019). Controversies about CSR are a good illustration of this, since it has been used so much to define “the” raison d’être of the firm both by the directors eager to safeguard the space of their discretionary power and their interests, and by NGOs grabbing a lever to transform what are deemed socially unfair or ecologically harmful practices. It should be understood that, contrary to much of the thriving literature on business ethics, CSR is not a pure discussion of ideas about the director’s personal convictions nor is it sufficient proof that the world has changed (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999) because an idea does not symbolize a new form of business organization unless it can withstand meaningful material tests: What effective access is there to governance of the firm when one is not the majority shareholder? How many women are in positions of responsibility? How many tons of CO2 are emitted? What are the social or ecological criteria for conducting R&D on future products? What guarantees are there that commitments to change will be lastingly kept? So, whatever the directions and the ways in which the organization changes, it is the institutional structure that must be reconfigured too. Hence the importance of analyzing the systems of rules in use.48 The IAD-SES framework of analysis can be used to organize the

46 This is why “hybrid” statuses are so very ambiguous: benefit corporations (US), sociétés “à mission” (FR), etc. 47 The fact that both the primary distribution of income and the effective recognition of many social rights occur at the level of the firm makes it an essential scale of framing for social justice depending on the capacity of representation in its symbolic order (Fraser, 2008). 48 Even a cooperative organization needs rules to demarcate access to resources, distribute outcomes, and settle conflicts (Ostrom, 2005).

Do organizations have a purpose? The symbolic constructivism test  103

Note: 1. Boundary rules specify how actors were to be chosen to enter or leave these positions; 2. Position rules specify a set of positions and how many actors hold each one; 3. Choice rules specify which actions are assigned to an actor in a position; 4. Information rules specify channels of communication among actors and what information must, may, or must not be shared; 5. Scope rules specify the outcomes that could be affected; 6. Aggregation rules (such as majority or unanimity rules) specify how the decisions of actors at a node were to be mapped to intermediate or final outcomes; 7. Payoff rules specify how benefits and costs were to be distributed to actors in positions. Source: Adapted from Ostrom (2005, p. 189).

Figure 5.3

Systems of rules to be analyzed in order to characterize an organization’s structure

field surveys of these systems on the scale of a firm or a political authority area (Chanteau et al., 2019) (Figure 5.3). The firm’s memorandum and articles of association form a first set of constitutional rules for its organization (setting out the object of the corporation, the rules of access to the decision-making bodies, the aggregation rules for amending those rules, etc.) which are a first symbolic materialization of its raison d’être. But those formal rules are never sufficient to structurally regulate the orientation of a firm. Understanding over time the consistency of its raison d’être further implies investigating how, within the firm, people and the positions they hold shape a standard interpretation and implementation of these rules on a daily basis, at the different operational and decision-making levels (Reynaud, 2002). The contributions from the anthropology of organization, the sociology of work, cultural studies, and gender studies are very heuristic here. The methodological elements set out above can be used to articulate these disciplinary fields in a coherent manner as part of a cross-disciplinary approach in the social sciences.

104  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

SCIENTIFIC DEFINITIONS AND POLITICAL ISSUES Producing for the market or maximizing profit cannot be presented, then, as “the” raison d’être “by nature” of “the” firm. This raison d’être is not even an objective universal or unchanging attribute waiting to be discovered by science: it is constructed in the symbolic internormativity of those actors who are concerned (in social, financial, ecological, and political terms) by the activity of a firm and who have enough resources at their command to structure its raison d’être … or more accurately what those actors construe as raison d’être. Thus the symbolization of the raison d’être is ultimately materialized in a narrative that imposes order on and makes sense of organizations. This common standard may be mobilized as an argumentative resource consolidating or contesting the instituted authority, depending on the judgment made of this order and of the conduct of whoever embodies authority. In this sense, the question of the raison d’être of the firm is profoundly political (Veldman, 2013), in particular as concerns the issues of social justice and democracy: Who is authorized, and how, to adjudicate between each group seeking to advance its particular conception of raison d’être and its practice of it? This issue of the firm’s governance cannot be dissociated from the role of the authorities of the political system (Joerges et al., 2005). Hence the importance, from a critical perspective, of procuring a tool for comparative analysis of systems of rules to evaluate the conditions of real equality for participating in the orientation of the raison d’être, its interpretation and its practical outcomes.49 As the long history of corporations since the sixteenth century illustrates, these are not new questions. They appear again on the agenda of social actors and governments after each economic crisis signaling, as in 2008 or 2020, the failings or even the abuses of business directors (Enron; Dieselgate; Servier; etc.). The ambivalence of the CSR movement that has endeavored since the 1950s to give capitalism a soul has made it possible to maintain interest in this subject without saying all there is to say about relations between business and society. Making raison d’être a subject of research also makes it possible to distance the institutional communication of business leaders promoting their “purpose”. This is because declarations, even those of leaders of major corporations breaking with the primacy of shareholders,50 do not guarantee any structural change – even in the aftermath of a major crisis like that of 2020. Likewise, regulatory developments confirming the possible diversity of raisons d’être will remain ineffective unless social actors take them up in order to move corporate governance in the direction of greater democracy.

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106  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Joerges, C., Stråth, B., and Wagner, P. (eds) (2005). The Economy as a Polity: The Political Constitution of Contemporary Capitalism. London: Routledge. Knight, F. (1921). Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Lawrence, T., Suddaby, R., and Leca, B. (eds) (2019). Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lazonick, W. and O’Sullivan, M. (2000). Maximizing Shareholder Value: A New Ideology for Corporate Governance. Economy and Society, 29(1), 13–35. Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A Radical View (2nd edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Marens, R. (2012). Generous in Victory? American Managerial Autonomy, Labour Relations and the Invention of Corporate Social Responsibility. Socio-Economic Review, 10(1), 59–84. Melé, D. (2009). The View and Purpose of the Firm in Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory. Philosophy of Management, 8, 3–13. Millon, D. (2014). Radical Shareholder Primacy. University of St. Thomas Law Journal, 10(4), 1013–1044. open​ Morris, J. and Hodges, T. (2020). Strategic Management. Oregon State University. https://​ .oregonstate​.education/​strategicmanagement/​. Osterloh, M. and Frey, B. (2013). Motivation Governance. In A. Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization (pp. 26–40). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Petrella, F. and Richez-Battesti, N. (2014). Social Entrepreneur, Social Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise: Semantics and Controversies. Journal of Innovation Economics & Management, 14(2), 143–156. Rajan, R. and Zingales, L. (2001). The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy: A Theory of the Origins and Growth of Firms. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(3), 805–851. Reynaud, B. (2002). Operating Rules in Organizations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Robé, J.-P., Lyon-Caen, A., and Vernac, S. (eds) (2016). Multinationals and the Constitutionalization of the World Power System. London: Routledge. Schlager, E. and Ostrom, E. (1992). Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis. Land Economics, 68(3), 249–262. Seijts, G. H., Latham, G. P., Tasa, K., and Latham, B. W. (2004). Goal Setting and Goal Orientation: An Integration of Two Different Yet Related Literatures. Academy of Management Journal, 47(2), 227–239. Simon, H. (1964). On the Concept of Organizational Goal. Administrative Science Quarterly, 9(1), 1–22. Sjåfjell, B., Johnston, A., Anker-Sørensen, L., and Millon, D. (2015). Shareholder Primacy: The Main Barrier to Sustainable Companies. In B. Sjåfjell, and B. J. Richardson (eds), Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities (pp. 79–147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starrett, D. (1978). Market Allocations of Location Choice in a Model with Free Mobility. Journal of Economic Theory, 17, 21–37. Stout, L. A. (2007). Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford. Law-Econ Research Paper, 07–11. UCLA School of Law. Stout, L. A. (2012). The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Sum, N. L. and Jessop, B. (2013). Towards a Cultural Political Economy. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Supiot, A. (2005). Homo Juridicus. Paris: Seuil (tr. Homo Juridicus: On the Anthropological Function of the Law. New York: Verso Books, 2007). Teece, D. J., Rumelt, R., Dosi, G., and Winter, S. (1994). Understanding Corporate Coherence. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 23(1), 1–30. Vandenberghe, F. (1998). Une Histoire critique de la sociologie allemande. Paris: La Découverte (tr. A Philosophical History of German Sociology. London: Routledge, 2008). Veblen, T. (1899). The Leisure Class. New York: Macmillan. Veldman, J. (2013). Politics of the Corporation. British Journal of Management, 24, S18–S30. Winkler, A. (2018). We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights. New York: Liveright Publishing.

6. Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths Martijn Boersma

Over the last two decades many of the world’s largest companies have been involved in scandals, misconduct and dubious ethics. Notorious examples are Enron “cooking” its books, Apple sourcing from suppliers that exploit workers, excessive risk taking by financial services companies leading to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Volkswagen installing “defeat devices” in its cars to cheat emission tests, the use of Facebook user data – without explicit user consent – in the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign and the Leave.EU campaign, and the working conditions at Amazon fulfilment centers – which exist in stark contrast with founder Jeff Bezos’ status as one of the richest people in the world. Due to the influence of neoliberalism there has been limited appetite among governments to correct corporate conduct or to intervene in markets. Neoliberalism advocates that a largely unregulated free market economy achieves the best outcomes for society, that the state should be assigned a small role, and that interventions to correct markets and to curb corporate prerogative are undesirable (Ostry, Loungani and Furceri, 2016). Neoliberalism promotes market mechanisms, self-regulation and business-friendly policies as solutions to collective concerns, and generally embodies the governing rationality of our times, spreading “the model of the market to all domains and activities” (Brown, 2015, p. 35). Rather than relying on interventions by public authorities, the dominant governing rationality is informed by the belief that the market is able to balance social, environmental, and financial interests. Apart from companies such as Enron and Lehman Brothers going bankrupt, other companies that have been involved in ethical transgressions have survived – and have even thrived. While insolvency puts a halt to corporate misconduct, potential damage to the reputation of companies, or threats to their “social license to operate”, seems to have had a limited effect. There is therefore reason to believe that market forces are not adequate by themselves to correct corporate misbehavior: despite numerous ethical transgressions, the riches of Apple and Amazon are unparalleled, bonuses in the financial sector are back to pre-GFC levels, Volkswagen’s share price and sales rebounded spectacularly, and 2.6 billion people remain active on Facebook. This chapter explores the reliance on market forces to correct corporate actions that are not aligned with the common good. It examines to what extent legitimacy theory adequately explains the dynamics around organizational legitimacy, and it proposes an expansion of legitimacy theory to increase its explanatory power. Practically, the chapter contends that the risk of reputational damage does not comprise an effective strategy to change corporate behavior. The use of social dominance theory and legitimizing myths expands the explanatory power of (organizational) legitimacy as a theoretical construct. In explaining why antagonistic stakeholders continue to rely on market-based approaches, this research suggests that they have either bought into the hierarchy-enhancing myths, or they have not yet developed compelling hierarchy-attenuating myths to challenge the status quo. 107

108  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The chapter is structured as follows. The first section discusses “corporate purpose”, a concept that rehashes the notion that companies should consider stakeholder concerns rather than merely shareholder returns. The virtues espoused by this concept are juxtaposed by discussing examples of corporate misconduct and ethical transgressions involving some of the world’s largest companies. This raises the question why these companies continue to thrive, despite the notion that not adhering to community values threatens organizational legitimacy. The second section examines the theoretical perspectives associated with (organizational) legitimacy, arguing that this concept is applied across several disciplines and theories. The third section explains how organizational legitimacy is operationalized within stakeholder theory, while reviewing the notion of the “the social license to operate”, and explaining the different tactics that organizations use to gain, maintain and repair legitimacy. Finally, section four proposes an expansion of organizational legitimacy as a theoretical construct by incorporating views from social dominance theory – notably the concept of legitimizing myths. The proposition will be operationalized by discussing the ethical transgressions of Apple, and the tactics it applied to successfully preserve its legitimacy. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that the “social license to operate” and “corporate purpose” are legitimizing myths that uphold the idea that the market can balance social, environmental, and financial interests.

ARE COMPANIES DRIVEN BY PROFIT OR BY PURPOSE? In February 2019, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was released from custody after having spent over a decade behind bars. In 2006, Skilling was sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined US$45 million for securities fraud, conspiracy and other crimes. In 2013, the sentence was reduced to 14 years. Enron went bankrupt in 2001 after years of illicit deals and accounting tricks that resulted in more than 5,000 job losses, eliminated over US$2 billion in pensions and rendered US$60 billion in Enron shares worthless (Stevens and Haag, 2019). The Enron scandal remains one of the largest corporate scandals of all time. Just prior to Skilling’s release, Larry Fink, CEO of Black Rock, the largest asset management company in the world (Fortune, 2020), called on business leaders to consider the purpose of their company: Purpose is not a mere tagline or marketing campaign; it is a company’s fundamental reason for being – what it does every day to create value for its stakeholders. Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them. Profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose – in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked. Profits are essential if a company is to effectively serve all of its stakeholders over time – not only shareholders, but also employees, customers, and communities. When a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability. (Fink, 2019)

The urging for business leaders to consider “purpose” is remarkable because of Black Rock’s size and because of Fink’s argumentation: Unnerved by fundamental economic changes and the failure of government to provide lasting solutions, society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues. These issues range from protecting the environment to retirement to gender and racial inequality, among others. Fueled in part by social media, public pressures on corporations build faster and reach further than ever before. In addition to these pressures, companies

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  109 must navigate the complexities of a late-cycle financial environment – including increased volatility – which can create incentives to maximize short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth. (Fink, 2019)

In underlining the importance of corporate purpose Larry Fink is, ostensibly, arguing for a shift away from shareholder capitalism towards “stakeholder capitalism”. In his letter, he argues that companies should no longer prioritize short-term profits or solely focus on maximizing shareholder returns. Rather, companies should aim to create value for all stakeholders, and – in true neoliberal fashion – he contends that companies need to do so because of the failure of public institutions to adequately address collective concerns expressed by the public. By promoting a narrative around corporate purpose, Larry Fink gives credence to the idea that companies are beholden to all of their stakeholders rather than merely to their shareholders. As the following paragraphs show, the problem is that the empirical record contradicts the supposed shift from shareholder returns towards stakeholder concerns. Between Enron’s collapse and Fink’s call for CEOs to consider their companies’ purpose lies nearly twenty years of corporate scandals, misconduct and dubious ethics. For example, in 2006, Apple was shown to source from suppliers with a poor reputation concerning labor standards. It was alleged that workers were earning as little as US$50 a month, while working 15 hours a day. Events took turn for the worse in 2010 when a string of suicides occurred at Apple’s largest supplier. Fourteen Foxconn employees took their lives, with another four individuals attempting suicide and surviving badly injured (Clarke and Boersma, 2015). More recently, in 2017, Apple became embroiled in “Batterygate”. Consumers accused the company of forcing users to upgrade by deliberately slowing older devices after a software update. Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that the update was designed to reduce the performance of older Apple devices (Robertson, 2020). Despite these occurrences, in 2018 Apple became the first trillion-dollar company (Davies, 2018). In 2007, years of excessive risk taking in the financial services industry reached its peak and resulted in the largest global recession since the Great Depression, up until the recession caused by the Covid19 pandemic. Large financial companies such as Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, while other financial companies received massive bailouts using taxpayer money to avoid the collapse of the world economy. Among others, American International Group (AIG), received $US170 billion in emergency credit. In the fourth quarter of 2008 AIG reported a loss of US$62 billion (Ellis, 2009). Despite the bailout and the record loss, AIG paid out $US450 million in bonuses to employees in its financial products unit in 2009 (Pleven, 2009), prompting the US Senate to debate the introduction of legislation to recover these funds. These plans were abandoned after recipients agreed to pay back US$50 million (Walsh and Hulse, 2009). Bonuses in the financial sector, widely regarded as creating perverse incentives leading to unethical behavior, surpassed pre-GFC levels when Jamie Dimon – CEO of JPMorgan Chase, another financial company engaged in excessive risk taking prior to the GFC, was given a $US 31 million bonus in 2019 (Davis and Melin, 2019). Jamie Dimon, like Larry Fink, has come out publicly to say that companies should consider the common good: “the [Covid-19] crisis must serve as a wake-up call and a call to action for business and government to think, act and invest for the common good and confront the structural obstacles that have inhibited inclusive economic growth for years”, he added that “[t]he last few months have laid bare the reality

110  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations that, even before the pandemic hit, far too many people were living on the edge” (Noonan, 2020). In 2015, Volkswagen was caught in the well-known emissions scandal, also known as “Emissionsgate” or “Dieselgate”. The US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had reason to believe Volkswagen’s cars were fitted with software that could detect test conditions, so-called “defeat devices”, that would detect when the cars were undergoing laboratory testing and turn on controls to reduce nitrogen emissions. The cars would then appear to comply with the agency’s standards but were actually emitting up to 40 times the nitrogen dioxide limit when driving on the road. Volkswagen admitted to systematically cheating emissions tests, it recalled millions of cars and paid large fines (Rhodes, 2016). In 2017, Forbes posted: “Volkswagen Wows Investors with Latest Profit Report, And Strong Outlook”. The company’s earnings had risen by 15 percent in the third quarter of 2017 to €4.13 billion, compared with €3.75 billion in the same period of 2016 (Winton, 2017). Looking at these financial results, it is almost as if the emissions scandal never happened. Facebook has been involved in numerous debates around privacy issues. In 2018, The Guardian and the New York Times reported that a company named Global Science Research had harvested data from millions of Facebook users in 2013 – without their explicit consent. This was made possible because a previous version of Facebook’s privacy policy allowed apps to gather information from about 87 million Facebook users even though only around 30,000 people had actually used their app. These details were later sold to Cambridge Analytica, who used it to create targeted ads to encourage users to vote for Donald Trump and Brexit (Badshah, 2018). The fallout of this scandal led to Mark Zuckerberg appearing in front of Congress in the US. Nevertheless, in 2020, Facebook had 2.6 billion active users (Clement, 2020). Various business practices of Amazon have also been called into question. Most notably, US Senator Bernie Sanders raised concerns about the fact that many of Amazon’s employees were dependent on food stamps. A 2018 report showed that one in three Amazon employees in Arizona relied on food stamps, while one in ten Amazons employees received them in Pennsylvania and Ohio (Brown, 2018). In 2018, Sanders introduced the “Stop BEZOS” act, which would result in companies being taxed the total cost of any government aid that its employees would receive. Sanders stated that “[t]he taxpayers in this country should not be subsidizing a guy who’s worth $150 billion, whose wealth is increasing by $260 million every single day” (Heater, 2018). In 2018, Amazon announced it would raise the minimum hourly wage for all US-based employees to $US15. To put this in contrast: Bezos makes around $US2,489 each second – more than twice what the median US worker makes in a week, and his net worth is greater than the combined gross domestic product of Iceland, Luxembourg, and Cyprus (Warren, 2019). In February 2020 Amazon reached a market capitalization of one trillion dollars (Vlastelica, 2020). In these examples there is little evidence of companies genuinely being concerned with stakeholder interests. The same can be said when looking at behaviors of the private sector as a whole. In 2018, companies in the S&P 500 Index repurchased US$806 billion in shares (Lazonick, Sakinç and Hopkins, 2020). Companies use share buybacks to manipulate their share price to their own benefit. Repurchases inhibit the investment in productive capabilities to sustain the company in the long run and therefore come at the expense of employees, as well as continuing shareholders. Excessive dividend payouts similarly undercut reinvestment in productive capabilities. Both share buybacks and excessive dividend payouts make no contribution to the productive capacity of a company. Instead, they disrupt the growth

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  111 dynamic that links productivity with worker compensation. The results are increased income inequity, employment instability, and anemic productivity (Lazonick and Shin, 2019). These examples cast doubt on the idea that companies consider stakeholder concerns as seriously as they do shareholder concerns. Despite the widely publicized examples of misconduct and injustice, we have not seen these companies being held to account by consumers or investors, nor has the “social license to operate” of these companies come under serious threat. It is therefore necessary to critically analyze the core assumptions that underpin “organizational legitimacy”. As we will see, organizational legitimacy is shaped within a wider belief system. The commonly accepted notion is that not adhering to these beliefs threatens organizational legitimacy. If that is indeed the case, how do we explain the scenarios described in the previous paragraphs? This research suggests that organizational legitimacy as a theoretical construct currently does not adequately explain these scenarios. As such, the time is right to rethink the ways in which companies can(not) be held to account.

LEGITIMACY (AND) THEORY Central to the idea of organizational legitimacy is that organizations need to consider pressures emanating from society, and deal with these factors accordingly, in order to retain legitimacy and continue their enterprise (Suchman, 1995). For companies, this means they should not only consider the dynamics of the market and the interests of shareholders, but they should also consider community concerns. This description signals a strong association of organizational legitimacy with stakeholder theory (Idowu et al., 2013). Organizational legitimacy complements stakeholder theory by providing an abstract concept that provides a motivation for companies to engage with stakeholders. As a concept that can be bestowed and taken away, it provides corporate stakeholders with leverage in dealing with companies. Legitimacy has several interpretations and is used in disciplines such as political science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology (Suddaby, Bitektine and Haack, 2017). Legitimacy as a scholarly concept has its origins in sociology. Max Weber’s seminal work at the start of the twentieth century discusses legitimacy as a broad political and social concept, specifically related to power, and identifies “traditional”, “charismatic” and “rational-legal” legitimacy (Weber, 1978). Weber stressed that power is legitimate if it is perceived as such in the eyes of those over whom power is exerted. Apart from legitimacy in a socio-political sense, we also have to look at the genesis of organizational legitimacy. Legitimacy in a general sense is closely related to organizational legitimacy, in that “[s]ociety grants legitimacy and power to business. In the long run, those who do not use power in a manner which society considers responsible will tend to lose it” (Davis, 1973, p. 314). Dowling and Pfeffer argue that, for a company to persist, there must be “congruence between the social values associated with or implied by their activities and the norms of acceptable behavior in the larger social system of which they are apart” (1975, p. 122). While legitimacy has many dimensions, definitions share a number of common characteristics. Suchman defines legitimacy as a “[…] generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Legitimacy has similarly been described as the attitude of people towards durable elements of society (Hybels, 1995), and as a “social construct based on cultural norms” (Nasi et al., 1997,

112  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations p. 300). These definitions show that legitimacy is not static, but that it is continuously shaped by changing social values and expectations on the part of individuals and groups, and how entities are expected to conform. It is argued that legitimacy is not simply something that an entity either does or does not possess (O’Donovan, 2000). When there is a rift between the broader value system and the impact of corporate activities, a company’s legitimacy can come under threat. Sethi coined the term “legitimacy gap” (1978) to describe this rupture. It is noted that “[l]egitimacy has emerged as a pivotal but often confusing construct in management theory” (Suddaby, Bitektine and Haack, 2017, p. 1). Perhaps even more so than in the various definitions of (organizational) legitimacy, the confusing nature of this concept is apparent in the different taxonomies that are used to classify legitimacy according epistemological and ontological factors. Suddaby and co-authors identify three ways in which researchers understand legitimacy: “legitimacy as a property”, which regards legitimacy as a resource that an entity either does or does not possess based on the existence or non-existence of a legitimacy gap; “legitimacy as a process”, which sees legitimacy as constructed in an interactive process, the process thus granting legitimacy; and “legitimacy as a perception”, which focuses on its perception and evaluation and sees cognition as the primary mechanism through with legitimacy is constructed (2017). Prior to Suddaby et al., Suchman (1995) classified legitimacy into three types: “pragmatic legitimacy”, which describes whether the characteristics of a company enable it to achieve its practical objectives; “moral legitimacy”, which refers to the congruence of organizational values with the normative expectations of the environment that surrounds it; and “cognitive legitimacy”, which rests on the organizational image and the societal acceptance of this image. All types of legitimacy show that it is an essential yet intangible resource for companies, which can be threatened and needs to be managed carefully. Suchman’s typology demonstrates that moral legitimacy forms the core of legitimacy as a theoretical construct: without the normative views of the social environment in which the company is embedded there is no frame of reference to judge the actions of a company, and therefore legitimacy cannot be used to explain the enabling or constraining of organizational activities. Surprisingly, it is not exactly clear what the repercussions are of organizational legitimacy being negatively affected. Davis (1973) says that organizations can lose legitimacy, while Dowling and Pfeffer even argue that an organization needs legitimacy in order to continue to exist (1975). It has long been recognized that threats to organizational legitimacy can result in negative financial consequences (Deegan and Blomquist, 2006). Considering the ascendency of neoliberalism and the diminishing appetite for government intervention in business affairs, market forces arguably become increasingly important in influencing organizational legitimacy. This trend can be witnessed in the growth of consumer pressure (Colli, 2017) and investor activism campaigns (O’Brien, 2020). Yet, it remains uncertain whether this leaves stakeholders such as consumers and investors with enough leverage to challenge corporate conduct. Apart from being used in different disciplines, legitimacy can also be linked to various theories. Legitimacy as a resource is related to resource dependence theory, which theorizes that the behavior of an organization can be explained on the basis of their need for resources such as labor or capital (Hillman, Withers and Collins, 2009); legitimacy as a process can be linked to stakeholder theory, which has descriptive, instrumental, and normative dimensions, and is concerned with how companies manage the (competing) demands of their stakeholders (Donaldson and Preston, 1995); while legitimacy as a perception can be linked to reputational

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  113 and impression management theory (McDonnell and King, 2013), which revolve around the portrayal of the corporate imagery. Institutional theory examines how organizations deal with normative pressures, which frequently occurs by copying accepted practices displayed by other organizations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In the context of organizational legitimacy, this means that organizations are more likely to prosper if legitimacy is obtained by conforming with its institutional environment, or by acting similar to other organizations that it shares this environment with (Haack, 2012). A useful taxonomy of legitimacy-related theories is the distinction between institutional and strategic approaches. Suchman (1995) divides theoretical approaches to legitimacy into these two groups: the first category is concerned with organizational legitimacy being gained by conforming with institutional settings; the second perspective is concerned with the way in which organizations strategically manage and even manipulate their environment to obtain legitimacy. The former approach has a normative footing, while the later approach is aligned with instrumental approaches. In practice it is questionable whether legitimacy can be viewed along such strict lines. Regardless of the theoretical approach, in each scenario where legitimacy is a feature, legitimacy is in a state of flux as organizations are dealing with the demands of actors that can (seemingly) influence organizational legitimacy. In addition, each theoretical approach posits that organizations will strive to maintain stability of legitimacy. Where theories differ is how the different demands and groups expressing those demands are approached by organizations, what kinds of strategies are used in doing so, and why organizations are (not) motivated to meet those demands. It is arguable that there is no such thing as “legitimacy theory” in and of itself. Instead, it seems that legitimacy is an explanatory concept that is applicable across different disciplines and theories. For example, seeing legitimacy in the context of institutional theory explains why companies do not only conform to the law, but also conform to informal norms. It explains why organizations meet and comply with informal institutions, as there is something that is at stake, that stake being legitimacy. Similarly, stakeholder theory argues that organizations have stakeholders whose claims they need to consider. The same applies to the addition of legitimacy to stakeholder theory: it assists in explaining actor motivations and strategies, and therefore increases the explanatory power of this theory. In short, legitimacy should not strictly be regarded as a theory, but rather a useful theoretical construct that has a strong interplay with other theories and expands their explanatory capacity.

STAKEHOLDER THEORY AND THE SOCIAL LICENSE TO OPERATE Stakeholder theory can bring together several key components of the other theories. Stakeholder theory harmonizes institutional and strategic approaches, as it can embody descriptive, normative, and instrumental views (Donaldson and Preston, 1995). It can describe managerial motivations within institutional settings, while also capturing the stakeholder demands. In addition, stakeholder theory can also consider social, political, and economic factors, and it does so by focusing on the dynamics between companies and their stakeholders within the specific context at hand. Finally, organizational legitimacy can be inserted into stakeholder theory as the abstract concept that represents the stake.

114  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Stakeholder theory was popularized by Edward Freeman in the early 1980s. What is often left unsaid about the genesis of stakeholder theory is that it was introduced as part of a strategic management paradigm (Freeman, 1984). Freeman described how companies could manage their stakeholders to further the goals of the company, he did not suggest that stakeholders should replace shareholders as the locus of the organization. Many scholars have built on stakeholder theory to capture the dynamics between companies and their stakeholders. In addition, companies have widely adopted the stakeholder narrative in their annual and sustainability reports to demonstrate their awareness and alleged concern for social and environmental issues. The previous sections show that the commonly accepted notion is that stakeholders can judge the legitimacy of an organization by evaluating its activities. The frame of reference in making this judgement is marked by stakeholder interests and more broadly with the question of whether the activities of the organization are aligned with social norms. However, arguably, not all stakeholder groups will be equally powerful, and therefore will not have the same impact in bestowing or threatening legitimacy. Following this reasoning, a company will be more concerned with certain stakeholder demands compared to others. In descriptions of who can influence legitimacy, literature uses broad terms such as “a status conferred by social actors” (Guthrie and Parker, 1989) or “conferring publics” (O’Donovan, 2002). Freeman describes stakeholders as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” (Freeman, 1984, p. 46). In a seminal work on stakeholder identification, Mitchell et al. (1997) describe how organizations classify stakeholders and their demands. In the context of legitimacy, these attributes can help to determine the influence of stakeholders, and how companies prioritize stakeholders and develop strategies to manage organizational legitimacy. The first and arguably most important stakeholder attribute is power, which determines the degree of influence a stakeholder has; the second attribute is urgency, which relates to the importance of the demand and the timeliness of the corporate response; and the third attribute is legitimacy, which concerns the judgment of the company regarding validity of the stakeholder group and their claim. The idea that businesses must act in accordance with societal values relates to the notion of the social contract, which states that if an entity is found to be in breach of the contract with society, repercussions can be severe and this may even result in the failure of that entity (Deegan & Blomquist, 2006). The concept of the social contract dates back to philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was initially related to governing entities. For Rousseau, the social contract intends to safeguard the freedoms of the people: while power may be exercised by sovereigns, this right is not divinely granted and can instead only be granted – and taken away – by the people (Rousseau and May, 2002). Hobbes argues that individuals consent to give up a degree of their liberty in order to benefit from the political order (Hampton, 1988). In short, social contract theorists such as Hobbes and Rousseau argue that the exercise of power is condoned by the public in so far as it is beneficial for the many and in congruence with prevalent values, while rulers are condemned to give up their authority once the conditions of the social contract are violated. Researchers have theorized about the relation between the social contract and organizational legitimacy. For example, Shocker and Sethi (1973) argue that a social contract between an organization and society exists, whereby the community grants the organization permission to operate – be it in accordance with social expectations about appropriate conduct: “an institution must constantly meet the twin tests of legitimacy

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  115 and relevance by demonstrating that society requires its services and that the groups benefiting from its rewards have society’s approval” (1973, p. 97). Evidently, this statement is related to the social responsibilities of corporations: in addition to reaping rewards it is also implied that a business has a duty to act in a socially responsible manner. According to Guthrie and Parker (1989), legitimacy as a theoretical notion used in management studies relies on the idea that an organization needs a social contract with society. In other words, corporate activities need to be regarded as desirable – or at least not in contrast with social norms, in order to be condoned by the community and therefore for the organization to continue its endeavors. If Weber’s socio-political view of legitimacy can be linked to the general idea of the social contract, then the notion of organizational legitimacy can be linked to the “social license to operate”. Indeed, research suggests that the social license to operate may well be “legitimacy by another name” (Gehman, Lefsrud and Fast, 2017). The idea of the social license to operate emerged in the 2000s in the mining and resource industry, which was “distrusted by many of the people it deals with day to day” and has been “failing to convince some of its constituents and stakeholders that it has the “social license to operate” (International Institute for Environment and Development, 2002, p. xiv). Other definitions include having “the approval, the broad acceptance of society to conduct its activities” (Joyce and Thomson, 2000, p. 52), the demands on businesses “that emerge from neighborhoods, environmental groups, community members, and other elements of the surrounding civil society” (Gunningham, Kagan and Thornton, 2004, p. 308), and as a sign of “social acceptance or approval… a socially constructed perception that your company or project has a legitimate place in the community” (Black, 2017, p. 18). The social license to operate has become embedded in corporate sustainability reports, as well as in company and industry policies and standards, in CEO speeches, and in statements by peak industry bodies: “[…] the concept of a social license to operate has been widely accepted by the industry as an essential attribute of success. It has prompted companies to look well beyond their self-interest” (International Council on Mining and Metals, 2012, p. 5). The concept has also been embraced by civil society: “[t]he social license is fundamentally about accountability to people and not just powerful interests” according to Kumi Naidoo, former Executive Director of Greenpeace International and former Secretary General of Amnesty International (Morrison, 2014). Despite its common acceptance, the social license “exists” on the basis of an unwritten agreement between business and society. Problematically, while an actual regulatory license has precise conditions, the social license to operate is intangible with conditions that are not universally defined, in addition to being subject to continuous change. Apart from its conditions not being universally defined, the idea of the social license suggests that it can be granted and revoked, propositions which are questionable given the empirical record. It has been pointed out that “it is easier to point to an absence of particular factors […] necessary for a social license rather than to know when all relevant factors are actively in place” and that the “absence of explicit forms of contestation can be interpreted as latent support in so far as communities have not offered any explicit point of objection” (Owen and Kemp, 2013, p. 32). The burden of proof therefore seems to lie with stakeholders to show what companies are doing wrong, not with companies to prove what they are doing right. In addition, the absence of community protest can be interpreted as consent. Regarding revoking the social license: while companies that act against societal values can ostensibly suffer repercussions, these only have potential reputational and financial bearing if companies do not break the law, which suggests that the social license relies on the market to balance interests and create desired

116  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations outcomes for companies and stakeholders. Therefore, while the social license is a seemingly useful abstract concept, and it arguably represents the organizational equivalent of the social contract, the way in which it is said to operate remains contentious. Civil society organizations are essential actors in exposing corporate misconduct and in holding companies to account. Non-governmental organizations and trade unions in particular are organizations that are ideologically driven and actively aim to influence community perceptions on corporate behavior. Through their campaigns, civil society organizations try to create a legitimacy gap by arguing there is a discrepancy between organizational behavior and social norms. The same can be achieved by the media through investigative journalism. In other instances, the media serves as an amplifier that reverberates concerns raised by civil society. Basically, the suggestion of a legitimacy gap is meant to threaten organizational legitimacy, which in turn is meant to pressure companies to respond to the issues that have been raised. “Legitimation” refers to the tactics that companies use to maintain, gain, or repair legitimacy (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990). Dowling & Pfeffer (1975) contend that organizations have three options: conforming by adapting to expectations; altering expectations among those that judge the organizations; and aligning the organization with institutionalized symbols or values that are considered legitimate. Lindblom (1993) argues along the same lines: a company can change its activities; change perceptions of its activities; distract from issues that are a concern; or alter expectations about the organization. A company can, of course, also choose not to respond. For example, the company may not recognize the individual or group that raises the issue as a stakeholder, it may deem the issue not to be in breach with its own values or the values of the institutional environment in which it operates, or the organization may not be concerned about the threat to its legitimacy. Other authors have made a distinction between symbolic and substantive legitimation (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990). Symbolic legitimation signals increased compliance through positive disclosures. Effectively, this means that a company shapes its image to align with community expectations, while not necessarily substantially changing its behavior. In doing so, the company aims to “appear consistent with social values and expectations” (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990, p. 180). Ashforth and Gibbs call this tactic “double-edged”, as companies outwardly meet community expectations, yet make no changes to their operations. Conversely, substantive legitimation is based on actual changes in practices. In addition to Dowling and Pfeffer, Lindblom, and Ashforth and Gibbs, researchers have identified a range of ways to classify corporate approaches to managing legitimacy. For example, companies conform, in which case a company signals it has adjusted activities, symbolically or substantially, with the expectations of its stakeholders (Sethi, 1978); ignore, which is a passive non-response to an issue; and relatedly a company can avoid, which is an active response to shun an issue (Oliver, 1991). Companies can also deploy a manipulative strategy as it can distract, in which case companies accentuate a different and more positive side of an issue, or point to a different issue (Lindblom, 1993); deny, to detach a company from an event by arguing it did not happen or the company was not involved (Elsbach, 1994); and challenge, in which case a company goes on the attack by undermining its critics or tries to change the values by which it is judged (Oliver, 1991). There are two further corporate responses to legitimacy threats that require attention. The first is compromise, which implies an acknowledgement of the issue, but also involves efforts by the company to seek concessions from its critics in implementing its response; and

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  117 finally cooperate, which in addition to acknowledgement of the issue involves the company engaging in a partnership to resolve the issue (O’Donovan, 2000). The latter approach often takes the shape of multi-stakeholder initiatives. These initiatives can take a substantive form and provide a way forward for groups to collaborate and solve issues, but they can also take on a symbolic form where companies engage so that they are seen to address an issue, thereby positively contributing to organizational legitimacy (Boersma, 2018). As we have seen at the outset of the chapter, companies that have been involved in scandals, misconduct and dubious ethics continue their operations relatively unchallenged. Nevertheless, corporate stakeholders seemingly have not entirely lost faith in approaches that challenge organizational legitimacy, as civil society organizations keep on targeting the reputation of companies in attempts to make them change their behavior. To explain this impasse, a critical approach to organizational legitimacy as a theoretical construct can help to reveal why market-based approaches to hold companies accountable fall short, and why these flawed approaches nevertheless continue. This task is aided by applying knowledge from other scholastic areas (Spicer, Alvesson and Kärreman, 2009).

EXPANDING LEGITIMACY: SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY AND LEGITIMIZING MYTHS To expand the use of legitimacy as a theoretical construct, this research incorporates notions from social dominance theory. Social dominance theory aims to increase understanding of conflict between different social agents by framing societies as group-based hierarchy structures, and by taking into account cultural, ideological, political, and structural aspects of societies (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). It postulates that the social agents that benefit from the status quo will demonstrate hierarchy-enhancing behavior – and promote myths that strengthen their hegemony, while marginalized social agents will express hierarchy-attenuating behavior – and use legitimizing myths that aim to undermine the existing hierarchy. These legitimizing myths are described as the “attitudes, values, beliefs, stereotypes, and ideologies that provide moral and intellectual justification for the social practices that distribute social value within the social system” (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999, p. 45). Social dominance theory posits that marginalization of social agents is based on ideologies and associated myths, which have become embedded in institutions such as companies and schools. These institutions disproportionately distribute sought-after goods such as wealth and knowledge to dominant groups, while directing undesirable elements such as hazardous work and unemployment toward members of less powerful groups. According to social dominance theory, social inequality becomes systematic because of this embeddedness in social institutions: as people tend to support institutions that align with their beliefs, they therefore support the manner in which these institutions allocate resources. According to social dominance theory, the beliefs that legitimize and enhance the existing hierarchy gain strength as the social status of benefitting social agents increases (Sidanius et al., 2004). Legitimizing myths are therefore an important factor in explaining social inequality. An example of legitimizing myths are paternalistic myths, which contend that hegemony is beneficial as particular groups are unable to look after themselves – thus justifying the need for the welfare state. Other examples are reciprocal myths, which claim that dominant and marginalized groups are in fact equal, and meritocratic myths, which suggest equal

118  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations opportunities while in reality enhancing inequality (Pratto et al., 1994). A taxonomy of legitimizing myths, which is relevant for the question at hand, concerns hierarchy-enhancing myths and hierarchy attenuating myths (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). The first kind maintains the status quo, while the second kind seeks to undermine it. The patriarchal myths are an example of hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths, which justify inequality based on gender, while feminist myths are an example of hierarchy-attenuating myth, which aim to undermine the patriarchy and strive towards gender equality (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). Identifying legitimizing myths can help to reveal how social agents uphold or challenge the taken for granted notions around organizational legitimacy. It can assist in analyzing how companies manage organizational legitimacy when responding to legitimacy threats, and it sheds additional light on the dynamics surrounding social and environmental issues. In other words, where the addition of legitimacy as a concept adds a focal point and motivating factor for social actors, and thus enhances the explanatory ability of theory, legitimizing myths increase explanatory power by describing how social actors maintain or contest the taken for granted notions that surround the gaining, maintaining, threatening, and repairing of organizational legitimacy. Up until now, social dominance theory and legitimizing myths have not been applied in the context of organizational studies. A well-known book by Lynn Stout titled “The Shareholder Value Myth” (2012) does posit that shareholder primacy has no basis in law or economics, but Stout does not explicitly use social dominance theory or legitimizing myths. Yet, the myth of shareholder value is a typical example of a hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myth, as it contributes to the hegemony of companies and shareholders while delegitimizing broader stakeholder concerns. This research proposes that organizational legitimacy currently fails to adequately explain how companies can be held to account. Applying notions from social dominance theory to organizational legitimacy implies that companies, as a dominant group of social agents, want to maintain the dominant governing rationality, which is that the market is able to balance social, environmental, and financial interests. Companies will therefore express hierarchy-enhancing myths to maintain the status quo. Negatively affected social agents will ordinarily express hierarchy-attenuating myths to contest this dominant governing rationality. However, the following paragraphs will contend that the key antagonistic stakeholders of companies have either bought into the hierarchy-enhancing myths that companies perpetuate; or have not developed sufficiently compelling hierarchy-attenuating myths. With the diminishing role of government intervention, the gaining, maintaining, repairing and threatening of organizational legitimacy increasingly relies on market forces. Questioning organizational legitimacy is a seemingly powerful tool for corporate stakeholders. Yet, while this tactic may prompt a response from companies, examples provided at the outset of this chapter show that threats to organizational have limited effect. Insolvency aside, every example provided at the beginning of this chapter shows that companies whose legitimacy was questioned because of scandals or misconduct have survived and thrived. This research suggests that the unquestioned reliance on the market to balance social, environmental, and financial interests is upheld by legitimizing myths. If we accept that brand damage campaigns orchestrated by stakeholders rely on market forces, we should also accept that corporate responses may follow the logic of the market. In responding to social and environmental issues after being pressured by stakeholders, companies may therefore be driven by instrumental rather than by moral incentives, meaning that corporate responses to stakeholder concerns become a means to an end (meeting financial

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  119 objectives by addressing stakeholder concerns) rather than an end in itself (addressing stakeholder concerns). As the market ascribes commercial value to the corporate brand and reputation, which are threatened by the campaigns of stakeholders, any corporate response that neutralizes the threat to the corporate brand and reputation suffices. This results in the option of an entirely symbolic rather than a substantive approach to social and environmental issues, without adequately addressing underlying stakeholder concerns. For example, following reports that Apple was sourcing from sweatshops, the company implemented a supplier code of conduct and hired a social auditing firm to make its suppliers implement reforms. In the words of CEO Tim Cook: “…to me that goes from everything, from environmentally, to how you work with suppliers, with labour questions, to the carbon footprint of your products, to the things you choose to support, to the way you treat your employees” (Haslam, 2013). Despite these public statements, new evidence of continuing labour abuses were presented numerous times over the course of a decade (Clarke and Boersma, 2015). As a former Apple executive told the New York Times in 2012: “We’ve known about labour abuses in some factories for 4 years, and they’re still going on. Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice” (Duhigg and Barboza, 2012). While Apple’s organizational legitimacy is allegedly “threatened”, the array of incidents in its supply chain have not had major – if any – impact on the company’s success. One of the key concepts that upholds the idea that the market can balance social, environmental and financial interests is the “social license to operate”. A major assumption underlying organizational legitimacy is that a social contract exists between companies and society. This is why the social license to operate is also referred to as “legitimacy by another name” (Gehman, Lefsrud and Fast, 2017). The social license to operate suggests that companies will suffer negative consequences if their actions are not aligned with societal norms. While intangible and merely implied, the notion of the social license to operate has become commonplace and is used by companies and civil society organizations alike. The social license to operate implies two things: first, that society can grant this license to a company; and second, that the license can be revoked. However, the examples of corporate misconduct provided throughout this chapter suggest that these notions are contentious. For example, Apple applies a combination of legitimation tactics to safeguard its social license to operate. Following Dowling & Pfeffer’s (1975) and Lindblom’s (1994) taxonomies, it conforms with stakeholder pressures by implementing reforms; it alters expectations by not taking responsibility for transgressions but by blaming its supplier Foxconn; and it aligns itself with institutionalized symbols that are considered legitimate, namely through a code of conduct and social auditing approach. While Apple uses symbolic and substantive means to manage its legitimacy, Foxconn deploys a manipulative tactic to maintain its legitimacy vis-à-vis Apple, as it decouples symbolic from substantive measures: Apple’s promised reforms do not align with Foxconn’s operational reality, as Apple’s supplier falsely signals compliance while continuing to breach conditions (Clarke and Boersma, 2015). In terms of Suchman’s legitimacy taxonomy (1995), Apple manages its cognitive legitimacy through a mix of symbolic and substantive means: the positive statement by Tim Cook about Apple’s approaches to supply chain labour issues are examples of symbolic means, while hiring independent social auditors to monitor activities at suppliers is an example of a substantial effort. In doing so, Apple ostensibly attains moral legitimacy by appearing to align itself with normative expectations expressed by civil society organizations. Despite the

120  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations fact that civil society organizations are persistent in their skepticism about Apple’s reforms, and continue to gather evidence which demonstrates that labor exploitation is ongoing, Apple attains pragmatic legitimacy by achieving its organizational goals and by reaching a market capitalization of $US one trillion. The case of Apple shows that the company deploys effective legitimation tactics to manage its social license to operate. Based on the literature, it can be argued that Apple views organizational legitimacy as a resource that represents value to the company – mainly via its brand – which can be maintained by managing stakeholder perceptions. By suggesting that its actions are congruous with the values and expectations of stakeholders, Apple positively influences public views and thus neutralizes threats to its brand. Arguably, civil society organizations on the other hand regard organizational legitimacy as something that is withheld or bestowed based on whether issues have been substantively addressed. Civil society organizations nevertheless continue to apply pressure on Apple and try to leverage the company’s brand to effectuate change (China Labor Watch, 2019). This difference in views on organizational legitimacy offers an explanation as to why brand damage approaches are an inefficient strategy to make a company fundamentally change its behavior, however it does not explain why this cycle of failure continues unhindered. There is no evidence to suggest that any amount of threat to the social license to operate posed an existential threat to Apple or any of the other companies mentioned in this chapter. This gives credence to the suggestion that the social license to operate constitutes a hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myth that upholds the idea that the market can balance social, environmental, and financial interests. One of the potential reasons why civil society organizations and other antagonistic stakeholders continue to take the failing brand damage approach to change corporate behavior is because they also have come to believe the myth that a company’s social license to operate can be threatened. Alternatively, there may simply be a lack of alternatives, which means there are no compelling hierarchy-attenuating myths to challenge the status quo. Ironically, the best advice for antagonistic stakeholders comes from a champion of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable” (Friedman, 2009, p. xiv). Whatever the current or upcoming crises may be, the defenders of the status quo have already developed a new legitimizing myth: corporate purpose.

CONCLUSION Organizational legitimacy is a useful construct within organizational studies, that can be inserted into several theoretical frameworks. Organizational legitimacy dictates that the actions of a company need to be appropriate within a wider system of beliefs. Organizational legitimacy can assist in assessing how companies respond to societal pressures and assist in explaining how stakeholders attempt to hold companies accountable. However, this chapter argues that organizational legitimacy as a theoretical construct currently does not adequately explain how the social and environmental impacts of companies are contested. It argues that we need to critically rethink the ways in which companies can be held accountable.

Organizational legitimacy and legitimizing myths  121 This is achieved by borrowing the concept of legitimizing myths from social dominance theory, thus broadening the conceptual use of legitimacy within the context of organizational studies. Social dominance theory posits that groups of social agents that benefit from the current social order will display hierarchy-enhancing behavior – and promote legitimizing myths that strengthen the existing hegemony, while marginalized groups of social agents will express hierarchy-attenuating behavior – and therefore spread legitimizing myths that aim to undermine the hierarchy. According to social dominance theory, the beliefs that legitimize and enhance the existing hierarchy gain strength as the social status of benefitting social agents increases. The introduction of legitimizing myths advances the analysis of the dynamics between companies and their stakeholders and explains the struggle to maintain or challenge the status quo. In applying a social dominance theoretical perspective to organizational legitimacy, it is suggested that companies, as an influential and dominant group, want to maintain how they are held to account for their social and environmental impacts, which is through market forces. The chapter contends that the social license to operate and corporate purpose are hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths that uphold this status quo in favor of companies at the detriment of society. In explaining why antagonistic stakeholders continue to rely on market-based approaches, it is suggested that they either believe the hierarchy-enhancing myths, or they have not created compelling hierarchy-attenuating myths to defy the status quo. Future research could apply the suggested theoretical expansion of organizational legitimacy to case studies that involve corporate misconduct and ethical transgressions, in order to bolster the operational rigor of the proposed expansion. Research could also explore the existence of additional hierarchy-enhancing myths that are used to uphold the reliance on market forces to address societal concerns. A useful and supplementary frame of analysis that could be operationalized in doing so is the work by Chomsky (2002) on manufacturing consent, to demonstrate how societal consensus on values can be shifted and manipulated. In addition, research could focus on the existence and possible creation of hierarchy-attenuating myths that challenge the faith in the market to alleviate collective concerns. Such research could also explore the specific role that antagonistic stakeholders may play in this context, whether they are consumers, the media, investors, or civil society organizations.

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7. Dialectical network analysis: a critical approach for researching networks in management and organization studies1 Martha Emilie Ehrich

INTRODUCTION Network research within and beyond Management and Organization Studies (MOS) is booming in recent decades (Borgatti and Foster, 2003, p. 991). The “network society” (Castells, 1996, 2000), the rise of network-based technologies (Fisher, 2010) and social network(ing)s (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005) are conceptualized as endemic markers of contemporary societies. The scholarly attention to network research is accompanied by its institutionalization (Borgatti and Foster, 2003, p. 991). Annual conferences, such as the European Conference on Social Networks (EUSN) or the Sunbelt conference organized by the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), specific journals such as Social Networks, and a worldwide network of network research(ers), such as Socnet, are growing hotspots marking the institutionalization of network research since the 1980s (see for example: Borgatti et al., 2009, 2014; Borgatti and Foster, 2003; Kilduff and Brass, 2010). Numerous scholarly debates have been held on the theoretical and methodological cornerstones of network research, whilst especially Social Network Analysis (SNA) has developed into a distinctive niche, which co-evolved alongside particular statistical advances in computational mathematics (Buch-Hansen, 2014). SNA is particularly frequented by Business Administration scholars doing research on networks. By employing such a formalist methodology to researching network relations in business contexts, the majority of Business Administration research is limited to understanding relational patterns as fixed and pre-given entities to be detected through formal and rigorous scientific methods, thereby reducing social relations to structural ones (Dépelteau, 2018; Donati, 2017; Erikson, 2018, p. 279). In fact, the following paragraphs build the argument that in particular research on inter-organizational networks in business environments falls short on grasping both the politico-economic embeddedness as well as the material-discursive realizations of this actually not-so-new form of organization – networks. To buttress the network research rationale, I first review the theoretical cornerstones of network research in Business Administration scholarship, pointing to its underlying structuralist assumptions. I continue by introducing the main tenets of SNA, then move beyond this niche and ground (inter-organizational) networks as social phenomena in their politico-economic

1 This chapter is in large parts an adapted and revised version of single chapters from my doctoral dissertation “Neither New Nor Heterarchic: Inter-Organizational Networks throughout the History of the Dutch Paper and Board Industry” which can be retrieved online at the Radboud University’s Repository: https://​repository​.ubn​.ru​.nl/​handle/​2066/​222292.

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126  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations context through building on key premises from critical political economy. By introducing these tenets to network research, I explicate four dimensions of inter-organizational networks in business contexts, and advance Dialectical Network Analysis (DNA) methodology as a viable alternative for doing network research in MOS. The chapter ends with an overview of applying this methodology to the empirical context of inter-organizational networks in the Dutch paper and board industry.

UNDERSTANDING NETWORKS AS STRUCTURES Structuralist assumptions underlie the majority of network research in Business Administration scholarship. Structuralism presupposes that self-subsistent social structures are the sole sources of social action and thus the legitimate point of departure for all social inquiry (Emirbayer, 1997), thereby turning away from an individualistic perspective on social change. By means of empirically mapping out social structures, the development of structuralist network approaches depicted a new, vital alliance of Economic Science and Sociology. Structuralists throughout these disciplines understand “networks as a priori social forms, which exist […] independent of the relations they make possible” (Erikson, 2018, p. 278). In other words, with the rise of the network paradigm in these fields, scholars started proclaiming the a priori existence and analytical primacy of relations between actors, instead of solely focusing on individual actors’ attributes and behaviors (cf. Knox et al., 2006, pp. 117–118). With relations per se becoming the analytical focus of much of sociological and economic inquiry, Business Administration scholars tend to understand networks as “a set of actors connected by a set of ties” (Borgatti and Foster, 2003, p. 992). Actors or nodes can be, for example, individuals or organizations, which are connected through social relations. These relations can be directed and undirected as well as describe different types of relations, for example, cooperation or friendship. This formal definition of networks lays the ground for four theories within network research: Theory of Networks (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011; Buchanan, 2003), Network Theory (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011; Salancik, 1995), Strength of Weak Ties theory (Granovetter, 1973, 1983) and Structural Holes theory (Burt, 2005, 2009). Whereas Theory of Networks deals with the preconditions by means of which networks are founded, thus network antecedents, Network Theory deals with the outcomes of network cooperation, thus network consequences (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011, p. 1168). Granovetter’s (1973, 1983) Strength of Weak Ties (SWT) theory, on the other hand, concerns the formation of ties between homophile (similar in characteristics) nodes and the novelty of information shared through such ties, and Burt’s (2005, 2009) Structural Holes (SH) theory concerns the structural position of a given node in a network, which determines the node’s access to novel information. SWT theory is, for example, employed to understand knowledge sharing and trust formation within and between business organizations (Hansen, 1999; Michelfelder and Kratzer, 2013). SH theory, on the other hand, is used to understand, for example, innovation potentials of business organizations and inter-organizational cooperation more generally (Collins-Dogrul, 2012; Everett and Valente, 2016; Obstfeld, 2005; Spiro et al., 2013). Such theories also postulate that the more centrally a network agent is positioned, the more unique and rich information can flow through that central agent, making them more confident in task fulfillments as well as enabling them to pursue their goals more effectively (Granovetter, 1983; Uzzi, 1997; Vasudeva et al., 2013).

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  127 To sum up, scholars working with Network Theory, Theory of Networks, SH or SWT theory distinguish network research as either testing the effects of network structure upon individual or organizational level outcomes, or as testing the relationship between non-network variables and their effect on network structural outcomes (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011). Most network research is, thus, empirically grounded and explores the interdependencies between networks and their surroundings. Thereby such research foremost offers insights into the correlative relations between structural network variables and non-network variables (Ahuja, 2000; Burt, 2015; Krackhardt et al., 2003; Soda et al., 2004). By doing so, networks are reduced to sociograms, which neatly map agents and their relations.

THE TENETS OF SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS In line with the definition of a network as a set of nodes connected by a set of ties, SNA is not a theory in itself, but more a methodology, which draws on graph theory by employing mathematical concepts to map social reality using specialized software such as R, Ucinet and Visone (López and Scott, 2000, p. 61). Common SNA measures range from basic ones, like network density (the actual number of realized ties between nodes in relation to the highest potential number of ties in the network) and degree centrality (the number of ties each node has in the network), to quite sophisticated ones. Brokerage measures are generally more complex than centrality measures as they do not only consider the realized ties of a certain node with other nodes, but also the overall structure of the network in order to retrieve the relational network position of the node. For example, nodes can exhibit the same degree centrality, but a different betweenness centrality, as one of the nodes is connected to more unconnected others in the network than the other node. Consequently, scholars argue that knowledge can be withheld or controlled by network brokers, hence suggesting a certain form of power associated with brokerage network positions (Everett and Valente, 2016). Underlying these measures is the assumption that (social) reality is characterized by consistent event regularities and that these regularities are detectable through rigorous scientific inquiry (Buch-Hansen, 2014, p. 311). More often than not, inquiry into inter-organizational network relations within Business Administration scholarship is guided by a belief in value-free science, in which theories serve as deductive models to test and empirically falsify (or verify) hypotheses (Johnson and Duberley, 2000, pp. 38ff.). These deductive models are commonly embedded in cross-sectional research designs, which analyze an abstracted social structure through graph theoretical measures and statistical inference in order to understand the hypothesized relation between two or more variables. These cross-sectional research designs have been critiqued by scholars, who emphasize the importance of understanding networks as evolutionary structures (Brass et al., 2004; Demirkan et al., 2013; Doreian and Stokman, 1997; Snijders and Doreian, 2010, 2012). Scholars of this niche argue that “some deliberate network modifying actions by network actors in the present may have consequences for network structure later. As a consequence, recognizing the impact of such agency on network structure is critical for appropriate causal inference” (Ahuja et al., 2012, p. 435). Thus, while the core argument of these scholars is that network structures are of a temporal nature and that agency must be brought back in, the privileging of statistical inference models in Business Administration research to find structural constants comes at the cost of ignoring all of which does not categorize as structural patterns, such as agency.

128  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Yet, to understand networks as an evolutionary process, empirical research on the interrelation of agency and structure is pivotal (Gulati and Srivastava, 2014). Only a minority of Business Administration scholars acknowledge that networks do change and that this change is due to internal and external pressures exerted upon agents through the network structure they find themselves in (Emirbayer and Goodwin, 1994; Gulati and Gargiulo, 1999; Hannan and Freeman, 1984). Agency, according to these scholars, is a structurally conditioned action of a network member, which in turn modifies network structures. An example of such an instance is a triad (three-node network), in which organization B and organization C both cooperate with organization A, yet not with one another. As soon as they also start cooperating with one another the triad is fully connected, meaning the network structure changed due to the agency of one or (in this example) two network agents. Next to agency, some network scholars have pointed out the relevancy of network embeddedness, taking the institutional and structural embeddedness of network relations within wider sets of network relations more seriously (Granovetter, 1983; Podolny, 2001; Huang and Provan, 2007; Lin et al., 2009; Rowley, 1997; Thune, 2007). Embeddedness literature within and beyond Business Administration scholarship understands networks as consisting of relations (ties) between agents embedded in a structure of further relations (ties) between agents (Gnyawali and Madhavan, 2001). Imagine the triad again. Embeddedness literature would stress that to understand why the network structure has changed from one point in time to another, one has to not only consider single instances of agency, but the wider relations the triad (or network) is embedded in. It could thus be that organizations B and C did not start cooperating with one another due to their mutual cooperation with organization A (for example a company of the same industrial sector), but due to a different network of nationwide organized SMEs, whom both are part of, but A is not. The problem with both – looking beyond the network-level perspective and considering the role of agency as currently practiced in Business Administration research on inter-organizational networks – is that agency is once more reduced to a structural constraint, which agents are embedded in a priori. Even though both embeddedness and agency literature are critical advancements in Business Administration research on networks more generally and inter-organizational networks more particularly, they both fall short on considering the politico-economic embeddedness of inter-organizational networks. In fact, by rarely analyzing inter-organizational networks as relational entities embedded in a wider politico-economic context of agents and structure, such research insufficiently accounts for the social structure networks themselves are embedded in. Social structure, understood here from a critical political economy perspective, describes the capitalist relations of (re-)production in which all social relations are immersed. These capitalist relations of (re-)production, also shape the contexts where inter-organizational networks are embedded. In the following paragraphs, I argue that inter-organizational networks are, in fact, historically contingent social phenomena. Against this backdrop, we need to develop tools to analyze them as historical geographies of concrete cases (Davies, 2011).

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  129

MOVING BEYOND SNA: THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC EMBEDDEDNESS OF NETWORKS In the words of Emirbayer and Mische (1998, p. 1004), who stress the importance of moving beyond the prevalent divide of agency and structure in most empirically grounded network research: All social action is a concrete synthesis, shaped and conditioned, on the one hand, by the temporal-relational contexts of action and, on the other, by the dynamic element of agency itself. The latter guarantees that empirical social action will never be completely determined or structured. On the other hand, there is no hypothetical moment in which agency actually gets “free” of structure.

Thus, networks are temporal-spatial instances culminating from the interrelation of agency and structure. The historical contingency of networks has been acknowledged by Business Administration scholars only in so far as networks have been conceptualized as novel phenomena in contrast to well-established ones such as market and hierarchy (Powell, 2003). In fact, a host of scholars studying inter-organizational networks in business settings postulate that networks increase organizations’ performance levels through stimulating open innovation (Borgatti and Foster, 2003; Chesbrough, 2003; Lee et al., 2010; Rothaermel and Hess, 2007). Networks, in contrast to hierarchy and market, are said to offer possibilities of increasing technological innovation within and beyond single firms, thereby boosting entire industries’ performance levels (Ozman, 2009; Phelps, 2010; Powell et al., 1996; Sammarra and Biggiero, 2008; Vanhaverbeke and Cloodt, 2006). They are, thus, celebrated as an innovative, heterarchical organizing principle for private and public organizations alike (cf. Jessop and Sum, 2006, p. 264). By emphasizing the recent development and rising importance of networks, Business Administration scholars indirectly see them as endemic to the current phase of capitalism, namely post-Fordism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005, p. xxii). There is a severe problem in assuming that networks are not only novel phenomena, but more so novel solutions to old problems of capitalist accumulation (Osborne, 2006; Sørensen and Torfing, 2016). Networks’ presumed self-organizing capacity is frequently obscured as a “quasi-‘revolutionary’ emancipatory force” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005, p. xxiii) and scholars postulate that “the state, now just one governance actor among many, can steer them only ‘indirectly’ and ‘imperfectly’” (Davies, 2011, p. 14). This so-called transformation thesis propagates not only a democratization of the existing social structure, but also that network cooperation is the materialization of the dominance of capital over state power in the current phase of capitalism (Davies, 2011, pp. 63–64). Yet, to view the establishment of networks as emblematic of the current phase of capitalism is misleading since networks as fora of organization are historically contingent social phenomena, which have existed throughout capitalist relations of (re-)production more generally. Capitalism rests on both the social organization of production, that is the exploitation of commodified labor by those owning the means of production for the accumulation of surplus value, as well as the reproduction of the means for human subsistence (Federici, 2019; Rai and Waylen, 2013; also see Camfield, 2014). Capitalist relations of (re-)production describe the economic and social order we live in, namely “the accumulation and competition of capitals” (Banaji, 2010, p. 41) and, thus, constitute a social structure engrained by power asymmetry and exploitation (Acker, 2006). Building on my first argument, namely that networks are historically contingent, current forms of networks, both as they are and as scholars understand

130  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations them, solely represent a change in institutional structure but not per se in social structure. This argument draws on a distinction of the institutional structure of capitalist society, on the one hand, and its underlying social structure, namely capitalist relations of (re-)production, on the other hand (Davies, 2011, p. 131). The conflation of both is often utilized as a proof for a new, consensual, interdependent, shared-power era in first-wave industrialized countries as represented in research drawing on the transformation thesis (Davies, 2011, p. 9). Actually, the assumed heterarchical nature of networks, meaning that their members are equal in terms of power distribution, remains a utopia in a social structure that is grounded in capitalist relations of (re-)production. “Networks cannot be conflated with capitalism, but nor do they exist outside it” (Davies, 2012, p. 373). The following paragraphs, which develop the dimensional aspects of networks, show that they in no way add up to the new, consensual, interdependent, shared-power institutional structure as assumed by a majority of MOS, simply because they are a priori embedded in a capitalist social structure.

FOUR DIMENSIONS OF NETWORKS IN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS The embeddedness of networks as material-discursive entities within the social realities of capitalist relations of (re-)production allows for the actual subversion of taken for granted assumptions and truth claims about networks, offering urgently needed alternatives for doing network research within and beyond MOS (cf. Alvesson and Deetz, 2000, p. 8). What does an understanding of networks look like that takes the historical contingency as well as the prevalent power asymmetry in networks seriously? In contrast to the postulation of the transformation thesis, such a critical view on networks understands them as an amalgamation of the hegemonic ambitions of political, administrative and capitalist class fractions throughout all phases of capitalism (cf. Davies, 2011, p. 14). Hegemonic ambitions entail the establishment of different “growth coalitions” by a hegemonic bloc, namely a durable alliance of class fractions which are “capable of exercising political, intellectual, and moral leadership over the dominant classes and the popular masses alike” (Jessop, 1993, p. 58). Drawing on Gramsci, hegemony equals “[t]he historical unity of the ruling classes […] [which] results from the organic relations between State or political society and ‘civil society’” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 52). While the majority of network research in Business Administration chronically underestimates the role of the state, a critical view on networks, particularly inter-organizational networks, is aware of the fact that one cannot think industry without the capitalist state, and the capitalist state without industry as their relationship runs deep in capitalism. In other words, I argue that inter-organizational networks are state–industry projects, which involve multiple agents including the state, in order to sustain national industries. Since in capitalism the state is always a capitalist state, each capitalist phase is demarcated by a changing institutional setup of the state, which reproduces capitalist relations of (re-)production (Poulantzas, 2000, p. 126). Each of these phases is heralded by specific “constellation[s] of legal, administrative and coercive state apparatuses to both legitimize and shield themselves from political and social contestation” (Bruff and Tansel, 2019, p. 239). Thus, Business Administration research on networks has to consider the particular spatial-temporal relation between state and capitalist class fractions at different points in time.

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  131 Additionally, the state is an instrument of class domination, a historically conditioned form of organizing domination (Hirsch, 1978, p. 57; Wigger and Buch-Hansen, 2013, p. 615). This said, the state mediates the conflicts between different capital fractions, while labor and social struggle are subjugated within these (Poulantzas, 2000, p. 125). Thus, one can also not think capitalist relations of (re-)production without class relations. As state institutions are agents in their own right, changes in the social structure due to condensed class conflicts do not directly lead to changing institutional structures. Consequently, the state relies not only on active or passive consent, but exerts coercion (Gramsci, 1971; Harvey, 2003; Jessop, 1993). In essence, the state’s institutional setup conceals who is the dominating class(es) and whom the dominated classes, due to framing itself as being representative of “the people.” Both anarchist and Marxist scholarship have pointed to the antagonism between capital and labor as constitutive of capitalist social relations (Wigger and Buch-Hansen, 2013), while black feminist scholars have in turn pointed out that class is not the only constitutive dimension of capitalist relations of (re‑)production (Crenshaw, 1989; Nash, 2008; see also Liu, 2018). Instead gender, race, nation and (settler) colonialism simultaneously determine these relations. In fact, political and material hierarchies in terms of gender, race, and class are hidden behind the concept of a capitalist state, which in tendency universalizes dominant capitalist interests as the interest of all. Thus, both state–industry and capital–labor relations are essential to the formation and evolution of networks more generally and inter-organizational networks more particularly. Yet, to understand business-related networks as embedded in their wider politico-economic context means to also consider two more dimensions: technology as well as competition and cooperation. As mentioned before, Business Administration scholars researching networks commonly view them as key drivers for technological innovation (Chesbrough, 2003). Within such research, technological innovation is defined as a knowledge-intensive activity, building upon the identification, acquisition, assimilation, and combination of knowledge, allowing companies to enter new markets or disrupt old ones, remain competitive and perform well (Lee et al., 2010). Technological innovation is not only the reason for organizations to form networks, but also its outcome. Therefore, Business Administration scholars explore why organizations form networks and how these networks increase organizations’ performance levels (Borgatti and Foster, 2003, p. 997). In fact, the need for innovation and the possibility for open innovation are often researched as the main driver and outcome of network cooperation (Chesbrough, 2003; Lee et al., 2010; Rothaermel and Hess, 2007). Scholars of this stream establish that inter-organizational networks are crucial to the survival of entire industries as these enable unique avenues for technological innovation. Yet, to “allow the socio-economic patterns embedded in both the content of technologies and the processes of innovation to be exposed and analyzed” (Williams and Edge, 1996, p. 866), means to not only understand technological innovation as having a direct effect on performance, production processes, working conditions, consumer demands and consumption levels, but that technology more generally and technological innovation more specifically are (re-)produced within the wider context of network dimensions (cf. Williams and Edge, 1996, p. 867). Thus, to understand technology as the third meaningful dimension of networks accounts for the fact that in capitalism, capitalists compete for profit maximization on the basis of introducing ever more “efficient,” that is labor extensive, as well as ever more productive technology (Davis et al., 1997, p. 4). Since “technology is produced amidst [these] conflicting social relations,” technology needs to be understood as both a material artifact and

132  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations as a discursive practice, being shaped by and itself shaping the politico-economic realities networks are embedded in (Davis et al., 1997, p. 6). In alignment with the centrality of the theme of technological innovation within network research, inter-organizational networks in particular are assumed to be a breeding ground for open innovation. Scholars of this stream corroborate that innovation pursued and reached through network cooperation is much more open, that is open to external inputs, than through other forms of organization (Capaldo, 2007; Obstfeld, 2005; Soda and Bizzi, 2012). More specifically, inter-organizational networks are said to enable organizations to combine internal and external resources, in order to “accelerate their internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” (Chesbrough, 2003, p. 1). These assumptions are primarily rooted in Powell’s (2003) already mentioned differentiation of market, hierarchy and network. He defines networks as “distinctive form(s) of coordinating economic activity,” depicting cooperative and heterarchical properties, which allow innovation to flourish (Powell, 2003, p. 301). These assumptions have been predominantly challenged by scholars located within the field of public administration. They contest Powell’s assumption that hierarchy is not a property of or incompatible with network cooperation (Kenis and Provan, 2006; Powell, 2003; Provan and Kenis, 2008; Raab and Kenis, 2009). Provan and Kenis (2008) argue that networks can in fact exhibit governance modes, which resemble hierarchy or market structures. In other words, networks are said to be a governance mode as well as an organizational structure. As a governance mode, networks can be employed to govern organizational structures more effectively, while networks as organizational structures need governance themselves (for example market- or hierarchy-based modes of governance) to function efficiently. From this perspective, networks are not only defined as a distinct form of governance, but argued to demand a form of governance themselves. In turn, trust is identified as explanatory for the establishment and sufficiency of a specific governance mode over others in networks (Provan and Kenis, 2008, p. 237). In addition to viewing trust as the source or basis of network cooperation, management scholars also view trust as its outcome (Grandori and Soda, 1995). McEvily et al. (2003, p. 93) argue that “by influencing the status and reputation of certain actors, trust affects their positions within a social network and changes the shape and structure of the network itself,” and they emphasize the importance of viewing trust as an outcome of both structural as well as agency-based network antecedents. Yet, when acknowledging the importance of trust to negotiate individual and common interests in networks and when taking seriously the critique that networks need governance, one necessarily has to question the assumption that networks are a heterarchical form of organizing. Due to limited attention to capitalist relations of (re-) production, network scholars fail to account for the underlying tenets of networks in business environments – competition and cooperation, which are two sides of the same coin. The fact that exchange-value is privileged in the capitalist mode of production over use-value, in turn makes inter-organizational network cooperation foremost an effort to decrease competition (e.g. Boaz, 2011). Since “competition disintegrates more than it unites […] cooperation and mutual aid – the antithesis to competition – are marginalized as organizing principles” (Wigger and Buch-Hansen, 2013, p. 608). In other words, cooperation always exists in a tensional relation to competition as capitalist accumulation regimes are anchored in competition to (re-)produce surplus value (e.g. Kropotkin [1902], 2009). As a result, inter-organizational networks take on new forms of institutionalized power-play between various capitalist class fractions throughout time. These class fractions compete with each other, while at the same

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  133 time aligning their common interests to maintain the capitalist system. Consequently, the imbalance of configurations of network agents varies over time. They can exhibit forms of consensus and power-equality, but this is not the norm. Thus, the fourth dimension meaningful to networks are the different forms of competition and cooperation, which dominate during different phases of capitalism.

DIALECTICAL NETWORK ANALYSIS The above explicated critical view on networks, which acknowledges the interlocking matrices of social relations (Collins, 2000), in turn demands an anti-positivist methodology, which allows to research networks as intersections of material-discursive realities. Dialectical Network Analysis (DNA) offers such a “critical-emancipatory stance” for studying and actively reconstructing networks (Benson, 1977, p. 18). The dialectical in DNA refers to the underlying dialectics of social structure, which involve “alternating patterns of intermittent social reorganisation […] oscillating under the influence of recurrent dis-equilibrating and re-equilibrating forces” (Burrell and Morgan, 1979, p. 90). DNA foregrounds an ontology that understands agency and structure to be “locked in a dialectical relationship in which each defines and influences the other” (Burrell and Morgan, 1979, p. 280). Dialectical inquiry, then, means to practice research that is “reflexive, interlocutive and oriented” towards contestations, fostering conflicting interpretations of differences that unite (Hardy and Clegg, 1996, p. 5). This dialectical inquiry is sensitive to the social power relations in organizations and societies at large, resulting from “the dialectical interplay between structural constraint and social action” (Clegg et al., 2006, p. 40). Put simply, the dialectical paradigm primarily focuses on change, process and the emergence of historically contingent phenomena, instead of universality and stability (Smith, 1979). Based on these premises, DNA highlights the importance of analyzing network relations contextually, focusing on contradictions and inconsistencies as much as on possible regularities in their (re-)production. In DNA the need to include meaningful contradictions between for example network agency, network structures and its politico-economic context, instead of focusing on sole correlations as done in Social Network Analysis (SNA), is stressed. In practice, such contradictions could delineate, for example, the antagonism of cooperation and competition in the hyper-competitive capitalist accumulation regime during post-Fordism. While one would expect that competition for surplus value limits cooperative ventures between firms, the opposite becomes visible in current inter-organizational networks: firms cooperate to establish, for example, innovative technologies, which, when implemented, grant these firms a competitive advantage. This reworking of contradictory elements in interaction with regularities is what makes DNA a dialectical methodology (cf. Alvesson and Deetz, 2000, p. 149; cf. Johnson and Duberley, 2000, pp. 116–117). To emphasize the need for, but also enable the reworking of meaningful contradictions and regularities in the material-discursive unfolding of networks makes DNA a worthwhile contribution to shortcomings in past and current network research within MOS. Even though DNA enables researchers to account for the capitalist social structure in which networks are embedded, not a lot of studies have utilized this methodology on a practical level (Evans, 2001; Marsh and Smith, 2000, 2001). All three of these studies belong to the field of public administration more generally and policy research more particularly. Marsh and Smith

134  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations (2000, 2001), for example, rework Benson’s (1977) original approach of DNA to include three dialectical relationships meaningful to policy networks and their outcomes. Similarly, Evans (2001) emphasizes the wealth of a dialectical understanding of policy networks, as it foregrounds the contradictory and reproductive forces of social relations on the macro-, mesoand micro-levels, namely the level of social relations of (re-)production, the level of networks, and the level of individual agents. These works, primarily located within governance research, have gone unnoticed by the wider community of network scholars, particularly by Business Administration scholars, which is probably due to the fact that dialectic inquiry is critical of and essentially at odds with positivism. Introducing DNA to Business Administration research on networks brings novel and, more importantly, long neglected realities of networks as forms of organization to the foreground. DNA postulates that no two networks are the same. Treating them in a generalized way and searching for models, which represent them in a law-like fashion, leads to an exclusion of meaningful aspects that influence and constitute the network, its structure and agents in a dialectical fashion (Marsh and Smith, 2000, p. 10). Furthermore, DNA is an inherently longitudinal method, which considers “how a network is produced, mechanisms through which it is maintained and its ongoing reproduction and reconstruction” (Davies, 2011, p. 126). Such a renewed focus allows grasping tendencies of heterarchical network structures to morph into hierarchy (or the other way around) as well as the surrounding politico-economic changes influencing such tendencies (Marsh and Smith, 2000, p. 9). To be precise, DNA helps to move beyond the dualistic discussion on network governance, towards a more dialectic approach to understanding networks. By analyzing inter-organizational networks as historically contingent, as embedded in the wider politico-economic structure of capitalism, and as involving multiple agents including the state, the assumed heterarchical nature of networks, meaning that their members are equal in terms of power distribution, is debunked as a utopia. DNA views power as a dynamic relation rather than a static resource or individual attribute in networks. Power is constituted through the relational positions agents occupy within evolving networks, thereby emphasizing that networks are always both sites of power symmetry (heterarchical) and power asymmetry (hierarchic). In this way, DNA overcomes the ongoing debate in network research about whether or not networks are a heterarchical mode of governance or need to themselves be governed. Historicizations of power imbalances between capitalist class fractions and network visualizations of power dynamics are, for example, worthwhile methodological tools to substantiate longitudinal network research by providing rich descriptions and analyses of the historical development of network dimensions and their intersections. Particularly, Business Administration research focused on specific industries or firms can gain significantly from a critical account of network relations throughout capitalist history. In fact, DNA allows to not only analyze network relations themselves, but what matters to their formation, development and ceasing. Therefore, DNA can be the stepping stone to a profuse wave of network research, where its politico-economic embeddedness and historical contingency can be explored purposely and in great detail. To sum up, the current scholarly application of DNA is adapted by suggesting (1) that four dimensions of networks are essential to (the history of) different modes of capitalist (re‑)production throughout temporally and spatially fluid phases, and (2) that the contextual analysis of networks as historical geographies of concrete cases must include the convergence of multiple sources of data (qualitative and quantitative) as well as research methods such as,

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  135 but not limited to, secondary literature analysis, interviews, participatory observation, and network visualization techniques. In this way, DNA allows for an iterative exploration of theory, methodology and empirics. Iteratively going back and forth between theoretical and empirical input is the very actualization of theory and practice as always already entangled (Wigger and Horn, 2016, p. 50).

APPLICATION OF DNA DNA, thus, depicts a worthwhile methodology for researching inter-organizational networks in MOS more generally and Business Administration research more particularly. To give the reader a better grasp of what an application of this methodology in an empirical context might look like, DNA was employed to research the roles inter-organizational networks played and continue to play in the development of an entire industry, namely the Dutch paper and board industry (PBI). In the following paragraphs, I explicate the different methods utilized within DNA one by one. First, the method of historicization based on secondary literature analysis was used to historicize the roles inter-organizational networks played for the Dutch PBI during the first three centuries of capitalist development. Furthermore, interviewing and participatory observation were carried out to supplement the historical data on networks for the current phase of capitalist development, namely post-Fordism. Lastly, the creation of a quantitative dataset and its visualization based on project cooperation data from the industry allowed for a detailed analysis of current network power dynamics in the Dutch PBI. Historicization of Networks Fundamental to any longitudinal analysis of networks is to understand present forms of networks in relation to their past occurrences. While more mainstream network research draws statistical inferences between datasets on past and present network cooperation, the critical approach of DNA suggests to embed networks of the past and present within their politico-economic context. To do so, a historicization of the respective inter-organizational networks and their four dimensions is indispensable. Thus, DNA does not follow the historical realist idea that history exists independently of the researcher as an “untold story” until discovered (Norman, 1991, p. 121), instead favoring a narrative construction of history “as a sequence of logically and chronologically related events organized by a coherent plot” (Rowlinson et al., 2014, p. 254). In the chosen empirical context, this plot is the evolution of the Dutch PBI since its origins around 1580 and its stories of success, survival and struggle in the form of the four network dimensions, state–industry relations, labor–capital relations, technology, and competition and cooperation. Historicizing organization is an arduous endeavor in terms of access to reliable information and the richness of information available on the subject (Rowlinson et al., 2014, p. 255). Generally, organization historians distinguish two paths of constructing historical narrations. Depending on the time and cost limitations of a research project, one can either base the historicization on primary data collection, such as archival research and contemporary witness or expert interviews, or one can base it on secondary data analysis, namely scientific literature written about the subject of interest (cf. Rowlinson et al., 2014, p. 255). I followed the second path of (re-)constructing the history

136  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations of the Dutch PBI’s networks based on analyzing secondary literature published on the four different network dimensions. Overall, the historicization was composed in multiple steps of creating a thorough timeline on three different levels of analysis. The first level, the level of theorization, was guided by a historical materialist conception of the changing capitalist relations of (re-)production. A critical analysis of network relations within capitalist societies has to account for the distinct, yet successive phases, which constitute capitalist history (Jessop, 1993, 2002; Jessop and Sum, 2006). More often referred to as modes of regulation, meaning the social conditions under which (re-)production is organized, these phases are the manner as well as the object of regulation (Hirsch, 1978, p. 58; Jessop, 1994, p. 276). In essence, history succeeds through continuous discontinuity. In times of severe crisis, each mode of regulation struggles to serve as a supportive base to the respective accumulation regime. Retrospectively, one can identify meaningful conjunctures for the gradual succession of a particular mode of regulation by another one. Therefore, the historicization of inter-organizational networks in the Dutch PBI is structured according to four capitalist phases: the rise of Dutch capitalism (1580–1815), Dutch monarchic liberalism (1815–1914), Fordism (1914–1980), and post-Fordism (1980– now). These four phases are fluid in their temporal and spatial boundaries. This periodization, primarily, sketches out the specific Dutch PBI industrial context and, hence, remains non-generalizable (e.g. Duménil and Lévy, 2001). Nevertheless, it can serve as a viable reference point for further industry-specific research, which is dedicated to offering a critical account of network relations throughout capitalist history. On the second level of historicization, the politico-economic context of the Netherlands, I relied on literature covering at least one of the four dimensions of inter-organizational networks in the context of the Netherlands. Even though the four dimensions are clearly distinguishable, the majority of the literature overlapped in multiple dimensions and thus cannot be assigned to only one of them. Lastly, on the third level, the level of industry, I relied on the analysis of secondary literature, which deals directly with specific aspects of the Dutch PBI. Most of the contributions were concerned with technological innovation, ranging from sustainable production processes to environmental-friendly logistics as well as industrial cooperation for the sake of technological innovation within the industry. Additionally, I relied on scientific contributions spanning fractional analyses of specific aspects, such as the evolution of particular companies, production methods or family businesses. Expert Interviewing and Participatory Observation DNA allows the historicization of networks in organizational contexts to be supplemented with information sourced from primary data based on, amongst many other methods, semi-structured interviews and participatory observation. Thus, I collected primary data in the setting of the knowledge and innovation hub of the Dutch PBI, which was established to carve out sustainable future avenues for producing paper and board in the Netherlands. For the analysis of this qualitative material I treated the notes I took, the words I transcribed from the interviews, my personal memos and the literature I read as an assemblage. The concept of assemblage can be found in new materialist methodologies, which understand fieldwork practices and outcomes as deeply entangled (Barad, 2007; Mazzei, 2013). Following this stream of new materialist methodology, I mapped connectives between the readings, the interviews, the notes and broader research experiences in an iterative way. This process

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  137 is called diffractive reading and describes “a methodological practice of reading ‘insights through one another’” (Mazzei, 2014, p. 265). In other words, neither of these sources led the analysis, but together formed the research performance. By re-listening to the interviews and re-reading my field notes at different points in time during the research process, the plot of the historicization and the storylines disclosed in my research writings were re-assembled (e.g. Barad, 2007). Underlying this post-coding qualitative method, is an understanding of interview data and fieldnotes as “an enactment among researcher-data-participants-theory-analysis” (Mazzei, 2013, p. 732). Consequently, interviews do not represent (the experiences of) individual interviewees and field notes do not represent the facts of an event. Instead, all qualitative data is treated iteratively as a whole, forming an assemblage, an amalgamation of stories or as Mazzei (2013, p. 739) puts it “an agentic clash on the surface with data,” ultimately forming a transversal research performance. Hence, my research performance was not a linear process; it was (and continues to be) an entangled becoming, trying to engage with the irreducible complexity through an iterative way of marking differences which connect. Therefore, I integrated quotes and information from the interviews, my informal talks with workers from the industry and my experiences at industry-wide conferences through the creation of a storyline, of finding contradictions and connectives within the materializations of the Dutch PBI’s inter-organizational networks. Quantitative Network Data and Visualization Techniques Lastly, DNA enabled me to enrich the network analysis even further by investigating the current network of the Dutch PBI through network visualization techniques based on creating a dataset sourced from inter-organizational project cooperation within the industry. The raw data, which I created the final dataset from, was collected from the electronic archive of the industry’s knowledge and innovation hub, which stored information on projects between 1998 and 2016. These projects covered either process or product innovation themes, included at least two organizations from various sectors and commonly lasted a few months up to a few years. The themes of the projects were usually clearly defined and rather narrow, such as the testing of novel production processes to replace the industry’s use of fossil fuels. Selecting data due to its availability and completeness is a common practice in archival research, in which one necessarily chooses, highlights, neglects, distorts and creates information (Ferguson, 2011). The final dataset included information on 48 projects and consisted of a total of 344 participating organizations, of which 38 organizations belong to the Dutch PBI. I divided the entire time span of the project data from 1998 until 2016 into sets of two years, while the first and last period span a total of three years. Therefore, each of the resulting eight periods contains a manageable amount of information for its later visualization. Furthermore, I classified all participating organizations conforming to their legal status as belonging to a particular sector by triangulated information from Orbis and LexisNexis, two databases that store up-to-date information on private and public companies as well as research organizations. The network resulting from this dataset is a two-mode network as it consists of events (projects) and agents (participants). In fact, for this two-mode network a tie depicts the participation of an agent in a project. Therefore, ties are not established between agents

138  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations themselves, until recalculated into a one-mode network.2 Furthermore, the ties in this network are directed since only agents participate in events, not the other way around. If recalculated into a one-mode network of agents, who participate together in a project, the network consists of undirected ties instead. I constructed the dataset in a way that would allow viewing the dynamism of the power relations throughout time and in accordance with prior research on network evolution (Ahuja et al., 2012; Gulati, 1995; Gulati and Gargiulo, 1999; Knoben et al., 2006). By acknowledging network dynamics, the network is not understood as developing from scratch during artificially conceptualized moments in time. In other words, the network of the Dutch PBI is not a star-like network structure at tx which then develops into a fully connected network structure at tx+1. The acclaimed network structures are neither independent of nor dependent on time, but instead dependent on the marking and, therefore, the making of time (Dolphijn and van der Tuin, 2012, p. 66). Thus, I constructed the dataset as consisting of latent ties, instead of past and present ties (Ferriani et al., 2013; Kenis and Knoke, 2002; Mariotti and Delbridge, 2012; Westphal et al., 2001). In this way, I account for the always already existent potential for change. It is the latency of ties that is congenial to the ever-present, yet not necessarily actualized inter-organizational cooperation. In more technical terms, the dataset is cumulative; I separated the data into eight periods, each entailing their own periodic information and all the information of the former periods. In terms of the power relations of agents in a network, I follow the conceptualizations of power by Allen (2009) and Sharp et al. (2000) who understand power as a dynamic relation rather than a static resource: Power relations, in topological terms, are not so much located in space or extended across it, as compose the spaces of which they are a part. On this account, spatiality itself is imbued with power; proximity, distance and reach are inseparable from the practices of power which define them. (Allen, 2009, p. 206)

Translated into network research, this means that power is not something given within a network, such as a certain trait of an agent, i.e., their social capital, but power itself is constitutive of the network. In other words, the power relations between the network agents are expressed in their structural network position in relation to each other. Thus, in the empirical analysis at hand, power is assessed as the relational position agents occupy within the evolving network. The choice to visualize the network power dynamics over time was informed by the accessibility of visual network data for the reader in comparison to providing summary statistics in meaningful tables and subsequent text. In fact, network visualization is discussed as both an alternative route to depict network statistics, and as a unique way to gain additional insights (Moody et al., 2005). Single graphs, when interpreted in succession, provide researcher and reader alike with a more tangible understanding of how power relations shift and/or substantiate over time between network agents. Through choosing different colors, shapes and labels, the researcher can highlight particular statistical information, which is in tune with the

2 For a more detailed discussion on calculating one- into two-mode networks see Agneessens, F. and Everett, M. G. (2013). Special Issue on Advances in Two-Mode Social Networks. Social Networks, 35(2), 145–278.

Dialectical network analysis: researching networks  139 pursued analysis. For example, by increasing the size of a node from graph to graph based on its recurrent and increasing brokerage position, this information is moved to the foreground, while other information, such as the overall centralization of the network, remains hidden. As a result, network visualization is a technique to make meaningful information on network statistics more readily available to the reader, while allowing for the mathematically correct calculation of the respective measures.

CONCLUSION The above outlined methods of empirically researching inter-organizational networks in the Dutch PBI provide an effective example of applied DNA. The iterative research process and combination of insights from secondary literature analysis, semi-structured interviews, participatory unstructured observations and quantitative project network data, allows for a thorough understanding of the inter-organizational networks in the Dutch PBI throughout capitalism. DNA does not follow positivist tenets by simply “matching observations to theories” (Porpora, 2018, p. 418), but understands (inter-organizational) networks as conjunctures of spatial-temporally bounded agency-structure dialectics that need to be analyzed as material-discursive entities. By employing DNA, scholars can gain insight into the evolution of networks as historical geographies of concrete cases, which correspond with actual events under real mechanisms of social (re-)production. Being able to advance scholarly understanding of the mutual relations between network entities, DNA always considers their spatial-temporal contexts (Donati, 2018, p. 436; Porpora, 2018, p. 417). To conclude, I want to once more point out that contingency and contextuality are key characteristics of (inter-organizational) networks and DNA accounts for the fact that power cannot simply be reduced to a transaction, treating it as a relational condition instead (Porpora, 2018, p. 418). Such a relational epistemology acknowledges that “it is the sui generis processual structure of relations that characterizes the emergence of every social form,” including (inter-organizational) networks (Donati, 2018, p. 434). This chapter offers a detailed and rich investigation of the politico-economic context of networks, their contingency and content (Erikson, 2018, p. 280). The whole point of dialectical network research is neither to reduce the ontology of networks to relations and neither to reduce these relations to networks (Donati, 2018, p. 436). Instead it offers a critical lens to understand the evolutions, meanings and materialities of networks (1) as historically contingent, (2) as always involving multiple agents including the state, and (3) as arenas of power asymmetry.

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8. The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations: why there is so little, and why we need more Fiona Meechan, Leo McCann and Sir Cary Cooper

INTRODUCTION Empathy and compassion are not terms often associated with workplaces. Rather, the dominant discourse around work and organizations circles around terms such as performance, delivery, competition, efficiency, effectiveness and profit. These are, of course, relevant concepts in organizations – any organization might be expected to ‘perform’ and deliver its core business – but they can never encapsulate the entire picture. At the heart of the majority of workplaces are the people who ‘do’ the delivery; organizations without human beings are empty shells: collections of real estate, technology, software, data and machinery. So while many organizations have a core purpose of delivering services and making money, their essence and existence relies on human beings to realize it. Losing sight of that reality is dangerous. Ignoring organizations’ human element can have catastrophic effects on the health, well-being, and morale of staff. If organizations treat their employees and clients as ‘cogs in a machine’ or ‘pieces of business intelligence’ then this increases the likelihood of disaffection and burnout. Many studies point to a crisis in poor mental health across all kinds of workplaces and occupations (World Health Organization, 2013; Naghieh et al., 2015; Purba and Demou, 2019). There is a growing understanding of the importance of empathy and compassion in managing people and interacting with clients, yet widespread evidence of organizations’ failure to enact it. This chapter, based on a detailed literature review of the meaning and value of empathy and compassion in organizations, seeks to explore the overarching question of the importance of empathy and compassion in organizations. The chapter aims to do three things. First, we will show that compassion underpins humanity – it should apply to all equally and it should be encouraged to flourish in all aspects of our lives. Second, we will highlight that, where empathy and compassion are lacking in the workplace, we see suffering for employees and for wider society and compromised organizational outcomes, whereas where we can bring empathy and compassion into work, there are benefits for individuals and for organizations. Third, we will demonstrate that bringing our common humanity to work is possible, when it is genuinely embedded into organizational cultures through values and practices. Neoliberal doctrines have grown to dominate many societies since the 1980s. But whilst they have tended to reify and naturalize notions such as rational self-interest, competition, deregulation, profit and efficiency (Navarro, 2020), they have also been found to be detrimental to working conditions and workplace well-being (Dekker, 2020). Compassion can be argued to be a much more fundamental and natural human state. Compassion and mutual aid (as identified by Kropotkin in 1902, and still utilized widely (Gulik et al., 2020)), 145

146  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations are vital for humans to sustain and nurture. Developmental psychologists have noted that even the youngest children display comforting, caring and helping behaviour towards others (Bloom, 2013). Many writers have identified that this behaviour has evolved as a way of ensuring the survival of ourselves and our offspring, as well as having the added benefit of enhancing our psychological and physiological health, helping us to function at our best (Gilbert, 2015). Compassion also helps us to develop social relationships, something Gilbert (2015) conceptualizes as a “social motive and social mentality”. The anthropologist Margaret Mead is widely credited with saying that the earliest evidence of civilization is where a 15,000 year old body was found at an archaeological dig with a fractured femur, which had healed – this demonstrated that another human had cared for that person whilst the bone healed – and archaeologists have also stated that compassion is one of the “socio-moral” emotions which make us human, giving us “evolutionary advantage” individually and collectively (Spikins et al., 2010, p. 306). While it is recognized that empathy and compassionate tendencies can be suppressed in people who have developed in or are living in challenging circumstances (Bai, 2014) sometimes as a way of avoiding exploitation, or amongst individuals with certain disorders (Baron-Cohen, 2012), Spikins et al. (2010) back up the Margaret Mead story with evidence from a number of archaeological digs dating back many thousands of years demonstrating that early humans and their predecessors cared for and collaborated with one another, as individuals and in groups beyond family members, over prolonged periods of time. Even though different cultures may demonstrate values in different ways, it has been argued that core human values akin to compassion, such as friendship and love, exist in all cultures (Hofstede, 1980, 1997, cited in Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999). The religious historian Karen Armstrong has studied the world’s main religious, spiritual and ethical traditions and found that compassion is the one trait which underpins them (Armstrong, 2011). And it is from these traditions that we see the principle of equity in compassion (Bai, 2014); that is, the fundamental principle that all life is of equal value, and so compassion is a rational choice to help another (von Dietze and Orb, 2000). As Bai puts it: By freeing compassion from the calculative thinking of who deserves it and how much, compassion becomes a true force of nature, and can thus serve the world in the widest possible ways. (Bai, 2014, p. 4)

The study of compassion crosses religions and beliefs and also crosses academic fields of study, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, moral philosophy, theology and religious history. As a vital aspect of human behaviour, it has clear resonance to the study of organizations. Concepts of empathy and compassion have much crossover with other terms, including, for example, sympathy, kindness, benevolence and care (Deane-Drummond, 2017; Sinclair et al., 2017). All provide a strong sense of what we mean, but when there is no one definition of what we actually mean (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012; Duarte et al., 2016), there can be a blurring of meaning (Batt-Rawden et al., 2013; Olinik, 2014), leaving room for interpretation. Considering the terms empathy and sympathy, Inzunza (2015) builds on the work of Wispé (1986) and considers that empathy is about one person being able to understand the experiences of another and being non-judgemental about those experiences. They contend that sympathy is associated with compassion, which they conceptualize as having a desire to relieve the suffering that

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  147 another person may be feeling. In this interpretation, sympathy is seen as sharing emotion, which can interfere with objectivity (Wispé, 1986; Hojat et al., 2002; Inzunza, 2015). In order to address the issue of objectivity, Singer and Klimecki (2014) contend that it is the response to empathy that is important. If one feels with the other and shares in their distress or suffering, there is a danger that this can lead to empathic distress, generating negative outcomes (also Klimecki et al., 2014). On the other hand, a compassionate response to the circumstances of another involves “feelings of warmth concern and care for the other” (Singer and Klimecki, 2014, p. R875) coupled with the desire to act to alleviate their circumstances. The key difference is that one feels for the other, rather than with them, recognizing that the suffering still belongs to the other, otherwise known as “compassionate detachment” (Hojat et al., 2002, p. 1563). Therefore, clarity is important, because empathy and compassion can generate very different outcomes, both for those demonstrating the emotion and for those on the receiving end (Sinclair et al., 2017). There are further problems associated with empathy, often linked to empathic distress. Where people are under particular pressure in work, through high demands and low levels of resources, it has been found that people can experience emotional burnout and find it difficult to demonstrate empathy, even towards people that they know (Bakker and Heuven, 2006; Dutton et al., 2014; Wiseman, 2007). Levels of empathy have been found to drop as medics (mainly nurses and physicians) go through training, possibly as a reaction to stress and desensitization (Benbassat and Baumal, 2004; Ward et al., 2012). Further, it has also been shown that people have a tendency to show more empathy to particular people, for example people who are like themselves (Bloom, 2017) or people who are more friendly or better communicators (Wiseman, 2007; Dutton et al., 2014), which clearly becomes a problem when we should expect fairness and equality, particularly in the workplace. Ultimately, compassion within the workplace relates to a process of firstly noticing that another might have their situation improved, secondly empathizing with the other (feeling for the other, and appreciating that all life is of equal value), and thirdly (and critically), taking action to improve their circumstances (Choi et al., 2016; Chu, 2016; Kanov et al., 2004; Simpson et al., 2013; Worline and Dutton, 2017). Compassion does not need to be reserved for those in distress; rather it is about supporting others to flourish and develop from their own starting point (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Dalai Lama, as quoted in Gilbert, 2015). A number of studies demonstrate that compassion not only benefits the person on the receiving end, but also the person manifesting the compassion, and through an emotional contagion, or ripple effect, even those who witness compassionate acts have improved well-being (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Lilius, 2012, cited in Chu, 2016; Moon et al., 2016). Although more and more evidence is emerging to show the benefits of empathy and compassion at work – for individuals and organizations – sadly, there remain countless examples of where this is not happening. It is important to understand the ramifications for organizations where empathy and compassion are absent. It is also important to understand why we have got to a place where such fundamental human qualities are missing in one aspect of our lives. We will address the widespread lack of compassion, but conclude that this is not inevitable. Providing optimism and hope, there is evidence that compassion and empathy are present in some workplace organizations. Using these examples, finally, we turn our attention to how we can embed empathy and compassion in the workplace, whilst recognizing the manifold challenges confronting this aim.

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WHY IS THERE A COMPASSION GAP? Why are organizations typically unsupportive places for discussing and practising compassion? The ‘modern’ factory or office is arguably an offshoot of industrial modernity, and historically there was little compassion to be seen in the workplaces of the eighteenth century. It could be contended that the root of the contemporary problem lies in how we perceive our fellow human beings in the workplace, where they become dehumanized as human resources, to be deployed, controlled and evaluated by ‘managers’. When we consider the etymology of the term ‘management’, it has roots in the term used for handling, training and controlling horses, from the Italian ‘maneggiare’ and from the Latin ‘manus’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012). Some outdated ways of controlling horses are still used widely across the world and many are cruel and painful, being used as a way of forcing the animal into submission by ‘breaking’ its spirit to ensure obedience (Leste-Lasserre, 2020). This is a stark metaphor, but not a huge leap to ‘scientific’ and ‘efficient’ approaches from the later 1800s onwards which aimed to mechanize, rationalize, objectivize and dehumanize job roles. Such dynamics can be seen across many of the most important management concepts and traditions such as bureaucracy, scientific management and Fordism, and cost accounting. The rise of industrialized capitalism, with its central focus on profits over people, accelerated this dehumanization and led to more divisiveness in organizations and society (Alvesson and Willmot, 2012). Layered on top of that, drives for ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ in the form of New Public Management have seen a myopic focus on targets, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ‘numericalizing the other’. Employee agency, input and discretion are deliberately limited and controlled. Professionals on the receiving end of such strategies are rarely seen or valued as human beings, and their voice and input are belittled and silenced, leading to yet further depersonalization (Vik, 2017; McCabe, 2016; Waters, 2014). If we accept that compassion is a fundamental human trait, then it is easy to see how this layering of dehumanizing practices in the workplace over many years has eroded our fundamental humanity in the workplace. This has happened to the point where compassion has been seen as an almost insulting term, representing a negative view of sentimentality and a ‘soft’ approach (Himmelfarb, 2001), where responses to suffering and sadness are associated with weakness and so are rarely demonstrated by those in power (Van Kleef et al., 2008; Martin et al., 2015). This has led us to a place where inequality and cruelty can easily prevail (Parker, 2002) and where those in positions of power often adopt approaches to management which are the antithesis of compassion (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012). Indeed, it has been found that where a person has a level of influence over the outcomes of others, they are less likely to demonstrate care and appropriate reaction to the feelings of others due to a poorer ability to judge others’ emotions accurately (Van Kleef et al., 2008). This could be linked to Bloom’s concept of empathy bias (2017), where people are more likely to empathize with people like themselves, and so a power imbalance could potentially remove that familiarity. However, it has also been found that those with lower power are more capable of resonating with the emotions of those with higher power status (Anderson et al., 2003), and so this bias would appear to be one-sided. This resonates with the disconcerting results of several other studies. There is evidence that people with a social dominance orientation (that is, those who believe that they are part of a group who have a right to dominate over other groups), actually have decreased brain activation in relation to concern for others and affective empathy (Martin et al., 2015), and specifically that business leaders and students of business studies are

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  149 low on empathy and focused on self-interest. Finance students demonstrate the least empathy and most narcissism, which then manifests in their professional careers in organizations where these traits are often actively promoted (Brown et al., 2010 cited in Holt and Marquess, 2012). Much recent writing has described the ubiquity of remote, insensitive and toxic leadership (Boddy, 2017; Reed, 2015) suggesting that senior figures of an organization often reach the summit by displaying traits of hubris, aggression and insensitivity. Taking this to the extreme end, the lack of empathy is also associated with psychopathy (Ali et al., 2009). Disturbingly, those lacking in empathy often appear to do very well in organizations, which: may be because the very nature of business with its often excessive focus on the bottom line rewards and reinforces the typical narcissistic, self-centered, greed-based and guilt-deprived mentality of psychopaths. (Holt and Marquess, 2012, p. 102)

Van Kleef et al. (2008) highlight a number of theories which might go some way to explaining this lack of empathy from those in powerful and dominant positions, and which might account for why those people who traditionally hold more social power and dominance in organizations – persons occupying leadership and management positions in the workplace – might be less inclined to demonstrate empathy and compassion towards those in less powerful positions. It could be asserted that senior leaders are less likely to notice (or ‘attend to’) those with less power (Fiske, 1993 cited in Van Kleef et al., 2008). With noticing being the first stage of compassion, we can see that there is an early gap in this process; they simply don’t perceive the suffering. Those with higher social power have fewer interactions with those with lower power because they simply do not need to; they have less dependence on them and little incentive to notice their experiences (De Dreu and Van Kleef, 2004 cited in Van Kleef et al., 2008). Van Kleef et al. (2008) highlight that those with higher social power did in fact notice the suffering of the other, but were simply less motivated to respond, or would respond selectively, “when doing so can further their own goals” (Van Kleef et al., 2008, p. 1320), fitting neatly with concepts of self-interest enduring since at least industrial modernity (Kumar, 2005), and with reports suggesting those in power fear that demonstrating compassion will lead to others taking advantage of them (McLaughlin et al., 2003 cited in Martin et al., 2015). Significantly, Van Kleef et al. (2008) also found a strong suggestion that “the emotions of powerful individuals disproportionately sway the direction of social interactions” (p. 1320), which would help to explain the development of organizational cultures lacking in compassion. Classic (highly controversial) experiments such as those by Milgram (1974) and Zimbardo (2007) suggest that organizational members can be dangerously obedient to those in ‘authority’. Formal organizations tend to reward robustness and the suppression of emotion. Sadness has been found to be perceived as a ‘low-status emotion’ associated with incompetence and weakness (Tiedens, 2001 and Tiedens et al., 2000 cited in Van Kleef et al., 2008). Those in higher power positions are less likely to demonstrate it. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that they do not feel it, only that they do not admit to feeling it. Associated with this, those in power are less likely to respond to sadness in others. And those who fear demonstrating compassion have also been found to fear receiving it and so may reject it, because compassion conflicts with their world view of maintaining a status quo of power and dominance (Martin et al., 2015). But this inability, unwillingness, fear or rejection of empathy and compassion, may come at a high cost to the individual; perhaps their power and social dominance may remain

150  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations intact, but it is likely that they will have more difficulties with relationships, their physical and mental health will be compromised and their performance at work will be reduced (Van Kleef et al., 2008; Martin et al., 2015). Throughout all of these discussions a key – and disturbing – recurring issue is that, for all we know about how valuable compassion can be, organizations seem unable to eradicate toxicity and they repeatedly fail to instigate more compassionate approaches. The following sections will explore the problems associated with a lack of organizational empathy and compassion, and the benefits that can accrue from instilling it.

WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT EMPATHY AND COMPASSION AT WORK? Much of the writing on compassion at work starts from the ontological assumption that suffering is part of organizational life; work overload, toxic work relationships, bullying, managing home life alongside work, and illness (Chu, 2016; Moon et al., 2016; Kanov et al., 2004; Dutton et al., 2014). It tends also to assume that suffering has a range of implications and costs, for the individual, for the organization and for society. Research is increasingly highlighting many negative outcomes associated with a lack of compassion in organization, including: an increase in deviant workplace behaviour, resentment and anger, poor relationships, conflict, bullying, unfairness and injustice, which are all associated with reduced employee well-being and performance (Martin et al., 2015; Simpson et al., 2013). In many cases, empathy has been linked to ethical leadership and decision making (Dietz and Kleinlogel, 2014) which in turn has been found to have a positive relationship with employee performance (Walumbwa et al., 2011). The opposite is also true. Where empathy is lacking amongst those in management and leadership positions in organizations, we often find a lack of ethical practice and even psychopathy, which in the workplace has been found to be associated with higher levels of psychological distress amongst staff, and lower levels of job satisfaction, well-being and performance, as well as organizational problems such as poor training, no information sharing or support and a lack of corporate social responsibility (Mathieu et al., 2014; Schyns and Shilling, 2013; Holt and Marquess, 2012). Scheming, dishonesty and unethical behaviour are all associated with organizational cultures where there is a lack of empathy (Holt and Marquess, 2012). Many cases of unethical behaviour have become public scandals, including car manufacturers cheating on emissions tests (Mansouri, 2016), pharmaceutical companies ‘price-gouging’ (Morgan et al., 2020), financial misconduct and collapses of companies such as Enron and Lehman Brothers (Campbell and Zegwaard, 2011), and safety failures and whistleblower silencing at nuclear power facilities (Mueller, 2020). Such misconduct has profoundly negative impacts on customers, the environment and society. It can also be devastating for these organizations and their executives. An analysis of organizational responses to the floods in Brisbane Central Business District in Australia in 2011, found that some organizations neglected their employees in attempts to protect their income. This included not allowing staff to be evacuated as the flooding started, poor communication with staff, making unreasonable demands on people and even failing to pay staff whilst they were unable to work. These actions might be seen as making ‘efficient’ use of managerial prerogative, but in the longer term it led to employees distancing themselves emotionally from the organization due to feelings of anger, injustice and disappointment (Simpson et al., 2013). The longer-term impact of such

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  151 a lack of empathy for human beings being caught up in a crisis scenario, was devastating to the business. Perhaps one of the most shocking cases in recent times occurred at France Telecom, where, between 2008 and 2011, 69 members of staff died by suicide, many in the workplace, following the deliberate development by senior managers of toxic conditions within the organization, designed to push staff to leave the organization following a ruthless focus on profit and shareholder value (Chabrak et al., 2016). The social suffering created has been conceptualized as leading to the phenomenon described by Durkheim as ‘anomic suicide’, whereby social relationships in the organization were deliberately destabilized (see Sweet, 2019) and individuals’ sense of meaning and identity were sabotaged, leading to isolation and suicidal ideation (Waters, 2014, 2015; Chabrak et al., 2016). These cases are all from private sector organizations, where we are used to seeing a focus on profits over people, but it is important also not to assume that some organizations will be more compassionate than others, because of the nature of their work. This was sharply demonstrated in the case of the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust in the UK (Francis, 2013) and has also been found in relation to other organizations that we might expect to have a core role in caring for people (Oakes, 2012; Wise, 2015). In Mid-Staffordshire, when investigations were finally made following ongoing complaints by patients and their families, the Francis Inquiry found evidence of poor care and unacceptably high mortality rates because of a lack of compassion and care by some staff, within a wider context of an organizational culture “not conducive to providing good care for patients or providing a supportive working environment for staff” (Francis, 2013, p. 13). And we should also not assume that the lack of empathy and compassion will only be in existence in such high-profile cases. In fact suffering in organizations happens on a daily, and almost expected and accepted, basis in workplaces all over the world, where managers pay little or no regard to the impact on the individual of increasing workloads, pressure to achieve targets and constant organizational change, and fail to recognize employees’ qualities. This leads people to feel, daily, like they are fundamentally not valued and their humanity is invalid in the place where they spend a huge proportion of their lives (Worline and Dutton, 2017). Overall, the evidence is stark. Where we lack empathy and compassion, and deny our humanity in the workplace, suffering is the outcome. Holt and Marquess are clear in their assessment: “empathy is an essential aspect of 21st century leadership and can no longer be ignored if we want to prevent continuation of ethical disasters” (2012, p. 104).

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DO HAVE EMPATHY AND COMPASSION? After a depressing analysis thus far, thankfully there are grounds for optimism and mounting evidence that the tide may be turning on organizational culture, in some places, towards more focus on empathy and compassion in work (Fryer, 2013). Accepting that workplaces can create much suffering, it is well recognized that empathy and compassion – the demonstration of genuine care and support for fellow humans – could well be an antidote. In Germany, the traditional approach of the manager as “tough on the issue, tough on the person” appears to have taken place alongside some economic success in the late twentieth century; however in 2002 there was a call for managers to adopt a more human orientated approach – “tough on the issue, soft on the person” – to reflect wider social values and adopting a compassionate

152  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations approach which would facilitate more sensitivity to and more appropriate response to the needs of the diversity of human beings across the world (Brodbeck et al., 2002, p. 16). In 2012 the Academy of Management Review produced a special edition on ‘Creating Caring and Compassionate Organizations’, which opened with an extract from a letter written by Albert Einstein in 1950, calling for humanity to extend “our circle of compassion” (Rynes et al., 2012, p. 504); reinforcing the evidence to show that compassion is central to our humanity, and in fact sits well with traditional business narratives: In the past twenty-five years or so, empirical evidence has begun to suggest the possibility of symbiotic positive relationships between emotions and reason, compassion and justice, and altruism and self-interest. (Rynes et al., 2012, p. 507)

In 2017, Worline and Dutton set out copious amounts of evidence supporting the business benefits of compassion at work – increasing profits through improving learning and innovation; collaboration; adaptability; service quality; and talent management – and again restated the plea for a call for action to reduce suffering in organizations through ‘Awakening Compassion at Work’ (Worline and Dutton, 2017). Highlighting the business benefits of empathy and compassion can help to capture the attention of business leaders to engage them in the debate, and of course this is important. However, from a critical and ethical point of view, if we are to have empathy with our fellow human beings, the moral starting point must be that we should honour our fundamental humanity at all times, including in the workplace. Human dignity should be respected, and empathy should be used not because there is ‘a business case’ for it, but because it is right and just. There is evidence that those approaches to compassion which are primarily motivated by a desire to improve performance and productivity are likely to lead to a longer-term resistance from staff “either through physical or emotional distancing” (Simpson et al., 2013, p. 388). But if an organizational approach to compassion is considered genuine and authentic, founded on ethical principles of valuing human beings over human resources to reduce suffering, this approach can generate collective feelings of trust, commitment and loyalty which can lead to improvements for the whole organization (Simpson et al., 2013). Put simply, putting profits before people leads to suffering; putting people before profits, conversely leads to improvements in both. In addition to day-to-day business, empathy and compassion are critical in relation to more extreme, and perhaps less predictable, events experienced in organizations. Examining the Brisbane Central Business District flooding event in Australia in 2011, Simpson et al. (2013) found that key features of compassionate responses by organizations included clarifying that the safety of the staff and their families was paramount, highlighting that their fundamental needs as human beings came before work commitments. In addition, organizations made it clear to people that they would continue to pay them when they couldn’t work because of the conditions, which quickly removed the potential for added anxiety around financial security which would have compounded the immediate worry around the flooding. Some organizations followed up staff to ask about their well-being and keep them updated, and those demonstrating the highest levels of compassion also provided additional financial support to assist staff to make up for personal losses, going above and beyond their organizational responsibilities. However, ultimately it’s not the money that counts. Rather: “It is the perceived care that is interpreted and validated by staff and not necessarily the monetary value of how compassion is articulated” (Simpson et al., 2013, p. 398).

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  153 Those organizations that demonstrated such compassionate responses to their workers generated feelings of pride and gratitude amongst their staff which in turn led to increased organizational commitment. And these findings seem to be consistent in relation to dealing with traumatic events in work; Dutton et al. (2002) highlight cases in relation to companies whose employees were involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US and the case of a manufacturing plant destroyed by fire, amongst others, and show that where organizations respond compassionately to staff, understanding and responding to their human needs before the financial wants of shareholders, the ‘payback’ is profound and people have been seen to come back into the workplace earlier than might have been expected, and even improve output and productivity. Where there is shared trauma related to work, if colleagues experience a compassionate response in their work, they often come through the experience with stronger relationships and an improved sense of belonging (Powley, 2009); they recover and return to regular, and sometimes improved functioning, more quickly (Lilius et al., 2011 cited in Simpson et al., 2013; Moon et al., 2016). In general, compassion at work connects people psychologically as colleagues and so strengthens bonds between them (Frost et al., 2000), which is important both for social support within organizations, which improves individual resilience, and for effective team working, which improves performance (West, 2012). Empathy and compassion are also directly linked to better relationships between leaders and staff, and this in turn has been widely shown to lower stress and improve performance (Dutton et al., 2014; Gunther et al., 2007; Inzunza, 2015; Kellett et al., 2002; Rahman and Castelli, 2013; Walumbwa et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2011). And where people have a belief that their managers and leaders care about them as human beings, those staff have higher levels of job satisfaction, and in turn increased organizational commitment; they are more likely to demonstrate pro-social behaviour and are less likely to leave their jobs, which also leads to improved organizational performance and reduced organizational costs (Lilius et al., 2011; Moon et al., 2016; Martin et al., 2014). Further, when people feel more emotional ties to one another as a result of experiencing compassion, they are more likely to demonstrate compassion to others, thus creating the ripple effect mentioned above (Lilius, 2012 cited in Chu, 2016). Another added benefit is that these enhanced relationships lead to positive emotions for people; Chu (2016) found that nurses in Taiwan not only experienced positive emotions as a result of compassion improving relationships, but also benefited from an improved sense of meaning in work; and again, these positive outcomes led to improved in-work motivation and performance. Positive emotions as a result of experiencing compassion at work have been found many times (Dutton et al., 2007), and is core to counteracting the consistent dehumanization that we have seen in workplaces over many years. In addition to creating positive emotions, compassion in work also leads to a reduction in negative emotions and experiences such as anxiety and burnout. Choi et al. (2016) found that when nurses in Korea experienced these benefits, they went on to demonstrate less deviant behaviour at work and were again less likely to quit. There is a strong and consistent theme showing that when people experience compassion in work, there is ultimately an increase in affective commitment to colleagues and to the organization (Lilius et al., 2008; Dutton et al., 2007), which then results in improvements to organizational productivity and quality (Lilius et al., 2011). These positive emotions are also good for physical health and have the opposite effect to the physical effects of stress on the body; where psychological stress leads to ill

154  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations health, compassion can be seen to be linked, through positive emotions, to a stronger immune system, and lower heart rate and blood pressure (Fredrickson et al., 2000). Finally, not only does compassion benefit those on the receiving end in organizations, but there is also evidence to show that those who demonstrate compassion benefit from better physical and mental health as a result of their approach (Martin et al., 2015; Dutton et al., 2014). Those in high power positions who subscribe to the social dominance approach would do well to take heed; those who are unwilling to demonstrate empathy and compassion towards others are also less likely to demonstrate self-compassion, and whilst this might be related to their misplaced views of it representing weakness, in fact self-compassion has been found to be associated with improved well-being and resilience (Martin et al., 2015; Neff, 2011). Denying this to oneself potentially harms a person’s ability to lead in the organizations where they may hold power. Just as compassion sits well with traditional business narratives, it also sits well with concepts of leadership: Compassion and care are not separate from ‘being a professional’ or ‘doing the work of the organization’. They are a natural and living representation of people’s humanity in the workplace. (Frost et al., 2000, p. 25)

HOW CAN WE EMBED EMPATHY AND COMPASSION IN WORKPLACES? We know we have a dearth of empathy and compassion at work and we have some understanding of why that might be. We also know that where we can cultivate it, we can reduce suffering in work and create positive outcomes for individuals and organizations. However, the processes which got us to where we are with the compassion gap have been deeply ingrained over many years, so how might that be changed? Many organizations are trying to change, as we saw in the previous section, so there is clear evidence that bringing compassion into work is a human possibility. We have to recognize, however, that generating fundamental and lasting change is an immense challenge. Poorkavoos (2017) found that across a range of private and not-for-profit organizations in the UK, the key barriers to instigating compassion and empathy at work fell into the categories of ‘organizational culture’, ‘individual circumstances’ and ‘policy and procedures’. Organizational policies and procedures can be representative of organizational cultures, and indeed can help to shape them as we will show below, so here we will firstly address organizational culture, including organizational values, before going on to look at individual circumstances and leadership. Organizational Culture Within organizational culture, Poorkavoos (2017) found that people reported that pressure from senior managers to focus on outputs, cultural ‘norms’, and a lack of management empowerment, all stifled people’s ability to demonstrate workplace compassion. This resonates with findings discussed earlier around the common focus on profits over people, a view of compassion as soft or weak, and the fact that those who hold power and social dominance orientation commonly want to maintain that power and are less likely to delegate it. Whilst it may not always be easy, however, organizational cultures can be changed.

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  155 At their best, organizations with compassionate cultures demonstrate collective responsibility for their actions, for amplifying the status of their members, and for contributing to society at large (Cameron, 2017). Some examples of collective organizational compassion include one where members of a business school – faculty and students – came together to support students who had lost all of their possessions in a fire, and another where the chief executive officer of a relocation company offered their services for free to BP staff at the time of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, recognizing that we all have a role to play in such issues (Cameron, 2017). Again though, it is also important to recognize that day-to-day compassion in organizations does not have to be in response to disaster and trauma, and can be demonstrated in relatively small actions (Hewison et al., 2018; Sinclair et al., 2017). Examples include a nurse taking extra time to be especially gentle with a patient in pain (Crowther et al., 2019) or staff demonstrating small acts of kindness and care above and beyond those which were strictly necessary, such as: Just that extra mile. It’s just a feeling. It’s hard to explain … that extra smile, that extra you know, “hi how are you?” Hand on your shoulder you know, we’re here for you (Patient 50). (Sinclair et al., 2017, p. 445)

These are clearly examples between care givers and service users but these can easily be translated into how managers and staff, and colleagues could act with one another within work on a day-to-day basis. People report that the impact of such acts is significant, relieving suffering and enhancing well-being (Sinclair et al., 2017). Ultimately organizational cultures are generated from a mix of values and practices in organizations (Schein, 1985; Schneider et al., 2017), some of which are implicit and not overtly recognized (Cameron, 2017). If change is going to come to these cultures, then these assumptions need to be made explicit. This could be done by generating clear statements of the values of an organization, which set out the fundamental principles that the company operates under (Sullivan et al., 2001). There is evidence to show that where organizations are values driven, and particularly when care and compassion are explicitly part of those values, there is better staff well-being, lower turnover of staff and better organizational outcomes (Sullivan et al., 2001; Love, 2017). Where values explicitly include empathy and compassion, it is easier then to develop policies and processes throughout the organization which support these concepts. Such processes can include, for example, recruitment and selection processes which clarify that compassion is a core quality which is expected (Chu, 2016; Simpson et al., 2013). This can be achieved through values based recruitment, an approach being widely adopted in the National Health Service in the UK as a response to the Mid-Staffordshire scandal, as a way of ensuring ‘value congruence’, that is, ensuring that organizational values and individual values are aligned, in this case towards high quality care (Patterson et al., 2014). In theory, other policies and processes can then follow to further embed compassion into the organizational culture, including for example: building compassion into behavioural expectations and objectives (Worline and Dutton, 2017); ensuring everyday reward and recognition celebrates even the smallest compassionate acts (Chu, 2016; Hewison et al., 2018); developing policies which support work/life balance and support for staff when needed at such times as bereavement or illness (Simpson et al., 2013; Chu, 2016); and implementing approaches which help to further an individual’s personal development, such as coaching with compassion (Boyatzis et al.,

156  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations 2013) and compassionate leadership development (Chu, 2016). These technical tactics will certainly help in organizations, but only if they are embedded authentically and genuinely, with the core purpose of reducing suffering in workplaces, which has the added benefit of improved organizational outcomes – not the other way round. This leads us neatly into a discussion about individual characteristics as well as the role of the leader in relation to embedding values and influencing culture in a meaningful and authentic way. Individuals Organizations are populated by human beings; individuals in a range of different roles with a range of responsibilities and all to some extent influencing and embodying the culture of an organization. Poorkavoos (2017) identified that individual circumstances were another barrier to compassion in the workplace. Some people (often including those at the top) possess low levels of emotional intelligence and a lack of care for others, focusing on their own interests or output at any cost. One major challenge is in relation to encouraging change in this mindset. Compared to other organization priorities, we are less likely to see training around empathy and relationship skills, which might help to change this mindset. However, humans are remarkably adaptable. Empathy and compassion can be taught and developed (Fredrickson et al., 2008; Klimecki et al., 2014). Or perhaps more accurately, they can be re-kindled in those who may have felt the need to bury these attributes. There is some need for caution here, however. Empathy training, which encourages one to resonate with the suffering of another, can increase empathic distress, due to empathy being related to neural pathways in the brain which are responsible for processing pain (Singer and Klimecki, 2014). Particularly empathic persons can even feel physical pain or discomfort whilst witnessing another experiencing pain (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012). But training which focuses on cultivating compassion for others appears to relate to different elements of brain functioning; where we are encouraged to extend feelings of care and warmth to others, this stimulates parts of the brain which are focused on “reward, love and affiliation” (Singer and Klimecki, 2014, p. 873), and this has been shown to lead to increased positive mood and helping behaviour, and reduce worry, stress, anxiety and fear of compassion (Jazaieri et al., 2013; Martin and Heineberg, 2017a; Orellana-Rios et al., 2018). A simple ‘loving-kindness’ process for cultivating compassion towards others is described by Armstrong (2011) and can be tried at any time by anybody. Being able to demonstrate compassion towards ourselves is also part of the process of accepting that compassion is a fundamental human virtue and that all lives are deserving of it equally. Many have difficulty accepting compassion. Some even fear it. However, as with demonstrating compassion towards others, the skills needed for self-compassion can also be taught and it has been found that self-compassion training can lead to reductions in depression, anxiety, burnout and stress and increases in life satisfaction, well-being and the ability to demonstrate compassion for others (Jazaieri et al., 2013; Super, 2019). Techniques such as meditation and relaxation have also been found to contribute to a person’s ability to demonstrate compassion towards themselves, as well as towards others, whilst working in challenging circumstances (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Crowther et al., 2019) again contributing to the positive ripple effect that compassion can have (Lilius, 2012). Incivility in work, which is

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  157 based on a lack of compassion and generates anger, fear and sadness, also has a ripple effect, and behaves in a viral way throughout organizations once it is instigated, usually by those in a higher position of power, with the outcomes for the organization being extremely negative (Porath and Pearson, 2012). Leaders can choose which to cultivate. While there is optimism in knowing that organizations can re-kindle and train compassion, this does of course rely on people wanting to develop in this area; you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Although we may agree that an ethical position is the right place to start in order to counteract the self-interest, greed and inauthenticity associated with free-market capitalism, using a language which appeals to those in current positions of power may at least start to engage them in the discussion around empathy and compassion. This could be done by promoting the fact that noticing and responding kindly to suffering, and having a desire to value and lift people who work in their organizations is the right thing to do because it reduces suffering, with the added benefit that it also leads to organizational and bottom line improvements. Self-development in this area is critical in order to ensure organizational and business development, particularly amongst leaders. Business schools have a crucial role here in fostering this, particularly given what we know about low levels of empathy amongst business students. Leadership Those individuals with the largest influence on organizational culture are generally those in leadership positions (Martin and Heineberg, 2017b). Everything done and said by a leader is a public communication, whether wanted or not. Leaders set the tone, which others then follow (Worline and Dutton, 2017). Although we identified earlier that a lack of empathy is associated with psychopathy, thankfully the rate of psychopathy in the general population is low at only 1 per cent, so although the rate has been found to be four times higher amongst senior leaders (Boddy, 2017), that still means that 96 per cent of our senior leaders do not demonstrate clinical psychopathy, which gives hope that behavioural change and positive modelling of empathy and compassion is possible. To encourage behavioural change, it is necessary to change the narrative around what ‘good’ leadership looks like in workplaces (Katene, 2010). The days of “tough on the issue, tough on the person” no longer suit a more globalized and enlightened world (Brodbeck et al., 2002). Managers and leaders have to make tough decisions about work intensification as the increase in demands in organizations, alongside diminishing levels of resources leads to the ‘too busy’ culture (McCann et al., 2008; Granter et al., 2015), also highlighted by Poorkavoos (2017, p. 8) as one of the conditions which stifles compassion, where people report being “too busy to stop and show care”. We have seen that compassion can motivate people to become more productive, however this also needs to be balanced with decisions about reducing or stopping some elements of work in order to ensure people have the personal resources to notice and respond to one another. Further, in order to truly embed a culture of compassion in our workplaces, those in positions of power need to take the lead in directly challenging behaviours which counteract compassion and lead to dehumanization, such as incivility, bullying, inequality and disrespect. These are not easy decisions and actions, and so being “tough on the issue” (Brodbeck et al., 2002) is still required as part of a compassionate leadership approach. In this way, rather than being seen as a ‘weak’ concept, compassion is in fact something which requires strength of character and courage.

158  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Finally, the issue of authenticity is key, both for individual leaders and for organizations. Organizations can be highly skilled at producing a marketing message about empathy and compassion, while failing to act according to these values. People often ‘see through’ fake behaviour (Seppälä, 2014). Imposing and broadcasting inauthentic organizational values might generate desired behaviours in the short term, but if leaders’ and organizations’ actions and priorities are incongruent with their messages and espoused values, then their intentions will soon become apparent (Simpson et al., 2013). For all the talk of compassion, authenticity and moral leadership, often the interests of senior leadership are simply not aligned with those of workers, clients and wider society. Organizations cannot be made compassionate just by issuing the right ‘messaging’ and without addressing fundamental differences in interest. Ultimately, in order to embed empathy and compassion in our workplaces, organizational leaders need to tap into their fundamental humanity, and be courageous enough to bring that into the workplace with authenticity. Only then will we see the development of organizational cultures of contagious, courageous compassion which will reduce the suffering we currently see, and will lead to better outcomes for organizations.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have established that compassion underpins humanity and consists of firstly noticing the circumstances of another, secondly being able to empathize with them by feeling for them and appreciating that all life is of equal value, and thirdly responding to their circumstances with a view to improving them. Because it is a core part of humanity, we have argued that compassion should be our ethical starting point in all aspects of our lives, including in the workplace: “compassion is a virtue, and as such, it is inherently valuable, even if no beneficial outcomes are detected … [it is] … worthwhile for its own sake” (Cameron, 2017, p. 431). We have demonstrated that when empathy and compassion are missing from organizations, which is sadly widespread, we see extensive suffering both within organizations and in wider society, and we see compromised outcomes for organizations. However, when empathy and compassion are brought into the workplace, much evidence is emerging to show that ethics are improved, people benefit from improved mood, relationships and feelings of value and this in turn leads to increased commitment to one another and to organizations, subsequently leading to improved organizational outcomes. On this basis, we should strive to embed these principles: “if care and compassion were to move to the forefront of organizational scholarship, the results might be truly radical” (Rynes et al., 2012, p. 518). Finally, we have shown that bringing our common humanity to work is a possibility when it is embedded it organizational cultures through clear values and authentic leadership. We have seen that compassion can be demonstrated in the smallest day-to-day actions and that it has an emotional contagion or ripple effect, benefiting not only those on the receiving end of compassion, but also those demonstrating and witnessing it. The case for embedding compassion at work is a profoundly simple one; this is a matter of right versus wrong. If we accept that dehumanization, inequality, cruelty and suffering are wrong wherever we find them, and if we accept that compassion is a fundamental human virtue, which every human life is worthy of – worth it for its own sake, with the added benefit of improving organizational outcomes – then we can be emboldened to make our case for contagious, courageous

The importance of empathy and compassion in organizations  159 compassion in work on that basis: “Every employee who works with you is the same as you … human. There may be different levels of hierarchy within your corporation, but when all the layers are peeled back, we are all the same” (Worline and Dutton, 2017, p. 449).

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9. Where words speak louder than actions: values, strategy and action in globalizing education – how successful IB schools are made Alexander Gardner-McTaggart and Tony Bush

INTRODUCTION Words: ‘I think absolutely that successful organizations (we are big and diverse) … my job … it’s about creating structures that empower people … empower people to enable us to do things that perhaps we weren’t doing before we took them onboard’. Actions: Said the director. He was white, sat alone with me in a large office behind a deadbolt armoured security door controlled by his secretary and himself only. His leadership team were all white and Anglo-English, as were the vast overwhelming majority of the teachers in the school. He had a tendency to fire (many) people to send out a message – it was a privilege to work in this school not an expectation. As a devout Roman Catholic he felt passionately about the values of internationalism. He continued, Words: ‘… diversity is absolutely an integral part of what we do here our teachers are diverse in their beliefs and experiences.’

This research reports on an inductive naturalist study into educational leadership in international schools. It breaks ground in this sector, providing critical insight into the character of senior administrators, providing a timely contribution to the fields of Educational Leadership and International Education. International Baccalaureate International Schools (henceforth IBIS) belong to a rapidly growing sector of autonomous schools around the world, now with 6 million enrolled students and when taken as a collective, comparable to the schooling infrastructure and demographic of a reasonably sized nation. Unlike a sovereign state’s schooling, very little is known about these schools’ leadership, policy and direction, aside from marketing literature and research often snap-shot and functionalist in nature. IBIS are authorized by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) to offer any of the three main International Baccalaureate (IB) continuums for elementary, middle school, and high school. The IB and correspondingly these schools place “making the world a better place” (IBO, 2006) centrally to their ethos, and so an exploration of leadership here is timely and apt, as leadership must strive to “do unto others as you would have done to yourself”. These schools are private and autonomous, and have existed with little critical scrutiny on the peripheries of educational research for decades. In a time characterized by the widening gap between rich and poor, this chapter addresses the policy and leadership of this burgeoning influential yet little understood world of educational privilege. Beyond my own research (Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2020a), almost nothing is known of the most senior educational leader of an international school, so much so that an international schools’ recruiter equates finding a good director to “looking for God 164

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  165 on a good day” (Roberts and Mancuso, 2014, p. 103). A highly challenging international schools landscape has led to the relevant research and scholarship community settling on an understanding of its leadership that throws up many questions as to its value and efficacy (Bunnell, 2019; Caffyn, 2010, 2013, 2018; Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2019; Lee et al., 2012). Indeed, this is no easy lot, as “loneliness; transience; cultural differences; governance; business elements; and managing school composition” are said to be responsible for the ‘extremes’ that characterize and exacerbate tensions in educational administration (Bailey and Gibson, 2020, p. 1021). These are major issues, as educational leadership is regarded by some as a major factor affecting the sector’s high teacher turnover (Everitt, 2019). This is a context that is characterized by: advantage with precarity, and opportunity with insecurity (Poole, 2019; Rey et al., 2020; Savva, 2017). On the other hand, more functionalist field commentators accept the status quo of inequality and injustice as proof of field agents’ resilience, and see teacher turnover as empowering (Bunnell and Poole, 2021). It is also reported that meddling boards, high leadership turnover (Littleford, 1999; Benson, 2011), and big vision (Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2018d) provide fertile beds for ‘structural amnesia’ (Lingard and Rawolle, 2004). Perhaps the most enduring and overlooked issue is whiteness and the fact that internationalism is typically modelled as a white matter, by white staff, mostly Anglo-English in origin (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020b). Statistics and profits tell a more optimistic story. The past 20 years have witnessed an unprecedented increase in international schooling from 1 million students in 2002 to 5.5 million in 2019, with income at US$50 billion (ISR, 2019), set to reach $89 billion by 2026 (Morrison, 2016). The accompanying streams of teachers embarking on educational careers in near or distant parts of the world (Bunnell, 2019; ISR, 2018) strain staff retention at home, and create a new, and largely unrepresented demographic, abroad (Gardner-McTaggart 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). Common to all growth in this sector is an emphasis on success (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a) and ‘distinction’ (Bourdieu, 1984). This manifests through qualification-capital and global mindedness in an autonomous schools field that is defined by privilege. It is transitory and decentralized, with franchised quality controls (Hallinger et al., 2014; IBO, 2006; Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2019). IB schools purport to lead the world (around the globe) with critical thinking and Global Citizenship education (IBO, 2006) in increasingly polarized times of climate crisis and inequity, yet knowledge is rare on those responsible for these schools’ actual success. With so little known and so much at stake, this chapter presents new and comparative analysis of qualitative research on the character and leadership of six directors of successful IBIS in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. These directors are commonly educators who, having risen through the ranks are now operational executives who both define policy in the school, and provide leadership, vision and strategy for these well-endowed, international schools. In this way, they present a unique human resource in a little understood educational field, where power is invested in one position and one person. Knowledge Boundaries To begin with, it is important to establish knowledge boundaries. The field of Educational Leadership Administration and Management (EMAL) is well established and distinct from other leadership fields, such as business or healthcare. The smaller field of international schools’ leadership is not, and given its very distinct nature, can be viewed as a young,

166  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations and emerging subfield of EMAL. In respect of this distinction, this chapter refers to the main field and the subfield separately. Understanding and informing the complexities of leadership practice in today’s globalizing landscape is difficult enough, even without the added convolutions inherent to international schools. In explanation, international schools are known to face inordinate complexities based upon cultural expectations from different parents/teachers/students from different parts of the world (Hayden, 2006; Lee et al., 2012), exacerbated by a claustrophobic expatriate work-life bubble for teachers (Bailey and Gibson, 2020; Caffyn, 2010; Keller, 2015), and highly problematic employment conditions (privileged expat-hire, exploited local hire), racist recruitment policy (Gardner-McTaggart 2020b), and oftentimes deeply divisive and hierarchical leadership structures (Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c; Poole, 2019). However, helpful and definitive knowledge generation in the main field provides enduring insight into the multifaceted, and multilayered nature of this profession. For example, Day et al. (2016a) demonstrate that a ‘layering’ of transformational and instructional approaches can be ascribed to successful principals in national school contexts. Despite the influence, size and growth of international schools, and the very clear crises of leadership in a distinct subfield of EMAL, such theoretical insight remains pedantically absent. As this subfield grows, attracting thousands more staff and students every month, contextualized theory is in short supply. The extremes and antagonisms of this unique international schools context calls for a conceptualization of its leadership that is drawn from practice and best accommodates the beastly beatitudes of globalizing education in a scholarly and theoretically robust manner. Globalizing Educational Leadership The negative status quo as regards international schools administrators follows more general globalizing discourses based upon bonds of commerce and jurisprudence, rather than the social practice of education (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a). While the term leadership is used in a social context (Bottery, 2004; Courtney, 2015; Eacott, 2015; Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a; Greenfield, 1993; Gunter et al., 2017), some point out that this autonomous schooling context is different as, “effective school autonomy depends upon effective school leaders” (OECD, 2012, p. 12). There is no doubt some truth behind this claim, IBIS have no ‘system’ administration (as common in state schooling) aside from what they produce themselves. Herein lies a strong argument which places more emphasis on the international leadership structure as policy engines and organizational captains. In moving forward, we should note that effectiveness refers to measurable academic attainment, and success to broader educational goals. In this research chapter, schools and their directors emerge as effective private institutions, yet the directors in the following case studies explained the success of the school in pluralistic, intercultural ways; through practices and beliefs that are empowering and collective. This is the normative speak of leadership and one that this chapter shows, lies in stark contrast to a descriptive leadership reality. Research into educational administration, management and leadership repeatedly evidences the potential positive and negative impact of leadership on heads, organizations and culture, thereby providing insight into teaching and student outcomes (Allix, 2000; Bruggencate et al., 2012; Busher and Saran, 1994; Day et al., 2016a; Evans, 1999; Gronn and Ribbins, 1996; Robinson et al., 2008). However, educational leadership in the globalizing context has a tendency to follow the money in an ethical space heavy on marketing and light on ethics

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  167 (Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2018a, 2020b). In this context it is then easy for leadership to reify (Courtney, 2015) snappy terms such as transformational/distributed/instructional leadership, global mindedness, etc., and substitute leadership lexis for an actual leadership grammar (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a). This is because globalizing pressures privilege glossy terms and business-like practices over the authenticity of teaching and learning because of the autonomous nature of schools in a competitive environment. It erroneously sets up adjectival labels as ‘hypothetical constructs’ (sound, clear, reasoned theory) when in fact they are ‘intervening variables’ (descriptive connectives) (MacCorquodale and Meehl, 1948). This means that adjectival terms become a highly visible and recognizable tool for leadership to invoke discourses that are largely unknown in quick, powerful punches that suit the short-termism and organizational amnesia of the sector. A problematization of educational leadership in this globalizing context questions the efficacy of a colonization of practice and terms from the business world. In education, this distances leadership agency from the social practice of educational organization (Greenfield, 1993). The emerging field of international schools’ leadership is often characterized by knowledge claims that remain focused more on organizational and pragmatic issues, and less on the people and identities in leadership. It is in this latter purview that this chapter will argue the case for an intersubjective approach (Habermas, 1981) to educational leadership (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a). The Marketplace of Privilege and Its Research Corporate funded projects (of which the IB is a notable example) are strategic by design; their remit is teleological, which means that they are target-oriented with a clear objective. They dictate the aims of much of the most rigorous research as in Day et al. (2016a), Hallinger et al. (2014), Stevenson et al. (2016), and Walker et al. (2014). Additionally, with this being a small and relatively new subfield, it has tended to privilege positivist approaches that while important in establishing knowledge initially, are limited in assessing the details of complex human behaviour (for example: Benson, 2011; Bunnell, 2005, 2006a, 2006b; Hayden and Thompson, 1998; Hersey, 2012; Keung and Rokinson-Szapkiw, 2013; Legatte and Thompson, 1997; Mancuso et al., 2010; and Odland and Ruzicka, 2009). Mixed methods studies into administration and leadership in this context (Bryant, 2015; Day et al., 2016a; Hallinger et al., 2014; Morrison, 2018; Roberts and Mancuso, 2014; Rizvi et al., 2014; Stevenson et al., 2016; Subrahmanya and Mhunpiew, 2015; Tooher-Hancock, 2014; Walker et al., 2014), offer closer insight, yet an examination of these studies often returns a bias towards positivism. Interpretive, post-structural, post-modern or critical research (Caffyn, 2010; Everitt, 2019; Hamad and Shah, 2018; Bailey and Gibson, 2020; Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018c, 2019, 2020b; Vahid et al., 2017) is now on the increase and exposes more and more of the drawbacks of a functionalist teleology in an entire sector. The research presented here presents a methodology specifically designed to address these gaps, and provide significant understanding and detail. Although it is acknowledged that most forms of international schools may demonstrate elevated levels of effectiveness due to privileged cultural, social and economic standing, this is inadequate in defining what successful schools may be. More general leadership research and scholarship is unequivocal in showing that institutional success is linked to schools which endeavour to encourage positive values in line with intersubjectivity (Gardner-McTaggart,

168  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations 2020a; Habermas, 1981) such as fairness, open-mindedness, integrity, compassion and life-long learning (Brown, 2006; Day et al., 2016a; Evans, 1999; Greenfield, 1993; Ishimaru, 2013), and administrations that seek to develop trust among staff (Bottery, 2004; Daly, 2009; Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a; Hallam et al., 2015; Romero and Mitchell, 2018). While the values of international schools are by their very nature non-national, in this specific international schools’ context, the values mentioned above are broadly represented in an IB curriculum by the IB Learner Profile (IBLP). The IBLP booklet works as a guide for organizational values not only among students, but also informing the practice of teachers, managers and leaders. It consists of ten attributes which are: Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk Takers, Balanced, Reflective (IBO, 2006). What makes these schools really different and international is this central feature of IBIS where the culture reflects the diversity of the school community being international, as opposed to a national moral orientation in state and national private schooling. The IBLP is informed by Global Citizenship Education (GCE); a set of understandings engineered in response to the challenges of a diverse world; fostering peace and intercultural understanding, while responding to the wider crises of climate change, inequity and a post-truth word (Andreotti, 2011; Goren and Yemini, 2017; Olssen et al., 2004; Oxley and Morris, 2013; Pashby, 2011; UNESCO, 2015; Gardner-McTaggart, 2016). While we acknowledge that the typical IBIS student comes from privilege, from a particular transnational group, an intersectional understanding of this privilege is little researched and/or understood. Much is taken for granted as shown in participants’ rich data below upon the many nationalities enrolled, the international vision of the school, etc. It appears to the researcher that the functionalist ‘passport internationalism’ is often invoked and repeatedly claimed in normative episodes with directors to underscore diversity. However, this does little to detract from homogeneous advantage and the pervasive institutional IBIS lack of engagement with the critical issues of “making the world a better place”, poverty, inequity, systemic injustice, racism and knowledge generation (Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2019, 2020a, 2020b). (Passport internationalism denotes a claimed diversity of nations based upon students’ passport status, and not cultural or biographical affiliations, heritage or identities.) Privilege is no excuse for ignorance or epistemic myopia, and this applies strongly to IBIS. The IBLP promotes values that to some may appear overly normative given the descriptive realities outlined above and the way schools seek to interpret them in administration. However, through the IBLP, IBIS would be ideally placed to operationalize leadership in line with: Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk Takers, Balanced, Reflective (IBO, 2006) and it is at this point that it is relevant to introduce the theory of educational leadership. EMAL and IBISs The organization of schools, colleges and nurseries is a unique endeavour and requires a clear set of understandings focused around the context at hand. It places human development central to the prospect of leadership, and to make matters harder, it affords few measurable indices from which to chart a leadership trajectory. For example, there are fewer sales charts, or growth stats, and more children, parents and teachers who may be happier or angrier depending on the day, not necessarily the numbers. It is a field that is all about people and profoundly contextual (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a; Greenfield, 1993; Gunter et al., 2017).

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  169 There is fairly broad international consensus that the most common normative theoretical ideas underpinning EMAL are models of transformational and instructional leadership with the former being associated with school success, and the latter with school effectiveness (Bush, 2011; Day et al., 2016a; Hallinger and Lee, 2013; Kwan, 2020; Shatzer et al., 2014; Yokota, 2020). Transformational leadership is noted for a focus on generating shared vision, setting direction, developing people and rethinking the organization, whereas instructional leadership emphasizes setting educational goals, curriculum and teacher evaluation. By contrast, the most common descriptive model is transactional leadership (Bush, 2011; Hsiao et al., 2013), particularly in international schools (Bunnell 2019; Caffyn, 2010, 2013; Keller, 2015; Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2020b) and is known as a political model which is leader-led, with no overt orientation towards collegiality, collaboration or empowerment. These terms can be problematic, as they are incomplete, misleading and continually reified (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a) and while we acknowledge their influence in the field, we refer to them with caution. IBIS set a high bar for staff, students and leadership. The values of the IBLP and the guidelines from the IBLP booklet indicate a form of values-based leadership is required in order to lead a successful IB school, notably one where the attributes of the IBLP become central in steering the organization. Making the IBLP the oxygen of the school receives overwhelming confirmation from IB commissioned research in this area (Day et al., 2016b; Stevenson et al., 2016). If it were possible to build a consensual framework of GCE values (though the IBLP), with empowerment and trust then these schools would be talking about a form of leadership based upon intersubjectivity and communicative action (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a; Habermas, 1981). However, transformational leadership remains questionable as an appropriate theoretical lever for building trust. For example, collective influence remains a contested issue, particularly in the light of empirical studies which view this leadership model as being closely connected to transactional leadership (Allix, 2000; Berkovich, 2017; Currie and Lockett, 2007; Gronn, 1996; Hartley, 2016; Yokota, 2020). There remains enduring evidence to suggest transformational leadership is five times less likely to affect student outcomes (effectiveness) than instructional leadership (Robinson et al., 2008). Equally, there is considerable problematization of instructional leadership as a helpful administrative model in its own right, suggesting that instructional leadership works most advantageously when operationalized together with transformational leadership (Hallinger, 2003; Kwan, 2020; Marks and Printy, 2003) in a process that has been referred to as ‘layering’. This occurs when “the principals selected, clustered, integrated, and placed different emphases on different combinations of both transformational and instructional strategies that were timely and fit for purpose” (Day et al., 2016a, p. 226). For many, this is little more than the mix ’n’ match of contingent leadership, once again proving the normative nature of such terms (Gunter, 2016). Day et al. (2016a) go on to point out the limitations of such models given the complexities of educational administration and inherent contextuality, and Gardner-McTaggart (2020a) finds them largely incompatible with educational practice due to their strategic teleology, privileging notions of success over nurture, and strategic action over communicative action (Habermas, 1981). In support of intersubjectivity and in acknowledgment of the questionable applicability of such models in the educational context, some recent research moves the field forwards by showing that ‘collective leadership’ can be instrumental in facilitating both effective and successful school environments. Ni et al. (2018, p. 244) state that, “Strategically sharing

170  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations decision-making influence with teachers can potentially improve principals’ efficacy and ease the burden of their workload. In sum, the right balance of decision influence among stakeholders and across decision zones has the potential to create a harmonious and high-functioning school environment”. This research is particularly helpful in moving educational administration discourse away from models towards more educational ‘understandings’ highlighting ‘balance’ and in line with Gardner-McTaggart (2020a), seeking communicative and intersubjective (Habermas, 1981) ways of approaching educational organization. In doing so it confirms long-established views underscoring the importance of collaboration, values and collegiality in this field (Busher and Saran, 1994; Hargreaves, 1991; Greenfield, 1993), and provides a practical lens from which to begin an inquiry into senior leadership in IBIS.

THE SENIOR LEADERSHIP RESEARCH: AN INTERNATIONALLY ADAPTIVE DESIGN Senior IBIS leaders’ time is scarce and their schools are often hundreds even thousands of miles apart. However, collecting valid rich data requires trust, and so building a relationship was important to this research design. This proceeded from a ‘blended’ platform mixing online and face-to-face elements over a period of two years: from initial solicitation to final participant review of findings. As a result, this study relied upon an internationally adaptive design. Figure 9.1 displays the various phases and strands of the research. The original data set was the PhD research conducted between 2012 and 2018, which is presented here with new operational analysis, focusing upon the values, strategies and actions of these leaders. As the previous section has highlighted, the significant weakness of most knowledge generation in this area was identified as a self-interested research agenda due to corporate research actions and a privileging of positivist approaches. A review of the general and international schools leadership literature (Day et al., 2016b; Bush, 2011; Gunter, 2001; Hallinger et al., 2014, etc.), along with methodological literature specific to educational leadership (Briggs et al., 2012), education (Cohen et al., 2011) and social sciences (Miles and Huberman, 1994; Punch, 1998; Smith et al., 2009) informed the design and development of this hybrid inductive research for international educational contexts. It sought to maximize contextual data, personal narrative and trust building, all the while cognizant of onerous logistical challenges common to, and reductive of, international schools research. The application of post-structural approaches ensured the personal voice of the leader was laid bare, presenting the participant’s perspective. It was important to capture the subject’s history, outlook, and orientation on their terms, and the researcher’s. The research design acknowledged the risk of ‘double interpretation’ and so went to great lengths to place the researcher among the ethnocentric world of international schools as embedded middle-manager and teacher (with accompanying spouse and three children) for the period of five years. The source of this ethnography (being a part of the phenomenon) was an IBIS in a separate region of the world with no direct data being collected in situ for use in the study, other than contextual background knowledge of life and work as an expatriate international schools staff-member. With this lived ethnographical context to draw upon, the interpretation of specific international school phenomena was achieved with increased transparency, much as with Caffyn (2010), or Keller (2015). This ontological foundation, coupled with case study allowed the research to identify various patterns, commonalities and differences between participants and linked

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  171

Figure 9.1

Research design: integrating and developing evidence for successful international schools’ leadership

with features of successful leadership practices in IBIS. The ethnocentric approach to context, phenomenological proximity and adaptively efficient international design of methods, allowed for the kind of thematic analysis required in well-designed critical research (Gunter et al., 2014), leading to evidence of values, strategies and actions. The Sampling Approach: Identifying Successful International School Leaders A further aspect of the phenomenological understanding of context utilized this researcher’s fluency in a second language other than the dominant English of international schools. Much research in international schools misses detail and context due the fact that the surrounding ‘noise’ of the school is embedded in one or more foreign languages. This reduces the contextual significance of location and staff, which is specific to, and neglected in, international schools research, and serves the ethnocentric bias identified in such education (Bailey and Gibson, 2020; Caffyn, 2010; Gardner-McTaggart, 2016, 2019). For this reason, and drawing on the researcher’s fluency in German, IBIS in German-speaking Europe were selected through the Council of International Schools list (CIS, 2019). Further criteria for ‘success’ foregrounded international schools which are positioned in the upper end of fee requirements (from Euro 20,000 to 34,000 per annum), with histories over 25 years, and above average IB diploma scores. The study also sought participants who were a-typical of the ethnocentric white, male, Anglo field. With 13 emailed requests made, six participants agreed to the study. They were all white and Anglo (which is typical of my own ethnocentric observations of the field) with four male, and two female. One further white, male director in England served as pilot participant. Participants are anonymized alphabetically in all collected data as: Alfred, Barry, Charles, Dorothy, Elvin, and Fiona. Gardner-McTaggart finds that in leadership, females

172  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations while significantly underrepresented, manifest as more successful in this complex context, yet the sample size was limited and more research is required. Service is central to how directors view their work. An exploration of their emotional and intellectual expression of service reveals the two female participants as most balanced in this approach (with the most authentic connection to emotional intelligence), and according to the literature, thereby potentially more successful in being service oriented. (Gardner-McTaggart, 2018d, p. 77)

Stimulus, Observation and Unstructured Interviews to Explore Leadership and School Process Pre-interview questionnaires were emailed to participants, and served as an inductive stimulus with 21 structured biographical and professional questions. Specifically, these questions probed understandings of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and the IB Learner Profile (IBLP) from a biographical (personal) perspective, and from a leadership (organizational) one. The design of these questions was influenced by the researcher’s lived experience (personal and organizational) of the IBIS context, as well as relevant literature on GCE (Andreotti, 2011; Oxley and Morris, 2013; Pashby, 2011; UNESCO, 2015), IBIS (Caffyn, 2010; Keller, 2015; Hallinger et al., 2014), and Educational Leadership (Allix, 2000; Arrowsmith, 2007; Bottery, 2006; Brown, 2006; Bush, 2011; Busher and Saran, 1994; Daly, 2009; Day et al., 2016a; Day et al., 2009; Eacott, 2015; Greenfield, 1993; Gronn, 1996; Gronn and Ribbins, 1996; Hallinger, 2003; Hargreaves and Fullan, 2009; Harris, 2013; Hsiao et al., 2013; Ishimaru, 2013; Keung and Rokinson-Szapkiw, 2013; Kovačević and Hallinger, 2019; Lopez, 2003; Marks and Printy, 2003; Robinson and Roxe, 2007; Robinson et al., 2008; Shatzer et al., 2014). It covered the following topics: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The IBLP Global citizenship education and global mindedness Leadership practice Leadership influences.

The questionnaire maximized efficiency with a double function of collecting initial data for analysis (data set one), while serving as an inductive introduction to the themes of the study; in other words, a stimulus activity in preparation for unstructured interview which is its main purpose in this chapter. For further details of these case studies, see Gardner-McTaggart (2018a). Findings were coded and condensed (Miles and Huberman, 1994) and formed into data driven themes (Attride-Sterling, 2001) which here have been reassigned for this output under strategy, values, and action. Subsequently theoretical triangulation (Punch, 1998; Cohen et al., 2011) and interpretive phenomenological analysis (Smith et al., 2009) led to conclusions pertaining to leadership in this context. This chapter presents the culmination of this project and presents the findings of organizational theme ‘Being Leader’ from the original data set as shown in Figure 9.1.

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  173

FINDINGS: BEING A SUCCESSFUL INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS LEADER Findings are presented alphabetically by participant. The main focus of this section lies in unstructured interview data from transcript, and where helpful, supporting data from sets one or two is provided. Alfred In data set two, Alfred is observed in a job interview, in a walkabout and in conversation with two of his principals. He listens candidly to his instructional leaders and appears supportive and collegial. Values. The values of GCE are clear and permeate strategies below. He talks of the transient population of students (in his school over 100 nationalities), and therefore “diversity is absolutely an integral part of what we do here”. Alfred goes on to stress how important it is in this context to provide learning experiences so that everyone feels they are benefiting. Alfred mentions how the diversity of the student population is reflected by the diversity among the teaching staff which Alfred terms as being diverse in their “beliefs and experiences”. Strategies. In data set three and on success, Alfred says, “I think absolutely that successful organizations (we are big and diverse) … my job … it’s about creating structures that empower people...empower people to enable us to do things that perhaps we weren’t doing before we took them onboard”. He says it is the leader’s responsibility to make the abstract nature of GCE tangible for staff and students; the challenge is for educational leaders to make it concrete for teachers and managers. Alfred says this is the collective responsibility of educational leaders: “This is what I can actually do”. He states that he “takes the really big notion” [sic] and does “something very pragmatic with the group of children in his school in this point of time”. On the matter of being a leader, Alfred intimates that it is complex, contextual requiring adaptability, and time bound. He postulates that there is a temptation to package what leadership should look like, and Alfred feels this is flawed. Alfred talks of leaders drawing on a basket of resources, and when questioned on leadership outlook does not appear to wish to see himself defined by any particular framework or model. Actions. Alfred tells me how he broke the mould of what he saw as a laissez faire teaching culture, by not renewing all teachers who were up for tenure, effectively handing them their notice. Alfred felt this was needed, in order to send the message that working at his school is a privilege and something to work hard for. Alfred acknowledges the “collateral damage” in such an approach, but believes this was important in setting up a new school culture. Barry In data set two, I hear the school porters talking very dismissively of the school leadership in German. Barry sits in a very large room not far from the teaching and learning and is observed in a very supportive meeting with his two principals. Values. Barry believes in “adaptable” fairness and leads through cultural change. He wants a culture that is improvement focused, with critical thinking and basic people skills. He says there are two ways of getting culture change (other than through values), and that is A. Vision

174  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations that is apparent in words and terms, and B. The artefacts used within the school. (This refers to the visual representation of the ten IB learner attributes displayed around the school, as well as the showcasing of the curriculum planning for all to see, and the product of inquiry in the form of student work around the school.) Barry facilitated a culture change by aspiring to be a world leading school. He states, “We don’t always get it right, but the visual element is important” … “and those artefacts may enable you to have the right culture, that your kids are actually going to learn and become critical thinkers”. Strategy. In data set three, Barry says of his job: “This idea of cultural awareness is huge”. In respect of cultural diversity, he says being fair is not always the best strategy, as different cultural groups may need to be challenged and find solutions. Different cultural groups expect different things from the leader: some expect direction, others collaboration. He considers that his leadership is based upon the situation and he has read theory on this and reflected. Barry shares that, to be a good leader, one needs to put in place systems, and develop people and remain adaptable. Here Barry is emphatic, and considers it is much more emphasis on developing leaders than being a leader. He lets his principals “get on with it” and in order to facilitate this. Barry identifies with “distributed leadership” but is “improving” as a transformational leader: he justifies this by calling himself a “cheerleader” in his first period at the school. This was in order to improve morale: he says he was very visible and very positive. At the point when he was able to introduce new principals into the school, he moved to a different more systemic strategy, working more with smaller groups. Actions. Data set two shows a strong visual presence of IBLP attributes: visual artefacts. From data set three: Barry did not renew his two principals and brought in new ones in line with his culture change; with them he holds an individual conversation once a week, plus a fortnightly study group on leadership. He tells me that previously the SLT would only meet to talk about operational matters and they now meet to talk about planning, development, and curriculum. Barry explains how he may adopt quite contrary approaches to the above, depending on the situation. For example, he talks about the school Union which is passive-aggressive, and he feels the need to mirror this approach to best manage it. Barry believes this to be a very different approach from the one he adopts otherwise as a leader. Charles In data set two, Charles’ office is in a building entirely separate from teaching and learning. Off recording, he relates how the IBLP can also work to undermine him, citing an episode where teachers turned around the attribute principled (that he was using with them) to “criticize him” back. He walks around the campus from principal to principal, and takes a highly facilitative approach to supporting them in their work; he appears close to his principals. Values. In data sets one and three, Charles finds the IBLP far too prescriptive, and limiting and a corporate tool of the IB. He relates that cultural competency, and global mindedness are essential in the job: “With 60 different nationalities here, it’s critical that you don’t get off on the wrong footing”, and he is continually striving to be a global citizen. Strategy. In data set three, Charles believes he has suffered as a leader in this country due to a transactional business culture. He has moved away from being a “low key transformational leader”, because he is not a “big charismatic figure”. Charles is undertaking doctoral studies in educational leadership and knows that instructional leadership is “the one that supposedly

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  175 affects student outcomes in the best way”. He firmly disagrees. Charles believes that the international educational leader has to be adaptive: there is a need for the right degree of transformation and transaction in leadership, because you still have to be a manager. There is a need to check things, check people, and to check systems, and then act. Charles calls for change. He believes that there is a need for the transformational approach, and still a need for the instructional approach, because “you can drift away if you’re just talking about massaging relationships in talking about vision in general”. Further, Charles posits that democratic leadership, and or distributed leadership, are only good up to a point, and that charismatic leadership is not good because, when the leader is gone, “the whole thing falls apart”. Charles believes that the most important strategies are: 1. Getting the right people for the school 2. Protecting the school and the country 3. Training those people 4. Having the right leadership team 5. Coordinating. Charles sees the job as long-term, with little or no day-to-day satisfaction in the individual parts. “My leadership is more teamwork, its more collaborative, its more facilitating. I’ll make decisions, and do have strong opinions about certain things – but pleasing people, that is difficult”. Actions. Charles does not talk of specific action. Yet, for him it is all about people’s issues and concerns. “So that is very much a part of my life in a large school”. He stresses systems, where “the instructional part of the job is achieved through the principals”. In a diverse job, he lists many and various aspects: teaching and learning, finance, marketing, safety, security, cafeteria, transport. Charles relies upon the systems and other managers to deal with issues: “If something gets to me, it is because somebody hasn’t been able to fix it”. Dorothy In data set two, Dorothy’s office is far away from teaching and learning, tucked away almost behind administrators’ offices; her interaction with principals is highly collegial, and supportive. Values. In all data sets, Dorothy wholeheartedly and unreservedly embraces the IBLP and GCE in leadership and sees both as key to her successful leadership, and to who she is as a person. Strategy. In data set three, Dorothy sees two groups within the IBIS community. She relates that, in one group, the IB is viewed as a tool for success: gaining entry into Ivy League universities. So yeah. Here in [school name], I would say that there’s certainly those that see the IB as the thing that’s going to get the interview for Oxford or into Stanford or Harvard or Princeton, if that’s, ideally, if that’s what’s important to you. I think we do a lot, though, in making sure that we’re communicating that that’s not necessarily the best thing for every child.

176  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Dorothy advocates for what she terms “the diversifier”, as she believes she puts the child’s orientation and individuality first. She goes on to say: “I think we do a lot though in making sure that we’re communicating that that’s not necessarily the best thing for every child”. Dorothy views herself as a leader who is able to remain child-centred, and advocate for the student, despite the above-mentioned pressure from parents in driving towards elitist university systems. Dorothy sees herself as a collaborative leader and a supportive leader. She calls herself a “change agent”. She mentions the term “transformational”, but says “You know, it sounds funny to call yourself transformational”. Action. Dorothy’s day-to-day leadership habits appear to be infectious. For example, Dorothy likes to stand at her “workstation” as she calls her desk: she does not sit, unless in a meeting. The workstation idea is being adopted by others in the leadership team. Dorothy is very enthusiastic. She organizes leadership retreats, uses the IBLP in all leadership actions, she cannot help but be enthusiastic and links this to her being West Coast American. Building on this, Dorothy relates that she likes to see others “taking the limelight” and getting the credit for something: “even if it was my idea, right?” … “I love what I do”. Elvin In data set one, Elvin states that his postgraduate studies (Ed. D) are seen to have had the biggest effect on being a leader. In data set two, Elvin is observed to be open and facilitative in meetings (my impression was charismatic and transformational), listening to multiple viewpoints and drawing upon involved parties’ opinions and observations. He works closely with his instructional leaders, respecting and encouraging them. Values. In data set one Elvin makes his values clear: globally minded, open. In data set three Elvin says he understands the importance of differentiating communication, allowing for “multiple truths”, or viewpoints to exist together. “I do have a fundamental belief: There’s something to learn from everybody”. Elvin maintains that international schools have to “cement” values by being globally minded, and the range/broad spectrum of people’s abilities to live in this world, future challenges – environment – are tremendous. Strategy. In data set three, Elvin refers to a generally conservative trend at the highest leadership level, and remarks on a slow bureaucratic, procedural type approach and comments that IBIS’ directors will often sweep things under the rug, reminiscent of a group of people who are anxious to retain their positions. Elvin says he takes risks and is vision driven as a leader: “I have a little point up in the corner of the room and say, ‘That’s where we’re going’”. Vision has defined his leadership, he wanted a people-oriented organization, which could handle a crisis, and he wanted “a common language and collaboration”. He describes the high tension between his educational remit and his board directives. Elvin is a leader who encourages collaboration; planting seeds, nurturing ideas, getting others to start using his language. Elvin talks of the ability to morph (be flexible) and cyclical in his approach to external pressure, he is always trying to stay one step ahead, and always has a back-up plan, or six. Elvin prepares assiduously for any contingency, in fact when asked about if he has contingency models, Elvin answers: “Up the wazoo!” He is aware that things can change suddenly and drastically, and he is prepared to “risk-take”. Elvin sees some justification in this as his workplace is international, with multiple viewpoints and many perspectives.

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  177 When talking about crisis, Elvin points out that being highly adaptable is advantageous in the role of school director, however, he continues to stress that a collaborative mind-set and attitude gives everybody a role to play to get through crisis. In my opinion [you need to] cultivate this kind of ethos, this kind of collaborative mind-set and attitude because everybody has a role then to play to get through a crisis. I don’t care where you are in the organization. Everybody has a role to play.

Actions. In data set two, Elvin talks over the reduction of staff benefits (reducing free tuition to one child per teacher). In data set three he is radically changing teacher appraisals based on achievements at school, de-emphasizing academic qualifications, although how this is implemented is unclear. Fiona Data set two shows Fiona’s as a “facilitator”. She was observed trying to work around people’s needs in a very collaborative leadership environment. In a job interview, Fiona lets the department (HOD) lead the interview, only joining the conversation to say a reassuring word to the interviewee, or add operational, strategic information. Another example is how Fiona was able to lead the SLT meeting by taking the meeting minutes – she appears to be highly adaptable. Fiona gets stuck in and moves tables around, and acts as an intermediary. It appeared that the leadership team of principals and curriculum coordinators were comfortable (Fiona is kind and highly supportive of her principals) and the power distance ratio appeared to be very low, as interactions were collegial and without much fuss. Values. In data set three, Fiona states that leadership requires meaningful purpose, with a transcending moral dimension. To tell you the truth, I didn’t look for leadership in many ways. Leadership has come as a default for me. But I did look to have a meaningful life with a purpose that I could connect to at all levels, and particularly at a moral [level]. I don’t mean a religious moral, but I mean a transcending moral dimension.

Fiona is quick to point out a secular embodiment of morality. For Fiona, global mindedness is the very most central core of everything she does in leadership in this role, and is at the core of leading international education. She emphasizes moral leadership in this international context and the importance of global mindedness. Strategy. Fiona claims to be moving towards a distributed leadership model. In explanation of what she means by this, Fiona relates that she is sharing responsibility for several important facets of her leadership; strategic direction, collaborative conversations, coaching, non-threatening ways, and providing mindfulness courses. Although limited, the observational data does appear to corroborate this collective approach, and Fiona appeared to be a person who was quite dedicated to pursuing goals of a facilitative nature. Fiona appears satisfied with her leadership approach and says of herself that she seems to be faced with general acceptance in moving forwards. Action. Fiona makes a direct link to the teacher appraisal system in her school as an example of how a school culture may be challenged to change. She feels that there is a need for making appraisals more realistic and a better reflection of the actual teaching being done. Fiona then

178  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations goes on to offer the example of where she changed the appraisal process for teachers at her current school but had to challenge the board to implement this.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: COLLABORATIVE OUTLOOKS AND ‘FLEXIBILITY’ ARE NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS The adaptive design of this methodology allowed for rare access to rich data enabling the researcher to identify patterns and strategies common to directors’ perceptions of successful IBIS. A key feature for success in the field is a habitus (Bourdieu, 1984) of Anglo whiteness (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020b). Further, the directors: ● measured success in terms of empowerment and thinking with global mindedness; ● were engaging personalities and charismatic in significantly different ways: Alfred was quietly confident, Barry was bookish, Charles was measured, Dorothy was charismatic, Elvin was cerebral, and Fiona was benign. They possessed common values and traits such as a clarity of vision, particularly in strategy, adaptability, determination, courage of conviction, open-mindedness and plurality. They all were unequivocal in communicating their values, which aligned clearly with global mindedness; ● presented their approach to leadership as one focused upon a collective process based upon empowerment; ● relied strongly upon vision to guide school change; ● combined and acquired collective and globally-minded strategies in mid, and long-term strategies across all areas of school practice; ● were ‘flexible’: employed leader-led power-play in short-term and some mid-term ‘catalyst’ actions; and ● emphasized the importance of fostering and building a common understanding of goals underscored by a shared, global-minded outlook. In presenting their voice, some normativity is to be expected among participants. This study is not measuring leadership performance or verifying words with actions. As a result, it emerged that most directors opened up with some sincerity in the course of the unstructured interview and this is not an unknown feature of this method (Briggs et al., 2012; Smith et al., 2009). It appeared to the researcher that this shared time held something of ‘the confessional’ for the ‘lonely head’ (Bailey and Gibson, 2020) where an impartial observer could record and acknowledge this person’s journey in leadership. It follows that the information presented here is an ambitious departure from much previous research on leadership in globalizing education (as reviewed above), offering a rare insight into the many challenges and the numerous conflicts that drain energy in international schools (Bailey and Gibson, 2020; Caffyn, 2013; Hamad and Shah, 2018; Keller, 2015). Some participants were able to move beyond controlled normativity and tell of times in their leadership where threats were encountered. In doing so, they often described a transactional top-down reaction to a threat. This reaction meant levying the equitable values of the school for instrumental purpose. For example, if a stakeholder takes issue with the school they take issue with the values of that school: diversity, interculturalism and principles. This strategy is not uncommon of corporate leadership underscoring how emancipatory and intersubjective (Habermas, 1981) goals may be exploited teleologically for success (see Gardner-McTaggart

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  179 2020a). What also emerged is a tendency to think big transformationally, but implement transactionally. To some, this is viewed as common practice in corporate environments where vision overrules personal stories and detail (Courtney, 2015; Gunter et al., 2017) a sort of “My way or the highway” but packaged in the soft values of internationalism and diversity. Such an antagonistic approach is not ubiquitous but is a recurring theme in international schools. It appears to be an important part of understanding how increased power can and does operate with increased pressure in this globalizing educational leadership context. Examples of such antagonisms include the following: ● Alfred, who “let 30 teachers go” (they were approaching legal tenure after a nationally regulated two years of service) to “send out a message”. ● Barry, who replaced both of his principals because he couldn’t get them onside, also his conflict with the union. ● Charles, who struggles with the teachers seeking an equal voice, and with the rigid board. ● Elvin also is challenged with the board (both confirming Littleford, 1999 on board structures). He also significantly reduces teacher benefits and alters school appraisal towards performance. ● Fiona changed appraisals “to reflect actual teaching”: also challenging the board. Dorothy refrained from any critical professional reflection and came away with no admission of significant top-down, transactional leadership (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020a). All in all, findings uncover some harsh, anti-collegial decision-making and yet are reflective of the honesty participants have shown, and testament to their own moral compass as well as the suitability of this methodology. With all the talk of global mindedness, transaction still forms an integral part of leading a successful international school confirming attempts at intersubjectivity (Habermas, 1981) as strategic ‘window dressing’ rather than an aim in itself. In the concluding three paragraphs, Values deals with the moral aspect of leading in the globalizing international space; Strategies uncovers the two main overarching goals of directors; Actions deposits the more tactical, workaday reality as senior leadership moves from thinking to action. Values. These are vital in a successful international school because they empower leadership to defend the emancipatory goals of an educational establishment defined by privilege and beset by instrumental pressures. There is strong general consensus among directors that the values of global mindedness or GCE (Andreotti, 2011; Oxley and Morris, 2013; Pashby, 2011; UNESCO, 2015; Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a) are non-negotiable, and form the essential feature of leadership in this schools’ context. While the IBLP is well regarded by all, some participants are wary of its ‘corporate’ feel as a franchise (and thereby devaluation) of global mindedness. (Their opinion is that the IBLP is reductive and restricting.) These participants prefer to see plurality through the values of internationalism, global mindedness and GCE. The exception is Dorothy who wholeheartedly endorses the IBLP into her leadership and outlook. Several also see the moral framework as being under attack, mostly by the board of the school, but also at times by parents, or even teachers. Championing these values is vital, and participants have a strong influence on them, equating them with success and by doing so they invoke ‘collaborative leadership’ (Ni et al., 2018); stressing the importance of what amounts to a ‘learning organization’ as they consistently highlight the difference between individual international schools (Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a) and stress the importance of context (Bruggencate et al., 2012). Directors use their power

180  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations to formalize values in strategic documentation, for example, they will write them into the school’s mission statement (Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2018d, 2019), and then use this in an attempt to keep balance. However, values emerge as ‘intervening variables’ as opposed to ‘hypothetical constructs’ (MacCorquodale and Meehl, 1948), which allows for values to be reified and deployed strategically for success. A most salient example of this is how values of diversity, internationalism and interculturalism exist unproblematically in international schools alongside a pervasive culture of whiteness, injustice and racist hiring practices (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020b). Strategy. Participants’ data highlights the importance of values in promoting the school, but also collaboration and collegiality, confirming research in the main field of educational leadership (Brown, 2006; Busher and Saran, 1994; Eacott, 2015; Gunter, 2015; Hargreaves, 1991; Harris, 2013; Greenfield, 1993; Ishimaru, 2013; Lumby, 2013; Marks and Printy, 2003; Robinson et al., 2008) and in the international schools leadership literature (Bryant, 2015; Bunnell, 2019; Caffyn, 2010; Day et al., 2009; Hallinger et al., 2014; Hamad and Shah, 2018; Gardner-McTaggart, 2018a, 2018b). This confirmation highlights once more the value of intersubjectivity (Habermas, 1981) in educational organization as the most valuable tool in its leadership. For example, Ni et al. (2018) relate how effective and successful school environments are empowering collegial places focused upon collaboration. In line with Ni et al. (2018), all director participants in this sample recognize that success depends on inclusion and empowerment and this confirms Hamad and Shah (2018) who found that IBIS’ leaders were prepared to levy considerable influence (and even circumvent state legislation) in order to foster a preferred culture and remove state-appointed staff who damaged social cohesion. (In their study, local state appointed teachers were asked to stay at home on full pay, because their mere presence was considered too detrimental to the school culture.) Here too, participants view collective strategies as being important in building a culture and establishing social cohesion between all stakeholders (Lumby, 2009), and in a way that facilitates a “harmonious and high-functioning school environment” (Ni et al., 2018, p. 244). Participants in this sample are very much aware of the importance of the school environment, and they repeatedly highlight what makes them so different. That is to say, their international schools are extremely diverse, complex multicultural organizations with many voices. In this international schools context, the ability to invoke ‘collective leadership’ as advocated by Ni et al., is a strategy. In other words, directors are likely to exploit intersubjectivity for strategic action (fostering communicative action being secondary) (Habermas, 1981) because this is what the structure of the globalizing organization requires. The way they are able to (or believe they are able to) do this is through the power of shared values. For these international educational leadership professionals, building on shared values is a way of uniting the many voices. These include the board, the multicultural parents or emancipatory parents or the targets-driven parents (or an intersection of any of the afore), along with the variously trained and experienced teachers, and students drawn from over a hundred nations, with just as many ideas on teaching and learning. Understanding how to assimilate the comparative nature of professionals and institutions, to develop and levy the values of global mindedness is the key strategy of successful senior leaders of IBIS. Action. Findings also show that the conceptions of collective leadership are subject to unforeseen and ongoing threats. However, educational leadership is profoundly contextual, and this analysis has sought to accommodate the rigid realities as a lived experience of globalizing education, and one that directors deal with in a constant manner, levying strong

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  181 leader-led initiatives – supported by an ontology of strategic action (Habermas, 1981) – in order to maintain and accumulate a functionalist appearance of organizational harmony. When faced with threat, some leaders reviewed here become despotic or ‘transactional’ in terms of reified educational leadership theory. Good examples are found in the arbitrary firing of 30 teachers to evade granting tenure (Alfred), or firing principals rather than sharing leadership (Barry), or severely reducing teacher benefits and introducing performance pay (Elvin). Despite this, Fiona and Dorothy make a very clear case for balance and shared leadership and so in comparative analysis it emerges that much agency is afforded the director, demanding a great deal of leadership skill and experience. This practice confirms the interwoven nature of empowerment and leader-led actions (or transformational and transactional leadership) (Allix, 2000; Busher and Saran, 1994; Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Kezar and Eckel, 2008; Lopez, 2003; Lumby, 2013) when emphasis drifts from a relational, collegial professionality (Courtney, 2015; Eacott, 2015; Gronn, 1996; Gunter, 2015; Hartley, 2016; Lopez, 2003). This emerges as a pronounced standard feature of international schools placed as they are in a more precarious, threatened, and fluid environment (Bailey and Gibson, 2020; Bunnell, 2010; Caffyn, 2010, 2013; Everitt, 2019; Keller, 2015; Poole, 2019; Rey et al., 2020; Savva, 2017). The sub-optimal actions of senior leadership are doubtless ameliorated by a shifting staff, and patchwork collegiality where collective memories are short and directors (and teaching staff) can evade many collegial repercussions due to teachers ‘voting with their feet’, and simply leaving one school for another. However, it follows that this can also act to encourage a culture less facilitative of genuine collegial collaboration and compromise. This condition implies an organization with a predilection for ‘structural amnesia’ (Lingard and Rawolle, 2004) and one that privileges the hierarchical over the intersubjective. Effectiveness, Success and Professional Identity The international school’s director is often misunderstood due to an absence of knowledge generation in this emerging subfield that this study has sought to address by providing trustworthy rich data with a critical analysis. It is clear that the director must provide and nurture the conditions for school effectiveness and success within the IB framework. The job is best suited to an educator able to shoulder the burden of an isolated position; to play an organizational role of which there are two main parts described as follows. Senior Leadership Role 1 Provide an environment for school principals to lead learning in line with the school mission. For some directors this requires the balanced interplay of authority and collegiality, for others this means generating a culture of shared leadership, and collegiality. As has been clear from research in the main field (Robinson et al., 2008) the ability to levy influence to support instruction and elevate teaching and learning as core practice is a major feature of effective school leadership. In this context instruction is focused on the principals and coordinators. The effective director understands the valuable instructional position of principals and supports them, or replaces them – collegiality is subservient to strategy, not constitutive of it. Senior Leadership Role 2 This regards success of the school, and is about providing vision and generating the mission (Day et al., 2016a; Keung and Rokinson-Szapkiw, 2013; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2006; Marks

182  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations and Printy, 2003; Shatzer et al., 2014). In this case, building a multilateral culture based upon shared values of global-mindedness – as interpreted by the director. To this end, some directors rely heavily on positional authority (‘transaction’) to get things done as they see fit. To the director’s mind as she/he projects into the world, they initiate empowering, collegial leadership and promote GCE values in order to build a school culture. A strong culture influences the educational credentials (and effectiveness) of the school, and markets a harmonious ethos of diversity in line with the mission, vision and stakeholders of the school (Ni et al., 2018). Where Words Speak Louder than Actions The director participants in this study show how they lead through the antagonistic dualisms of an international school amidst globalizing pressures of precarity, transition, and threat. Directors present a very human face to help understand the director figure; the god Janus (Keller, 2015), surrounded by vampirism (Caffyn, 2018), the ‘God on a good day’ (Roberts and Mancuso, 2014) in what can be a lonely (Bailey and Gibson, 2020) and unforgiving job (Caffyn, 2013). As findings show, some directors can and do act in ways that would be deemed unacceptable or unnecessarily harsh in the main field of EMAL presenting a push-pull of influence, directly confirming Savva (2017), Rey et al. (2020) and Poole (2019) on teacher precarity and insecurity. Yet others appear to develop collegiality and collaboration, and all participants ‘claim’ this approach as their normative orientation. This interrelation between making the world a better place, and small-time tyranny emerges from a causal relationship through this research. It is clear that the IB promotes, as best it can, educational values for an international sector. Its acknowledged collective, collegial harmony as school culture (Ni et al., 2018) is aligned with education and its optimal organization. It follows that the process of communicative action and intersubjectivity (Habermas, 1981) can and does provide the benchmark for educational leadership in social spaces. However, what happens when the educational context is no longer social, but customer oriented? In a school culture defined by extraordinary hierarchy, and division of labour, it follows that a ‘division of values’ invokes one meaning for customers (students and parents) and another for staff (teachers): for example when Alfred is able to maintain strong values-based leadership towards students and parents, whilst enacting unjust contract terminations towards staff. In other contexts, the principal or director might consider more ‘intersubjectively’ in decision making, yet not so for Alfred: he is able to act ‘subjectively’ and alone and contrary to the benchmark of educational practice. This strategic action is possible because the school is a market. It is fluid and while teachers have little say or representation, they are itinerant, knowledge workers whose professional identities are more likely to imitate other corporate and business fields than in comparable national and state school contexts (Bunnell and Poole, 2021). Over many decades, these values, strategies, and actions of senior leadership have shaped a distinct subfield of EMAL, where – in isolation and far from instruction – the director balances the success of the school as a customer-oriented, socially competent and global-minded strategist. The liberal organizational powers available to directors, allied with the globalizing pressure typical to this sector uncovers a shared normative orientation invoking social practice, juxtaposed with a range of descriptive strategies and actions which can appear to thrive on (or survive through) hierarchy, positional authority, and leader-led initiative. The director manifests as the system-world to colonize the lifeworld (Habermas,

Values, strategy and action in globalizing education  183 1981) of students and educators. They do this by repurposing ‘hypothetical constructs’ to drive success. These become the intellectually reduced and transient ‘intervening variables’ (MacCorquodale and Meehl, 1948) of global mindedness and social practice which are deployed as to be teleologically indistinct from strategic action pursuant of ‘success’. As recent findings show on pervasive whiteness, injustice and even racism in IB international schools (Gardner-McTaggart, 2020b) these schools are not about emancipatory change because they do not challenge the injustices and inequities which afford them advantage and distinction. Instead, they do what is good for business meaning they are a globalized outgrowth of the hegemonic system-world. The values of the IB make for good marketing for the brand of parent who seeks ‘privilege with a conscience’. The director is an omniscient champion and models according to his or her own belief system. As shown here, female participants appeared to orient more towards the ‘benchmark’ of international educational leadership through intersubjectivity, the males were more able to invoke collaboration but take the tough decisions on their own. This is a unique leadership role with sweeping powers and freedoms. Whether male or female, this white, Anglo leader oversees education and is able to orient/act as he/she believes amidst a narrative of emancipation and togetherness where words speak louder than actions.1

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10. Exploring the connections between critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture Dustin Garlitz

INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE IN RELATION TO ORGANIZATIONS Making connections between sociology and philosophy and their overlapping influences in relation to organizations is of prime importance to the historical foundations of theory construction and culture because it is carries on the methodological tradition of leading figures in the field such as Max Weber. As another classical social theorist, Karl Marx, states in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in relation to organizations, a “class of small peasant proprietors”1 “cannot represent themselves, they must be represented” (Tucker, 1978, p. 608).2 This brings up the issue of “mediation” in the political sphere in the process of forming a theoretical sociology of culture. If an emergent class of capitalists cannot represent themselves outside the marketplace, they need to turn to the bureaucracy of the nation-state to acknowledge their presence. In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argued that man in the state of nature was indeed brutal, and that he needed to surrender his right and transfer his authority to a hegemonic state that would protect him. In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed that people would actually come together and voluntarily form/accept this type of state to administer their public and social affairs. Since the social and political thought of Karl Marx has conceivably reached its end, numerous social critics of late have commented on the cultural ramifications of accepting totalizing conceptions of government as a scholarly tradition in social theory. I examine how contemporary sociologists and philosophers of culture such as Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu have all followed in such a tradition, in one way or another. Douglas Kellner outlines all of Baudrillard’s famous works and states that the young Baudrillard was very much committed to Marxist criticism. To fully articulate a contemporary sociology of culture, one must examine the early cultural theorists of structuralism that reigned supreme in Baudrillard’s formative years. While Jean Baudrillard was studying with philosopher of culture Henri Lefebvre in France, cultural theorists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan were only beginning to digest the structuralist stance conceived by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as stated in the posthumously published Course in General Linguistics

1 Rearticulated by post-colonialism scholar Edward Said in the Introduction to his book Orientalism (1979). 2 Cultural commentator Henry Louis Gates, Jr. also turns to this famous quote in his article “Writing, ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes” (1985).

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Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  189 (1916). For cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, this involved viewing myths not only diachronically (horizontally), but also synchronically (vertically). That is, the structuralist would “freeze the system”3 and look for similarities and differences (very much like a code). Concerning philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the algorithm for metaphor that was published in Écrits [f(S…S’)S=S(-)s] involved describing signification with an ‘S’ rather than an ‘s.’4 Both cultural philosophies (synchronicity and signifier-centrism) were hugely influential in critical theorist Jean Baudrillard’s formation of a postmodern critique of society. In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard displays his cultural Marxist foundation and writes that “it was capital which was the first to feed throughout its history on the destruction of every referential, of every human goal” (Baudrillard, 2001, p. 182). Jean Baudrillard theorizes about a “hyperreality”5 where one sign leads to another (only to lead to another). One can view capital as fueling such activity. Baudrillard is obsessed with Disneyland, an institution that exudes simulation and the convergence of marketplace and contemporary culture. Marx, the proto-structuralist, had the foresight to predict that the modern individual would fetishize commodities to the point that consuming the commodity would have its own contemporary cultural logic. Tourism is the world’s largest industry today. Consumers indeed pay an exorbitant amount of money to observe the “social practices”6 of others. The appeal of Disneyland or Epcot is that the postmodern subject can travel the simulated world in one day. The French philosopher Louis Althusser was starting to integrate structuralism and Marxism as fields of intellectual inquiry in the 1950s, yet Baudrillard used the spirit of Course in General Linguistics, as well as philosopher/psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s Écrits, to actually discredit orthodox Marxism as early as 1972. The post-1968 France which gave us the critical theory and contemporary continental philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and Julia Kristeva, was in the most part rooted in Nietzschean characteristics rather than staunch Marxist qualities. Jean Baudrillard is typically associated with this poststructuralist trend in contemporary French thought. Missing from an account of materialistic phenomena are cultural dynamics, and Jean Baudrillard expressed these dynamics so precisely in his critical contemporary philosophy of culture. Classical political economists did not intend to elaborate on social activities associated with use value, yet Baudrillard as social theorist made critical cultural statements when he examined the limits of political economy in a media-saturated society. In his first two books, Baudrillard writes about the emergence of ever-present advertising and branding in mass society, and in his third book – For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign – describes

3 As described by commentator Louis Markos in his lecture on linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralism in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (3rd edition; Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2000). 4 Originally, Ferdinand de Saussure believed that S=signified and s=signifier. Only after fully digesting Course in General Linguistics, did philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (in the “Agency of the Letter” from Écrits) write that ‘S’ could actually equal the signifier (it is actually the sign that reigns supreme in the structuralist endeavor). Jacques Lacan, Écrits (New York: Norton, 2003). 5 Semiotician Umberto Eco applies this concept in his own writings, as evident in “Travels in Hyperreality.” Baudrillard builds on this theme in his critical and contemporary social/cultural theory. See Baudrillard (2001). 6 Or as the French cultural theorist Michel de Certeau would state as “The Practice of Everyday Life.” De Certeau (2011 [1984]).

190  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations the inner logic which governs the consumer’s confrontation with various labels, slogans and marketing devices. Jean Baudrillard believes that there is something symbolic taking place in our consumer society when a multi-million dollar advertising company’s cigarette ad appeals to one of the masses by saying, “smoke this brand of cigarette if you want to be one of the elite,” when in fact this corporation is telling every consumer the same homogenized message. When we see this brand of cigarettes plastered on billboards and in between magazine spreads, we immediately associated the name with this socially constructed message, and therefore Baudrillard theorizes a “sign value” to account for the symbolic character of this product. When the consumer gives in to the corporately informed slogan, and buys a pack of this brand of cigarette, we have the beginnings of symbolic exchange and Jean Baudrillard’s critical inquiry into agency-rich “cultural metaphysics” (a term coined by commentator Charles Levin). Part of the critique Baudrillard makes about late capitalism is that not only are we inundated with commodities and their signifiers created by the advertising sector, but the actual signifiers point to one another and the actual corporeal tie from signifier to signified has been broken. We have become lost in a land of signs that have no resolution or grounding in Fordist and Post-Fordist production techniques and we are now disillusioned (like Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor W. Adorno was) by the warped product placement found in these signs motivating behavior. For Jean Baudrillard, postmodernity may very well entail the widespread collusion of disparate signifiers. In The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard writes that actually “the sign no longer designates anything at all. It approaches it true structural limit which is to refer back only to other signs. All reality then becomes the place of a semiurgical manipulation, of a structural simulation” (Baudrillard, 2001, p. 128). Jean Baudrillard is attempting to get the point across that there is in fact no referential tied to many of the innumerable signs which subliminally confront us in the public sphere. Philosopher and cultural theorist Douglas Kellner finds that Baudrillard as social commentator uses this type of postmodern rhetoric in order to express to his audience that “we have entered a new stage in history, in which sign control is almost complete and totalitarian” (Kellner, 1989, p. 50). Jean Baudrillard has seen the sign emerge from three different stages or eras in modern world history, which starts with the Renaissance, progresses with mass industrialization and concludes with “code”-ridden postmodernity. Such a cultural phenomenon contrasts with the traditional three stage model of feudalism-mercantilism-capitalism developed by French historian Fernand Braudel, because capitalist industrialization is not the final stage in human history for Baudrillard: there is still a culturally distinct “hyperreality” that progresses after this ideology reaches full maturity. Cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai’s “ethnoscapes” are relevant to such synthetic homogenization of global culture. Issues of migration and demography accompany industries such as tourism in “ethnoscapes.” With the emergence of globalization we now have “people flows” that accompany transnational “capital flows.” Fetishism has an anthropomorphic origin, placing it at the groundwork of a philosophy of culture. Marx’s nineteenth-century fetishism of commodities informed Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s “Culture Industry” of the mid-twentieth century, which has taken an “ethnic turn” in theorist Arjun Appadurai’s late twentieth-century/early twenty-first century assessment of global cultural phenomena. Social policy, that is, formally-trained sociologists spending time doing applied work, has risen to the forefront of contemporary culture.

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  191 In the opening decades of the twenty-first century praxis has become much more fashionable than contemporary theory, as was demonstrated by social theorist Anthony Giddens’ career shift. That is, a long time social theorist was driven out of his lecture hall in academia (the London School of Economics) and into the public sphere, in an effort to advise a political regime (Gaddafi in Libya), as related to the sociology of organizations. Another cultural theorist active in the sociology of organizations and higher education, former New School Provost Arjun Appadurai, writes that “ethnic politics in today’s world is that primordia (whether of language or skin color or neighborhood or kinship) have become globalized” (Appadurai, 1990, p. 41, emphases added). Cultural scholars of social life will continue to find applied work as policy advisors – civil society needs to be assured that globalization will be assigned an appropriate “human face.” Only when multiculturalism becomes as important as international finance will the archetypal WTO protestors from Seattle in 1999 know their voices have been heard. In Discipline and Punish, historian and philosopher of culture Michel Foucault writes of the hierarchizing of surveillance that has occurred since the founding of Mettray in 1840. As brilliantly described in the lectures of sociologist Spencer Cahill and musicologist Maria Cizmic,7 the postmodern subject has grown to internalize such elements of social control. Issues of identity in contemporary culture involve mastering totalizing mechanisms of control. We have an entire culture of “authenticity” that funds the efforts of “self-help” gurus.8 These pseudo-authorities tell us to master the art of self-discipline in such acts as dieting and giving up smoking. Philosopher Charles Taylor9 gives a modernist, narrative inspired, account of historical acts of philosophical thought leading to such contemporary cultural predicaments. In the Foucauldian encounter with postmodernism, the issue of “docility” is raised. In “the great transformation”10 from enlightened modernist coercion to postmodern fragmentation, historian and philosopher of culture Michel Foucault writes that, “The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down, and rearranges it. A ‘political autonomy,’ which was also a ‘mechanics of power,’ was being born” (Rabinow, 1984, p. 182) Thus we have the emergence of a new11 “body politic” that operates outside of “self and subjectivity.” We are dealing with an ahistorical entity that is deterministic, rather than metaphysical. We allow social policy to shape our lives. The state is the social realm, as opposed to the Marxian exploitative corporate sphere. The blue collar worker will one day retire and rely on the state to administer benefits to him. Corporatism has structured the majority of his life, yet it is the state that will fund his very existence after he demonstrates an appropriate allegiance to docility (via a long career in the private sphere). Weberian asceticism is a motivator of activity at the workplace, yet it is the duty of social policy to shape a blue collar worker’s overarching life projects. In the long term, the state administers our social affairs. 7 In “Contemporary Sociological Theory” and “Theory and Methods: A Survey of Critical and Cultural Theory,” respectively (University of South Florida Departments of Sociology and Humanities & Cultural Studies, Tampa, Florida, 2005). 8 As elaborated by philosopher Charles Guignon in On Being Authentic (2004). 9 In Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989). 10 Karl Polanyi inspired. 11 Anti-Hobbesian, anti-Machiavellian, philosophically and theoretically guided in the tradition of classical social and political thought (see Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, New York: Vintage, 1983).

192  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Although cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1968 [1936]) was the first to write about a capitalist marketplace that fetishized the originality and authenticity of “auratic,” one-of-a-kind works of art (which in turn drove up their monetary value), it was French public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu who first theorized about an individual having the “cultural capital” to fully appreciate that actual aura the work of art exuded.12 In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Pierre Bourdieu writes that “middle-brow culture is resolutely against vulgarity” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 326). The middle class is indeed caught up in attempting to learn the lingo of white collar culture and decoding bourgeois works of art (via the attainment of a certain degree of “culture capital”). Here we have the functioning of aesthetics as status symbols. The avant-garde piece of art (whether it be a Jackson Pollock or a Mark Rothko) has an esoteric meaning that can serve as a class barrier. Those confused, or lacking the “cultural capital” to understand/decode its meaning, can very well be labeled peasants. There is a certain degree of cultural13 appreciation involved in asset accumulation resulting in the demarcation of “highbrow” and “lowbrow.” Pierre Bourdieu writes that “the class … exists if and when there exist agents who can say that they are the class, by the mere fact of speaking publicly” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 24). It is the upper class of society that acts publicly through funding cultural institutions such as museums and universities. It is very fashionable for the rich to sit as members on the Board of Trustees of such institutions and is a sign of their wealth and success. Our society in fact “hierarchizes” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 16) people who hold such distinctions. The upper-class funds such cultural institutions to separate them from the blue collar. Frankfurt School social philosopher Herbert Marcuse writes in Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory that, “If the exercises of the absolute mind, art, religion, and philosophy, constitute man’s essence, the proletarian is forever severed from his essence, for his existence permits him no time to indulge in these activities” (Marcuse, 1954, p. 261). Here we have the paradox of contemporary culture. We are supposed to all enjoy the aesthetic value of cultural production, yet it seems that the only people with time to enjoy things such as “auratic” art are those who have their money making more money for them (and are not working in excess just to survive financially). Is this a consequence of Weberian asceticism? The enjoyment of art can be labeled as “hedonism,” an evil word in the minds of those who adhere to the Protestant work ethic. It is through discipline and self-control (the very antithesis of hedonistic pursuits) that Benjamin Franklin thought would leave a man “healthy, wealthy, and wise” (Franklin, 2001). This is the very origin of the textbook standardization of culture. The child of the blue collar worker might be given the basic literacy to appreciate art and culture through the educational sphere (they might learn in school about the key works of art, music, literature, etc.) but an entire, in-depth survey of the humanities is reserved only for a child from the upper class. In History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Hungarian philosopher and sociologist Georg Lukács writes that, “The historical knowledge of the proletariat begins with knowledge of the present, with self-knowledge of its social situation and with the elucidation of its necessity” (Lukács, 1968, p. 159) The contemporary cultural sphere, in such

12 Cultural theorist John Guillory has an entire book devoted to applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital” to the literary canon (1995). For Bourdieu and habitus, see his Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984). 13 Aesthetic, not ethnic, as developed in the cultural aesthetics and cultural theory of Bourdieu – The Field of Cultural Production (1993) and The Rules of Art (1996).

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  193 a situation, is outside and beyond the worker’s life world. Art, in such a situation, becomes a characteristic of bourgeois life. Social theorist Max Weber, in his essay “Class, Status, Party,” wrote that “‘class situation’ is … ultimately ‘market situation’” (Weber, 1958, p. 182). The proletarian has its own conception of what art and culture is, and it originates from the type of artistic and cultural objects that are available for someone with that certain monetary endowment. For example, very few wage workers in New York City can afford to view an opera at the Met in Manhattan. Such a public event is reserved for only the upper echelon of society. This is how market situation shapes the Weberian notion of class. The Pierre Bourdieu (Max Weber becomes evident at this point) of Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste may very well be rooted in “status honor.” Max Weber writes that “a specific style of life can be expected from all those who wish to belong to the circle” (Weber, 1958, p. 187). There are certain tastes and preferences that can serve as necessary requirements for belonging to a social circle. These tastes can be labeled as “highbrow” or “lowbrow” and have classificatory tendencies. Beyond stratification, preferences can organize social groups at their most micro-level. We see a rather large amount of special interest groups in politics today, yet we also have witnessed the emergence of many different types of organizations. We have NGOs that virtually run the United Nations’ day-to-day activities, but we also have clusters of individuals throughout culture at large coming together in effort to pursue a common interest. Such an example would be a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who congregate in sunny Florida’s Daytona Beach every year, which can arguably be interpreted as an illustration of Durkheimian solidarity. With the emergence of the internet, we have seen online chat rooms and listservs that focus on every type of interest possible. And on college campuses, we have seen a wide variety of clubs for those with similar interests.14 Social theorist Max Weber writes in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that “The notion of a societal division of labor and occupational stratification has been conceptualized, by Aquinas, as well as others, as a direct manifestation of God’s divine plan” (Weber, 2002, p. 107). From this statement we can draw a parallel to Martin Heidegger’s notion of “facticity” and “thrownness.” That is, German foundations in continental philosophy give us the grounding to believe we do not have a choice or say in our life situation; what matters, however, is how we engage in the situation. Max Weber saw individuals approaching life with an ascetic urgency, trying to secure their salvation by showing devotion to the Lord. However, the Max Weber we see in “Class, Status, Party” is more concerned with describing or outlining the various ways people actually congregate (on a more secular level). Once again is the central issue of social and cultural practices. In Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory, philosopher and critical theorist Nancy Fraser explores a Foucauldian-Habermasian connection regarding classificatory social activity. She writes that, “Just as Heidegger’s delimitation of humanism was intended to enhance rather to undermine human dignity, so Foucault’s critique, pace Habermas, is not an attack on the notions of freedom and reason per se” (Fraser, 1989, p. 41). Individuals, coaxed by the state, can congregate around special interests. Spectator culture is a profound component of the modern and postmodern identity. Sports and entertainment are mammoth industries because workers find the need for public consumption outside their private sector activities. This is also true of the capitalist. We find that all 14 For example, my father Dr. Jay Garlitz is faculty advisor to the University of Florida’s amateur radio club; he has informed me that the University has approximately 600 clubs at the student level.

194  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations echelons of society consume certain types of entertainment. Therefore, we can also find Pierre Bourdieu’s spatial element of social differentiation when someone remarks, “Oh, that jazz listener is so sophisticated.” Contemporary social theorist Anthony Giddens writes in Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber, that “Many instances can be adduced in which men draw clear distinctions between economic possession and status privilege” (Giddens, 1971, p. 167). Therefore, by calling the jazz listener “sophisticated,” we may very well be implying that that individual has more financial assets than we do. Social theorist Anthony Giddens finds that although Max Weber does not always equate status with wealth, he writes that wealth accumulation is a very good indicator of aggregate social status. As a whole, upper-class America has very different cultural interests and preferences than the working class. We come to romanticize the actions and interests of the rich, knowing that we too, through the Weberian work ethic, could come to be like them one day. Those successful in such a pursuit (new money), simulate the cultural practices of their inspirations (old money). Sociologist of culture Jean Baudrillard would say that there is a continuous circle of simulation at work here. His explanation would be that people with newly acquired wealth have simply copied the cultural tastes and preferences (theorized about by Pierre Bourdieu) of those who came before them. It was continental philosopher Jacques Derrida’s famous lecture “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” delivered at Johns Hopkins University in 1966, which ushered in the age of poststructuralism.15 Today, cultural critic Jean Baudrillard is an example of a social theorist that builds from such a tradition, emphasizing the absurdity, confusion, and novelty of living in a world where the signifier reigns supreme. Philosopher, sociologist, and historian of culture Michel Foucault also had a unique, poststructuralist take on social history, inspiring several variants of cultural criticism. However, all three French public intellectuals were admonished by the academy in some way. Continental philosopher Jacques Derrida was refused a honorary degree from Cambridge University in the 1990s, social theorist Jean Baudrillard only found work at a rogue summer institution in the Swiss alps,16 and philosopher of culture Michel Foucault was famously criticized by American academic and cultural institutions for being a “good philosopher of history, but not a very good historian of philosophy.”17 It may be the “ethnic turn” of global culture theorist Arjun Appadurai, on the other hand, that is the legacy of today’s hypercapitalist globalization. His cultural theories are simply more practical than French poststructuralism. We are undergoing a new “great transformation”18 and we need to address social issues of migration and demography. The real academic concern in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, however, involves taking steps to bridge esoteric French philosophy of culture with this type of engaged social praxis. French critical social theorist Jean Baudrillard started making commentary as a Marxist theorist, yet displayed structuralist tendencies from his earliest writings. One of the legacies of Jean Baudrillard is that he used the structuralist techniques of structural linguist Ferdinand

15 As situated by David Richter in his anthology The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends (1998). 16 I am friendly with a New York musician who taught alongside Jean Baudrillard at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. 17 As musicologist Maria Cizmic has reminded me in a cultural theory seminar. 18 Karl Polanyi, once again.

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  195 de Saussure to find aggregate faults in Marxian political economy. The structural Marxist Louis Althusser was starting to integrate these two fields of intellectual inquiry in the 1950s, yet Baudrillard was using the spirit of Course in General Linguistics, as well as philosopher/ psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s Écrits, to actually discredit orthodox Marxism as early as 1972. The post-1968 France which gave us the critical theory and contemporary continental philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Julia Kristeva, was significantly grounded in Nietzschean characteristics rather than staunch Marxist qualities. Jean Baudrillard is typically associated with this poststructuralist trend in contemporary French thought. French cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, on the other hand, is a little more difficult to pin down. Generally he is regarded as an early innovator in the field of a type of structuralist or poststructuralist sociology of culture. In terms of contemporary sociological theory, one can place Pierre Bourdieu’s writings within the postmodern selections of social theory (alongside theorists such as Foucault, Baudrillard, Appadurai, Rose, and Seidman), yet one should note that Pierre Bourdieu was never in fact a postmodernist or a poststructuralist (as neither is a cultural theorist such as Arjun Appadurai). Pierre Bourdieu is quick to cite the analytic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his writings. Richard Nice and Richard Shusterman have both pointed out that his texts such as Outline of a Theory of Practice represent a critical reaction to, yet an apogee of, Anglo-American thought. Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste can be thought of as a synthesized reaction to Immanuel Kant and Max Weber, and to Neo-French theory to emerge from post-1968 France. Pierre Bourdieu may have been one of the contemporary French theorists most grounded in (1) classical social theory and (2) German continental pursuits (as evident in his Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, in addition to the stated Kantian and Weberian themes of Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste). Both Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu, by the 1980s, had carved their own niche in critical and cultural theory, and at that time academic buzzwords such as “habitus” and “simulacrum” were the trendiest imports from the new French intellectual scene. These cultural terms, though, have now become more like institutions, which reflect the grandeur of both Baudrillard and Bourdieu’s entire bodies of academic work. Jean Baudrillard theorizes about a postmodern, hypercapitalist world in which emphasis is now placed on consumption rather than production. In fact, in this post-Fordist environment our consumption practices have become so complex that Baudrillard has conceptualized a “sign-value” dimension to decode the myriad code-like signs which the advertising realm has created to sell its product. Philosopher Karl Marx theorized of two dimensions in classical political economy, that of “use value” and “exchange value.” Gold was to have great exchange value (or economic worth), but didn’t have the practical utility water had (social worth) in the practice of everyday life. This was the message preached in the historical foundations of political economy, in which we find a ménage of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx’s intellectual thought. Missing from an account of materialistic phenomena are cultural dynamics, and Jean Baudrillard expressed these dynamics so precisely in his critical theory. Classical political economists did not intend to elaborate on social activities associated with use value, yet Baudrillard as social theorist made critical cultural statements when he examined the limits of political economy in a media-saturated society. In his first two books, Baudrillard writes about the emergence of ever-present advertising and branding in mass society, and in his third book – For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign – he describes the inner

196  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations logic which governs the consumer’s confrontation with various labels, slogans and marketing devices. An examination of Jean Baudrillard’s coded signs and semiotics is warranted, and their genesis in the French structuralist tradition should be discussed. In For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, Baudrillard writes that “sign value is to symbolic exchange what exchange value (economic) is to use value” and describes it in the equation of SgEV/ SbE=EcEv/UV (Baudrillard, 2001, p. 63). Such a formula has structural elements that bear an uncanny resemblance to philosopher Jacques Lacan’s algorithms of metonymy and metaphor in “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious.” In Lacan’s Écrits we are presented with the metonymy formula f(S…S’)S=S(-)s as a result of the Lacanian thesis that a signified can have multiple signifiers (for instance two identical bathrooms consisting of only a toilet and a sink, one labeled “ladies” and the other labeled “gentlemen” [Richter, 1998, p. 1048]). In For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, Baudrillard builds on Jacques Lacan’s poststructuralism and posits that “A signifier may refer to many signifieds, or vice versa: the principle of equivalence, ergo of exclusion and reduction, which roots the arbitrariness of the sign, remains untouched. While still opposing itself as radically as ever to ambivalence, equivalence has simply transmuted into polyvalence” (Baudrillard, 2001, p. 84) What we have developing in Baudrillard’s poststructuralist and postmodernist world is a clustering of signifiers, which although at a particular time pointed to one signified now reflect off one another, perpetuating each other’s livelihood. A recurring theme in Jean Baudrillard’s literature is the Saussure-inspired idea of interplay and juxtaposition among langue and parole. In Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition: Part 6 – Modernism and the Age of Analysis, commentator Louis Markos explains how parole is a specific act of speech act or writing whereas the langue is the “overarching” deep-seeded pursuit of language (a structure). Baudrillard incorporates Claude Lévi-Strauss’ late structuralist development of analyzing social phenomena synchronically as well as diachronically. Although Saussure’s linguistics is the motivation for this multidirectional way of analyzing structures (thinking vertically as well as horizontally, historically as well as ahistorically, and incorporating the belief that all language in arbitrary and that elements of linguistic signifiers only have meaning in a “greater system or structure of similarities and differences” [Markos]), Jean Baudrillard throughout his For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign cites Émile Beneviste as the semiotician who is chiefly influential in his work. Philosopher Roland Barthes is another figure who plays a central role in Baudrillard’s conceptualizing of the deviant logic of the signified in this work. In The System of Objects, Saussure’s “langue” and “parole” directly account for the social standing of Jean Baudrillard’s postmodern subject (a theme which resonates with qualities of Pierre Bourdieu). What was symbolic and simulated in the Jean Baudrillard of the 1980s became “the virtual” with the emergence of information technologies of the 1990s. Baudrillard started making critical commentary under the guise of neo-Marxian social theory in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and found himself a major figure in contemporary cultural theory by the late 1980s with his concept of simulacrum. However, when his notion of the virtual emerged to socio-culturally make sense of the phenomenon of the internet in the 1990s, Jean Baudrillard became one of the world’s preeminent media theorists (a new Marshall McLuhan of sorts). Jean Baudrillard writes in Symbolic Exchange and Death that “McLuhan saw that the real message, the real ultimatum, lay in reproduction itself, and that production, as such, has no meaning: its social finality gets lost in seriality. Simulacra surpass history” (Baudrillard, 2001,

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  197 p. 141). Jean Baudrillard also mentions the relevance of cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s study of mechanical reproduction in such a line of pursuit during Symbolic Exchange and Death. In the theory and methods of cultural studies, one finds referenced Baudrillard’s notion of “simulacrum” as proto-media studies, and his theory was introduced in the context of Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan’s seminal studies in the interdisciplinary field. What further study of Baudrillard’s concept of the simulated has taught me is that “media-steered systems” (as theorized by Jürgen Habermas) are inextricably linked to the economic sphere’s activities. Jean Baudrillard describes how one can feign an illness and really feel just fine inside, but when he simulates an illness, he feels real symptoms. “Media-steered systems” are vulnerable to such simulated risks, and when symptoms are felt there is an aggregates shift in the economic sphere. Jean Baudrillard approaches such activity on a micro-level (by debunking myths of the governing logic of economic agents) in his second book, which I would like to discuss next. Cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu writes in “Social Space and Symbolic Power” that “Habitus is both a system of schemes of production of practices and a system of perception and appreciation of practices” (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 19) and that social reality is constructed collectively (in the form of norms and class) just as it can be individually. There is a type of Durkheimian social solidarity reminiscent when Pierre Bourdieu conceptualizes about class concordance. In fact, the third volume of philosopher Karl Marx’s Das Kapital comes to an abrupt stop when the issue of “class” is approached. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Pierre Bourdieu gives the quintessential cultural account of “class symbolization” (as phrased by social theorist David Gartman), picking up where Karl Marx left off, yet with entirely different methods (which are in fact rooted in the “Class, Status, Party” writings of Max Weber). What Pierre Bourdieu does in his cultural theory is develop the concept of a dual “highbrow/ lowbrow” culture and examines “conspicuous consumption” ad infinitum. The aesthetic preferences and consumption habits of various educated French citizens are analyzed, and Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste should be admired in part for its high theory and in part for its intensive ethnographic methods. Pierre Bourdieu shows how individuals with an especially high level of education or cultural producers do not, for instance, listen to Strauss’ “Blue Danube” while manual workers and the undereducated for the most part do (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 17). This relates to the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of a homogenized mass culture, where there remain power elites that are not hypnotized by the banality of the deceptive and barbaric culture industry and its standardized artistic product. Like Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu uses symbolic devices aimed at codifying the spirit of late industrial capitalism, and theorizes of an educational capital whose endowment can help one recognize when there is any type of kitschy and commercial low-brow commodification taking place in artistic production via the culture industry. For example, Pierre Bourdieu once again uses the “Blue Danube” as representative lowbrow art. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste was first published in 1979, and the research done by Pierre Bourdieu on the French public was done in the 1960s. In 1968 Stanley Kubrick used the “Blue Danube” in a blockbuster motion picture (2001: A Space Odyssey), and French intellectuals may have been attempting to distance themselves from corporate Hollywood when acknowledging in surveys that they listen to “Well-Tempered Clavier” rather than this composition. The “Blue Danube” may have symbolized, at the time of Pierre Bourdieu’s fieldwork, a proto-“Hollywoodization”

198  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations (that would lead to sociologist and social theorist George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization”) of society, and French cultural producers would therefore be much more likely to despise such American hegemony than wage workers who don’t have as much education capital or stake in their nation’s legacy. Pierre Bourdieu writes in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste that “the higher one rises is the social hierarchy, the more one’s tastes are shaped by the organization and operation of the education system” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 67). Cultural institutions play a key role in the social structure of space for Bourdieu. Education is the cultural institution that provides legitimating appeal, providing credentials to a rather small group out of an entire mass of citizens. Not only does this institution provide legitimating appeal, it sets standards. Pierre Bourdieu writes that “There is such a thing as bad taste … and persons of refinement know this instinctively. For those who do not, rules are needed” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 67). Bourdieu references poststructuralist Roland Barthes when he uses the term “scholastic acquisition” in the realm of “cultural capital,” and emphasizes that the only factor that is as important as educational history when determining artistic success is social origin. Towards the end of Pierre Bourdieu’s earlier Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972), the second volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is brought up. Bourdieu references the distinction Marx made between labor time and production time. Traditionally in agrarian societies, cultural anthropologists observed that there was nothing much significant (in terms of activity) emerging from the nine or so idle months of production time that Karl Marx theorized about in Capital Volume II. In Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice, on the other hand, observed was the fact that in the case of the Kabylia people of Algeria, the practices taking place during the time of production carried symbolic value. From observation, we can deduce that Bourdieu and Baudrillard intersect on the notion of the symbolic. Where Baudrillard theorizes about symbolic exchange, Bourdieu conceived of the symbolic capital which complemented and possibly even historically informs such a process. However, part of what in fact inspired Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic capital,” as first expressed in Outline of a Theory of Practice, is cultural theorist Marcel Mauss’ own earlier theory of “gift” exchange. The final pages of Outline of a Theory of Practice are spent discussing the strange process in which economic capital is transmutated into “symbolic capital.” Pierre Bourdieu brings up Marxian themes such as surplus values as wells as Nietzschean themes such as the debtor/ creditor and makes the claim that although these terms are traditionally used for materialist lines of pursuit, they may also carry over to the hazy world of the symbolic (we may in fact say there is a symbolic surplus value on an occasion, or a symbolic debt may be felt somewhere). Bourdieu actually re-distinguishes a third realm to accompany “economic” and “symbolic capital,” that of “cultural capital.” The two fields that Pierre Bourdieu links to “cultural capital” in this particular context are artistic endeavoring and the educational establishment. Bourdieu writes that “academic qualifications are to cultural capital what money is to economic capital” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 187). Bourdieu describes a type of motionlessness that exists in the cultural sphere (from an unbiased perspective) because once a cultural producer has their academic credentials, there is no need to constantly prove their acknowledged abilities to others or seek recertification through the educational establishments and institutions which granted them their original privileged cultural status. In using “habitus” to see how an indigenous culture works in Outline of a Theory of Practice, Pierre Bourdieu often finds himself juxtaposing binary opposites in a Derridean fashion (Bourdieu mentions continental philosopher Jacques Derrida, in the context of Immanuel

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  199 Kant’s Third Critique, in the postscript of Distinction). For example, Outline of a Theory of Practice contains several charts in which the wet season of the Kabylia is opposed to the dry season, the cultural practices of the male are compared to the female, day is contrasted to night, moon juxtaposed to sun, hot is compared to cold, etc. These dichotomous elements of social life help to isolate and pursue Pierre Bourdieu’s overarching theme of “habitus” (the black and white way of looking at culture make one want to build a grey bridge between the objective and subjective). The structuralist thought of authors Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss is as important to the intellectual development of Pierre Bourdieu as it was to Jean Baudrillard, and the structuralist concept of synchronicity once again is broached in Outline of a Theory of Practice. Pierre Bourdieu introduces this method when analyzing the calendars of the natives of the Algerian culture he was studying. He writes, “The social calendar tends to secure integration by compounding the synchronization of identical practices with the orchestration of different but structurally homologous practices” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 163). Bourdieu makes such a statement in a section on doxa where he presents a collective world view that incorporates the Empedoclean notion of heterodoxy and orthodoxy. In the case of the indigenous Algerian tribe, during the last days of the dry season certain ages of men find themselves in fields doing preparatory work in the form of sowing. If we take the framework developed in some of the later Bourdieu, we can say that these Kabylian men have their own world view, and form their own social group within the culture because of large amount of hours spent together laboring. The next developmental stage concerns class: since these workers spend so much time together, their consumption preferences might become homogeneous. Outline of a Theory of Practice is a work in anthropology, not consumerism, yet we find some of the early signs and tendencies of Distinction is this book. Pierre Bourdieu as French social theorist in relation to the world of economics and its capitalism helps give one a better perspective on what type of logic the “culture” of capitalism works by. In order to carry this forward, one may have to learn some of what Bourdieu eloquently states in Distinction. However, his Outline of a Theory of Practice has an entirely different thesis. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu theorizes that the Kabylian shooting their rifles during marriage ceremonials symbolizes something greater than the physical union of those two people, and I thought this was indeed unique to read in light of Jean Baudrillard’s extensive writings on the “economy” of the symbolic. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan ushered in a new phase of global capitalism, one that involved the concept of reform. Both Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu were alive to witness these historic events in 2001, although Bourdieu passed away the next year in France (at the time of his death he was considered one of the world’s preeminent intellectuals). Jean Baudrillard, since the late 1970s, was obsessed with the architectural design of the Twin Towers in New York City and what they symbolized. Immediately following the terrorist attacks he was asked to write a book on the event, as was cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, and he in part started promoting a controversial theory that America may have somehow encouraged terrorists to attack the skyscrapers that symbolized its global economic dominance, so that it could possibly exert its hegemonic military muscle abroad and rebuild at home as though it had never been challenged in the first place. In the post-9/11 world, we may find the need for integrating Karl Marx’s theory back into international capitalist reform, as related to the sociology of organization and organizational theory. Whereas the relevance of Karl Marx was left dwindling after May of 1968, his

200  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations influence may very well be called for again since the 9/11 attacks, and we should look for shifts in the style of Jean Baudrillard’s social critique to meet that cultural need in civil society. Recently Baudrillard has published on the art world, and the pursuit of Marxian aesthetics would be a welcomed development by the Frenchman. In his virtual dimension of media and cultural theory, as well as in his early grounding in Marxian political economy, one finds Jean Baudrillard a social theorist fit for the contemporary world. As far as Pierre Bourdieu is concerned, one may in fact find that the concept of “habitus” can help society understand the governing behavior of the cultural dimensions and limits involved with this rather new collective endeavor we call capitalist globalization. The sociology of organizations presupposed by these theoretical provocations are grounded in Marxian conflict theory, Weber’s notion of charisma, and Simmel’s concept of the web of group affiliations and network theory, namely the conflict and tragedy of culture. Treating sociology of organizations like culture is not a radically novel theme, as it was proposed in the theoretical assumptions of nineteenth-century social thought and classical sociological theory (the triad of Marx, Weber, and Simmel). With Bourdieu came the notion of a reflexive sociology of organizations and culture. Habitus as organization for Bourdieu rests on Weber’s sociological theory of rationalization and the iron cage of bureaucracy. Bourdieu and Foucault, as influenced by classical sociological thought, were concerned with notions of power, namely, symbolic power, in the treating of organizations as culture. Bourdieu treats education as culture and symbolic power, equating it with a sociology of organization based on status and hierarchies. The social theorist is concerned with notions of Reproduction in Education, Culture, Society, and Organizations. Foucault is preoccupied with treating Knowledge as Power and Knowledge as Culture with Power entangled in Organizational Theory, a Sociology of Organizations that presupposes a Weberian sociological theory of Class, Status, and Party. This organizational theory as related to the sociology of culture and social theory accompany Weber’s notion of Charisma. The primary importance of recording the overlapping influences between philosophy and sociology in the context of organizational studies and culture rests on the historical foundations and connections between theory and methods. This relates to a reviving of Weber’s work as a theorist of organizations in sociology and philosophy, including his theories of bureaucracy – of being a cog in a wheel – and the iron cage. There are hierarchies involved in Weber’s theory construction in relation to organizations and the overlapping of sociology and philosophy as related to its historical dimensions. Also related is Weber’s theory of a calling, and his rationalization of society. Simmel anticipated much of this overlapping between sociology and philosophy in his work in the field, as did Durkheim. Simmel, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber were four classical social theorists preoccupied with the theme of culture and its relation to the overlapping of sociology and philosophy in context of organizations, hence the importance to examine theory construction and historical foundations in the first part of this study. I next move on to a contemporary example of how these thinkers works – and their overlapping of sociology and philosophy in relation to organizations and culture played out in the real world of twenty-first century public affairs and public sociology.

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LSE SOCIOLOGY’S CRITICAL CONTEMPORARY CULTURE AND THEORIES OF AUTHENTICITY AND FAKENESS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE, KNOWLEDGE, AND ORGANIZATIONS In February of 2012, I joined the London School of Economics-supported sociology journal Critical Contemporary Culture as an article editor. American sociologist and social theorist Craig Calhoun became the new Director and President of the London School of Economics in September of 2012 and as part of the fall issue of the LSE’s CCC journal on Authenticity and Fakeness, I documented the events of the Republican National Convention that was held during the week of August 27, 2012, in Tampa, Florida at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. As the Republican National Convention in Tampa commenced, I documented and critiqued its proceedings. I had a connection to Paul Ryan, the Vice Presidential Candidate on the Republican ticket. My senior thesis in economics at New York City’s New School for Social Research was directed by economist, former Federal Reserve Vice Chair and Congressional Budget Office founding Director, Alice Rivlin. Paul Ryan (Rivlin-Ryan Plan), was her counterpart on the Simpson-Bowles Commission as well as House Budget Committee Chair, and, as mentioned, Ryan was also the Vice Presidential Candidate on the GOP ticket in Tampa. My portion of the journal included editing an article on the lack of authenticity in the GOP and how their idea of the American way of life, or their political philosophy, represented utter fakeness (Garlitz, 2012). Inspired by the avant-garde Orson Welles’ F for Fake, the political philosophy that informed such an American ideology involved Ryan’s subscribing of the works of Ayn Rand and the Fountainhead – an ideological hero of the Tea Party. Such a political philosophy of individualism and free-market capitalism was at stark contrast to Durkheimian social-theoretical themes of collectivism, collectivity, and solidarity so popular in continental Europe’s social market system and critical social theory. The politicization of higher education was highlighted by this peer-reviewed publication in an election year. Calhoun acted as a public sociologist and sociologist of organizations by publishing this research, along with his own original research on Libyan money in Public Culture (Calhoun, 2012), in the tradition of his predecessor at the LSE sociologist Anthony Giddens and his functioning as social policy expert and political advisor. Other articles in the journal issue that accompanied my edited article on the fakeness and lack of authenticity of the GOP included one on the concept of authenticity and fake acting in the theatrical, dramatic, and performing arts (Schulze, 2012). There were also discussions of Plato’s allegory of the cave, Barthes’ Mythologies, and literary/cultural theory and theories of fakeness on show in Las Vegas Casinos as a display of the American artificial way of life, or, false dream – how to fake it in America – and displays of authenticity, fakeness, kitsch and theories of the avant-garde in new artwork, art production, and artistic movements from both America and Britain – New York and London. This scholarship and LSE project on culture is an extension of Calhoun and urban sociologist Richard Sennett’s work on culture and cultural sociology in Practicing Culture and NYLON. The project brought together graduate students from both New York and London – New York University and the LSE – to approach culture from historical, political, economic, sociological, and ethnographic perspectives.

202  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations NYLON researchers share a broad interest in culture and qualitative research methods; more, with ways that social processes turn into concrete cultural forms through practical activity. They thus explore informal, improvised social practices, as well as the bones of institutions. We try to integrate cultural analysis with an understanding of politics and political economy. Similar research has been conducted at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology by Durkheim scholars and theorists Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith, including their strong program in cultural sociology. Similarly, research in cultural sociology and the sociology of culture has been conducted by sociologists in the cultural studies programs at University of California, Davis and George Mason University in Virginia. The Yale Research culminated in the publishing of the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, the George Mason work produced the Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture, while UC Davis’ approach resulted in the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology. New research since 2012 at the LSE Sociology Department by Mike Savage has led to the publishing of the Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture and other research on the sociology of culture and British cultural studies in the University of London system has generated the Sage Handbook of Cultural Sociology. Sociology of consumer culture Don Slater at the LSE Sociology Department has convened the MSc program in Culture and Society, where sociology of culture, cultural sociology, and cultural studies scholarship has been disseminated. This work carries on the tradition of British cultural studies, British cultural theory, sociology of culture, and cultural sociology in England at the University of Birmingham and its Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies led by sociologist of culture Stuart Hall, Raymond William, E. P. Thompson, Richard Hoggart, Paul Gilroy, and Dick Hebdige. One of Williams’ first publications in Britain at the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies was a volume titled Sociology of Culture. British sociology of culture embraced history and historicism to a much greater extent than French and German sociology of culture, which were much more concerned with structuralism/poststructuralism and critical theory, accordingly. American sociology of culture was preoccupied with themes of ethnicity, race, and power relations, as inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault in twentieth-century contemporary continental thought. British sociology of culture has to a very large extent been influenced by media studies and communications, and has been practiced in America in communication departments by the likes of cultural studies scholar Lawrence Grossberg at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This research has appropriated the critical theory of the Frankfurt School’s Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer and their scholarship on the Culture Industry. There have been attempts in New York City to theorize an urban sociology of culture by the likes of cultural sociologists Sharon Zukin and Richard Sennett, as well as Saskia Sassen in Chicago. Sassen’s work The Global City has been a founding text in this new subfield of scholarship. Richard Sennett’s work now reaches beyond cities such as New York and London and across the East in cities such as Shanghai in China. In 2010, the Berggruen Institute was launched in Los Angeles, and their Philosophy and Culture center unites the philosophy of culture with the sociology of culture and connects it with the East – namely Beijing in China with their new center located at Peking University. Sennett’s colleague Craig Calhoun has generated scholarship since his tenure as Director of the LSE that politicizes a theoretical sociology of culture in the tradition of scholars Daniel Bell and Karl Polanyi. This research is part of a larger historical tradition of approaching

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  203 sociology of culture as sociology of knowledge in the manner of Karl Mannheim, Ernst Bloch, and Max Scheler in Germany and Peter Berger and Nicholas Luckmann in the volume the Social Construction of Reality authored at the New School for Social Research in New York City. This scholarship unites both the sociology of culture and knowledge with critical and contemporary social theory. Goldsmiths College in the University of London system offers a doctoral program in cultural studies that integrates foundational texts in the sociology of culture, cultural sociology, and cultural theory in its MPhil/PhD curriculum. Sociologist of consumer culture Don Slater taught in this program before moving to the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics and convening its MSc in Culture and Society there. Similar research has been conducted at the University of Edinburgh by sociologist Simon Firth, the late David Frisby at the University of Glasgow, as the sociology of culture relates to the sociology of music and sociology of knowledge, respectively, and in the Sage journal Theory, Culture, and Society with its editor sociologist Mike Featherstone as well as the Journal of Classical Sociology by the likes of social theorists Nigel Dodd and Bryan Turner, which is an extension of classical sociologists Georg Simmel and Max and Alfred Weber’s work on the sociology of culture. Specific publications in the form of books and collected essays include Simmel on Culture. Alfred Weber’s sociology of culture was theoretical – he was an early theoretician of culture, or, a cultural theorist – while Simmel’s work on the sociology of culture was critical and philosophical, inspired by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Lebensphilosophie in Germany, as well as the philosophy of culture in Neo-Kantianism among the university system there and its mandarins or academics. Contemporary research on the sociology of culture, as related to sociology of organizations and organizational theory, has been conducted by faculty and doctoral students at the Sociology Department of the New School for Social Research in New York City in the online forum Public Seminar, led by University of Chicago-educated sociologist of culture Jeffrey Goldfarb. The political dimension of the sociology of culture has been studied at the New School for Social Research and its sociology department by the social theorists Nancy Fraser and Andrew Arato, especially as practiced in the Central European tradition of György Lukács from Budapest, Hungary, and theoretical sociologist and critical social commentator Ágnes Heller. Commentator Vera Zolberg studied the sociology of culture theoretically and in relation to the sociology of art and the arts at the Graduate Faculty of New School for Social Research, which was an extension of her doctoral research on the Art Institute of Chicago at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. Her doctoral student at the New School for Social Research, Samuel Binkley, studied consumerism – namely Post-Fordism – in relation to lifestyle movements in the 1970s, as influenced by the theoretical sociology of culture of Bourdieu and Foucault. Sociologists Tia Denora and Robert Witkin have examined the sociology of culture as it relates to the arts at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. This work is an extension of Adorno’s sociology of culture at the Frankfurt School in Germany and his critical theory of the Culture Industry. In British social thought there has been a historicizing of the sociology of culture by social-historical thinkers such as the late Eric Hobsbawm and his research at Cambridge University, the London School of Economics, and the New School for Social Research. Cambridge intellectual historian and historian of political thought Quentin Skinner has sought to connect intellectual history and grand theory with the sociology of culture and social and political thought, which he first embarked on in the edited volume Return of Grand Theory

204  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations in the Human Sciences published by Cambridge University Press and featuring the sociology of culture scholarship of British sociologists Anthony Giddens and William Outhwaite as related to contemporary continental social and political thought – especially as related to Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, and Habermas, as well as earlier continental thought on the philosophy and history and of culture by hermeneutics innovator and theorist of the human sciences Dilthey in Berlin. In more recent sociology of culture scholarship, LSE Sociology Department Head Nigel Dodd has attempted to make connections between the sociology of culture, sociology of organizations, and contemporary continental philosophers Nietzsche, Benjamin, Foucault, and Baudrillard. Additional scholarship on the sociology of culture in the University of London system has sought to make connections to contemporary French continental thought, namely the cultural theory of Deleuze and his co-authored two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Professor Daniel Miller at University College London has done additional research on the commodification of culture and has collaborated with Don Slater at the Sociology Department of the London School of Economics. Historical research on cultural production has been carried out at the Warburg Institute in London, and at the Seeley Historical Library in Cambridge. In particular, the Warburg Institute – Aby Warburg’s Library of the Cultural Sciences – after moving from Hamburg in Germany to London, provided a theoretical apparatus for the study of culture, cultural history, and the cultural sciences, as practiced by Ernst Cassirer and his Neo-Kantian philosophy of culture – the logic of the cultural sciences in Hamburg in relation to Simmel’s sociology of culture in Berlin. The Warburg is now affiliated with University College London and the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, allowing for an interdisciplinary approach to culture and its images, connecting sociology of culture with intellectual and cultural history, the type of work Cambridge intellectual historian Skinner now does in the University of London system as Professor of Humanities and the History of Political Thought at the Queen Mary School of History and his connection-making with the LSE Department of Sociology and its research agenda on the sociology of culture. James Clifford and George Marcus have also studied the historical and literary foundations of culture and its material production as related to the poetics and politics of ethnography in their co-edited volume Writing Culture published by University of California Press. Bourdieu’s volume The Field of Cultural Production represents similar research. Historically in continental Europe and the United Kingdom, political sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has done research on liquid consumption in the sociology of culture, and critical commentator Norbert Elias’ theory of the civilizing process has also resulted in a politicized sociology of culture. Historically, and in a dialectical manner, Marxist theorist Lucien Goldmann has examined how the philosophy and sociology of culture is a logical representation of the human sciences, and Georges Gurvitch has examined how critical and theoretical sociology of culture is a manifestation of the social frameworks of knowledge – the sociology of knowledge as sociology of culture. Theorist and social/cultural commentator Ino Rossi has studied the logical foundations of the sociology of culture – the logic of culture, namely its transformation from the sociology of symbols to the sociology of signs and its structural theory and methods. Marxist critic Fredric Jameson has studied the cultural logic of late capitalism and its sociology of consumer culture, while French social historians Braudel and Foucault have studied the emergence and historical foundations of a capitalist sociology of culture in works

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  205 such as Capitalism and Civilization and The Order of Things. The sociology of culture from Britain has been revived in the comparative cultural studies curriculum of Australia and New Zealand and its university system by the likes of contemporary cultural theorist Tony Bennett, as related to cultural policy, critical education, the economy, politics, and the arts. In Germany, the sociology of urban culture formed in Weimar Berlin and its fin-de-siècle social theory in the works of Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Benjamin that cultural studies commentators in Australia, New Zealand, and Britain have been preoccupied with in their research and scholarship on a theoretical sociology of culture in recent years. Themes such as urbanism, film, and media have been studied in the contemporary sociology of culture there recently, as influenced by the theoretical works of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin, especially Kracauer’s Mass Ornament, Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Critical Contemporary Culture Issue II’s Fakeness Launch Event and Panel Discussion occurred on Wednesday, November 21, 2012 from 6:00–8:30 p.m. at the LSE Sociology Department with Don Slater convening. Following the first issue on novelty, Critical Contemporary Culture’s second issue explored the notion of fakeness in contemporary culture. Fakeness appears in many guises, most often in opposition with the authentic. Notions of authenticity, and consequently of fakeness, are implied and deployed in everyday culture and discourse. As related to organizations and capitalism, questions were asked including what is the experience of fakeness in the context of consumer culture? Goods and services such as designer clothing, the art market, musical taste, sports and management rely on the relational nexus of fakeness and authenticity. The desire for the authentic creates a spiral of frustration, as the drive to consume can never be satisfied. At the same time, the “prosumer,” who is at once a target consumer and major capital producer, constantly renegotiates the value of the copy, the fake, the authentic and the original. The expansion of information technologies has brought to the fore the fluidity of culture that allows space to analyze the socially constructed binary of fakeness/authenticity. Issue IV related to organizations and reflected upon “Play” as a complex and ambiguously productive category, central to subversion as much as to the maintenance of hegemony. Contributors consider the performance of play as a collision of the ludic and the horror in multiply contested and contextualized situations of contemporary life: as something spatialized, politicized, affective and embodied. Participating artists, cultural practitioners and academics with research agendas related to organizations joined in conversation about the theme of play and how it relates to their practice. This related to the journal issue theme of how to fake it in America, partying down, and the falseness/fakeness of the American dream.

CONCLUSION: NEW AND EMERGING RESEARCH ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE – QUALITATIVE METHODS AND CONTEMPORARY THEORY CONSTRUCTION IN RELATION TO ORGANIZATIONS New research on the sociology of culture as it relates to race, ethnicity, and post-colonialism has been conducted at King’s College London. Additional research on the sociology of culture as it relates to critical theory and continental philosophy has been conducted at Royal

206  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Holloway and Birkbeck in the University of London system, in the PhD program in Critical Theory. Research carried out at Oxford University’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program has intersected with the sociology of culture in recent years. Research in the political thought and intellectual history MPHIL program at Cambridge University’s Faculty of History has intersected with the sociology of culture recently as well, namely in the work on social and political thought by Raymond Guess, all in relation to sociology of organizations and organizational theory in the tradition of Max Weber. The overlapping of sociology and philosophy has been made evident by my employment of Weber’s theoretical works in this study of culture and its relation to organizations. This tripartite relation of sociology, philosophy, and history in the study of organizations and culture carries on a long tradition in classical social thought that was initiated by theorists Marx and Weber and their antinomies of intellectual thought, theory construction, and methodology. The future of the sociology of organizations will build on this methodological work of classical social theorists Marx and Weber in relation to culture. There are dialectics at work in their scholarship that can be reconstructed for years to come in this scholarly field. This translates to rationalization and charisma for Weber in relation to the sociology of organizations and culture. Of prime importance in the next generation of scholarship in this field will be to advance theory construction in relation to the works of these historical figures.

REFERENCES Alexander, J. C., Jacobs, R. and Smith, P. (eds.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture, & Society, 70, 295–310. Baudrillard, J. (2001). Selected Writings (ed. M. Poster). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Benjamin, W. (1968 [1936]). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations. New York: Schocken. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books Bourdieu, P. (1972). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14–25. Bourdieu, P. (1993). The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1996). The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cahill, S. (2005). Contemporary Sociological Theory. Tampa, Florida: University of South Florida Department of Sociology. Cahill, S. (2005). Theory and Methods: A Survey of Critical and Cultural Theory. Tampa, Florida: University of South Florida Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies. Calhoun, C. (2012). Libyan Money, Academic Missions, and Public Social Science. Public Culture, 24, 9–45. Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (2010). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. de Certeau, M. (2011 [1984]). The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. de Saussure, F. (1959 [1916]). Course in General Linguistics, eds. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye. Trans. Wade Baskin. NY: The Philosophical Society (reprint NY: McGraw-Hill, 1966). Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1983/1987). Capitalism and Schizophrenia (two volumes). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Critical and contemporary social theory and the sociology of culture  207 Foucault, M. (1983). Power/Knowledge. New York: Vintage. Franklin, B. (2001). The Autobiography and Other Essays. New York: Signet Classics. Fraser, N. (1989). Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Garlitz, D. (ed.) (2012). F is for Fake: How to Fake it in America, Authenticity, and the GOP. Critical Contemporary Culture, Issue II: Fakeness, November. http://​www​.critica​lcontempor​aryculture​.org (LSE Sociology). Gates, H. L., Jr. (1985). Writing “Race” and the Difference It Makes. Critical Inquiry, 12(1), 1–20. Giddens, A. (1971). Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guignon, C. B. (2004). On Being Authentic. London and New York: Routledge. Guillory, J. (1995). Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Grindstaff, L., Lo, M-C. M. and Hall, J. R. (eds.) (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology. London: Routledge. Hanquinet, L. and Savage, M. (eds.) (2016). Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture. London: Routledge. Hobbes, T. (1982). Leviathan. New York: Penguin Books. Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. W. (2002). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Inglis, D. and Almila, A-M. (eds.) (2016). The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology. London: Sage. Jacobs, M. D. and Hanrahan, N. W. (eds.) (2005). The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Kellner, D. (1989). Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits (reprints 1980 and 2001, London and New York: Routledge; 2021, Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis). Lacan, J. (1966). For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (reprints 1980 and 2001, London and New York: Routledge; 2021, Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis). Lukács, G. (1968). History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marcuse, H. (1954). Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. New York: Humanities Press. Markos, L. (2000). Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (3rd edition). Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company. Rabinow, P. (ed.) (1984). The Foucault Reader. Selections from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975). New York: Pantheon Books. Richter, D. (ed.) (1998). The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends (Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Jacques Derrida readings). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. Rousseau, J.-J. (2003). On the Social Contract. New York: Dover Publications. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sassen, S. (2002). The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schulze, D. (2012). Fake Acting—Real Experience: Theatre as a Form of New Authenticity. Critical Contemporary Culture, Issue II: Fakeness, November. http://​www​.critica​lcontempor​aryculture​.org (LSE Sociology). Skinner, Q. (1985). The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tucker, R. (ed.) (1978). The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd edition). New York: Norton. Weber, M. (1958). Class, Status, Party (1914). Reprinted in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (ed. Gerth and Mills). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (2002 [1905]). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Penguin Books. Williams, R. (1981). The Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

11. Entrepreneurial hybridity: concept and context in creative and cultural organizations Jaleesa Renee Wells

INTRODUCTION As a concept, entrepreneurial hybridity studies highlight the interconnections of merging traditional and non-traditional, or for-profit and not-for-profit, business practices, structures and behavior, and values within an organizational entity. This chapter explores the sociology of entrepreneurship and builds upon the previous literature exploring social enterprises as “ideal forms” of hybrid organization (Battilana and Lee, 2014). There is a continued emergence of social enterprises and social entrepreneurship in the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) in the wider sector of the creative economy. This emergence highlights the question of whether hybrid organizations can exist, in abundance, within the sector. Rushton (2014) positions a cautionary tale that, at least in the United States, the CCIs are not prepared for the emergence of hybrid organizational structures due to a lack of institutional support (particularly through governmental infrastructures). How might the lack of useful framing around entrepreneurial hybridity be a key factor in institutional unpreparedness for new, alternative organizational models? This chapter sets out to frame entrepreneurial hybridity as a multilevel construction between the macro-, meso-, and micro-environments in a CCI context. As a response, this chapter highlights the alternative ways that creative practitioners build creative businesses utilizing entrepreneurial hybridity. An example case organization is presented that showcases a woman-led creative social enterprise within the arts and crafts industry. Conceptually, this case organization highlights the sustainable praxis of women’s interrelationships as the foundation for entrepreneurial hybridity within the given context, positioning a contextual curiosity of how such hybridity encourages a sociological pivot towards a “female gaze” and catalyzes women’s entrepreneurial legitimacy. Ultimately, the chapter presents a community-market logics model that embraces the framework of entrepreneurial hybridity as a foundation for context-based social entrepreneurship.

HYBRID ORGANIZATIONS: INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT AND VALUE ORIENTATION Research in hybrid organizations has focused on factors that create hybrid contexts for businesses and enterprises. The context surrounding hybrid organizations is created by an abundance of intermixed and/or overlapped environments embedded between the margins of industries and sectors. Taking social enterprise emergence as an example, Santos et al. (2015) describe an environment built around economic capital hybridized with social values that overlap between clients and investors. This is a market logics approach to understanding hybrid organizations but highlights the emergence of situating an organization at the margins 208

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  209 between economic capital (for-profit) and social value (not-for-profit) orientations. The hybridization of organizations becomes more complex within the merging of sectors such as social enterprise and the creative and cultural industries because both sectors have their own orientations to similar value designators like social and community values. It is important to note, though, that the disparate institutional cultures for each sector have roles in regulating the organizational norms and practices that lead to hybrid organizational legitimacy (Toubiana and Zietsma, 2017). However, this influence can be either reflected or obstructed by the belief systems and intentions of the individuals who create hybrid organizations (Dimitriadis et al., 2017), and research has highlighted the connection between individuals, their organizations, and the emergence of a hybrid identity type in compliment to logic orientation(s) (Jay, 2013). Importantly, social relationships play a significant role in the capital resources available, and ultimately utilized, by hybrid organizations, especially those within the cultural and creative industries. Lumpkin et al. (2018) highlight that resources for hybrid organizations include physical, financial, and human capital situated with a given community context, and the utilization of these capitals is paramount to an organization’s ability to “fit in” within its surrounding sector(s) (Pret and Carter, 2017). In other words, a strong community logic is important to a hybrid organization’s value orientation and understanding how hybrid organizations engage in their community relationships is the bedrock of understanding the creation of hybrid logics. This chapter is focused on understanding and developing a framework for the emergence of hybrid organizations within the creative and cultural industries, using social enterprise as a hybrid organizational form within the industrial sector. The main approach to this logics framework considers the hybrid organizational form as driven by both institutional governance influence and organizational values stemming from hybrid entrepreneuring within a creative and cultural context. While there is a dominance in this type of research that focuses on the effects of market-based entrepreneurship on organizational missions (Doherty et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2013; Wilson and Post, 2013), this chapter builds upon current literature that discusses the tensions between community and market logics (Mair et al., 2015; Mason and Doherty, 2016), adding elements of community and creative logics into the emerging discourse.

EXPLORING THE CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES As the creative and cultural industries encompass many global economic areas, it’s important to acknowledge that this chapter is localized and grounded within the creative and cultural industries in western society. Globally, there is no universal definition of the creative and cultural industries, but there are many definitions that serve particular regions and adapt to the industries that exist within those regions. Contributing much of the emergence of definition to Florida’s seminal work on the creative class (2012), there is now a much stronger discourse about the economic value of the creative and cultural industries. Additionally, many new streams of research have begun to approach the industries from entrepreneurship perspectives that frame them within capitalist market-centered and production-focused logics. This chapter does not explore logics from these perspectives. Instead, it explores areas of value that shape economic, social, and creative values within a given context.

210  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations This chapter’s case example involves an organization within the craft and decorative arts industries. However, the Americans for the Arts1 SIC codes include museums and collections, performing arts, visual arts/photography, but omit other creative industries such as: film, radio, television, design, publishing, and other creative organizations such as schools and related services. The Americans for the Arts’ designations are similar but distinct from the definitions of the creative and cultural industries in the UK,2 which include advertising and marketing, architecture, crafts, design: product, graphic and fashion design, film, TV, video, radio, and photography, IT, software and computer services, publishing, museums, galleries and libraries, music, performing and visual arts, as example (DCMS, 2006). It’s important to note that these designations are distinct to their originating geographies, meaning they may be based on a particular country, region, and/or government’s interests and economic priorities.

CONCEPTUALIZING ENTREPRENEURIAL HYBRIDITY AT THE MESO-LEVEL OF ORGANIZATION This chapter positions the concept of entrepreneurial hybridity as a construction of a meso-level environment surrounding the emergence of new and alternative organizational structures in the creative and cultural industries, employing sociological conceptions of entrepreneurship and institutional theory (Bruton et al., 2010; Thornton, 1999; Tracey et al., 2011). Conceptually, this section aims to frame hybrid organizations as structures influenced by and emerging from grounded organizational contexts. This is explored through the manifestation of institutional logics as they emerge from within a hybrid context. Taking a logics approach helps to identify the emergence of entrepreneurial hybridity within CCIs such as creative social enterprises. According to Thornton and Ocasio (2005), logics, or institutional logics, are understood as normative structures influencing the social world of organizations, industries, and economies. Researchers have found that some logics in hybrid contexts compete with each other (Jones and Thornton, 2005; Thornton et al., 2005), while others have noted that logics couple together to create new hybrid organizational structures (Pache and Santos, 2013). It is the coupling, overlapping, and otherwise merging of logics that creates the foundation for the emergence of hybrid organizations within the CCIs (Wells, 2019). Issues of entrepreneurial axiology and the navigation of blended values play a large role in understanding the emergence of hybridity. As an example, a 2016 study conducted on creative social enterprise in Scotland concluded that organizational “needs contribute to the understanding of a hybrid blend of values that stem around the juxtaposition of being in a state of emerging and “finding your space” in a new landscape” (Wells, 2016, p. 12). Additionally, social entrepreneurship literature embeds hybridity as within the knowledge of social value creation (Chell, 2007; Diochon and Anderson, 2011), meaning there is an interplay between blending and creating hybrid organizational values whether they are competing, coupling, overlapping, and/or otherwise. Axiology, or the theory of value as a pillar of entrepreneurial hybridity, is also concerned with value orientations within a logics context. Epistemologically,

A US non-governmental organization. The US definition is built from case study research of the United Kingdom’s Department of Culture, Media, and Sport creative and cultural industries designations. 1 2

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  211 axiology is socially constructed between individuals, organizations, and institutions (Rader and Jessup, 1976) and within a particular hybridized context. Themes around creative and cultural industries agency and social enterprise activities emerge within a contextualized hybrid logics model, and it begs the question of whether there is a new institutionalism emerging within the creative economy. Taking a social constructionist approach, an exploration of what institutional logics exist serves as the foundation for understanding the merging of logics in hybrid creative and cultural organizations. While geographic regions take different approaches to hybrid organizational emergence, some countries have strong institutional infrastructures that nationally recognize and support the continued development of hybrid structures (social enterprises) such as in the UK and Europe. Other countries, such as the US, don’t have federal or national infrastructures but allow states and municipalities to decide whether or not to legitimize hybrid organizations. Thus, hybrid organizations emerge with some abundance. What organizational structures support the hybrid organizational form? This question is the foundation for understanding the emergence of hybridity within the meso-level of the conceptual framework. As hybrid organizations are influenced by their institutional environment, the creators of hybrid organizations also influence structural development. However, a key aspect of this section is to explore organizations as entities comprised of individuals and institutional structures. This can be done by looking at the management structures of hybrid organizations in the CCIs. If, as stated above, the practice of arts administration may be disruptive and influential to the merged norms of institutional structures within a hybrid context, then there is an interesting nascent space for conceptualizing hybridity as institutionally disruptive. This disruption stems from the activities within hybrid organizations, as they are being built, that then demand change across the sectors. As more hybrid organizations create an abundance of the organizational form, the understanding of either market or community logics that separates for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations shifts and merges based on a series of blended values. Using creative social enterprise as an example hybrid organizational form, the values that dominate this form are “creative value” through the practice of creative practitioners and artists within the organization, “social value” from the importance of relationships within their community contexts, and “enterprise value” as opportunity recognition and sectoral margin navigation. Blended, these values compete and couple, simultaneously, as they adapt to the organizational orientations presented at a given moment in time. They compete because they are equally present and dominant within the organization, and they couple because they allow for adaptability and nimbleness to occur for both the organization and the individuals within the organization. In essence, “the hybrid [organizational] form, fundamentally, emerges from the ground up, dependent upon its creator” (Wells, 2019, p. 239), and “serves an output of the hybrid entrepreneuring activities” (2019, p. 240). Then the question becomes that as hybridity continues to rise in organizational forms with the CCIs, do stakeholders of arts organizations need to find new infrastructures to support sectoral disruption?

CONCEPTUALIZING ENTREPRENEURIAL HYBRIDITY: A CRAFT PRACTITIONER’S PERSPECTIVE In the craft industry, the “social world” may involve crafters, as well as suppliers, manufacturers (on the production-supply side), customers, partner organizations, and stakeholders (on the

212  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations consumer-demand side). These institutional actors are not unique to the craft industry, as many of them overlap with other cultural and creative industries organizations. However, craft practitioners utilize their social world, particularly their social capital and networks, in ways that support hybrid approaches towards organizational sustainability. The norms surrounding these approaches include sharing resources and knowledge, friendship-focused networks, and social and community learning. Ultimately, when a business is created and situated in a particular cultural setting “this business reflects that cultural environment, for example, characteristics such as strategic orientation and growth expectations for the business” (Thornton et al., 2011, p. 109). Entrepreneurial hybridity involves a contextual dependency on socio-economic processes of venture creation and, in the craft industry, can be seen as a praxis3 of exploring the scope of alternative business models, such as social enterprise. Social enterprise, in essence, is the merging of for-profit and not-for-profit business methods into a hybridized organizational structure, which allows for “the coexistence of values and artefacts from two or more categories” (Doherty et al., 2014, p. 418). These categories have traditionally involved the environment and Fairtrade sectors, but have expanded to issues surrounding differing business models in the cultural and creative industries (Wells, 2016). While there isn’t a general definition of social enterprise, much of the literature agrees that a social enterprise is a type of enterprising nonprofit organization with a trading arm embedded within its social mission. Social enterprises have become a viable business structure for creative practitioners looking to generate income and resources that can be invested back in their communities through their organizational services and products. The CCIs are informally structured, and as such, creative practitioners shift their organizational structures towards social enterprise as a way to support their creative-social activities by capitalizing on varying funding opportunities. Entrepreneurial hybridity emerges from this context where normative actions and structures become merged in multiple ways. As hybrid organizations emerge, so do the institutional factors that surround them. This emergence creates an opportunity for creative practitioners to utilize the socio-cultural institutional logics of the craft industry with the socio-economic logics of social entrepreneurship to develop an organizational model built on the foundations of sharing resources-selling resources, friendship networks-social capitals, and social learning-social enterprising. Importantly, these hybrid connections are action-oriented and praxis-based, where the individual entrepreneurs are embedding their hybrid practices into broader organizational cultures. This embeddedness, however, still has implications for the often woman-centered perspectives in the craft industry. The dominance of male-centered entrepreneurship implies that traditional approaches to entrepreneurship research have not highlighted the unique contexts of entrepreneurial women in women-centered industries. Thus, in the following section, there is a discussion of the meaning of entrepreneurial hybridity within craft industry context.



3

Whereas praxis involves both theory and practice, inextricably.

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  213

SUSTAINING PRAXIS: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL IDENTITY AND FEMINIST REFLEXIVITY Reflexivity, in particular, is a pillar in feminist methodology research; thus, evoking the individual’s reflexivity helps us to understand how agency is positioned (England, 1994) and enacted within a hybrid entrepreneurial setting, such as creative social enterprise. This notion begs the question: where is there scope for recognizing how women’s interrelationships affect the development of systems of sustainable organizational practices. There is significant scope for practice-based methods to highlight the social construction of women’s interrelationships in the craft industry as part of exploring and understanding entrepreneurial hybridity. During a longitudinal study on creative social enterprise phenomena in Scotland, I engaged with creative practitioner and craft entrepreneur Suzi,4 as her experiences highlighted the nuances of starting up a hybrid organization within the craft industry. Suzi’s narratives explored issues of entrepreneurial mindset, institutional influence, opportunity juxtapositions, and professional development. Essentially, her narratives expose the nuances of a fluid and complex entrepreneurial identity (Hamilton, 2014). Suzi is in no way representative of the many manifestations of entrepreneurial hybridity in the craft industry. However, how she articulates the meaning of hybrid activities through her hybrid organization’s emergence does provide valuable insights into how context plays a key part in the emergence of entrepreneurial hybridity and the explorations of women’s social entrepreneurship in CCIs (Humbert, 2012). Ahl and Marlow (2012) posit that there are restrictions on who can claim themselves as legitimate “entrepreneurs,” and the dominance of masculine discourse on entrepreneurial knowledge limits possibilities for entrepreneurial identities outside of what is considered the “norm.” This is explored in Suzi’s two statements below, first that creative practitioners do not learn how to run proper businesses (a failure within the institutional landscape) and second that high growth is in direct opposition to alternative ways of creating sustainable hybrid organizations. In terms of the expectations of creative practitioners to appear “business-like” when creating businesses, there is an onus on the entrepreneurial mindset being at odds with creative practice and the disconnection between “starting a business” and “generating income.” Suzi states that it: Is something that is a gap in training. There’s an awkwardness that you don’t make money, but you actually need to [make money]. You need to survive, but asking for a grant … is like no … I do think these small enterprises … there’s this onus on policy and procedure … that I think can be alleviated and staying safe and protected and sensible. But perhaps, creative people who aren’t business or strategically minded can get in a twist, but that can be taught … creativity can’t be taught.

Furthermore, she states: That actually being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t mean necessarily building massive companies, it’s building sustainable ones…could the marker of success actually be that if it’s still in existence in 20 years … and have adapted to the times and the needs the world, you know, as time moves on … and still being, still delivering as much impact as you can … you know, is that not a better mark of success than reaching a 200 grand turnover by a certain amount at a particular time?



4

The participant’s name has been pseudonymized; identifying information has also been removed.

214  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations These statements relate to the overwhelming pressure of “entrepreneurs” to be highly scalable and pursue fast growth in their organizational capacity. But that this pressure creates tension in situations where the natural order of progress is more often slow and organic. Past research highlights a biased gendered understanding of women’s entrepreneurship as underwhelming, weak, and illegitimate (at least in relation to masculine-centered entrepreneurship) (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009; Orser et al., 2013). However, in order to understand entrepreneurial communities within the craft sector, it’s vital to engage in the reflexivities available within the research context. Reflexivity supports a phenomenological manifestation of self-narration in entrepreneurial experiences. In essence, we can understand the meaning behind particular entrepreneurial actions, as is the case with Suzi when she explores the social constructions behind starting her craft business: But, but generally, it’s not like I’m bust-a-gut to get this happening, and I’ve done everything I possibly can, and it’s not true … I also feel the guilt of not doing enough of any project, or child or house or whatever it is … But actually, I feel quite comfortable with MMC, like, yes I could do more but this is what I’m capable [of] and have the capacity for at the moment and this is what it is. That anti-growth thing … Bringing down capitalist hierarchies.

Additionally, she notices how having an alternative hybrid mindset provides further opportunities for her business to sustain itself: I’m quite … I realized I’m quite alternative, in that I don’t … [researcher interjecting: follow the status quo?] Yeah! Perhaps a slightly rebellious thing, but it’s a rebellious thing, so the support of humanity … in just aiming for economic growth … is not right across the board. … And, I found that I was doing the survey for the [redacted NGO], and it was about how can we support you to take on more employees say, well maybe you can support me best by acknowledging that some social enterprises shouldn’t take on extra employees [rising inflection] that that’s not the … mark of success that some should strive for.

There is a sense of “rebelling against” the expectations of creating and growing a business, where the hybrid entrepreneurial mindset is at odds with the hyper-juxtaposed position placed upon it. This rebelliousness against the status quo contributes to the craft mindset of relational aesthetics, where the object of the practice is subject to the participation that surrounds it (Garber, 2013). In line with feminist (post-structuralist) theories, this means that the hybrid organization – the object – is subject to its communal influences and that women’s entrepreneurial hybridity is developed in relation to its embedded networks. Outside influences, while present, serve as opportunities to be overcome. Interestingly, women in the craft industry continue to utilize their strong social network ties to build processes that overcome institutional obstacles. In essence, the hybrid organization becomes a platform for wider socially creative activity, as Suzi states: There was an article about making in the Guardian that there isn’t enough making in schools anymore … and I thought that was interesting, that we need the chance to make … to be creative entrepreneurs we kind of need to be in all professions … There seems to be a quite useful trendy movement around making … but actually, your big population of makers is 30-to-70-year-old women, women who never necessarily reached their potential. They have gone into the secretarial, like my mom … That’s the masses of the makers. Where are they connecting …? That’s a real driver for [my organization]. Where can I find platforms which are credible to both the participants and the decision makers?

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  215 Suzi’s understanding of herself in relation to her wider community proves to be the driver for her organizational sustainability. Broadly, while the utilization of strong social ties can be seen as a hindrance to high-growth scalability, in this instance it is seen as supporting an overarching shift in the ways women in the creative and cultural industries develop their organizations. They want to be able to build something unique and grounded in the realities of their particular communities, as Suzi states, “I want to build something that’s a little [quirkier]. [My organization] will never be a go-to bead shop online. That would be a fool’s mission. And I’d have to work six days a week just selling.” Ultimately, this shift has the potential to shift the broader landscape of new creative organizations in the future, by changing the meaning of once traditionally unattainable entrepreneurial rhetoric: Yes. It is kind of giving another meaning to the word growth … in terms of how to deliver a quality project … or …? How to infuse your work with greater meaning, greater purpose is growth as well … but that’s not seen as successful … in some ways! It is in other ways … people at your website and see, you know, and then they email you spontaneously to say: Oh, that project looks so brilliant! So really there is, there is a recognition of that but … that’s not in the sense of being a good businessperson.

She acknowledges, though: … yeah, it’s like if you’re an entrepreneur, you can’t do anything worthy because you’re weak.

As previously stated, Suzi’s articulations of her entrepreneurial social constructions provide detail to understand the nuances of obstacles and tensions within a hybrid context. Creative practitioners are creating organizations that reflect their socio-cultural perspectives, while also navigating the waters of entrepreneurial expectations placed upon them by both formal and informal institutional actors. There is triumph in the rebellious nature towards creating a unique organizational form, but also an acknowledgment that pursuing less economically focused opportunities are deterrents to traditional entrepreneurial success and growth. In the following section, we build upon these notions to explore the potential for a “female gaze” to circumvent these issues; and, further how such a gaze may serve to create a different type of hybrid logics model for understanding the empowerment of women in craft communities.

AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SHIFT: A “FEMALE GAZE” The stuff I make has nothing to do with adorning myself, or maybe it has, but the jewelry I make is almost predominantly where women will go “Oooo!” So [my organization] is very female and interested in the female audience [and] the female gaze … (Suzi)

Perhaps what makes entrepreneurship male-dominated is the decontextualization of entrepreneurial research. Functionalist and positivist epistemologies do not make space for entrepreneurial meaning to be derived from the situations in which their enterprises emerge. As stated earlier, Thornton’s sociological definition of entrepreneurship is context dependent. Thus, as women entrepreneurs create their hybrid organizations, it would be appropriate to understand how their contexts are influenced by their lived experiences. As we’ve seen from Suzi, there may be a shift towards a “female gaze” that supports the work of creating women-led crafting communities and spaces for sharing knowledge. The

216  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations notion of a “gaze” stems from the “male gaze,” which traditionally positions women as objects of male desire. In feminist theories, this id is explored in “objectification theory.” Based on the notion of objectification as a concept that is both negative and positive (Nussbaum, 1995), depending on the intention and context, objectification theory considers the position of women in relation to their socio-cultural context (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). Originally, this theory focused on the sexual objectification of women, by men and by themselves;5 however, this section positions objectification and its theory by considering how women’s hybrid businesses take on their own forms of objectification (as is alluded to in the quote above). It is possible to suspend the physicality of a hybrid organization as the object of craft entrepreneurial desires; ultimately absorbing the organization as both an object and an output of the work put into creating it. Does this shift in entrepreneurial mindset create a more situated understanding of how women go about creating creative social enterprises? It is also possible to consider, through objectification, that women’s social enterprises are disorientating to informal, yet dominant patriarchal social structures. If, in interpreting objectification theory, women are constructs of men’s desires, a woman-created organization made for women would be an anomaly. And yet, women-created-led-and-centered organizations exist in abundance in many different fields, sectors, and industries. Furthermore, by examining Nussbaum’s (1995) seven tenets of objectification and adapting them with a women’s business lens, we can develop a frame for the existence of a “female gaze” in entrepreneurship: (1) instrumentality is used to identify the usefulness of a women’s organization for other women; (2) autonomy is reclaimed by women and shared in women’s community-spaces; (3) agile activity is created in the community-space through social learning as knowledge sharing; (4) knowledge is interchangeable with wealth creation, where wealth is focused on sustainability; (5) boundaries can be created and maintained for shareability; (6) ownership is multifaceted; and (7) subjectivity serves as a foundation for organizational activity. Ultimately, the key elements of this shift are putting ownership and autonomy, which are key elements of entrepreneurship, into the hands of women and from the perspectives of women. As stated by Fredrickson and Roberts “the most profound effect of objectifying treatment is that it coaxes girls and women to adopt a peculiar view of self” (1997, p. 177), yet, shifting towards a female gaze, if it can be made purely from praxes of women6 also creates an opportunity for women to adopt the organizational self as an extension of their entrepreneurial identities (a “self” that would, in convention, be peculiar to the dominant patriarchalism of entrepreneurship discourse). The hybrid organization would take on the role of entrepreneurial heroine, as a community of women organized for the greater good of women. This notion is in contrast to the self-made male “entrepreneurial hero,” who picks himself up by his bootstraps, saves and refashions the world in his singular ideal. What is noted here is how this shift exposes the true nature of entrepreneurial success, that networks – whether weak or strong or in-between – are its foundation. Where in the traditional view, networks are capitalized upon to bring about success to the individual; from the “female gaze,” women’s networks are the social capitals that catalyze opportunities for sustainable success and empowerment.



5 6

Such as in cases of reflexive objectification or “self-objectification.” Without patriarchal influence and expectations.

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  217

A COMMUNITY-MARKET MODEL OF HYBRID ORGANIZATIONS In the previous sections, we’ve discussed the conceptualization of hybridity as a concept stemming from social enterprise activity in the creative and cultural industries, the effects of feminist reflexivity as part of developing a sustainable praxis, and a shift in entrepreneurial mindset towards the female gaze and amounting to the development of a gaze framework. This section will expound on the community-market model as an embedded approach for merging hybrid context-based values within a CCIs context (such as the craft industry). Using the refashioned Nussbaum tenets of objectification and merging them with a broader understanding of hybrid organizational activity, the identification of a community-market model as an entrepreneurial model involves dual engagement and rooted empowerment. In terms of dual engagement, this model places social enterprise firmly in the creative and cultural industries and reactivates the leadership of hybrid organizations as capital-actors who shift between the margins of institutional fields (in our case: craft industry and social enterprise fields). Additionally, this dual engagement positions investment derived from public funding and generated revenue as a necessity for sustainable praxis. This duality means that neither one should be dominant over the other, but that each has the potential for capital-resource building in a given situation. The key aspect of this model is to encourage and embrace flexibility and resiliency at the organization level for nascent hybrid entrepreneurs. In terms of rooted empowerment, this model positions money as a resource for doing things, and achievements come through creative liaisons. This rootedness means that rather than money as the end goal of an organization, it becomes a catalyst by which the end goal (wider network engagement, perhaps) can be achieved. Thus, spatiality is important. Women hybrid creative practitioners are particularly adept at creating spaces for the community; thus, the skillset is a key part of building sustainable hybrid organizations as they become spaces to gather, share stories and techniques, develop practices, and build networks. In essence, enterprising actions are developed through the sociality of creative kinship, and an intention to “objectify” and “produce” the hybrid organization in tandem with particular desires for community engagement. Ideally, organizational leadership will serve as active directors rather than passive decision-makers. Their subjectivity is embedded within organizational intentions. Thus, investment can be reinvested into the organization, giving way for multifaceted ownership to take place. The multitude of stakeholder investment (from the community) in the organization, also supports the concept of reflexive-social learning as knowledge sharing. Shifting the entrepreneurial “gaze” in this way means that the organization becomes the instrument used by women to reclaim their autonomy as a collective-community. It also creates opportunities for an exchange of entrepreneurial knowledge between established organizations and nascent ones; thus, exploiting the agility needed to create spaces for such exchanges to occur. Furthermore, boundaries become opportunities for solidarity in sharing the processes of building wealth creation that involves financial as well as sustainable community development.

CONCLUDING INSIGHTS AND FUTURE RESEARCH This chapter focused on developing a concept and context surrounding entrepreneurial hybridity within the creative and cultural industries. While implications for a hybrid

218  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations organizational form impact both policy and industry, this chapter focused on the concepts within the CCIs as discussed from an institutional logics perspective. This chapter also exhibited that entrepreneurial hybridity is not reliant on institutional influence, but that institutions are also influenced by meso practices and praxes within the industries. This chapter also discussed the alternative ways women engage and make meaning from hybrid organizational structures, such as social enterprise. It focused on the sociocultural context that surrounds hybrid organizations and situated the emergence within a feminist theory perspective. By looking at the context surrounding this hybrid merging in institutional fields, we can see that opportunities arise for creative practitioners to utilize the benefits of both fields. Critically, this chapter positions that hybrid organizations will continue to emerge and evolve, as they are centered on the agency of the entrepreneurial actor(s). Adaptability is key to this emergence, and nascent creative organizations are embracing adaptable ways of enacting entrepreneurial hybridity within their industries. Furthermore, there is scope for the utilization of entrepreneurial hybridity to serve women in their development of an entrepreneurial identity. It has been highlighted that these identities engage in a reflexive process that situates the organization’s creator firmly within her intended organizational context. Where, traditionally, it may have been seen as a benefit to have weak social ties, the strong ties that women bring to their hybrid organizations are part and parcel of their entrepreneurial success. This shift in approach typifies a shift towards a “female gaze,” in which women creative practitioners utilize their organizations as both object and output of intended desires for women’s empowerment. Adapting objectification theory to develop a framework, women creative practitioners may find that reframing the meaning of [organizational] objectification allows them to transform their wider entrepreneurial intentions towards the types of organizational communities in which they seek to exist. This chapter provides breadcrumbs for further exploration of women’s hybrid organizing within the creative and cultural industries. It serves to illuminate the potential for women’s social entrepreneurship to be explored through alternative, interdisciplinary perspectives. Present limitations to this work have been highlighted by the dominance of male-centered epistemologies and functionalist methodologies that surround the field of entrepreneurship. This chapter leads to the development of an emerging logics model – a community-market logics model – that embraces the inherent nature of women’s organizing groups and merges with an embedded wealth creation setting made up of hybrid capital values (creative, social, and economic). Thus, this chapter calls for further scholarship that pushes the boundaries of entrepreneurship discourse by investigating the marginal spaces in which enterprise activities take place. In terms of future research, there is a limitation to understanding the pure organizational and meso-level of how hybrid organizations exist within the creative economy. We can understand their emergence from both macro and micro contexts but identifying hybrid organizational models at the meso-level is critical to understanding how and why the macro (institutional, government) level changes over time, and the effects of the micro (entrepreneuring, relational) level emerging. This knowledge is key to understanding the ways in which creative organizations can sustain themselves and build (institutionally) legitimate organizations, which is reliant on understanding how stakeholders across the three levels engage, are utilized, and valued throughout the lifespan of a hybrid organization. Finally, by presenting as an opportunity for more context-based research in the broader field of entrepreneurship, this chapter supports further entrepreneurial scholarship to investigate the embedded relationship

Entrepreneurial hybridity: creative and cultural organizations  219 between an entrepreneur and her collective-community engagement in the development of hybrid organizations. Ultimately, this chapter serves as a catalyst for further research into the areas of entrepreneurial hybridity as part of the continued interest in the intersections between art, organizations, communities, and enterprise.

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220  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Orser, B., Elliott, C., and Leck, J. (2013). Entrepreneurial Feminists: Perspectives About Opportunity Recognition and Governance. Journal of Business Ethics, 115(2), 241–257. Pache, A.-C. and Santos, F. (2013). Inside the Hybrid Organization: Selective Coupling as a Response to Competing Institutional Logics. Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), 972–1001. Pret, T. and Carter, S. (2017). The Importance of ‘Fitting In’: Collaboration and Social Value Creation in Response to Community Norms and Expectations. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 29(7–8), 639–667. Rader, M. and Jessup, B. E. (1976). Art and Human Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Rushton, M. (2014). Hybrid Organizations in the Arts: A Cautionary View. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 44(3), 145–152. Santos, F., Pache, A.-C., and Birkholz, C. (2015). Making Hybrids Work: Aligning Business Models and Organizational Design for Social Enterprises. California Management Review, 57(3), 36–58. Smith, W. K., Gonin, M., and Besharov, M. L. (2013). Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprise. Business Ethics Quarterly, 23(3), 407–442. Thornton, P. H. (1999). The Sociology of Entrepreneurship. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 19–46. Thornton, P. H., Jones, C., and Kury, K. (2005). Institutional Logics and Institutional Change in Organizations: Transformation in Accounting, Architecture, and Publishing. Transformation in Cultural Industries, 23, 125–170. Thornton, P. H. and Ocasio, W. (2005). Institutional Logics. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin, and R. Suddaby (eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 99–129). London: Sage Publications. Thornton, P. H., Ribeiro-Soriano, D., and Urbano, D. (2011). Socio-Cultural Factors and Entrepreneurial Activity: An Overview. International Small Business Journal, 29(2), 105–118. Toubiana, M. and Zietsma, C. (2017). The Message Is on the Wall? Emotions, Social Media and the Dynamics of Institutional Complexity. Academy of Management Journal, 60(3), 922–953. Tracey, P., Phillips, N., and Jarvis, O. (2011). Bridging Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Creation of New Organizational Forms: A Multilevel Model. Organization Science, 22(1), 60–80. Wells, J. R. (2016). Entrepreneurial Axiology: Hybrid Values in Creative Social Enterprise. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference for the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship October 26–27, 2016, Paris, France, pp. 1–16. Wells, J. R. (2019). Contextualising Social Enterprise: Hybrid Entrepreneuring in the Creative Industries. University of Strathclyde. https://​suprimo​.lib​.strath​.ac​.uk/​permalink/​f/​k7ss9a/​SUDIGI33328. Wilson, F. and Post, J. E. (2013). Business Models for People, Planet (& Profits): Exploring the Phenomena of Social Business – A Market-Based Approach to Social Value Creation. Small Business Economics, 40(3), 715–737.

12. Theory, practice and bricolage: recombobulating agencies and reorienting resistance to neoliberalization of the (post-) welfare state Christopher N. Walker1

This chapter discusses the dynamics of neoliberalization upon the welfare state, with specific attention upon the managerialization of welfare providers. Its premise is that non-profit and community run welfare services are integral democratic infrastructure and that neoliberalizing efforts to marketize these services constitute a concerted effort to restructure modern democracy. Whilst written from a perspective grounded in an Australian context and cognizant that local contexts impart variations upon how (and to what extent) both the welfare state and subsequent neoliberalization have unfolded across jurisdictions, this chapter proceeds upon a discussion of neoliberalizing strategies of transformational discourse evident across Western nations. The chapter opens with a brief overview of the Marshallian basis for citizenship and post-war democratic norms, before discussing major contestations upon it bound within divergent orientations to democracy. It focuses upon neoliberalism, in particular, as proceeding upon the realization of reformed political norms through means inconsistent with the functioning and ideals underlying democratic discourse, and embarks upon a conceptual synthesis that draws together additional literatures relevant to further exploring these dynamics. It focuses in particular upon transformational discourse as a form of sensegiving that embeds performativity within welfare actors through a process of managerialization that ultimately disrupts sensemaking and undermines both resistance and welfare sector advocacy. The chapter then concludes by highlighting bricolage-based opportunities to reignite and reinforce community managed welfare services providers’ – also known as Third Sector Organizations (TSOs – see Onyx, 2000) – capacities for the preservation and facilitation of citizenship and the inclusive and representative democracy it proceeds upon.

1 This chapter builds upon work previously contributed to Macquarie University as part of a Master of Research dissertation (for original work, see Walker, 2019), and the University of Technology Sydney as part of a coursework within a PhD programme. Whilst largely rewritten and refocused, this chapter may retain some content from these submissions. I am very grateful to Professor Mary Godwyn for her wonderfully supportive editorship; to Meghan Kallman, Martha Emilie Ehrich, and Carl Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard for their generous and thoughtful peer reviews. I am also appreciative of Distinguished Professor Stewart R. Clegg and Helen Taylor for their input upon earlier iterations of this work. The foundations from which this chapter emerged were funded by a Macquarie University stipend and the people of Australia via the Commonwealth government’s research training pathway scholarship. I thank both for the beginnings these afforded me.

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222  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

INTRODUCING CITIZENSHIP AND THE WELFARE STATE Modern notions of citizenship played a crucial part in the reconstruction and stabilization of post-war democratic societies and continue to serve as the foundation upon which their subsequent freedoms and prosperity have advanced. Citizenship applies the lessons learnt from devastating global conflict, by acting upon the recognition that individuals, populations, and their state(s) are unavoidably intertwined, and that gross social inequality both undermines democratic participation and destabilizes nation-states and the relationships between them (Biesta and Lawy, 2006; see also Cingano, 2014; Hinton, 2008). Citizenship was described in (and as a consequence significantly influenced by) Marshall’s essay “Citizenship and Social Class” (1950, see also Biesta and Lawy, 2006), as crucial to reconciling the tensions between capitalism and democratic participation and inclusion. The turn to citizenship emphasized equality, dignity, and inclusion amongst the populace as crucial to curtailing the capacity for capitalistic excesses to undermine sustainable and representative democracy (see Inglehart and Norris, 2012). By expanding upon the existing framework of political and civil freedoms with the addition of social rights, citizenship sought to assure economic security, social inclusion, and living standards of at least the prevailing minimum standard for a “civilised being” (Marshall, 1950, p. 74). Community Organizations and the Assurance of Social Rights Although not without some precedent (see Gough, 2008), the wholescale transition to what is often now described as the Welfare State (Biesta and Lawy, 2006) was a massive undertaking – especially in the aftermath of devastating global conflict – and necessarily extended beyond government actors. Community organizations have filled especially important roles in realizing social rights; in an Australian context, for example, most of the services intended to relieve, redress, and/or prevent disadvantage, hardship, and psychosocial exclusion are delivered by community managed services providers (PwC, 2012). As community managed organizations, these grassroots organizations are run by the community and for the community; they embody collective lived expertise of the burdens imposed by still imperfect and unequal social, political, and economic structures. Usually beginning as groups of individuals united by their interest in ameliorating a specific social problem,2 these organizations are fundamentally engaged in social rights discourse. Those that go on to seek and attract funding to deliver welfare services build upon this expertise to deliver material supports informed by an understanding of the structural contexts within which individual disadvantage emerges. Whilst most associated with the welfare state’s social rights (e.g. Casey and Dalton, 2006; Onyx et al., 2010), the realization of civil and political rights nevertheless depends upon social rights, rendering welfare providers’ activities crucial to the realization of full and equal citizenship and the representative democracy it underwrites. Put another way, hardship and underprivilege marginalize and undermine the citizenship upon which democratic process depends. TSOs assure democracy by facilitating citizenship

2 Often by formalizing mutual support networks, and/or engaging in advocacy to effect social change through improved public awareness and public policy (Onyx et al., 2010; for examples, see One Door Mental Health, n.d.; Samarpan Inc., n.d.; and Stride, n.d.).

Theory, practice and bricolage  223 within and between individuals.3 As service providers, they inform, facilitate, and extend individuals’ capacity for equal participation and self-determination; as advocates, they ensure that those individuals are heard at a systemic level, and that their needs are accounted for. Through both services and public discourse, community services providers ensure people their voice, facilitate public discourse, and mediate citizen–state relations (Maddison, 2009; McDonald and Marston, 2002; Soldatic and Chapman, 2010; see also Meredyth and Minson, 2001). Subverting the Welfare State The role welfare providers play in the social discourse is not, however, uncontested. Influential pockets of scholarship from across the political spectrum4 describe welfare providers as corrupted and/or corrupting influences with specifically antidemocratic functions and effects (Mendes, 2017). Despite premising upon political ideals that are otherwise in diametric opposition, neoliberal (e.g. Johns, 2002) and anticapitalistic (e.g. INCITE!, 2017) arguments against the community sector often advance similar accounts, namely that the welfare sector is captured by outside interests which conflict with (different versions of) the public good. Neoliberalism – currently the dominant political paradigm in most Western nations (Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009; Macrine, 2016; Murray and Overton, 2016) – opposes collectivism, instead pursuing maximal individual freedom as mediated by one’s participation within the (neoliberally framed) free market (Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009). Whereas for TSOs democracy represents equality, collectivistic responsibility, and inclusivity and representation in the discourse, neoliberalism seeks instead an explicitly more limited form of democracy “less amenable to public dispute” (Johns, 2002, p. 14; see also Mendes, 2017; Staples, 2007) and more amenable to its market ideals. Anticapitalist perspectives, by contrast, premise that realizing genuine social rights depends upon the complete elimination of all forms of exploitation (see Chomsky, 1970; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Pellow and Brehm, 2015). In each case, they reject the counterbalance of capitalism and collectivistic social rights that Marshallian citizenship takes to be fundamental to sustainable democracy (Biesta and Lawy, 2006). Whilst not necessarily without any merit, the significant ideological difference between anticapitalist and neoliberal perspectives limits the extent to which both can be simultaneously true. Rather than converge upon paradox or contradiction, however, closer scrutiny reveals these arguments to reflect and act upon the same tension between order and conflict that modern citizenship is intended to moderate. More specifically, they advance upon ideological grounding that is itself at odds with the Marshallian effort to counterbalance capitalism with collectivistic social rights (Biesta and Lawy, 2006). Inasmuch, anticapitalistic and neoliberal 3 Disadvantage, hardship, and psychosocial burden are, in part, systemic; they result from imperfect and unequal social, political, and economic systems, and they hamper individuals’ opportunities and capacities to live in dignity. Citizenship facilitates social inclusion upon the recognition that individual circumstances emerge within social contexts, and a delineable interdependence between individuals, populations, and their state(s) (Shaver, 2002). 4 More comprehensive conceptualizations of ideological divisions typically expand upon the left-right binary with multidimensional axes arranged along various typologies (see, for example, Petrik, 2010). The left-right narrative is nevertheless used here as the better recognized instantiation of political typology, but should be read as broad groupings with fuzzy boundaries (also see Saldaña, 2016).

224  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations characterizations of TSOs as antidemocratic effect contestation over the terms for democracy itself, rather than the fitness for purpose of TSOs within the existing democratic system. By their emphases upon TSOs, however, both neoliberal and anticapitalist critiques often emerge at discursive distance from the substantive implications upon democratic forms and function. Since TSOs’ democratic function is of key significance to their role in the welfare state this has both practical consequence upon the relevance of the arguments as well as the implications of accepting these. Whereas the radical change sought by anticapitalist perspectives orients their arguments within an at least implicit push for social change, neoliberal arguments are often accused of deliberatively obfuscating the implications of their intended policy reforms. By continually problematizing TSOs, neoliberal discourse deploys a “pedagogic tool” of “chaos through crises” (Macrine, 2016, p. 310) that serves to both undermine welfare providers’ legitimacy and unsettle their operating logic enough to impose incremental changes that gradually reorient welfare state institutions within models more conducive to neoliberal ideals (see Carson and Kerr, 2010; Mendes, 2009; Staples, 2007). By emphasizing the need5 for value-for-money in the expenditure of public funds (Bhatia and Orsini, 2016), for example, paired with the ascription of a purportedly unsustainably funded welfare state, neoliberal narratives drew upon a “progressive and palatable” (Bhatia and Orsini, 2016, p. 311) vocabulary to realize otherwise unpopular reforms. By further (mis-)characterizing TSOs as inefficient, ineffective, and unaccountable (Cheverton, 2003; Kerr et al., 2002; Productivity Commission, 2010), neoliberally influenced funding reforms have imposed TSOs within increasingly burdensome reporting and performance regimes (Carson and Kerr, 2010). Although claimed in the neoliberal discourse to benefit providers by improving their operating costs and capacity for service innovation (Eikenberry, 2004); in practice the implementation and administration of these systems incurs significant costs and TSOs have instead become increasingly more constrained, imparting significant burden upon their capacity for continued advocacy provision (Carson and Kerr, 2010; Macdonald and Charlesworth, 2016; Mendes, 2009). Despite extant evidence that rationalization misunderstands and actually worsens efficacy within welfare services contexts (Cheverton, 2003; French and Stillman, 2014; Productivity Commission, 2010), TSOs have had little choice but to submit to pressure upon them to adopt more formalized governance, leadership, and operating paradigms (Future Social Service Institute, 2018). Described in the literature as a specific application of managerialization,6 these processes of justification combine technologies of agency and performance (King, 2017) with TSOs’ dependence upon monopsonic7 funding contexts to impose arrangements specifically structured

5 Value-for-money in this context is not simply about probity, but builds upon a ‘spending disease’ narrative that contributes to the delegitimization of public spending upon welfare programmes, yet despite which has in an Australian context been accompanied by an increase in social spending and its redirection towards mechanisms that shift “responsibility for the disadvantaged [away] from government to corporations, private individuals and families” (Mendes 2014, p. 102; see also Miller and Hayward, 2017). 6 The interested reader is encouraged to refer to Stewart Clegg’s (2014) informative discussion of Klikauer and Locke, as well as Spender’s books discussing the ideology and genealogy of managerialism. 7 A monopsony is the opposite economic condition to a monopoly. It describes an economic environment in which a single buyer enjoys overwhelming buyer power over several sellers. Monopsonic environments drive down prices and drive competition to potential unreasonable and unsustainable extremes.

Theory, practice and bricolage  225 to encourage (i.e., force) providers to perpetually deliver “more with less” (Mackenzie, 2012, p. 9; see also Carson and Kerr, 2010). Managerialism is deeply ingrained within a highly hierarchical form of capitalism, with particular emphases upon discipline and control (Kallman, 2021). By normalizing and extending scarcity within service delivery (see Future Social Service Institute, 2018; Needham and Dickinson, 2018), managerialization forces TSOs to redirect their already slender resources to increasingly market-like activities (e.g. competitive tendering) whilst constraining their capacity for anything else – including advocacy (Mendes, 2009; Staples, 2007). Inasmuch, managerializing welfare services effectively conscripts TSOs within a performative regime of their own pacification (Power, 2014), and plays a pivotal role in the marketization of services widely criticized as now threatening the downfall of the welfare state (Cappelen et al., 2018; Hickel, 2016; MacLeavy, 2016).

(NEOLIBERALIZE): MANAGERIALIZE; MARKETIZE; PHILANTHROPIZE Neoliberalized funding reforms deliberatively drive impoverished welfare services to supplement their funds through other means, either through philanthropy or by more proactive participation within state-led initiatives to marketize welfare services (Eikenberry, 2004; Graefe, 2016; King, 2017). By continuously funding services, which are increasingly oriented around market paradigms, neoliberal governments condition and normalize the logic of market-based welfare (see Murray and Overton, 2016), ultimately seeking to redirect the funding and provision of welfare services away from government and onto the private market (Mendes, 2009). Even though philanthropized funding contexts may be more prevalent in advanced stages of neoliberalization and impose differing problematics, they do depend upon a logic of managerialization that increasingly reorients TSOs within the objects and ideals of the neoliberalized market state (Alston, 2015; Cheverton, 2003; Evans et al., 2005). In each variation, marketization furthers the erosion of contemporary democratic norms. Coercive Services: Agents of the Neoliberal State INCITE!’s compendium of essays, for example, which discusses philanthropically funded TSOs, describes a “non-profit industrial complex” (Rodriguez, 2017) in which the absence of adequate state funding and/or the aggregation of funding within philanthropic foundations creates the space for private interests to influence the form and focus of these services. Characterized by elitism (Ahn, 2017), co-optation and cronyism (King and Osyande, 2017), these services are likely to rely on dominating8 rather than subordinated frames of reference when it comes to recognizing and acting upon ‘deserving’9 needs, consequently misdirecting 8 That is, from the terms of recognition informed by very white, heterosexist, male, colonialist, and ableist norms (see discussions in Butler, 2004; Liu, 2020; Muñoz, 1999). 9 The distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor is described by Mendes (Mendes 2009, p. 106) as stemming from the “19th-century English Poor Law distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. The deserving poor – those who have become briefly dependent on poor relief through no fault of their own and who, with some assistance, could return to independence – are to be cared for. However, the undeserving poor (more recently labelled the underclass), whose poverty results from laziness or moral failure, are to be disciplined.”

226  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations social justice movements and reproducing social inequality (Durazo, 2017; King and Osyande, 2017; Munshi and Willse, 2017). Sited within contexts that have already successfully redirected welfare funding and provision away from the state10 (see Lyons et al., 2006; Mendes, 2009, 2014), however, these TSOs no longer embody the Marshallian social rights infrastructure with which this chapter is interested in preserving. Instead, they embody a neoliberalizing ‘new philanthropy’ in which wealthy donors are incentivized by the state to further shape already market-oriented welfare (Eikenberry, 2004; Mendes, 2009). Critiques of TSOs within philanthropized models can, thus, not serve as learning examples for services still oriented around social rights frameworks, but as examples of warning as to where the marketization of such services could possibly lead. Critiques of welfare services within less philanthropized contexts nevertheless still highlight similar problematics associated with their marketization, and in particular the implications of increasingly neoliberalized ideals within welfare services. By their wholescale dependence upon government funding, state-funded welfare providers operate within a monopsonic environment – that is, a buyer’s market, in which governments enjoy overwhelming buyer-power. Although prevented from simply de-funding the welfare state based on the post-war citizen–state norms and institutional frameworks still in place, TSOs are nevertheless vulnerable to ideological drift within the services they are contracted to deliver – similar to those in philanthropized contexts wherein funders’ interests and ideals (mis-)shape service parameters. Unlike philanthropized contexts, however, state-funded welfare services are contracted by the state and are, therefore, on the frontline at which social issues meet public policy. As agents of a welfare system now undergoing increasingly coercive neoliberalizing reforms structured to motivate welfare recipients into active citizenship11 (Macintyre, 1999; Mendes, 2003), TSOs are liable to become “a tool of oppressive political authority” (Jordan and Drakeford, 2012, p. 173). Many authors – especially those oriented within more anti-capitalistic scholarship (Mendes, 2003; for examples see INCITE!, 2017) – now argue that welfare services have, as a result, become little more than an arm of the neoliberal state (also see Williams and Onyx, 1996). More than imposed upon by the neoliberal state, many analyses regard TSOs as complicit within an increasingly authoritarian (Bruff, 2014) – and at times even fascistic (Giroux, 2019; Santos, 2007) – neoliberalizing conditioning processes “concerned solely with the discipline and surveillance of the poor, rather than with the reduction of the inequality generated by the free market” (Mendes [summarizing other authors], 2003, p. 23). Extant literature does point to increasingly coercive welfare state practices (e.g. Shakespeare, 2006; Western et al., 2007; Wright et al., 2011; also see: The Disability Studies Reader (Davis, 2016)), but to characterize

10 Whilst beyond the scope of this chapter, it is notable that the neoliberal emphasis upon replacing government funding of welfare services with philanthropic alternatives appears to contradict its logic of self-interest and the primacy of the market. 11 Active citizenship is a fundamental neoliberal ideological discourse. It redefined ‘good’ citizenship as self-reliant (i.e., not dependent upon Welfare) and being possessed by “a sense of civic virtue and pride in both country and local community” (Faulks, as cited in Biesta and Lawy, 2006, p. 69). It actively cultivated a new moral narrative that blamed social ills upon widespread failures of individual responsibility and disengagement from the workforce (Biesta and Lawy, 2006; Shaver, 2002). “In this way active citizenship followed the strategy of blaming individuals rather than paying attention to and focusing on the structures that provide the context in which individuals act” (Biesta and Lawy, 2006, p. 69).

Theory, practice and bricolage  227 this as a motivating force within welfare providers arguably conflates the symptom with its disease. Welfare providers are complicit with the neoliberalizing reforms of the welfare state, but nevertheless also remain its most vocal opposition (for examples, see Maddison and Denniss, 2005; Power, 2014; Rogers, 2007). Complicity by co-optation is very different to wilful or welcoming and intentioned collaboration in the transition from social to market rights, and many providers continue to engage in staunch advocacy against these systems whilst at the same time embroiled within them – often with considerable risk to their funding (Mendes, 2009; Soldatic and Chapman, 2010). Many welfare providers are simply doing the best they can in some very difficult circumstances (see Casey and Dalton, 2006; Soldatic and Chapman, 2010). Reconstituting the Welfare State The neoliberalized ideals and objects within which welfare services find themselves compromise the welfare state ethos (Cheverton, 2003; King, 2017), whilst concurrently also constraining capacities to resist or indeed even recognize how deeply embroiled within them TSOs have become. TSOs and their workforces are conditioned and coerced by as well as restrained within these new operational models through processes of transformational discourse (Power, 2014) – a process in which the ambiguity inherent to language is exploited to normalize market rationalities within welfare services whilst undermining providers’ and workers’ capacity for resistance. Transformational discourse operates through multiple concurrent discursive acts, both publicly and in private. At its most obvious, transformational discourse incorporates relentless campaigns to undermine the welfare state by delegitimizing its institutions (including welfare providers as well as statutory bodies etc.12), whilst more discreetly implementing incremental normative change through funding those reforms, which serve the progressive reorientation of welfare services around market rationality (Carson and Kerr, 2010; Mendes, 2009; Shaver, 2002). The significant implications transformational discourse has for both ways of working and ways of being within neoliberalizing welfare services render its dynamics an important site of change, but also impose a breadth and complexity that makes these hard to unpack in due detail.

A SENSEMAKING PERSPECTIVE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL DISCOURSE Sensemaking perspectives, however, offer a particularly suitable framework for unpacking the complexities of transformational discourse in the context of neoliberalized welfare services. Sensemaking perspectives are interested in how “[language] transformation can be a pathway to behavioural transformation” (Weick, 1995, p. 109) and offer “explanatory possibilities”

12 Examples of the delegitimization and disempowerment of statutory authorities include the Australian Human Rights Commission (Williams et al., 2017), and Office of the Privacy Commissioner (Mulgan, 2015), and are well encapsulated by the former Australian Human Rights Commissioner who decried that “[human rights in Australia are] regressing on almost every front … [and] we have a government that’s ideologically opposed to human rights” (Triggs, 2017).

228  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations (Weick, 1995, p. ix) well suited to further examining the use and effects of transformational discourse upon and within welfare services. Sensemaking literatures explore how people order and reorder their worlds so as to render them meaningful. Grounded in particular upon identity construction, sensemaking is a process of “order, interruption, [and] recovery” (Weick, 2006, p. 1731), wherein what an individual perceives to be possible within their world both is shaped by prior experience and shapes what they then perceive, which in turn further reshapes the scope of their future perceptibility (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014; Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2015; Weick, 1995). Narrative and language are especially important in sensemaking; people make sense of the world and their place within it by telling themselves stories; narratives which construct causational ‘truths’ to inform current expectations by past experience (Kohler and Riessman, 2005; see Maitlis and Christianson, 2014). The vocabulary one draws upon to make their meaning is therefore of great significance; it is through language that people make sense of their worlds, order experience into narrative, and organize themselves in relation to others. The differing ‘vocabularies of work’ (Weick, 1995) that emerge within organizations and industries equate to paradigms of shared meaning that serve to regulate and refine intelligibility within groups, effectively constituting ‘alternate realities’ of knowing that both unite and orient speakers within their common interests and objectives. It is through these paradigms that professional identities emerge and evolve; by participating within these ways of speaking, individuals shape how they understand the context and their place within it, whilst reproducing the implicit norms and assumptions that guide perceptible possibilities of practice (Weick, 1995). Although sharpened by mutual context, shared meaning within groups is, of course, nevertheless not uniform. Language is inherently ambiguous (see Crystal, 2008; Fromkin et al., 2005); and since no two people can have the exact same experiences, so too will the way they understand the nuances of their vocabulary necessarily vary: “Words invariably come up short [by imposing] discrete labels on subject matter that is continuous. There is always slippage between words and what they refer to. Words approximate the territory; they never map it perfectly” (Weick, 1995, p. 107). Transformational discourse leverages linguistic ambiguity to gradually subsume one set of values with another. It draws upon a collection of discursive strategies to unsettle the implicit assumptions already established within an existing paradigm whilst progressively implanting and strengthening alternative associations, and with which reshaping possibilities for truth and sensibility. Transformational Discourse as a Combination of Sensegiving Strategies By appearing to adopt welfare services’ pre-existing ‘vocabularies of work’ (Weick, 1995), neoliberal actors tap into the terms with which welfare workers understand “what sort of things make up their [vocational] world, how they act, how they hang together, and how they may be known” (Brown, as cited in Weick, 1995, p. 118); by reproducing and gradually recasting these welfare terminologies within increasingly market oriented ideals, neoliberal actors unsettle and reorient the terms by which welfare workers enact meaning, and ultimately colonize them with new managerial subjectivities. The sensemaking perspective adopted here allows for a more granular analysis, however, that locates transformational discourse as a processes of sensegiving – a combination of interwoven but discrete discursive strategies intended to shape

Theory, practice and bricolage  229 social narratives so as to establish new parameters for making sense of and within the world (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2010; Maitlis and Christianson, 2014; Sonenshein, 2010). Sensegiving creates space for new ways of being in the world by unsettling existing norms (sensebreaking), obscuring alternative narratives (sensehiding), and by prescribing new ideals to realize a new and re-stabilized order, and with which new bounds of possibility (see Monin et al., 2013). Sensebreaking creates the burning platform that appears to leave no other choice but to make a change (see Vuori, 2013). By first “[problematizing] previous ways of thinking or acting” (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991, p. 263), sensebreaking challenges accepted ‘truths’ to create the premises for ‘breaking’ with old ways of doing things (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2010; Monin et al., 2013) and makes way for new parameters for order. Having quite literally defined a particular chaos into existence, sensebreaking makes way for a new order by sense-specifying new norms, terminologies and authorities, rearticulating the parameters that explicitly set new boundaries for thought (Monin et al., 2013). Whilst (sense-)specifying one narrative necessarily forecloses others (Bergin and Westwood, 2004), sensehiding describes a more deliberative manipulation of discourse through obfuscation, suppression and redirection (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014; Monin et al., 2013). In effect, sensegiving enacts change through crisis; it creates periods of interruption, for which existing paradigms prove no longer equipped to make adequate sense, and – since sensemaking is grounded in identity construction – imposes an ontological imperative to arrive at a new sense of order (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2010). Viewed in these terms, the broad strokes of neoliberalism’s advance can be understood as a process of sensebreaking the welfare state ideals that preceded them – ideals that themselves emerged from the reordering of sensemaking following the crises wrought by world war – and the sense-specification of a new hyper-capitalist social order (Biesta and Lawy, 2006; Glass, 2016). Sensegiving is not necessarily insidious, however; sensebreaking can dispel harmful myths and misunderstandings; sense-specification can open new worlds of knowledge; and sensehiding can bring clarity amidst noise. Sensegiving is an exercise of discursive power that is only necessarily problematic when used to block practices of freedom or block paths of resistance (see Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Foucault, 2010). The transformational discourse at play in the neoliberalization of welfare services, however, does exactly that; it creates a “fuzzy disequilibrium that allows neoliberalism to flourish” (Macrine, 2016, p. 310; also see Molé, 2010). By first problematizing welfare state expenditure (Bhatia and Orsini, 2016; Mendes, 2009; Shaver, 2002) it unsettles and then penetrates welfare funding with managerializing systems of control and surveillance. Managerialism – also an act of sensegiving (especially sense-specification) – signifies the neoliberal preoccupation with “quantitative top-down accountability, performance monitoring and … outputs” (Power, 2014, p. 140), and demands workers and organizations justify their work through reporting measurement data (Brodkin, 2011; Power, 2014). Managerialization Muddles Meaning Neoliberal sensegiving renders the community sector workforce in a paradox of complicity within the neoliberalization otherwise at odds with their organizational purposes. Concerned with social justice as they are (Cheverton, 2003), the community sector may be expected to resist the neoliberal colonization of community services, yet their inculcation within

230  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations a managerial performativity instead disorients, distracts, and divides them, making it impossible to realize and articulate their welfare state practice within a theory-borne neoliberal framework: While all community workers agree that resistance has a definite role in community work … [in a rising managerialist state resistances] are provisional and partial, and community workers are currently struggling to articulate new resistances collectively. (Power, 2014, p. 214)

Neoliberal narratives have eroded welfare providers’ operational capacities whilst reorienting their workforce within irreconcilable ideals and ways of working that do not make sense in their everyday practice. Managerialization combines technologies of performance with technologies of agency (King, 2017) with the effect of reconstituting services and their workers within “a set of informational structures and performance indicators that become the principle of intelligibility [for] social relations” (Ball and Olmedo, 2013, p. 91). It creates a funding imperative to satisfy “funder’s outcomes rather than participant’s needs” (King, 2017, p. 254), rendering workers responsible for the production of data that satisfies these ends (Cheverton, 2003; French and Stillman, 2014; Power, 2014), and managers for ensuring they do so. Given TSOs’ typically grassroots heritage (and as a result traditionally quite flat hierarchies – Bullen and Onyx, 2005; Campfens, 1997), managerialization effects a fundamental relational shift within these organizations. Managerialization installs an architecture of abjection that inculcates welfare workers within the obligations and duties of neoliberal performativity (Power, 2014; also see Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Rizq, 2013), leaving them feeling “confused, overwhelmed, unsuccessful and under siege” (Power, 2014, p. 198). Caught in a cycle of performativity, workers find their identities conflict, on the one hand becoming an instrument of the neoliberal state whilst on the other, being in practice still a critical defender of civil society (Alston, 2015; Cheverton, 2003; Power, 2014). Rather than empowered to protect citizenship, workers are co-opted in subjectification (Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Power, 2014; Shaver, 2002), and abjected in ontological dissonance. Moreover, by premising performance upon measurability, managerialization limits the extent to which workers may be successful within a performative regime. Premised on the market rationality that it is, managerialism reorders relations on a presupposition that community work is even actually measurable; yet, defining what ‘efficiency’ or ‘value-for-money’ even means within services which deal with “human and often delicate complexity” (French and Stillman, 2014, p. 627) is problematic. People do not access community services because their needs are easily redressed or even defined; knowing and selecting “what to measure – ‘what counts’ – is [both] technically difficult [and] politically fraught” (Brodkin, 2011, p. 256). Whilst specific needs can sometimes be effectively redressed with the short-term interventions most easily measured, it is often simply not possible to adequately (nor, therefore, accurately) capture client needs and outcomes through standardized screening and evaluation tools (French and Stillman, 2014; Power, 2014). Efforts to quantify welfare work most often advance upon fundamental misunderstanding or misconstruction of the nature and benefits of the services they purport to measure (Gilchrist and Knight, 2017; Olssen, 1996; Onyx, 2008) and rarely reflect the realities of either what goes into welfare work or the benefits that result (French and Stillman, 2014). Truly effective and ‘sustainable

Theory, practice and bricolage  231 outcomes’ result instead from recognizing (and treating) needs as emergent from many different and intersecting life domains (see Anderson et al., 2017; Bell, 2012).13 Welfare delivery is a practice of presence; it is complex and ‘hands on’ work, in which the unknowable is the norm (Ferris et al., 2016; Huxham and Vangen, 1996). Doing it well relies upon creating space for the recipient to be – and feel – heard and holistically understood; it demands non-linear and iterative approaches to intervention, and inasmuch is sometimes described as a form of bricolage (French and Stillman, 2014; Phillimore et al., 2016, 2018); a “structured improvisation” (Barnard and Spencer, 2010, p. 757) wherein “a creative welfare worker responds to the situation at hand, and harnesses tools, resources and techniques which they already have to create a unique combination of assistance for a particular client” (French and Stillman, 2014, p. 630). Much more than simply a specific way of working, bricolage is a way of orienting oneself within the world that is at odds with the mechanistic orientation imposed by managerialization. The bricoleur is capable within constraint and especially effective at “making do” both with limited resources and within environments dominated by ideals and language they “did not invent and do not control” (Deleuze and Guattari, as cited in Phillimore et al., 2016, p. 7). Their world is very tangible, and their actions upon it are as much modes of expression and discovery as they are instrumental to any particular end; with each new recombination of their resources the bricoleur discovers new possibilities of expression and of being (Lévi-Strauss, 1966). Bricolage borrows from Lévi-Strauss’ (1966) anthropological observations that, across cultures, two distinct modes of knowing typically coexist in a cultural symbiosis, delivering the ‘facts’ and forms upon which the narratives and materials of their worlds are built. The bricoleur thus operates in a counterbalance with the ingénieur who, by contrast, is concerned with devising and concocting the tools with which the bricoleur engages within the world. Although not typically connected with sensemaking perspectives, the onto-epistemological bearings advanced in bricolage mirror a broader pattern across organizational (Weick, 2005), philosophical (Heidegger, 1962; Kierkegaard, 1843) – and now also anthropological (Lévi-Strauss, 1966) – literatures suggestive of the same qualitative divergence of two differing modes of being within the world (see Weick, 2005): One “engaged in practical activity” (Weick, 2005, p. 467) and “roughly adapted to that of perception and the imagination” (Lévi-Strauss, 1966, p. 10), the other “at a remove from it” (Lévi-Strauss, 1966, p. 10) and oriented within “analysis, abstraction, and simplification” (Weick, 2005, p. 454). The Languages of Theory and Practice Meaningfully Diverge Described from a sensemaking perspective as the result and reproduction of vocabularies of work oriented more towards either theory or practice (Weick, 2005), theorist/ingénieurs and practitioner/bricoleurs (theorist or ingénieur, and practitioner or bricoleur used interchangeably from hereon) make sense of their worlds through language that, despite often appearing very similar, inflects nuance informed by fundamentally different assumptions as to how reality is ordered. Practitioners, for example, see the world as unknowable, unpredictable and finite; they depend upon intuition, improvisation and trial-and-error learning to understand their place and possibilities within it (Weick, 2005; Weick et al., 2005). Theorists, however, are

For example: vocational; occupational; social etc.

13

232  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations more abstractive; they see the world as a sum of knowable relationships and infinite potential and seek to collate objective knowledge with which to explain phenomena with increasing precision; they attempt to explain the world, impose order upon it, and through which create new possibilities in an otherwise chaotic universe (Weick, 2005; Weick et al., 2005). These paradigms are most powerful when mutually engaged: Practitioners are best able to spot the theories that matter in their world of practice when that world is interrupted. And theorists are best able to spot the situated action they should be puzzling over in their world of theory, in the presence of those same interruptions. (Weick, 2005, p. 469)

Practitioners’ orientation within the here and now informs ‘what works’ and when, whilst theorists’ more technical interest identifies why, how, and to what else the insights may be applied (Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Weick, 2005). As complementary as these different modes of engaging with the world are, however, their divergent mindsets impede understanding between them, and they may be more likely to misrecognize one another than converge upon a meaning-full symbiosis (Weick, 2005). Within this misrecognition, theorists in their need for order are likely to impose it upon practitioners – perhaps without even realizing – and with which disrupt the paradigms by which bricoleur practitioners orient within and navigate their worlds. By managerializing the welfare state, an imposition of order upon welfare providers passes through the organization as the imposition of order by managers upon workers, driving a wedge between them whilst disrupting capacities to reconcile new shared paradigms for sensemaking. Inverting Resistance Neoliberalization confronts workers with perpetual change, and enforces managerialism through service managers; it orients them within a language of theory and subjectifies worker and manager alike (see Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Power, 2014; Weick, 2005). Now charged with disciplining ‘productive’ and ‘responsible’ participation within the new quantifiable order, TSO managers’ attempts to make sense of services delivery for service reporting become attempts to impose order upon an “altogether different form of activity … less orderly and of a different order than it appears in hindsight” (Weick, 2005, p. 454). Inasmuch, it relocates managers and workers in increasingly different mindsets, and reinforces these with each additional act of theory or practice that follows: Whereas in the past the typical profile of a community-sector program coordinator was that of an activist, the typical profile now is more that of a business manager. (Casey and Dalton, 2006, p. 28)

By refocusing workers’ attention upon the discursive tensions within their everyday work, the welfare-bricoleur’s response to managerialization reorients resistance away from the ‘chief enemy’ of neoliberalization itself and refocuses it instead upon the ‘immediate enemy’ of managerialized performativity. Rather than push back upon managerialization itself, subjectified workers can enact only “resistance to (the managerial) practices” (Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Foucault, 1982) that otherwise frustrate their primary commitment to social rights. These practices, however, are located within the organization itself, between workers and their managers; despite being otherwise united in purpose, managerialization divides workers from managers by imposing different responsibilities and priorities upon them, and in

Theory, practice and bricolage  233 doing so effectively conquers resistance by relocating it away from funders and within TSOs themselves. The extent to which managerialization may capture workers’ sensemaking paradigms is, however, constrained by its incompatibilities with the nature of welfare work itself. Managerialization thereby effectively interrupts existing sensemaking order (see Power, 2014), but fails to deliver the tools with which to recover new effective order.14 It instead leaves workers continually in between worlds, inflicting upon them a form of ontological violence likely to precipitate retreat unto the self rather than facilitate space for coordinated pushback. Welfare workers may navigate the conflicted subjectivities imposed upon them, however, by leaning upon the ambiguity inherent within bricolage to mask efforts to “[bypass] the rules” (French and Stillman, 2014, p. 630) through acts of everyday resistance (e.g. inaction, disobedience, or subversion – see Power, 2014; also see Brodkin, 2011), whilst otherwise appearing to comply with managerial expectations. This is not to say, however, that workers deliberatively work against their own organizations – the literature shows workers to instead be galvanized in their work by more often strongly identifying with their organizations (Ferris et al., 2016) and their shared commitment to social rights (Barth et al., 2008; Cheverton, 2003; Meagher and Healy, 2005). Rather, welfare workers may engage in improvisational bricolage as a way to resist through (and with) the organization by working towards change with individuals, whilst protecting their organization’s interests by maintaining an impression of their participation within the managerialized ideals they otherwise reject. By obscuring resistance within a visage of managerialized performativity, however, workers’ dependence upon bricolage may also unwittingly embroil them within further processes of agentic subjectification. Bricolage can be deployed without contradiction to citizenship ideals, but its emphasis upon individual agency (Di Domenico et al., 2010) also renders it vulnerable to corruption by its points of connection with the managerialized pairing of agency and performance (French and Stillman, 2014), and much of the literature interested in welfare bricolage is oriented within an already clearly neoliberalized language (e.g. reframing services within ‘social enterprise’ – see Ladstaetter et al., 2018; Tasavori et al., 2018; Zollo et al., 2018). Although welfare-bricoleurs may intend to proceed upon only a performance of acquiescence within managerialized regimes, appearing compliant nevertheless requires participation within terms of meaning that are themselves still inscribed within a neoliberal logic. More explicitly market-oriented language may indeed be used by welfare-bricoleurs only as part of a performative strategy to mask acts of resistance, but also reproduces (neoliberalizing) linguistic co-optation upon the narratives by which ‘practices of freedom’ (Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Foucault, 2010) may otherwise be recognized and realized. Improvisational bricolage may then equate more to acts of cynicism than a practice of meaningful resistance (Fleming and Spicer, 2003). ‘Cynical’ workers knowingly participate in service models they believe to be flawed under the belief that by recognizing their shortcomings they are inoculated from colonization within them (Fleming and Spicer, 2003). Cynical practices may be appealing to welfare workers because they appear to protect identity from colonization by establishing a psychological distance between organizational practices and an individual’s participation within them (Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Power, 2014), 14 That is, managerialization disrupts the process of “order, interruption, [and] recovery” (Weick 2006, p. 1731) described earlier in this chapter.

234  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations effectively facilitating participation (and thus performance) within one regime of truth whilst ascribing oneself within another. Yet, in practice, cynical practices nevertheless reproduce the self within the dominating order, and can only be disrupted by unsettling the order against which identify is now ascribed: A Real act of resistance would be one for which we would have to bear the costs. It would be an act that changes the sociosymbolic network in which we and our way of life make sense. It would be costly because we depend on these sociosymbolic networks. To lose them would be like losing the world. (Contu, 2008)

Resistance cloaked as bricolage therefore has limited capacity to disrupt the sociosymbolic networks necessary for realizing meaningful change (Contu, 2008), and may be more likely to reinforce neoliberal subordination than undermine these new ‘regimes of truth’ (see Foucault, 1980; also see Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Power, 2014).

CONCLUDING REMARKS: NEW AVENUES FOR RESISTANCE It could also be argued, however, that the welfare sector is already bearing the costs of real acts of resistance. Neoliberalizing governments have a well-established record of dismantling any discursive infrastructure that undermines or inconveniences their interests. All institutions with a role in assuring the public interest have come under fire in recent years; universities, public broadcasters and statutory authorities, and supranational commitments to uphold human rights have all been actively compromised within neoliberal regimes (Giroux, 2019; Lund and Tienari, 2019; Williams et al., 2017; also see Price, 2021; Triggs, 2017). TSOs funded by the government are in an obviously subordinated and precarious position, and have good reason to proceed with caution (see Mendes, 2009). That welfare providers are not able to advocate without risk to their funding (Maddison and Carson, 2017) further marks the trend towards authoritarianism they are otherwise intended to guard against. The discursive norms and social rights underwriting post-war democracy are clearly straining under the neoliberal advance, rendering TSO advocacy more crucial than ever. Welfare providers must therefore resist and overcome efforts to silence them; but it is also unrealistic to expect them to be able to speak out more vociferously without further embroiling themselves within the same marketization that has already so comprehensively undermined them. Transformational discourse has changed the environment, and adaptation is now crucial – not only to welfare providers’ survival, but to the continuity of citizenship and proper functioning of post-war democracy. By connecting Lévi-Strauss’ and Weick’s sensemaking perspective with theory and practice in the real world, managerialized governmentalities can be seen to have ruptured the community sector’s capacity for advocacy and resistance by reorienting it within irreconcilable ideals. Considered from this perspective, neoliberal transformational discourse can be understood as acts of sensegiving intended to promote and legitimize neoliberalizing narratives and ontologies whilst delegitimizing Marshallian citizenship and its welfare state infrastructure. Arriving at new shared paradigms for sensemaking will be crucial to realizing meaningful resistance to the Marshallian ideals fundamental to their bearings within the world. Although bricolage has contributed to fragmentation within welfare services by providing an amenable vessel for dividing welfare workers in individualized practices of cynicism, it is

Theory, practice and bricolage  235 not bricolage itself that is the problem but that it allows for slippage between terms of meaning to go unnoticed, allowing market ideals sneak in to become parameters for truth: “As workers adopt and adapt (or not) to managerialism – taking on its language, forms of accountability, procedures – there is a corresponding demise of the autonomous reflective practitioner and professional” (Power, 2014, p. 34). Rejecting bricolage is unnecessary to reclaiming cohesive shared narratives, and may even be counterproductive. Rather, the same linguistic ambiguity upon which transformational discourse implants itself can be acted against through a recombination of bricolage with a refreshed emphasis upon the critical reflexivity managerialization otherwise disperses and displaces (Kessl, 2009; Power, 2014). Critical reflexivity is an explicitly values-oriented positionality wherein the interrelation between practice and theory is translated into “a specific form of social work intervention” (Kessl, 2009). It not only provides a process through which welfare service managers and workers can (re-)connect with one another, but specifically focuses attention upon the vocabularies at which their meanings diverge whilst providing the tools and techniques to draw their differences into the cultural symbiosis necessary to advance upon mutually constituted practices of meaningful resistance. Literature relevant to revitalizing and recentring critical reflexivity in post-welfare state services already exists (see Askeland and Fook, 2009), but informed by this chapter may be focused into specific frameworks suited to recognizing and deconstructing transformational discourse. Synthesizing approaches informed by and drawing upon bricolage research may serve to insulate against the potential for improvisational bricolage to slip into counterproductive acts of cynicism whilst bolstering its capacity to recognize and constructively resist the imposition of dominating narratives. Bricolage literatures offer a wide variation of foci, and inasmuch present the opportunity for future research to specifically identify conceptualizations best suited to facilitating effective critical reflexivity and constructive resistance amongst welfare providers. Duymedjian and Rüling (2010), for example, expand upon Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage by synthesizing it with Laurent Thévenot’s (2001) political-sociological reflection of pragmatic regimes. Using his concepts of familiar and convention-based governance, they advanced a view of bricolage as a set of practices that in their variability orient towards preferences for more personal or formalized practices along six categories of behaviour.15 By offering these differences between familiar and convention-based bricoleurs, Duymedjian and Rüling create opportunities for bricoleurs to reflect more completely upon how they wish to harness their doing, knowing and world-views (Duymedjian and Rüling, 2010; Rönkkö et al., 2014) towards the influence upon those around them and socio-political systems within which they operate. Similarly, informed by Baker and Nelson’s (2005) research of bricolage in entrepreneurial contexts, community sector actors may be able to engage in a ‘selective bricolage’, wherein 15 Duymedjian and Rüling (2010, see p. 144) describe familiar bricolage as ocurring over an extended period and within a defined common space dedicated to bricoleurs. It draws upon a shared library of mutually accessible resources and proceeds upon close and trustful relationships. Familiar bricolage makes little use of convention or investments in form, and where present is more likley to be quite informal. Convention based bricolage, by contrast, relies less upon co-location and is more likely to be used for defined purposes over shorter periods. Whilst more associated with non-exclusive spaces, this form of bricolage segregates resources into defined repertoires and regulates access through locally negotiated conventions, with varying scope for in/formality. Investments of form are therefore more important for convention-based bricolage (Duymedjian and Rüling, 2010).

236  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations some consciously selected formalization creates room for greater flexibility in others. Although perhaps appearing to submit to managerialization by adhering to formalized practices, selective bricolage differs by being driven from within, and seeks explicitly to resist the imposition of external narratives. By combining selective bricolage with critical reflexive practices, welfare workers may be better equipped to avoid cynical practices and draw instead upon more meaningful and effective forms of everyday resistance. Further research is clearly warranted, but welfare communities need not await academic insights to proceed upon their political reset. The pace of neoliberal reform is now such that action is likely required more quickly than the relatively slow pace of academic work can accommodate. Whilst still important that theory be combined with practice, leading this from a place of practice is not only appropriate in welfare work, but fundamentally necessary. By coming together upon processes of critical reflexivity, welfare organizations may realize new and more reliably emancipatory forms of bricolage conducive to their facilitation of citizenship ideals, and a wider scale resistance to neoliberalization and its authoritarianistic implications.

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13. A world polity view on reorganization and institutional change in natural resources management Mohammad Al-Saidi

INTRODUCTION In the field of natural resource management, an array of new organizational forms is being established in order to meet the challenges arising from ecological crises. Environment ministries, national environmental councils, sectoral organizations and civil society actors are often oriented towards supranational agreements, stipulating principles for transboundary environmental problems or prescribing “rational” solutions for sectoral and cross-cutting environmental management problems. Often, these principles and agreements are part of a global sustainability agenda promoted by the United Nations, international donors and other international organizations. Global conferences such as the celebrated 1992 Rio Conference constitute platforms for producing self-binding global targets, international conventions, or action plans. These outcomes incorporate principles and paradigms regarding the “right” ways to manage and organize emerging problems and their solutions. The latest pillar of the global sustainability agenda is represented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), valid for the years 2015–2030. Many of the new global paradigms concern problem solving in the field of natural resource management. The analysis of the impact of such global and international sustainability debates on institutional reforms is highly relevant. Often, the expectation structures, legitimation, work logics, and functioning of the new actors and organizations can change significantly in order to adhere to global sustainability paradigms (Al-Saidi, 2019a; Beunen and Patterson, 2019). The influences of these paradigms are, however, little understood, and they are rarely explained from a sociological and theoretical viewpoint. From a social sciences perspective, understanding institutional change in the environmental realm is quite relevant. Societal responses to system disturbances such as ecological scarcities and mounting environmental risks are now more critical than ever. The global environmental change caused by population and economic growth as well as climatic changes has led to significant changes in the organizations governing natural resources. While there was a trend of institutionalization of responsibility for environmental protection in the 1990s (Frank et al., 2000), more recent organizational changes go beyond the protection principle. As will be explained in this chapter, since the turn of the century, new phenomena of social organization have been observed at national, regional and local levels based on principles such as integration, participation, or efficiency. Institutional sector reforms in areas such as water, energy and land led to the establishment of special organizational forms according to these principles. The water sector is an exemplary case for highlighting this transformation. Since the late 1980s, a comprehensive institutional change has been happening, with new water laws and bylaws as well as new actors such as water ministries, water planning and 242

A world polity view on natural resources management  243 regulation agencies, water basin agencies, and national water councils. This institutional change is perceived to be an adequate reaction to the disturbances in the political, economic and social systems in light of increasing local and regional water-scarcity crises. The establishment of new actors and regulatory frameworks has been accompanied by the emergence of global paradigms for water management (e.g., the Dublin Principles of 1992) as well as powerful global actors (e.g., Global Water Partnership (GWP)), which put forward encompassing management remedies such as integrated water resources management (IWRM) (Al-Saidi, 2017; Biswas, 2008; Grigg, 2016). This chapter analyzes environmental institutional change from the perspective of sociological neo-institutionalism, and particularly from the viewpoint of world polity theory. This theory builds on the work of John W. Meyer (Meyer, 1987, 1994; Meyer et al., 1994, 1997, 2005; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Thomas et al., 1987) and Paul J. DiMaggio, who further developed the concept of isomorphism (DiMaggio, 1988; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). It provides useful conceptual tools for understanding the similarities in the organizational set‑up of national and international organizations. Using world polity theory, the chapter analyzes the influence of global and international sustainability debates on institutional reforms in the field of natural resource management, offering the water sector as an in-depth example. It explains the legacies and origins of these reforms and their impacts on the expectation structures, legitimation and work logics as well as the functions of the new actors. Using the examples of the rise of the paradigm of IWRM and the activist role of GWP, the chapter seeks to explain the institutional homogenization and organizational isomorphism of the new organizational forms in the water sector. Specifically, and in line with world polity theory, the chapter’s main thesis is that the organizational homogenization in the water sector can be directly linked to the influence of global paradigms (i.e., IWRM) and actor networks (i.e., GWP). First, the basic premises of world polity theory are explained and the postulated idea of cultural homogenization discussed with reference to the recent literature. Later, the organizational trends in the field of natural resource management are briefly explained. As a case study from the natural resource management field, the water sector will be analyzed and the characteristics of institutionalization (e.g., de-institutionalization vs. re-institutionalization) as well as the role of international actors will be discussed.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Delineating the World Polity Theory within Sociological Neo-Institutionalism There are several variations of institutionalism and neo-institutionalism (sometimes called new institutionalism) ranging from economic to historical and sociological institutionalism (Al-Saidi, 2019a; Amenta et al., 2012; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). Sociological neo-institutionalism’s basic premise is that rational actors are embedded in an institutional order (Koenig, 2008), and that actors or organizations are embedded and shaped by a social context or an environment (Amenta et al., 2012). There are some variants of sociological institutionalism and several ways to locate world polity theory within it. Powell and Bromley (2015) introduced the concept of sociological neo‑institutionalism of organizations and categorized world polity theory as a macro-level perspective that illuminates the influence of modernity on all societal sectors. Koenig and Dierkes (2011) see sociological

244  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations neo-institutionalism as having emerged from organizational studies, while classifying world polity theory under radical neo‑institutionalism. In contrast to the rational theory literature, world polity theory emphasizes cognitive-culture rules embedding interactions of actors and organizations (Koenig and Dierkes, 2011). It follows the anti-utilitarian and constructive argument of classical sociology, and is thus embedded in the phenomenological and cultural research tradition (Amenta et al., 2012; Koenig, 2008). World polity theory is also embedded within new institutional approaches that stress the adaptation of organizations through symbolic or profound changes (both internal and external to the organizations) in order to meet expectations in their environments. This adaptation is increasingly important for the construction of modern societies. In this sense, such new institutional approaches build on knowledge from other theories such as the ideas of reflexive modernity about the dissolution of unique and unquestionable beliefs and rules, and the need of organizations to survive in situations characterized by confusion and contradiction (Schaefers, 2002). At the same time, world polity theory focuses on how the global level can lead to a structuration of international or domestic organizations. In this sense, it is embedded in international institutionalism, which includes several neo-utilitarian and social constructivist theories that seek to explain institutionalization in the international system (Ruggie, 2002). Here, world polity theory emphasizes the cultural embeddedness of nation states, and unlike constructivist theorists of international relations focusing on discourses and ideas, it takes a macro-phenomenological standpoint on states (Koenig and Dierkes, 2011). Basic Premises of World Polity Theory World polity theory largely builds on the macro-institutionalist theories of Meyer and Rowan (1977) and DiMaggio and Powell (1983). According to Koenig and Dierkes (2011), there are three main components of world polity theory: (i) “institutional structuration” as the build-up of world polity; (ii) the cultural contents of world polity; and (iii) the impact of the world culture inherent in world polity on domestic and local institutions. With regard to world polity, it includes a range of universal values and translations, which are shared by actors such as international organizations, NGOs, or national states (Meyer et al., 1997). This view of world polity as an institutional environment has crystallized since the nineteenth century, with its influence steadily growing (Koenig and Dierkes, 2011). Cole (2016) explains this term further, and contrasts it to the term “world society.” While world polity theory originally emphasized the structural intensification and institutional environment constructed through the interactions among states, the use of the term “world society” aims at paying greater attention to non-state actors (e.g., non-governmental or international organizations or epistemic communities). Although the two terms are still being used interchangeably, world society is increasingly replacing world polity in recent literature (Cole, 2016). In this chapter, the original term “world polity” is used, while understanding it as also encompassing non-state actors. The second important aspect of world polity theory is the nature of expectations and assumptions generated by world polity. Meyer and Rowan (1977) describe these assumptions as “institutionalized rules,” which represent types of classifications or generally accepted interpretations. These rules represent myths, while some studies describe them as rational myths, (e.g., Caruso, 2008; Suchman et al., 1996). On the one hand, they include assumptions and social goals along with adequate pathways to achieve these goals. On the other hand, their reality and effectiveness depend on people’s belief in them (Walgenbach, 2006, p. 325). The

A world polity view on natural resources management  245 taken-for-granted rules represent “cultural models” as recipes for appropriate behavior, or they shape expectations for nation states (Meyer et al., 1997). World polity institutionalized these cultural models, thus sustaining a global or world culture. In this sense, world culture is understood as the norms or instructions for the determination of identity, capacity and purpose of actors and their actions as well as the justification of such actions at a certain moment (Lechner and Boli, 2005). According to Meyer (1987), the cultural order has its origins in the Western world. Amenta et al. (2012) explain these origins and stress that scholars of the world society see world culture as a product of history, and not based on inevitable values. Although the world culture of today is riddled with contradictions, it is explained within world polity theory in relation to major historical shifts, such as the Enlightenment, European dominance, the colonial legacies, or the rise of liberal, individualistic ideologies in the post-Second World War era. However, these shifts did not produce hegemonic ideologies. Moreover, these ideologies evolved autonomously and were institutionalized through world polity (Amenta et al., 2012). The (Western) principles propagated by world polity include individualism, progress, secularization and equality. They are similar to the norms put forward by Max Weber in his studies of the Western rationalization. However, in world polity theory, the rationalization thesis of Max Weber is expanded with a globalization thesis, which builds on ideas such as global citizenship and norms such as universal equality and fairness (Hasse and Krücken, 2005a, p. 72). Thirdly, the impact of world culture is the convergence of actors and organizations as they strive to reflect the cultural models and their associated symbols. In order to illustrate how many characteristics of modern societies are oriented towards global patterns propagated by the world culture and its actors, Meyer and Rowan (1977) used the example of a newly discovered island. Soon after its discovery, such an island attracts the attention of international organizations. It joins international organizations such as the World Bank or the United Nations (UN), which, in turn, influence national policies and resource distribution. The island becomes another node in a dense international network with multiple connections and relations with other states. Organizations on this island develop themselves according to the same pattern or structure of international organizations and organizations in other countries; e.g., ministries, national agencies, or NGOs. The island catches up with world polity and goes through the same process as other states before it. The Role of Organizations in Institutional Reforms In world polity theory, organizations as actors in modern societies have a dual function: as mediators and as addressees of the principles of world polity (Hasse and Krücken, 2005b). On the one hand, international organizations (not states or individuals) and NGOs are seen as instruments for legitimizing and de-legitimizing domestic policies and national organizations. On the other hand, international or national organizations are addressees of world polity, and therefore subject to adaptation processes according to world cultural norms such as gender equality, environmental protection, and efficiency. The important consequence of the increasing structural alignment of organizations as addressees of world polity is the structural similarity, or isomorphism, among organizations. Isomorphism is a central concept in world polity theory, which implies “conformity to dominant, legitimated, or ‘taken-for-granted’ views” (Schofer et al., 2012, p. 59). Basically, these views are the cultural models proposed by world polity. They lead to increasing

246  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations standardization and homogenization with regard to models of statehood, citizenship or problem solving in sectors such as education and environmental protection (Koenig, 2008). Isomorphism happens because organizations adopt dominant expectations and rules regarding the efficiency and effectivity of modern organizations in order to gain legitimacy in the public arena, thereby increasing their stability. For example, laws and regulations of important customers or stakeholders dictate that organizations adapt to them (Walgenbach, 2006, p. 320). This adaptation of institutionalized rules can lead to conflicts between the efforts of organizations to achieve efficiency and the striving to reflect societal expectations, ceremonies and symbols. Meyer and Rowan (1977) write of different intensities of “decoupling” between the formal structure and the structure of activities in organizations. Such a decoupling implies a gap between espoused policies and actual practices in order for organizations to protect their technical needs (Powell and Bromley, 2015). DiMaggio and Powell (1983) contest this notion of decoupling and argue that the changes and adaptation processes often go beyond the formal structure and influence the activities of organizations. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) identified three concrete mechanisms for the production of isomorphism: forced, mimetic, and normative isomorphism. Two actors play a role in the production of these mechanisms, namely the state and the professions. Forced isomorphism happens through the constraints produced by the state through laws and regulations. Other actors, such as clients for a particular service or product, can create constraints. Mimetic isomorphism occurs under conditions of uncertainty. Uncertain conditions can arise at different levels. An organization’s environment can produce symbolic uncertainty. In addition, the goals and means for the organization or its organizational technology may be unclear. This leads to imitation and adaptation at the structural level towards the other successful organizations. Finally, normative isomorphism is caused by the pressure of the professions, whose members give themselves a certain framework for problem solving. Organizations in the same industry are forced to follow this framework. This classification of the isomorphism processes emphasizes the role of professions, the media and education systems in promulgating ideas of world polity (Powell and Bromley, 2015). At the same time, the underlying social processes of homogenization require more elaboration (Koenig, 2008). Isomorphism can produce institutional reforms and reorganization, which is theorized in the context of world polity, namely in terms of the effects of environmental influences such as the change in the guiding principles for problem solving at the international level (Schaefers, 2002). According to world polity theory, a distinction is made between three forms of institutional change: “institutional development” as change within an existing form, “de-institutionalization” as a reduction in environmental requirements, and “re‑institutionalization” as a transition to a new institutional form under new principles and institutional rules (see Jepperson, 1991; Schaefers, 2002).

CASE STUDY AND APPROACH Natural Resources Management as an Organizational Field? Selecting the water sector as a case study in this chapter carries an implicit assumption that water organizations are exposed to the same or similar pressures and operate within an environment with common expectations. In sociological institutional literature with

A world polity view on natural resources management  247 a structurationist logic such as world polity theory, the concept of the organizational field has been a key construct for analyzing isomorphism based on the characteristics in the environment of organizations (Gore et al., 2019; Machado-da-Silva et al., 2006). According to DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 148), the organizational field is understood as “organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services and products.” For DiMaggio and Powell, this analysis unit is used to identify a group of actors who share common expectations in their environment. However, there are several theoretical perspectives for defining the organizational field. The definition by DiMaggio and Powell emphasizes that organizations must share common meanings and interact among themselves more frequently than with others (Machado-da-Silva et al., 2006). This neo-institutional definition of the organizational field is not based on material resource flows or the configurational relations among institutions, but rather on the configuration, power structures and ideologies that constitute institutional life in a certain field (Senge, 2013). According to DiMaggio and Powell (1983), the definition of a certain sector or field as an organizational field cannot be determined a priori as it requires empirical investigation. The criteria proposed by DiMaggio and Powell (1983) include the increased interactions, the existence of inter-organizational structure of domination and patterns of coalition, increased information exchange, and the development of awareness of organizations’ participants regarding the common enterprise. These criteria have been further developed by Zietsma et al. (2016), who stressed the existence of hierarchies and network structures among organizations, as well as the development of shared meanings and practices for these organization. However, the ambiguities arising in applying these criteria have been highlighted by Gore et al. (2019). Considering these problems and the heterogeneity of actors and inter-organizational relations in a certain sector or field, it might be difficult to conclusively classify any area in the environmental realm as an organizational field. This chapter is primarily concerned with structuration and isomorphism in the water sector, which will later be shown to be increasingly structured and integrated into an actual field. However, water organizations can also be embedded in the broader field of natural resource management, although a more precise assessment of the organizational hierarchies and networks in this field cannot be made at this point due to the lack of empirical data. By accepting natural resource management as a possible organization field, the chapter refers to actors who work actively in the planning, provision, regulation and management of natural resources, namely land, water and energy resources, as well as products and services relevant to these resources. The structuration thesis in the field of natural resource management can be argued due to recent expectations at global level in order to increase communication, integration and coordination among organizations in the water, energy and food sectors. Some narrative evidence of this structuration towards better integration of organization responsibilities can be provided, while the water sector will later be offered as an exemplary case. The reorganization in the field of natural resource management has lately been driven by pressures such as population growth, climate change, and changing consumer behavior. These pressures threaten the security of supplies of water, energy and food, thus necessitating more coordination and integration in the nexus between water, energy and food (Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017). The scarcity of these resources has become more evident, since according to some estimations, the need for water, land and energy will increase to 20–40 percent by 2030 (see Hoff, 2011; World

248  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Economic Forum, 2011). The management of the three resources was previously organized by sector, and institutionally separate in many countries (e.g., ministries of agriculture, ministries of energy, ministries of the environment, sector strategies for each area, etc.). It is increasingly recognized that a new way of thinking and new organizations are needed to secure supplies due to the mutual dependences between the supply of water, energy and food. This realization of the need for a joint consideration of water, energy and land resources has been discussed in recent environmental platforms such as the Rio+20 conference or the Bonn 2011 conference on the topic “Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus” (in short, “Nexus conference”). Most recently, the need for new thinking and reorganization in the field of natural resource management has been noted by leading international institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (5th Assessment Report in 2013). This need is also mentioned in the new concept of the green economy as the most important result of the Rio+20 conference. In response, new organizational reforms such as the establishment of joint ministries for water and energy (e.g., in Ethiopia since 2010) or cross-sectoral strategies and national councils in the sense of nexus or green growth ideas (e.g., Jordan or Chile) are being initiated around the world (see Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017; Engelmann et al., 2019). For resource supply sectors such as the water sector, the guideline for institutional change is the integration of tasks in the sense of better linkages with neighboring sectors. For example, water management issues are increasingly viewed in terms of the energy footprint. This leads to an increase in tasks and a reorganization of responsibilities (e.g., new sub-departments in water or energy ministries). Classic sectoral organizations such as national water authorities are also often decentralized and transferred, for example, as environmental ministries or regulatory authorities, as will be explained later in this chapter. This corresponds to the two earlier mentioned forms of institutional development (changes within the same organizational form) and re‑institutionalization (transition to a new form). Some of the new organizations established in the field of natural resource management use other guiding principles of world polity (besides integration), namely the principle of the participation of various concerned stakeholders, and above all communities (e.g., concepts such as community-based national resources management (CBNRM)). As will be explained in the example of water resources, these principles have led to new forms of organizations such as water or agricultural user associations, basin-level organizations, and regional service providers. Focusing on Country-Level Reforms The focus of this chapter is on the influence of world polity on water organizations, particularity based on global paradigms advocating reorganization towards more integrated management. In fact, organizational change in this field began with water resource management in the 1990s when there was an attempt to link water issues more closely with land issues. The resulting organizational changes have been mainly with regard to national actors and country-level institutional reforms. The focus on national-level organizations is valuable due to the lack of studies in this area and the importance of such organizations for environmental problem solving. Studies based on world polity theory have so far focused on actors in the area of civil society, such as environmental associations or international NGOs (Beckfield, 2010). Some of these actors are represented in what is called the environmental world society (see Shorette et

A world polity view on natural resources management  249 al., 2017). The environmental world society primarily comprises international organizations that convey cultural principles of environmental protection. Such international organizations strongly influence the formal and work structure of national organizations in the same organizational field. According to Longhofer and Schofer (2010), international donors in developing countries favor the development of national social environmental movements. These environmental movements and organizations have strong connections to international environmental protection organizations and are influenced by them in their work structure and their history. In industrialized countries, the development of environmental movements is more influenced by national circumstances and legislation (Longhofer and Schofer, 2010). In the field of natural resource management, it is by no means merely about environmental movements or environmental protection. In fact, the most important players in this area of classic public services remain public, although they are private in some cases. For this reason, Frank et al. (2000) investigated the emergence of state actors such as ministries in addition to NGOs for environmental protection. Organizations such as environment ministries have recently emerged in response to national and global environmental risks in many countries, but environmental protection is no longer at the heart of ecological debate. The example of the water sector in the next section shows that national organizations have evolved to incorporate broader tasks for proactively managing scarce environmental resources.

THE EXAMPLE OF THE WATER SECTOR Water Management as a Global Concern? The effects of increasing water scarcities as a feature of the ecological crisis were in many countries only observed after the Second World War. The expansion of agriculture through irrigation dams or the direct withdrawal from rivers led to local water crises, for example in cities. In fact, 40 percent of global food production depends on irrigation (representing 17 percent of the world’s agricultural area), with agriculture accounting for more than 70 percent of water consumption worldwide (World Water Assessment Programme [WWAP], 2008). Not only has the growth in agriculture led to increased pressure on water resources, but economic and population growth has led to further abstractions. As a result, global water demand is expected to increase by 55 percent by 2050, while water scarcity conditions are becoming more common in many regions around the world (UN Water, 2019). In addition, climate change is intensifying the water crisis, as it brings more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts (see IPCC, 2012). The water crisis is not only a problem of scarcity and quality, but also of ensuring universal access to water and wastewater services for people, particularly in developing countries. Although the impacts of water scarcity, mismanagement and the lack of access are largely local or regional, the global concern for water management has increased greatly, as will be explained in the following sections. As evidence of the multifaceted global concern with water issues, the water targets of the SDGs offer a range of national prescriptions. The targets of the water goal (SDG 6) aim at achieving universal water and sanitation access, fighting water pollution, increasing water-use efficiency, implementing IWRM (including transboundary water issues), restoring water-related ecosystems, and improving stakeholder participation and water-related international cooperation. SDG 6 has also been recognized as central to

250  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations achieving other SDG targets, and is a source of mobilization of funds and the initiation of reforms across the world (UN Water, 2019). Common Paradigms and Inter-Organizational Structure: The Dublin Principles and Global Water Partnership This section provides a first example of the influence of world polity on creating inter‑organizational structures and common meanings, norms and practices for national-level water organizations. This influence has been noticeable since the 1990s when a global consensus on the principles of water resource management emerged as a response to the water crisis. The global consensus is framed as the Dublin Principles, which were globally adopted, and have since guided the development of water organizations according to the IWRM paradigm. The Dublin Principles formed a kind of “good governance” guidelines in the water sector. They were formulated at the UN Conference in Dublin in preparation for the UN Environment and Development Conference in Rio in 1992. The adoption of the Dublin Principles has had two main repercussions for reorganization in the water sector. Firstly, these principles marked the emergence of powerful global actors that have since shaped expectations for national water organizations. These mainly civil societal actors were given the mandate through the 1992 Rio Conference to promote the global consensus on water management. Overall, civil society has gradually gained more influence in shaping the institutional environment for the water sectors. International NGOs in the environmental field were very active in the preparation process for Rio and Dublin (Al-Saidi, 2019b). Such international organizations have also participated in other international UN conferences on water management, such as the 1977 UN World Conference on Water in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and the subsequent UN Decade for Drinking Water and Wastewater, and have contributed to the emergence of regional and international conferences as well as national environmental movements. The Rio and Dublin conferences also led to the establishment of the GWP as an international, democratically governed network of organizations from various areas of society (business, science, donors, water managers and ministries, etc.). Since then, the GWP has been a very important advocate through international publications and networking. The contents of the Dublin Principles and some brief information about GWP are shown in Table 13.1. Evidence of the increased influence of GWP as a global actor network and an advocacy organization for IWRM is offered by its role in implementing SDG 6 on water. GWP has been tasked to be the implementation agency for the SDG Preparedness Facility (SDG PF), which supports countries in implementing the water SDG through short-term projects. Furthermore, GWP is also one of the main actors involved in monitoring the SDG Target 6.5 on IWRM. Secondly, the Dublin Principles and the consequent engagement of global-level and inter‑organizational actors such as GWP have created a set of common meanings and best practices for many national water organizations. Above all, the establishment of IWRM as a globally valid concept, which is to be defined and disseminated as one of the core mandates of GWP, has had profound impacts on national actors. IWRM was developed as a holistic concept regarding the compatibility of the goals of equity, efficiency and sustainability in water management (see Table 13.1). The concept builds on the Dublin Principles, and it is now widely recognized worldwide. It has led to institutional reforms in many countries around the world (Al-Saidi, 2017; Garcia, 2008; Grigg, 2016). IWRM also forms the background for the

A world polity view on natural resources management  251 Table 13.1

Overview of the global water paradigms and actors

Global water paradigm/actor

Description

The four 1992 Dublin Principles 1. Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential for sustaining life, development and the environment 2. Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy makers at all levels 3. Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water 4. Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good The three IWRM pillars

1. Enabling environment: policies, legislation, regulations and collective decision making

according to GWPa

2. Institutional roles: decentralization based on watershed management, public–private partnerships, integration of sectoral responsibilities 3. Management instruments: efficient pricing, economic allocation instruments, monitoring and assessment tools

Global water partnership (GWP)b Foundations: Founded in 1996 with original mandate to develop the conceptual founding of IWRM based on the Dublin Principles Organization: Organized as a global action network of members and partner organizations. As of 2019, working with 3,000 partner organizations in 179 countries, and supervising 69 Country Water Partnerships and 13 Regional Water Partnerships formed formally or informally by stakeholders, and accredited through GWP Finance: According to 2020 projects, €9.8 million as core income and €3.2 million as designated income (for designated activities) from 16 financing partners, and €3 million raised locally

Sources: a Global Water Partnership (2000); b https://​gwp​.org/​en/​About/​who/​What​-is​-the​-network/​.

European Water Framework Directive, which applies to all players in the water sector across Europe. Perhaps the most remarkable confirmation of the presumed global validity of IWRM is its incorporation into the SDGs. SDG Target 6.5 on water resource management reads as follows: “By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate.” This is a rare example of UN-based and high-level goals prescribing one particular management concept for all countries. The target is globally monitored through two indicators, namely 6.5.1 on the degree of IWRM implementation (a 0–‍100 scale based on a global survey), and 6.5.2 on the proportion of transboundary basins with operational water cooperation arrangements (largely based on qualitative data). The incorporation of the IWRM within the SDGs has cemented its conceptual domination in water management but has also led to the increase in information exchange and awareness among national water stakeholders towards a common sustainability paradigm for water management. Homogeneous Remedies and Reforms: Sector Reorganization under the IWRM Agenda Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the water sector in many industrialized countries, and especially in developing ones, has undergone an institutional change under the guidelines of IWRM. The evidence of countries worldwide adopting similar formal organizational structures, laws and strategies has been highlighted in different cross-country surveys, while the common IWRM-based remedies as a basis for such homogenization can be explained in this section. With regard to evidence of convergence towards IWRM, two surveys deserve

252  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Table 13.2 Survey category

Selected results from the global IWRM survey on SDG Target 6.5 Description of issues measured under

Selected indicator results from the 2017/2018 baseline survey (with

the survey category

percentage of countries)

Enabling

National water policies; national laws; At least medium–high implementation level of national

environment

national IWRM plans; watershed

policies, laws and plans

management plans

Approved and implemented basin or aquifer plans based

50 37

on IWRM Basin or aquifer plans being prepared or developed

47

Institutions and

National capacity for IWRM

Existence of basin- or aquifer-level organizations

83

participation

implementation; coordination

Moderate to high levels of private-sector participation

76

mechanisms; participation

Public authorities requesting information from stakeholders 50

arrangements; basin-level organizations; gender issues; transboundary water management Management

National monitoring; efficiency

Moderate to high implementation of national monitoring

88

instruments

in water use; pollution control;

Moderate to high implementation of basin management

74

water‑related ecosystem management; instruments Moderate to high implementation of sustainable and basin- or aquifer-level management Financing

instruments; data monitoring

efficient use management

78

National budgets for water;

Moderate to high implementation of national budgets for

sub-national watershed budgets;

investment

51

revenue management and cost

Moderate to high implementation of revenue recovery from 63

recovery

users

Note: “Moderate to high implementation” includes all scores in the categories “very high” (90–100 points), “high” (70–90), “medium–high” (50–70) and “medium–low” (30–50). Source: WWAP (2008).

a mention. In 2012, marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference, the UN implemented a survey on IWRM. The results indicated a wide dissemination of institutional reforms and organizational restructuring according to IWRM. For example, 65 percent of the 130 surveyed countries have developed IWRM management plans, 82 percent changed their national laws, 79 percent changed their water policies, and 71 percent facilitated management at the water-basin level (UNEP, 2012). A similarly structured but more comprehensive survey was implemented to monitor SDG 6.5 on IWRM, with information already collected in 2017/2018 (baseline survey) and later in 2020. Key results from the 2017/2018 baseline survey are shown in Table 13.2, and they indicate wide dissemination of IWRM-based remedies. In contextualizing these self-reported surveys, it is important to look at the guiding remedies for the IWRM reforms and explain how they render homogenization. The main IWRM remedies explained in the following are in the areas of sectoral planning, sectoral regulation and service provision. The greatest organizational impact of the new international guidelines for water resource management in the 1990s manifested itself in sectoral planning. The guiding principle of the “institutional principle” of IWRM includes the separation between planning, regulatory and everyday management issues in the sector (Global Water Partnership, 2000, 2004). All planning tasks for the water sector, including neighboring sectors such as navigation or agriculture, should be integrated in one institution. Regulatory tasks and service provision should be separated from overall water resource planning. As a result of such demands, new ministries (often environmental and/or water ministries) were founded in many countries,

A world polity view on natural resources management  253 which were primarily intended to develop sectoral strategies (National Water Strategy) with clear investment and reform plans. Such new ministries and strategies existed, for example, in countries in the Arab region such as Yemen, Jordan, and Morocco; or in South Asia, such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Nepal (see Narain et al., 2018; United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2013). These new actors are the ones designated to develop the enabling environment surveyed under Section 1 of the IWRM survey (see Table 13.1). Another consequence of the sectoral planning relates to water management along hydrological water catchment areas. IWRM regards the catchment area (water basin or groundwater aquifers) as the natural analysis and management unit for water problems. Accordingly, all water allocation and planning issues at this level should be resolved on a participatory basis in water basin or river basin organizations. There are no precise figures on the growth of such organizations since the 1990s, but this growth can be observed in many countries with a strong presence of Western donors. The existence of these basin-level organizations is surveyed under Section 2, “Institutions and Participation,” of the IWRM survey (Table 13.1). Regarding the homogenization of the formal structures of these organizations, Schmeier (2015) confirms this trend in many countries and points to common features in institutional design with regard to collective decision mechanisms. Closely related to the planning task, the decentralization principle under IWRM influenced many areas in the water sector. Decentralization was implemented within the framework of IWRM and the Dublin Principles as a solution for increasing efficiency (by better adapting services to user preferences) and combating sectoral failures such as mismanagement and lack of accountability (see Manor, 1999; Ribot, 2009). The establishment of management institutions for water catchment areas was a form of this decentralization. Another area of decentralization is in the provision of water services through the establishment of regional and local water suppliers. This led to the decentralization of many national water suppliers in countries such as Indonesia, Albania, Yemen, and Morocco (see Al-Saidi, 2018). Another area coming under the heading of organizational change is sectoral regulation. IWRM and the Dublin Principles propose that water should be treated as an economic good and that efficiency and environmental protection should be equally considered. In order to do this, independent regulators should force water suppliers and water users to operate efficiently, maintain quality standards, and internalize environmental costs through price limits, standards and penalties. IWRM sees these independent regulators as necessary in view of the many mistakes made by state water companies regarding the lack of capacity or the tendency to corruption (McIntosh, 2003). New independent sector regulators were established in many countries such as Albania in 1996, India from 2005 to the present (“state-level” water regulator), Tanzania in 2001, and Palestine in 2014 (Nour and Al-Saidi, 2018). Finally, regarding the form of institutional change according to Jepperson (1991), it can be said that the concerned actors in the water sector are little affected by the form of de‑institutionalization. Even decentralized state water suppliers will often be transformed into new forms of organization, for example, sectoral regulation. The organizational change rather represent the forms of re-institutionalization and organizational development.

254  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

DISCUSSION Reorganization and institutional change in the field of natural resource management is well under way. The example of the water sector as a pioneer of reforms in this area shows the core trends and the strong influence of international guidelines and consensus. In this section, two overarching issues will be discussed regarding the impacts of isomorphism and the consolidation of practices in the water sector on problem solving in water management. Firstly, the homogenization of water organizations can advance sustainability practices while also undermining problem solving of some local water issues. In the sense of world polity theory, global principles and paradigms such as IWRM can be interpreted as a unified global societal frame of reference that has triggered a process of structural adjustment and considerable pressure for conformity among water sector organizations worldwide. Nonetheless, water problems at the local level can differ widely, i.e., with regard to hydrological challenges, water availability conditions, socio-economic characteristics of users, or power dynamics among water management actors and stakeholders. The pressure from the global level to exhibit similar organizational and policy remedies can hinder the establishment of more context-specific solutions. For example, arid countries with no internal resources such as river basins or groundwater aquifers within their national territories might not need basin‑level organizations. Furthermore, elaborate stakeholder participation arrangements or water-specific national laws might not be needed in smaller countries. Other countries might consider the organization of water management at the city or municipality levels to be adequate. However, in these examples, a deviation from the IWRM prescriptions leads to lower scores for achieving the SDG target on IWRM. This can be a reason behind the sketchy answers provided by many countries in the self-completed surveys on IWRM. Further to the above, although empirical data is lacking, some restructured water organizations might not choose to reflect global expectations in their actual practice. This paper has shown that many of the new organizations in the water sector are at least similar in their formal structure. IWRM found its way into the organizational missions of many of the new water and environment ministries worldwide, while organizations at the water basin level have been found to work similarly; e.g., by preparing water basin plans and exhibiting similar mechanisms for collective decision making through the participation of water users or stakeholders along a river (Schmeier, 2015). However, there is mounting evidence of IWRM reform failures, conflicts in IWRM implementation, and a lack of appreciation of basic principles proposed at the global level (Al-Saidi, 2017; Giordano and Shah, 2014; Mehta et al., 2014). Secondly, the influence of global paradigms and world polity in general has been palpable for actors in the water sector, but this influence has monopolized the principles of problem solving of water issues. For example, the introduction of principles such as efficiency and participation in new or existing organizations leads to the creation of new departments (e.g., information systems or specialized human resources departments) or institutional decision-making mechanisms (e.g., advisory boards and community boards). The far-reaching adoption of the regulation principle has mostly failed due to the resistance of long-standing interests, especially the still-powerful agricultural ministries (Al-Saidi, 2017). There are, however, other principles that can be advocated as evidenced by recent demands in the water sector. For example, the integration principle can be strengthened beyond IWRM and extended to reflect contemporary links to the energy sector (Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017; Bhaduri et al.,

A world polity view on natural resources management  255 2014; WWAP, 2014). IWRM also requires an update of the underlying principles based on a broader understanding of sustainable development. This can be done through incorporating principles such as institutional harmony, peace-making and conflict resolution among water-related organizations in order to increase the success of institutional reforms and the transfer of the meanings of global remedies (Al-Saidi, 2017). Furthermore, IWRM can better incorporate issues such as transboundary water cooperation, since some water issues are becoming increasingly cross-border in nature. For example, although water resources are not evenly distributed globally, and some arid regions are more water-scarce than others, the causes and consequences of the crisis are linked at the global level (e.g., drying-up or pollution of international basins, water-based climate impacts, etc.). In fact, transboundary water cooperation has been reflected in newer global policies such as the SDGs, but it did not feature clearly in the original IWRM concept, which is still largely unrevised since the early 1990s.

CONCLUSION World polity theory is a major branch of sociological neo-institutionalism, and it provides a valuable macro-phenomenological perspective on organizations. It proposes a structuration thesis according to which global-level paradigms and expectations induce behavioral standardization and structural adjustments. The world polity approach emphasizes the importance of universal attitudes and values, which are shared and conveyed primarily by international organizations. National organizations are trying to conform to these principles and their symbols in order to increase legitimacy or stability. Organizations thus go through a structural adjustment or isomorphism, which is reinforced by legislation, models of success, or best-practice ideas in a specific industry. The induced reorganization and institutional change can lead to change within existing organizations, the reduction of institutional requirements, or the transition to new organizational forms. In natural resource management, an institutional change has been recently promoted under the influence of global paradigms stressing the value of increased coordination and integration. The new global guidelines for this change are primarily based on the premise of better integration of management sectoral issues and the more active participation of user groups and stakeholders. A similar development concerns new concepts emerging in the last decade. These include ideas such as the integration of water, energy and food securities, or improvement of the use efficiency and circularity of resources under the green growth paradigm. Alongside increased structuration and consolidation through increased interactions, information-sharing and the building of inter-organizational networks, the field of natural resource management has witnessed the emergence of new actors or the re-institutionalization of existing organizations beyond the areas of environmental movements and environmental protection. Although sectors such as land, water or energy are per se sensitive to expectations from the international arena due to the global dimension of the involved management issues, the isomorphism of the organizations points to a strong influence through an international frame of reference for the “right” way of managing resources. The SDG agenda has cemented ideas from the global level. Implementing the dominant water paradigm of the IWRM concept was incorporated under Target 6.5 of the SDGs, while the water–energy–food nexus has been mentioned in the declarations of the 2012 Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

256  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The water sector represents a good example of the homogenization thesis of world polity theory. This chapter has focused on country-level reforms and shown how international actors and networks (e.g., GWP) as well as global paradigms (IWRM) were instrumental for national‑level reorganization. The reorganization in the water sector started in the late 1980s and accelerated during the 1990s. Evidence today points to a global acceptance of the IWRM concept and increased influence of inter-organizational global actors in advocating IWRM and overseeing its implementation. The reorganization trend in the water sector has affected the areas of sectoral regulation, sectoral planning and service provision in many countries worldwide, but above all in developing countries. As a result, new actors such as water and environment ministries as well as regulatory and planning organizations have emerged. The homogenization was necessitated by IWRM-based legislations, professional expectations, and pressures facing national water organizations. The premise of the global principles and ideas is that the increasing risks and crises in the water sectors necessitate integrated and efficiency-oriented management of water issues across sectors and actors. Due to the high level of importance and expectations of these new actors for solving urgent local, national and partly global water issues, empirical analysis of the impacts of the homogenization trend is required. Current evidence indicates that the implementation of the IWRM agenda, particularly in developing countries, has seen derails, uneven outcomes, institutional conflicts, and often a symbolic fulfilment of requirements of donors and international organizations. In view of this, the ability of the new water organizations with similar work structures to solve local water problems, which are often specific to the local socio-economic situation, can be questioned. Furthermore, it is important to scrutinize the longstanding global principles of water management and adjust them to problem-solving requirements at local or national level and to contemporary environmental challenges.

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A world polity view on natural resources management  259 Walgenbach, P. (2006). Institutionalistische Ansätze in der Organisationstheorie. In A. Kieser and M. Ebers (eds), Organisationstheorien (pp. 319–353). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. World Economic Forum (2011). Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus. Washington, DC: World Economic Forum. World Water Assessment Programme (2008). Status Report on Integrated Water Resources Management and Water Efficiency Plans. United Nations. http://​www​.unwater​.org/​publications/​status​-report​ -integrated​-water​-resource​-management​-water​-efficiency​-plans​-csd​-16/​. World Water Assessment Programme (2014). World Water Development Report 2014: Water and Energy. United Nations. https://​unesdoc​.unesco​.org/​ark:/​48223/​pf0000225741. Zietsma, C., P. Groenewegen, D. M. Logue, and C. R. Hinings (2016). Field or Fields? Building the Scaffolding for Cumulation of Research on Institutional Fields. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 391–450.

14. The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making on stop, question and frisk Muneeba Azam, Christine Sim and Danielle S. Rudes

INTRODUCTION Among the most influential and notable United States Supreme Court cases, Terry v. Ohio (1968) occurred at a pivotal time in the history of US criminal justice. In October 1963, Detective McFadden saw two men standing on a street corner acting suspiciously. He observed the two men pace alternately back and forth along an identical route five or six times each, pausing to stare in the same store window. Eventually, a third man joined the two suspects. Detective McFadden followed the three men to the front of the store. As the detective approached the men, he identified himself as a police officer and asked their names. The men mumbled something in response. Detective McFadden patted down John W. Terry’s outside clothing and felt a pistol in his overcoat pocket. The detective ordered all three men into the store, removed Terry’s overcoat, and removed a .38 caliber-revolver (not a pistol which he had felt previously). Detective McFadden patted down the outer clothing of the two other men and found another revolver. He later testified that he only put his hands under the outer garments after he felt the revolvers. The Terry v. Ohio (1968) US Supreme Court case is a landmark case in US criminal justice because it authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct limited interventions (“stops”) at a justifiable threshold less than probable cause. Prior to the Terry v. Ohio (1968) ruling, a stop was considered a brief police detention to investigate a crime in progress. The Terry court specified the stop requirements further and ruled that an officer must observe unusual conduct suggesting a crime is about to take place or has taken place, and that the officer must have “reasonable suspicion.” Reasonable suspicion is a misgiving based on specific facts that can be stated beforehand and has a lower threshold than probable cause. In the Terry v. Ohio (1968) case, the court ruled that an officer “must have reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous” to conduct a frisk. A frisk is a pat-down of a person’s outer clothing for weapons. It is not a full search for evidence. Prior to the Terry v. Ohio (1968) ruling, probable cause was the threshold for police officers’ reasons to stop a citizen. After the landmark ruling, officers required reasonable suspicion, a level down from probable cause, to not only stop a citizen, but also to frisk for weapons. This landmark ruling was instrumental in the development of new policies regarding stop, question and frisk (SQF) as police agencies began interpreting the court’s definitions. These interpretations would then affect how the police agency as an organization operates to put SQF into action. The interpretations and implementations by police organizations directly affect the ways in which individual police officers carry out their decision-making.

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The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  261 The US began experiencing a rise in riots in the years following the Terry ruling, simultaneously as crime spiked to levels it had not previously seen. The African American struggle for civil rights was changing in character – transforming from nonviolent protest and acts of civil disobedience to riots in central cities caused by some hypothesized economic, social, and living plight (Gunther et al., 1975; Kerner Commission, 1968). However, the conditions against which residents raged were not confined to poor housing, schools, and jobs. The Kerner Commission (1968), charged with investigating urban riots, specifically noted that public confrontations between law enforcement personnel and residents of segregated urban neighborhoods sparked many riots. Although the Supreme Court ramped up regulation of state practices through the creation of a constitutional code of criminal procedure in an effort to combat the poisonous influence of institutionalized racism on state criminal justice system operations, the Terry court upheld the stop and frisk practice on the basis of reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause. The court’s solution provided some oversight of police practice because stop and frisk was subject to Fourth Amendment regulation. However, by justifying the practice on the basis of reasonable suspicion as opposed to probable cause, the court gave police more freedom than the petitioner desired. In threading the needle, the court worried explicitly about the toll that unchecked crime may take if the police continued to conduct stops and frisks under the probable cause threshold. As specific as the Terry court language was in defining what a stop and frisk was, actual departmental policy and procedures were not explicitly mandated. Police departments in major American cities interpreted the Terry v. Ohio (1968) decision and implemented their own procedures. Specifically, police agencies used Terry v. Ohio (1968) to develop their own version of SQF policies, gravely impacting their day-to-day operations and the way they solve social problems. As a result, variations of SQF policies exist between departments as well as between individual police officers. Studying SQF through an organizational lens provides greater insight into police proactivity and the various ways that departments and officers exercise their discretion. The goal of this chapter is to examine existing scholarly literature on the influence of organizational structures on police decision-making while considering how formal and informal structures within police departments impact police officers’ decision-making when it comes to SQF.

POLICE DISCRETION Prior to a detailed discussion regarding organizational structures, it is important to familiarize readers regarding what police discretion entails and how it plays into both formal and informal organizational structures. The term “discretion” bears significant meaning and weight in the realm of policing and law enforcement. A variety of definitions (some more specific than others) exist. Despite its numerous definitions, discretion at its core represents an individual’s power to make their own decisions within a particular context. However, that does not necessarily mean that those decisions are not influenced by organizational factors. The division of labor is, itself, a mechanism through which organizations direct and limit the attention of workers (Simon, 1945/1997). By doing so, they establish standard operating procedures, transmit decisions downward, and provide a channel of communication, which in turn, helps to train and indoctrinate members of the organization (Simon, 1945/1997). Specifically, according to Klockars (1985, p. 93), “A police officer or police agency may be said to exercise discretion

262  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations whenever effective limits on his, her, or its power leave [the officer or agency] free to make a choice amongst possible courses of action or inaction.” Klockars’ emphasis on discretion involving the power of action or inaction is what separates his definition from other scholars. Discretion is primarily thought of in terms of choosing not to act when there are clearly legal grounds to do so; however, the decision (i.e., whether to arrest or not arrest; to frisk or not frisk) itself is a discretionary choice. Further, Klockars’ discretion definition incorporates the idea of “effective limits” which is imperative and should not be ignored in this discussion. In most states and federally, selective enforcement (or the ability to exercise enforcement discretion) is technically illegal by statutes and violates the principle of full enforcement. However, Klockars (1985), like many others, argues that discretion exists because the law sometimes overreaches, and police have to defer to the communities they serve while remaining cognizant of citizen discretion. This deference by officers is one aspect of sensemaking inherent in policing (Weick et al., 2005). Sensemaking occurs when people use cues and images to enact order and understand identity in social contexts and it is the actions of reading, writing, conversing, and editing that serve as the media through which institutions shape conduct (Weick et al., 2005). Citizen discretion is a result of the reactive nature of policing, which makes police dependent upon citizen discretion before acting. Broad discretionary powers open doors to arbitrariness, favoritism, and discrimination. Additionally, patrol officers, or “street level bureaucrats” exercise broad discretionary powers (Lipsky, 1980). Officers, particularly those at the lowest level of the hierarchy, often make the greatest number of discretionary decisions. Ironically, the lowest rung is where there is the least amount of oversight and supervision, which is why studying discretion in this context is particularly hard: a police decision not to act typically does not yield data. As Portillo and Rudes (2014, p. 324) discuss, “Street level bureaucrats choose which rule or policy to apply in a particular situation. Street level bureaucrats have the discretion to decide how citizens interact with the state; they mold the encounter, operating as the authority figure – the state agent in that interaction.” Discretionary decisions are not just limited to particular officers. Agencies make discretionary choices as well, often through departmental policies, incidents, structures, and informal networks (Klockars, 1985). Through these larger departmental structures and networks, police officers (street-level bureaucrats) then implement policies in ways that are consistent with broader policy-oriented goals (Portillo and Rudes, 2014). The same is true in the context of SQF. If the department has a loosely defined SQF policy, it is the street-level police officers who use their discretion to implement the policy in a way they see fit for the department and the community. In a literature review on police discretion, Phillips (2016) discusses how police discretion is influenced by three factors: organizational factors, situational elements, and individual characteristics of the officer. Organizational factors such as management style influences officers’ behavior (Phillips, 2016). The department’s management style creates an “organizational ethos” (Mastrofski et al., 1987) which in turn directs officers’ discretion (Phillips, 2016). Situational elements that may influence officer discretion include verbal disrespect, active resistance, seriousness of an offense, presence of a weapon, and officer-initiated encounters (Phillips, 2016). When examining officer discretion in use of force, individual characteristics that are unrelated include race, age, and gender and officer experience (Phillips, 2016). Each of these factors significantly contribute to police discretionary decision-making and each can be separated into the formal or informal organizational structure. Organizational factors

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  263 are attributable to the formal police organizational structure, while situational elements and individual characteristics fall under the informal police organizational structure. As Portillo and Rudes (2014, p. 324) suggest, past scholars looked at discretion as either good or bad, but rather discretion is “an opportunity for either professionalism or an abuse of professional power.” Discretion itself is no longer the primary issue at hand. Instead, discretion is crucial because of how street level bureaucrats exercise it (Portillo and Rudes, 2014). As such, understanding, curtailing, and outlining discretion appropriately should be key for police agencies. Too much (or too little) discretion may lead agencies, and especially officers, to partake in misconduct, fabricate evidence, coerce false confessions, and arrest based on arbitrary factors among other activities. Far-reaching discretionary decisions may lead to discontent, bias, and unpredictability. Police and law enforcement officers’ use of discretion is often developed through specific patterns or routines (Portillo and Rudes, 2014). Therefore, curtailing and defining the proper uses of discretion should be imperative to researchers and practitioners now and in the future, especially in the face of controversial policies such as SQF.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE Discretion refers to the latitude in police decision-making occurring at both the formal and informal organizational level. Dissecting the influence that organizational structures have on police decision-making is imperative to understanding how those specific mechanisms impact officers’ SQF discretion. The pervasiveness of organizations in modern society is undeniable. Scott and Davis (2007) define an organization as exhibiting highly formalized social structures created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of specified goals. Similarly, Weber (1946) believed that formal organizations are designed to achieve a specific purpose and will become more bureaucratic as they grow in size. According to Weber (1946), bureaucracies entail five specific characteristics: (1) a formal hierarchy, (2) written rules and regulations, (3) specialization, (4) written records, and (5) impartiality. The following sections introduce the concept of formal (i.e., procedures, official hierarchy, rules, and files) and informal (i.e., norms, symbols, and rituals) organizational structures. Formal structures are usually codified and clearly defined (Weber, 1946) whereas informal structures are formed more spontaneously and organically through individual interactions within organizations. Additionally, subsequent sections tackle how the influence of these organizational structures is associated with police decision-making during SQFs.

FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE According to Maguire (2003), an organizational structure is the formal avenue through which organizations accomplish two major tasks: the division of labor and the coordination of work. Weber (1946) maintains that while bureaucracies are the most efficient and specialized form of formal organizations, they are often plagued by dysfunction due to a lack of communication or alienation. Despite this dysfunction, he asserts that bureaucracies continue to be highly resilient due to a process called goal displacement (Weber, 1946). This process occurs when an organization adopts new goals after they have achieved their prior ones (Weber, 1946). In line with this logic, institutions such as police agencies typically incorporate varying goals to

264  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations justify their very existence (Weber, 1946). As such, although organization has previously been defined as formalized social structures created by individuals to pursue a specified set of goals (Scott and Davis, 2007; Weber, 1946), throughout the rest of the chapter, the definition we use for formal organizational structure comes from policing scholar Maguire. The reason for use of Maguire’s definition over Scott and Davis’s is three-fold: (1) it is significantly more specific to organizations such as police departments that often encompass various units within the agency, (2) as a result, there are underlying goals for the organization as a whole and also specific goals tied to subunits within the department, and (3) his definition more specifically studies police agencies using an organizational theory lens. Police agencies are bureaucracies that function under the following set of characteristics: they are governed by rules and written documents, have a supervision system in which those at the lowest level are monitored by those in authority, and rules can be learned (Weber, 1946). There are two main dimensions of formal organizational structure: structural complexity and structural control (Maguire, 2003). Elements of Structural Complexity According to Robbins (1987), structural complexity refers to the degree of differentiation within an organization. It contains three basic components: vertical differentiation, functional differentiation, and spatial differentiation. Vertical differentiation is primarily concerned with the nature of the hierarchy within an organization. Its three basic elements include the number of command levels, degree of concentration, and height (degree of hierarchy) (Maguire, 2003). Particularly, police departments measure command levels by ranks. Prior research suggests that most US police departments have anywhere from six to twelve levels, ranging from the chief down to the patrol officer (Maguire, 2003). Concentration within police departments occurs primarily at the bottom where most patrol officers work, often creating “street-level bureaucracies” (Lipsky, 1980) and a supervision system in which those in authority monitor, supervise, train, and oversee those in lower positions (Weber, 1946). Additionally, the height of an organization refers to the amount of social space between those at the top of the hierarchy and those at the bottom (Langworthy, 1986). Each individual in the organization has specialized tasks and only those at the top have the mechanism or authority to limit production (Weber, 1946). Similarly, in police departments, height can often be measured as the social distance between the chief and the lowest level patrol officer. On the other hand, Maguire (2003) defines functional differentiation as the extent to which duties are broken into distinct units. Police departments are becoming more and more functionally differentiated, despite community policing reformers urging agencies not to do this (Cordner, 1997; Redlinger, 1994). In fact, police departments are notorious for adding special units to deal with specific issues as they arise (e.g., creating terrorism task forces after 9/11). The problem with numerous subunits is that they are often developed to address political or public pressure, rather than using a problem-oriented approach to home in on the issue itself. Alternatively, spatial differentiation refers to how geographically distributed an organization is (Maguire, 2003). Langworthy (1986) measures spatial differentiation of police departments as the number of station-houses and beats. Community policing reformers encourage departments to be more spatially differentiated so they can be closer to the actual communities they serve.

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  265 Elements of Structural Control The second dimension of organizational structures includes structural control, which is the administrative aspect that an organization incorporates to achieve coordination and control among the work and workers (Maguire, 2003). Structural control involves three primary mechanisms: administration, formalization, and centralization. According to Maguire (2003), the administrative intensity refers to the size of an organization’s administrative component, responsible for tasks relating to maintenance of the organization. As bureaucratic agencies, police departments incorporate high administrative intensity. The second mechanism of structural control is formalization, which is the degree to which an organization is governed by formal rules, policies, and procedures (Maguire, 2003). Most bureaucracies rely on expert training and specialization of work (Weber, 1946). Police agencies around the US vary in their degrees of formalization: some have very rigid standards whereas others simply rely on word-of-mouth instructions and processes. Police scholar Mastrofski (1998) maintains that departments should become less formalized to deliver more effective service. Lastly, centralization is the third mechanism of structural control and it refers to how concentrated decision-making capacity is within the department (Maguire, 2003). Particularly, police departments allow front-line patrol officers the most discretion.

FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND SQF Formal organizational structures in police agencies greatly influence officer discretion when it comes to proactivity of SQF. The formal organizational structure usually encompasses official hierarchy, procedures, rules, and files; all of which are greatly affected by the environment. In fact, this section highlights how certain organizational factors such as the environment, management, and codified records become constraining forces that structure the day-to-day work of police agencies and impact the inclusion (or lack thereof) of policies such as SQF. Although there are a number of environments through which formal organizational structure arises (Maguire 2003), the political environment is especially relevant for police departments. According to Reiss and Bordua (1967), police organizations are constantly involved in transactions with their political environments which are primarily affected by the security of the police chief’s tenure and the degree of accountability that the government executive demands from the chief. Following Reiss and Bordua’s work on the political environment, Mastrofski (1988) produced three models to explain the role of local officials’ relationship to their police: professional autonomy, team, and political activism. His research shows that local governments vary in how much control they exercise over their police departments (1988). Under this theoretical development, the political environment has shown to affect the implementation of SQF. More specifically, using the infamous New York Police Department (NYPD) in 2003 and onward as an example, it becomes increasingly clear that local New York City political leaders exercise tremendous control over the NYPD. During Floyd v. City of New York (2013), State Senator Eric Adams recounted comments made by Police Commissioner Kelly during a meeting where he stated that SQF was effective because it instilled fear among minority youth “that they could be stopped and frisked every time they leave their homes so that they are less likely to carry weapons” (White and Fradella, 2016, p. 101). Commissioner Kelly and

266  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Mayor Bloomberg were also publicly captured stating, “We disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little” (White and Fradella, 2016, p. 101). Another example of how much control local officials exercised occurred in 2013, when an NYPD officer recorded his commanding officer directing him to stop “the right people, at the right time, at the right location,” described as “male [B]lacks, 14 to 20, 21” (White and Fradella, 2016, p. 101). Environmental influences have the greatest effect on police discretion, especially through organizational elements such as goals and requirements of the police chief, which in turn affect the policies and structure of the organization, leading to patterns among officer practices (Mastrofski, 2004). External political pressure is instrumental in compelling official hierarchy, namely the police chief, to give their affirmation of a facially neutral, but racially charged proactivity strategy such as SQF. A study conducted by Mastrofski et al. (1987) reveals that the political environment may impact a chief’s priority and willingness for enforcement of a proactivity strategy. For instance, in their study, two chiefs (and in turn, their departments) were particularly avid about DUI (driving under the influence of drink/drugs) enforcement as a means to demonstrate professionalism and obtain revenue for their jurisdictions whereas another chief emphasized working with their community and managing a peaceful coexistence between the local campus and townspeople (Mastrofski et al., 1987). Expectations molded by institutions, or institutional leaders, cause people to act (Weick et al., 2005). Furthermore, apart from top leadership being influenced by the political climate, written procedures and rules also carry the power to shape discretion. Once again, using the infamous NYPD example, SQF incidents are recorded on UF-250 forms (White and Fradella, 2016). During the Floyd litigation, Fagan (2010) produced a report analyzing four million forms. His analysis indicated that on more than half of those forms, only “furtive movement” was checked off (Fagan, 2010), clearly not meeting the Terry requirement of “specific, reasonable inferences” that criminal activity was about to occur and instead relying on a mere hunch (Meares, 2014). In fact, Avdija (2014) conducted a study and found that furtive movement by a suspect was the third most cited reason for initiating a police stop and suspects who responded evasively to an officer’s questions were 1.9 times more likely to be frisked. Not surprisingly, Avdija (2014) also found that race is an important factor when it comes to an officer’s decision to frisk an individual. More specifically, his analysis showed that blacks and Hispanic/Latino suspects were respectively 1.68 and 1.73 times more likely to be frisked compared to their white counterparts, controlling for all other variables (Avdija, 2014). Further, Fagan’s (2010) analysis went on to explain NYPD’s patrol activity by examining the racial composition of a neighborhood with patrol strength. Fagan’s analysis found that racial composition, rather than crime levels, continuously predict stop patterns (Meares, 2014). Not even the level of violent crime predicts stop patterns as well as racial composition (Meares, 2014). After controlling for crime and race, patrol strength is one of the strongest predictors of the number of stops in an area (Meares, 2014). Analysis of UF-250 forms implies that rather than targeting high crime areas, the NYPD consistently directed officers to “stop the right people,” often leaving marginalized communities to deal with the impacts of severe patrol. However, the issue is not simply limited to incorrect use of UF-250 forms. Instead, it is further exacerbated by the lack of such forms. Official data on SQF should be taken with caution as not every officer may have been vigilant enough to produce and complete UF-250 forms. According to White and Fradella (2016), one NYPD commander noted that the

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  267 non-reporting rate could be as high as 70–90 percent. Further, White and Fradella (2016) explain that in 2012, the Civilian Review Board in NYC found that about 20 percent of the complaints it received did not come with a UF-250 form, alluding to the severe lack of reporting exhibited by officers. Failure to include important written information, such as the one provided by UF-250 forms, indicates more likelihood to engage in lethal force or illicit practices by police departments. In fact, according to Mastrofski (2004, p. 104), a small body of research “shows that formal rules and guidelines and strong disciplinary practices appear to reduce the frequency with which police resort to lethal force or corrupt practices.” Thus, the formal organizational structure, particularly official hierarchy and written procedures and rules, affects strategies such as SQF.

INFORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES Alternatively, organizations also have informal structures that may differ tremendously from the formal structures previously discussed. Informal structures, also referred to as “shadow structures,” are the informal guidelines, rules, and social cues that exist between individuals consisting of “unspoken rules of interaction” (McGuire, 2002). Shadow structures play a crucial role in how an organization’s work gets done at the individual level. One of the biggest differences between formal and informal organizational structures is that membership in an informal structure is voluntary (McGuire, 2002). Members of an organization inherently subscribe to the formal structure upon entry or hire into the organization; however, as McGuire (2002, p. 304) asserts, “membership [in informal networks] is voluntary … in that they help workers achieve work-related, personal, and social goals through unofficial channels.” Employees “build alliances, trade organizational resources, and manage their reputations” within the shadow structures (McGuire, 2002, p. 303). Informal and shadow structures may seem like an underlying world that lurks in an organization; however, shadow structures can and do (often) present themselves visibly. Shadow structures exist in every organization, including policing organizations. As previously mentioned, each police department has formal policies and procedures, sometimes known as “standard operating procedures,” which govern daily practice (Mastrofski, 1998). Shadow structures within police organizations are greatly influenced by the socialization process of the police officer. As Van Maanen (1975) asserts, police officers maneuver through a four-stage socialization process: entry, introduction, encounter, and metamorphosis. Entry includes the recruit screening process and reviewing qualifications. Introduction includes participation and successful completion of the police academy, and encounter begins when the police officer begins street field training with their assigned field training officer. The entry and introduction portions of the socialization process are both formal in nature; however, the encounter and metamorphosis portions contribute to the shadow structure of a police organization. In the encounter stage, officers learn which attitudes and behaviors are appropriate and acceptable (Van Maanen, 1975). Officers also adopt group norms which can include a notion of “staying out of trouble” by scaling back on proactive activities (Van Maanen, 1975). Marion (1998) discusses how police attitudes are often shared between officers through personal and secondhand story sharing and it is through these stories that officers learn and form their own understanding of group norms and behaviors. Paoline (2003) discusses the coping mechanisms/prescription of occupational culture as mechanisms that

268  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations help police officers regulate their occupational world. Two coping mechanisms that stem from an officer’s occupational environment are suspiciousness and maintaining the edge. Two coping mechanisms that stem from an officer’s organizational environment are laying-low and a “CYA” (“cover-your-ass”) mentality. Paoline (2003) asserts that the values of the police culture derive from the hazards of police work and seek to minimize these hazards to protect members. Another coping mechanism is the strict adherence to the crime fighter or law enforcement orientation. These coping mechanisms are socially learned through processes like the training academy and years of experience. The final stage in the socialization process is when officers come to internalize and adopt characteristic attitudes that match the norm of more experienced officers (Van Maanen, 1975). For example, Getty et al. (2016) focus on how the field training officer influences their trainees’ future allegations of misconduct. The researchers found that field training has the most potential to influence officer behavior because of its proximity to the “real” job. This social learning that occurs during the officer socialization process is critical for molding police recruits into self-sufficient officers (Getty et al., 2016). While the police academy and standard operating procedures constitute the formal structure of a police organization, it is the social learning, the adoption of attitude norms, and unspoken rules about what is important and unimportant that form the informal police organizational structure. These informal police organizational structures are a considerable contributing factor to officer SQF implementation. In the same way police officers learn the formal structure during the academy and socially learn from other officers, they also formally learn the SQF policy and practices from the academy and standard operating procedures, but informally learn how to implement SQF from their fellow officers.

INFORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES AND SQF Although the formal organizational structure, via political environment and official policies/ rules, tremendously shapes officer discretion when it comes to SQF, informal organizational structures (such as officer socialization and masculinity) also play an important role. In a study examining the relevance of rational and constrained rational models for explaining patrol officers’ decisions to arrest in a drinking-driving situation in four police agencies, Mastrofski et al. (1987) found that as the size of the police department and bureaucratization increases, relevance of formal governing structures decrease and informal peer group influence grows. This finding implicates the formal organizational structure of a police department which functions on the presumption that more formal rules and policies will govern an officer’s discretion. Mastrofski et al.’s (1987) finding that informal structures increase as bureaucratization increases suggests that an organization’s informal structure is as influential on officers’ discretion as the formal structure. Further, research on police department size suggests that officers employed at larger departments have more discretionary privileges (Nowacki, 2015). This same concept is applicable to SQF discretion. In one ethnographic study, Sobol (2010) found officer perceptions of local and societal standards influence the variation in police behavior. However, other studies posit that neighborhood settings shape the variations in police priorities and expectations (Sobol, 2010). Other variables of organizational informal structures such as an area’s crime rate, deviance levels, police cynicism, victim deservedness, and officer workload may contribute to officer discretion (Sobol, 2010). In a study analyzing police shootings, Fyfe (1980) reported that

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  269 officers may be more aggressive and more likely to use coercive tactics if they perceive dangerous situations or areas. Other studies suggest that cynical patrol officers may even ignore some violations in neighborhoods with high crime rates because they have cynical perceptions of the residents in that neighborhood (Sobol, 2010). Sobol (2010, p. 482) argues that “officers become cynical when they encounter citizens who do not cooperate and when they see the criminal justice fail to remedy deviance. The manifestation of this is when officers see previously arrested perpetrators on the street.” As Sobol (2010, p. 483) explains, victim deservedness refers to the officers’ perception of “citizen worthiness” and who is deserving of punishment versus not. Lastly, an officer’s workload is a considerable influence on police discretion, as officers in a low-workload area may have more time to be vigorous in their activity therefore opening more opportunities to use discretion (Sobol, 2010). Whereas in a high-workload area, officers may default to their formal training and use less discretion. There are many more informal factors that may influence police discretion; however, our chapter focuses on the main elements: strength of the formal structure, socialization, and gender/masculinity. As Portillo and Rudes (2014, p. 329) discuss, SQF policies present a concrete example of street-level bureaucracy theory because although individual officers have wide discretion, most of their actions are largely routinized and developed via socialization and internal practice laws (“routine policy deployment”). Through the police socialization process, officers informally learn the internal practice laws and adapt their policing style to what is acceptable. In a study examining factors affecting officers’ decisions to initiate a SQF procedure, Avdija (2014) found that the top five highest rank-ordered reasons for initiating a police stop were high-crime area, time of day fits the crime incident, fugitive movements by the suspects, casing a victim or location and proximity to a crime scene. It is important to note that the officers considered the “high-crime areas” based on their own perception, experience, and informal socialization as patrol officers rather than on formal crime data. Another informal factor that may affect SQF procedures is officer masculinity. As Cooper (2009) theorizes, policing is a male-dominated field, and associated with our current definitions of masculinity. An expression of hyper-masculinity that is considered central to the task of policing is the punishment of disrespect. Punishment of disrespect stems from the fact that police officers demand deference to the badge. In doing so, they often act more out of a desire to preserve their authority than to enforce a law (Cooper, 2009). As it relates to SQF procedures, it is perhaps inevitable that hyper-masculine police officers will use their stop and frisk powers to establish who is “the man” on the street (Cooper, 2009). Cooper (2009) also references criminologist James Messerschmidt who notes that police officers who work on the streets define patrolling their beats as manly and administrative tasks as feminine. Cooper (2009, p. 693) states “Criminologist Steve Herbert goes so far as to define machismo, in the form of seeking opportunities to insert oneself into dangerous situations, as a central element of police culture.” Female officers sometimes act masculine due to the expectations of the job (Cooper, 2009). These informal gender structures may drive the way an officer approaches an SQF procedure. According to the theory of police officer masculinity, male police officers are more prone to exercise their SQF discretion as a means to exert their power, and female police officers may choose to exercise their SQF discretion as a means to seem more masculine and therefore to access the social power and authority currently granted to masculine characteristics.

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CONCLUSION Discussion Studying police decision-making as it pertains to SQF via an organizational lens is perhaps more relevant today than ever. Researchers and practitioners alike question its validity, often citing the policy’s unconstitutionality as tied to its effectiveness and attempting to balance its crime control benefits with legitimacy. Whether individuals are in support of SQF or not, it must be recognized that the policy has mixed results, disparities, and a plethora of discontented communities across the nation. Jones-Brown et al. (2010) studied SQF stops in New York between 2003 and 2009 and found that only 1.7 percent led to discovery of contraband, 1.09 percent yielded non-gun weapons and only 0.15 percent yielded guns. The low finding of contraband suggests a large majority of people who are consistently stopped were innocent of any wrongdoing at the time an officer decided to engage in an SQF. Fagan et al. (2012) found that many of those stopped were simply trying to enter into their own homes or visit a family member who resided in public housing. SQF is an example of police departments dealing with individuals (particularly “the right individuals”) from a vantage point of suspicion. Policing scholar Tom Tyler and colleagues (2015) state that individuals who feel suspected by the police usually suggest they experienced unjust treatment at the hands of the police during stops. These individuals tend to be young, poor, male, minorities who often reside in high crime areas. Although Jones-Brown et al. (2010) debunked some of the crime control benefits of SQF, police continue to use factors such as criminogenic areas (which are often subject to perception rather than hard data) as a predictor for targeting individuals with suspicion. Further, Jacobs (2015) claims that any contact with the police, regardless of the disposition of the case, has severe implications on a young person’s future. Her argument maintains that although police justify their stops as a means to prevent future wrongdoing, they project their suspicions specifically on people who are already marginalized members of the community and who are normally motivated in their everyday choices about whether to obey or break the law by their views about trustworthiness and legitimacy of the police (Jacobs, 2015). Therefore, their alienation from the police continues to reduce public support of policing and in turn, has the potential to increase crime rates (Jacobs, 2015). However, using organizational theory to examine discretionary activities such as SQF is not only imperative but absolutely necessary in twenty-first-century policing. The multifaceted and complex history of both policing and SQF deem an organizational theory lens essential to understanding the interaction between policing as an organization and their environment. Specifically, organizational theory can help tap into the role of SQF within various environments and provide insight into workplace dynamics that aid or hinder the use of such activities. For the years to come, as researchers and practitioners struggle with understanding police discretion when it comes to SQF, Rosenfeld and Fornango (2014, pp. 116–117) offer some cautionary thoughts: But we can be more certain that, if there is an impact, it is so localized and dissipates so rapidly that it fails to register in annual precinct crime rates, much less the decade-long citywide crime reductions that public officials have attributed to the policy. If SQF is effective, but its effects are highly focused and fleeting, policy-makers must decide whether expansions in a policy that already produces 700,000 police stops a year are warranted, especially given the ongoing controversy regarding the

The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  271 disproportionate impact of SQF on racial and ethnic minorities and the possibility that it reduces police legitimacy, which may erode its crime-reduction effects over the long term.

Future Directions The conversation is shifting from simply understanding how police exercise their SQF powers to whether individual differences can produce longer-lasting, less harmful results of such a strategy. Future researchers and practitioners will need to tackle problems that are currently ignored or overlooked. An understanding of how inclusion of women and minorities in blue affects the decision-making powers of officers (Mastrofski, 2007) is required when employing a strategy like SQF. While there is clear indication that organizations operate in a gendered manner, the field of policing lacks clear consensus on the inclusion of women and minorities in blue and their decision-making abilities. Some questions that researchers will need to come to terms with, in the future, include but are not limited to: ● When women or minority officers are involved, is there a difference in the quality of stops? ● If the quality of policing does change, what is the source of such differences? ● Do the strategies employed by women or minorities work equally as well as those employed by white, male officers? ● What is the difference in the quality of policing in all women teams or in all minority teams? ● Does the make-up of the police team have a notable effect on the outcome? ● What effect, if any, does the number of women or the number of minorities with white, male officers have on the outcome? ● How does the presence of women or minorities change the behavior of white male officers on the job? ● How do women and minorities behave in leadership or supervisory roles? Additionally, researchers are currently trying to figure out the impact that an organizational factor such as college education (Mastrofski, 2007) may have on an officer’s decision-making abilities. Specifically, some questions that they may need to take head on include, but are not limited to: ● What value does the college experience add to an officer’s decision-making? ● What habits or skills can officers pick up in college that can aid their decision-making process? ● How does college affect the morals and values of an officer when employing proactivity strategies such as SQF? ● What types of degrees are going to be most beneficial for officers to substantially affect their performance? ● Does the type of college affect how an officer may view their community? The questions posed here deserve to be viewed through an organizational lens for two reasons. First, using organizational theory to understand leadership roles within an agency is practical and allows researchers to comprehend how the political environment and its various mechanisms influence an institution and to what extent. Further, elements from organization theory can be used to understand the implementation and evaluation of UF-250 forms.

272  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Specifically, these questions can shed light on how women and minorities utilize the form and whether those dynamics are helpful or harmful for police discretion. Recommendations Finally, there are specific items that police agencies can incorporate in their day-to-day work to monitor and limit the effects of police decision-making on police proactivity like SQF. To improve police decision-making around SQF, agencies should develop specific and written policies (formal organizational structures) that specify what is and is not appropriate behavior when officers carry out stops (White and Fradella, 2016). Although it is difficult to ascertain and write down every type of situation that may arise, it is important for agencies to give their officers codified procedures to look at, in an attempt to confine discretion. Secondly, agencies should require officers to complete a written report (formal organizational procedure) following any and every critical incident (White and Fradella, 2016). It is important for agencies to lay out what may constitute a critical incident, so officers have a clear understanding when their behavior is out of line. Thirdly, police departments should require a supervisory review of critical incident reports to ensure that the officer acted within their bounds (White and Fradella, 2016). In fact, Mastrofski (2004) indicates that some research shows that formal rules, guidelines and strong disciplinary practices can reduce the frequency with which officers engage in lethal force or corrupt practices. Lastly, agencies should conduct extensive background examinations to determine whether applicants possess characteristics fit to interact with citizens and properly carry out their duties (a way to rein in informal organizational factors that affect discretion). There have been numerous scandals that have been linked to mass hiring practices where departments hired hundreds of officers in a short amount of time (White and Fradella, 2016). Although such background examinations can be costly and time consuming and departments are desperate to hire personnel quickly, their relevance cannot be understated. It is important for agencies to be proactive in limiting officer discretion, particularly when it comes to controversial policies such as SQF. Although the crime control benefits of SQF have been hotly debated, less attention has been paid to organizational factors. It is imperative to view SQF through an organizational theory lens to disentangle the benefits from the overarching costs while also keeping in mind how such policies are influenced by their institutional actors.

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The influence of organizational structures on police decision-making  273 Fyfe, J. (1980). Geographic Correlates of Police Shootings: A Microanalysis. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 17(1), 101–113. Getty, R. M., Worrall, J. L., and Morris, R. G. (2016). How Far from the Tree Does the Apple Fall? Field Training Officers, Their Trainees, and Allegations of Misconduct. Crime & Delinquency, 62(6), 821–839. Gunther, G., Casper, G., and Kurland, P. B. (eds) (1975). Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America. Jacobs, J. (2015). The Eternal Criminal Record. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jones-Brown, D., Gill, J., and Trone, J. (2010). Stop, Question & Frisk Policing Practices in New York City: A Primer. New York: Center for Race, Crime & Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Kerner Commission (1968). Report of the U.S. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Klockars, C. B. (1985). The Idea of Police. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Langworthy, R. H. (1986). The Structure of Police Organizations. New York: Praeger. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Maguire, E. (2003). Organizational Structure in American Police Agencies: Context, Complexity, and Control. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Marion, N. (1998). Police Academy Training: Are We Teaching Recruits What They Need to Know? Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 21(1), 54–79. Mastrofski, S. D. (1988). Varieties of Police Governance in Metropolitan America. Politics and Policy, 8, 12–31. Mastrofski, S. D. (1998). Community Policing and Police Organizational Structure. In J. P. Brodeur (ed.), How to Recognize Good Policing: Problems and Issues (pp. 161–189). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Mastrofski, S. D. (2004). Controlling Street-Level Police Discretion. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 593(1), 100–118. Mastrofski, S. D. (2007). Police Organization and Management Issues for the Next Decade. Paper presented at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Policing Research Workshop: Planning for the Future, Washington, DC. Mastrofski, S. D., Ritti, R., and Hoffmaster, D. (1987). Organizational Determinants of Police Discretion: The Case of Drinking-Driving. Journal of Criminal Justice, 15(5), 387–402. McGuire, G. M. (2002). Gender, Race, and the Shadow Structure: A Study of Informal Networks and Inequality in a Work Organization. Gender & Society, 16(3), 303–322. Meares, T. L. (2014). The Law and Social Science of Stop and Frisk. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 10, 335–352. Nowacki, J. S. (2015). Organizational-Level Police Discretion: An Application for Police Use of Lethal Force. Crime & Delinquency, 61(5), 643–668. Paoline, E. A. (2003). Taking Stock: Toward a Richer Understanding of Police Culture. Journal of Criminal Justice, 31(3), 199–214. Phillips, S. W. (2016). Police Discretion and Boredom: What Officers Do When There Is Nothing to Do. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 45(5), 580–601. Portillo, S. and Rudes, D. S. (2014). Construction of Justice at the Street Level. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 10, 321–334. Redlinger, L. J. (1994). Community Policing and Changes in the Organizational Structure. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 10(1), 36–58. Reiss, A. J., Jr. and Bordua, D. J. (1967). Environment and Organization: A Perspective on the Police. In D. J. Bordua (ed.), The Police: Six Sociological Essays (pp. 22–55). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Robbins, S. P. (1987). Organization Theory: Structure, Design, and Applications (2nd edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rosenfeld, R. and Fornango, R. (2014). The Impact of Police Stops on Precinct Robbery and Burglary Rates in New York City, 2003–2010. Justice Quarterly: Special Issue on the New York Crime Drop, 31(1), 96–122. http://​www​.tandfonline​.com/​doi/​abs/​10​.1080/​07418825​.2012​.712152. Scott, W. R. and Davis, G. F. (2007). Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems Perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson & Prentice Hall.

274  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Simon, H. [1945] (1997). The Psychology of Administrative Decisions. In Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (pp. 92–117). New York: Free Press. Sobol, J. J. (2010). Social Ecology and Police Discretion: The Influence of District Crime, Cynicism, and Workload on the Vigor of Police Response. Journal of Criminal Justice, 38(4), 481–488. Tyler, T. R., Jackson, J., and Mentovich, A. (2015). The Consequences of Being an Object of Suspicion: Potential Pitfalls of Proactive Police Contact. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 12(4), 602–636. U.S. Reports: Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). Van Maanen, J. (1975). Police Socialization: A Longitudinal Examination of Job Attitudes in an Urban Police Department. Administrative Science Quarterly, 20(2), 207–228. Weber, M. (1946). Bureaucracy. In H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Weick, K., Sutcliffe, K. M., and Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking. Organizational Science, 16(4), 409–421. White, M. and Fradella, H. (2016). Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a Controversial Policing Tactic. New York: New York University Press.

PART II EMPIRICAL RESEARCH: WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES AND CASE STUDIES

15. Rationalizing work through occupational communities in independent games development Adrian Wright and Dorota Marsh

INTRODUCTION Since the creative industries conception, ‘creative’ jobs have been compared favourably with ‘uncreative’ and alienating jobs, suggesting that workers are free to utilize their intellectual and artistic talents and enjoy enhanced control over the labour process (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2010). This characterization rests on the premise that values of freedom, autonomy and choice predispose individuals to pursue the hegemonic neoliberal ideology of entrepreneurialism in search of self-exploration and self-fulfilment (Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999). Alongside this, promises of wealth and fame have encouraged individuals to develop entrepreneurial skills altering expectations of the creative workforce to become a ‘creative class’ of model entrepreneurs (Coulson, 2012). The digital games sector has been celebrated as an exemplar of successful creative entrepreneurialism. Political and media rhetoric highlighting a ‘myth of success’ (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2013) has been reinforced by policy to positively encourage enterprise and to facilitate the rise of the creative class (Florida, 2002). In contrast to optimistic interpretations of enterprise (Jones and Spicer, 2009) recent work highlights the exploitative and precarious work conditions to which creative workers are exposed when undertaking entrepreneurial activity (Haunschild and Eikhof, 2009; Coulson, 2012; Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2013). Perhaps due to creative work being seen as a vocation (Finkel et al., 2017), exploitative conditions have often been rationalized as willing exploitation fuelled by self-actualization or opportunity (Ekman, 2014) and the emotional connection or high levels of identification individuals have with their work (Ursell, 2000; Ross, 2003; Arvidsson et al., 2010, DeFillippi et al., 2007). The exploitative and precarious nature of work in the games industry has been unveiled in several high-profile exposés of production in a game studio. For example, the release of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption came alongside reports of no benefits, overwork, and unpaid mandatory overtime resulting in 100 hours weeks as ‘crunched’ employees characterize the labour exploitation in the industry (Francisco, 2018). In the context of accounts of self-exploitation in the digital games sector (Wright, 2015), which can be legitimized as ‘neo-normative’ control mechanisms of the deadline, individualized angst about career prospects and employability (Peticca-Harris et al., 2015, p.11), or an uneasy relationship between passion, the ‘do what you love mantra’ anchored destructive management practices and precarious conditions which further heighten exploitative untenable work conditions (Bulut, 2020). Research on work within the post-industrial economy demonstrates the growing importance of occupational forms of organizing (Barley and Kunda, 2004), specifically in the context of 276

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  277 an intensification of contingency work arrangements, to which workers in creative industries are increasingly exposed (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2010). Whilst traditional work structures bounded by singular organizational settings allowed workers to define, shape and solidify their work identities (Van Maanen, 2010) workers affected by non-standard forms of employment choose to fill this void by identifying with occupations to affirm and sustain their work identities (Weststar, 2015; Skaggs, 2019). The importance of occupational communities in contemporary work is even more prominent as individuals change their employers more frequently than their occupations. This suggests the need to reappraise the role of occupational communities in light of contingent, alternative and non-standard work arrangements (Anteby et al., 2016). This chapter aims to enhance our understanding of why individuals engage in self-exploitative working practices by examining the influence of occupational communities. This chapter contributes to the broader discussions on the growing role of occupational communities, understood as a group of workers who recognize and share job-specific sets of norms and values which serve as identity codes (Salaman 1971; Van Maanen and Barley, 1984), as a source of support, collegial relationships, communal bonds and a platform to find the meaning of work (Osnowitz, 2006; Skaggs, 2019; Cornfield, 2015; Schwartz, 2018). It also contributes to the more specific discussion on mechanisms of workers’ responses and consent for their precarious working conditions (Vallas and Christin, 2018). Using an ethnography of networking events, this chapter illustrates how the collective motivations of two occupational communities contribute towards shaping the values and beliefs of its members and, in turn, the socialization towards and normalization of, self-exploitative practices. It is argued that for these cohorts of developers, the community is not a source of collective resistance or solace, but a route to further self-exploitation.

RATIONALIZING WORK IN DIGITAL GAMES The insecure and precarious nature of the creative industries is visible in the digital games sector (Bulut, 2020). Typically, the industry is represented by project-based work where labour is constitutively unstable (Izushi and Aoyama, 2006), resulting in limited long-term employment commitment from employers and self-guided career patterns (Cadin et al., 2006). This flexible employment model suggests that labour market conditions are, at best, unstable for workers in the sector (Bulut, 2015). Developers have also been found to engage in ‘extreme work’ (Granter et al., 2015): long hours under ‘make it or break it’ conditions during periods of ‘crunch’ (a practice used in the sector where employees work up to 45–70 hours in a ‘regular’ week to finish a project (de Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2005) leaving some workers exposed to unpaid overtime, poor work-life balance and burnout (Peticca-Harris et al., 2015). Examples of precarious, insecure and exploitative work conditions in the digital games sector are also present in the experiences of independent developers. Motivations for self-employment such as a rejection of corporate control, the promise of increased autonomy and the opportunity of future success (Wright, 2015) are mediated by tensions surrounding balancing creative and commercial imperatives (Martin and Deuze, 2009) and power asymmetries (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2013). Increased outsourcing, growing casual employment and changing market conditions appear to have stimulated ‘involuntary entrepreneurship’ as developers have limited choice but to undertake entrepreneurial activity

278  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations (Wright, 2015). Working for free or low wages appears common practice amongst developers within the sector to gain experience or exposure in the sector (Wright, 2015). Developers have also been found to work for deferred payment in the belief that a game would become commercially successful in the future, highlighting an uneasy relationship between risk and reward that characterizes much of the creative industries (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2013). However, the unpredictability of the games market suggests no guarantee that developers will receive financial payment for this work (Wright, 2015). Marxist inspired analysis of the video games industry (Woodcock, 2016, p. 10) points to the role and influence of capital in the gaming industry, whilst workers’ subjectivities are played upon by management to raise their levels of exploitation. The acceptance by many developers of ‘crunch’ appears to be representative of the culture of the sector and not only prevalent in large development teams. Long hours are a necessity to survive as developers have also been found to work beyond the realms of a ‘normal working week’ either by working ‘day jobs’ or as freelancers, effectively being ‘on call’ to the demands of employers to assist in the financing of their independent projects (Wright, 2015). Structural and neo-normative control systems appear to encourage the rationalization of extreme conditions such as ‘crunch’, which remains a systemic problem in the digital games industry. A lack of resistance to such conditions has been explained by individuals’ disempowerment to speak out due to angst about employability and uncertainty about their future career prospects (Peticca-Harris et al., 2015). The acceptance of challenging work conditions has also been explained by passion (Harvey and Shepherd, 2016), glamour (Bulut, 2020) and high levels of attachment and identification to work (DeFillipi et al., 2007; Thompson et al., 2015). Working in digital games development has been described as ‘a calling’ (Peticca-Harris et al., 2015) where a ‘work as play model’ mitigates challenging conditions (de Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2005). This draws comparisons with Barrett’s (2005) depiction of software work as individuals are subjected to control strategies to appear ‘cool’ and as a way of capturing creativity and collective operation. An enterprising mentality, the desire to find attachment to others and maintain social relationships whilst working as independent developers provides an acceptable trade-off when intensifying work either by working long hours or carrying out unpaid work (Wright, 2017). The acceptance of exploitative conditions in the digital sector illustrates a complex picture of individuals consenting to or taking part in their own exploitation whether it be in the belief in future rewards, opportunities, self-improvement, passion or even a complex form of cultural control that encourages exploitative work practices to further their career. From this analysis, it seems that the acceptance towards exploitative conditions is to some extent developed normatively. Despite some level of technical control (Zackariasson et al., 2006; Cohendet and Simon, 2007; Thompson et al., 2015), the lack of resistance to exploitative conditions appears to be, at least partially, controlled by the identification and the meaning developers attach to their work. However, normative control usually requires socialization over time, and in the context of fragmented work this is difficult to establish.

FINDING MEANING THROUGH OCCUPATIONAL COMMUNITIES Contrasting optimistic interpretations of enterprise, other scholarship suggests this type of employment’s increasingly fragmented and insecure nature (Grimshaw et al., 2005) and the

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  279 implications of this on distorting the character-forming function of work (Sennett, 1998). A key argument is that for individuals, who are disembedded from the social forms and commitments associated with traditional work arrangements, work loses its significance as a locus of social relations (Doherty, 2009) and no longer provides substance for a permanent identity to be defined or secured (Bauman, 1998). The loss of work’s ability to provide meaning in people’s lives has been questioned with varying degrees of criticism. For some scholars, arguments that work no longer provides meaningful identity are inconclusive, based either on the overly simplistic analysis of work (Fevre, 2007), or a misrepresentation of the scale of the shift in employment (Strangleman 2007). Others argue that fragmented work doesn’t necessarily lead to fragmented identity (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003) as individuals actively engage in “forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness”, and in this case, personal identities are not fixed but shaped by discursive forces in their environment (Svenningsson and Alvesson, 2003, p. 631). This process of continuous mental activity referred to in the literature as ‘identity work’, is undertaken to construct an understanding of the self that is coherent, distinct and positively valued (Alvesson et al., 2008). ‘Identity work’ needs to be understood as a reciprocal process between the self and others around them (Bartel and Dutton, 2001) as individuals seek to maintain a narrative consistent with the ‘realities’ they inhabit (Ybema et al., 2009), meaning that individuals express agency and bring their meaning to their work (Watson, 2008). This conceptualization of identity positions it as a conscious activity, heavily reliant on others within and outside of the individuals’ work or organization. An example of the role external forces play in influencing ‘identity work’ can be found by examining occupational communities. Occupational communities operate outside the limits of the workplace, as it is the proximity of the work individuals do, rather than the geographic location, which separates members of an occupational community from non-members (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). Thus, occupational communities assist individuals in developing strong emotional attachment and shared attributes and values that embed a collective sense of identity (Salaman, 1971). Scholarship draws on the positive role of communities as a source of belonging (Sandiford and Seymour, 2007), emotional support (Korczynski, 2003), and professional reputation (Lawrence, 1998). Whereas in fragmented or insecure circumstances occupational communities might provide meaning in work and collective identity (Parry, 2003; MacKenzie et al., 2006). This notion challenges Beck’s (1992) view of the ‘individualized society of employees’ as collective influences play a significant part in identity formation. Wittel’s (2001) notion of ‘network sociality’ uses the new media industry to present sociality as an instrumental activity based on informational, individualized and ephemeral social relationships. In contrast, McRobbie’s (2016) study of small scale fashion designers in Berlin highlights collective values of active citizenship and neighbourhood community which enhance the meaning of work cemented through socialization. These contrasting accounts in the creative industries raise interesting questions regarding the nature of occupational communities in the creative sector, the intentions of those participating in the communities and the consequences of such social relationships. The presence of occupational communities in software work highlights how bounded work culture can manage subjectivities and indicate what represents ‘good and bad work’. This suggests that in an organizational context, the degree of collective control can be used to motivate and manipulate employees to work long hours and intensify their work pace through internalized self-policing (Tapia, 2004).

280  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Outside conventional organizational boundaries, Kennedy’s (2010) study of web designers finds ‘collective self-regulation’ allows open sharing collective practices such as peer and self-driven control to enhance professional practice, thus reinforcing the shared values of that community. Grabher and Ibert (2006) draw on the ability of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) outside the firm to influence the attitudes and behaviours of workers which emphasizes the role that communities of practice play in identity formation. Occupational communities within video game development promote values that may normalize overwork, poor working conditions and general hardship experienced by developers. Weststar’s (2015) account of an occupational community of video game developers highlights expectations of the community that members must be completely devoted to their work. By evoking passion and love of their craft, the community normalizes the sacrifices needed to survive in the industry as networking in non-work time is normalized by the community’s expectation from a ‘good game developer’. This chapter examines how occupational communities contribute towards the manufacture of values and beliefs of independent developers to enable them to rationalize their work conditions.

METHODS An ethnographic study of self-employed developers at networking events was undertaken in North West England and was part of a wider study aiming to understand developers’ work conditions in the region. The North West has been characterized as a ‘creative cluster’ for digital game development (Mateos-Garcia et al., 2014). This creative cluster has gone through some notable changes regarding the structure and constitution of firms. A distinctive characteristic of the North West was that several large, established development studios were acquired in the 2000s by foreign-owned publishers (Phillips et al., 2009). Therefore the region was more exposed to changing investment strategies of large development firms. By 2010 several large studios had downsized or closed. As a result, there has been an increase in the formation of smaller businesses within the sector now characterized by a mixture of large established companies and a growing number of smaller younger companies (Mateos-Garcia et al., 2014). The North West is thus an important context in which to examine entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of the ethnography was to understand the dynamics of the occupational community and how and why individuals at the events constructed their social world (Rosen, 1991). This enabled the researcher to meet developers in their domain, observe patterns in social organization and ideational systems (Wolcott, 2008) and gain an appreciation of the behaviour of developers (Van Maanen, 1979). The choice of ethnography was further supported by the relevance of occupational communities in software ecologies (Grabher and Ibert, 2006) and the digital games sector’s heavy reliance on social networks in shaping the industry’s evolution and competitiveness (Izushi and Aoyama, 2006). The role of an ‘overt ethnographer’ and ‘participant as an observer’ (Van Maanen, 1979) was undertaken where the purpose and intentions of the researcher were fully disclosed. The overt ethnography permitted an open relationship with developers regarding the nature of the research and a credible explanation for detailed questioning and participation at networking events.

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  281 The fieldwork visited two occupational communities and five networking events. The two communities have been given pseudonyms – one titled ‘The Sector’, the other titled ‘The Scene’. Access to networking events was arranged through invitations from the organizers. Events at ‘The Sector’ took place in city centre bars and function rooms in Manchester. They were focused on the digital mobile sector and were attended by digital games developers, software developers, managers and recruitment specialists. Research at ‘The Scene’ took place in various locations in the North West of England and was focused on the digital games sector; attendees included independent and freelance developers with a variety of specialisms such as artists, programmers, recruitment specialists, lecturers and representatives from hardware manufacturers. Participating in these events enabled the researcher to hang around, forge relationships, engage in informal conversations, and gather perspectives on the sector. In total, approximately 30 hours of ethnography were undertaken across the five events. During each event, the researcher observed activities and engaged in informal conversations with between 15 and 20 developers, enabling immersion into the group and the gathering of various perspectives and behaviours. Informal conversations enabled views to be aired on topics such as changing market conditions, working practices and the effect working conditions had on individuals. Analysis of the ethnography involved an interplay between the collection and the analysis of data to identify concepts and themes. Notes were taken in situ highlighting the interpretations of accounts and emotions relating to the fieldwork. After each event more detailed notes were taken to reflect the nature of the exchanges, information about the events, the people involved and the rituals. The data analysis drew on the procedure of the first-order and the second-order concepts (Van Maanen, 1979) to understand the rituals and actions of networking groups. Broadly, this entailed organizing and coding the ‘facts’, or descriptive properties (first-order concepts) from the fieldwork notes and then considering theories that could be used to organize and explain those facts (second-order concepts). As ethnography can be described as interpretations, this method can be considered as collecting and analysing ‘interpretations of interpretations’ (Van Maanen, 1979). During the later stages of the ethnography, it became apparent that the actions and attitudes towards their work conditions could be partially explained by examining the properties, the established practices and the rules of behaviour within the occupational communities. To understand the influence of the occupational community, tweets that were sent to the ‘Twitter wall’ and emails from event organizers were included to further enhance the theorization. The data collection and analysis were continued until theoretical saturation was achieved.

INTRODUCING ‘THE SECTOR’ AND ‘THE SCENE’ The first series of events, ‘The Sector’, represents a community of more established, business-oriented members. The second represents a casual, informal community called ‘The Scene’. Aside from the different demographics and distinct membership, ‘The Sector’ and ‘The Scene’ were characterized by different values and cultural norms. First, we describe the boundaries of membership and the established practices within these communities, then demonstrate how the collective values of sociality, altruism and enterprise influence the values and beliefs of developers. Finally, we examine how these values unintentionally contributed to the normalization of self-exploitative practices.

282  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The business-oriented nature of ‘The Sector’ was demonstrated by the organizers, the demographics of its members and the professionalism of the event. The events were organized by prominent members of the local software community who had senior roles in medium-sized enterprises and twenty years of experience in the sector. They were set up to foster a community of developers to discuss trends and to share ideas. They were staged in the function room of a high-end brasserie in the city centre. The layout and seating reflected a conference layout with the bar at the back of the room to promote networking in between presentations. At ‘The Sector’, the participation was shaped by the rules of the event, which reinforced gender and age inequalities in the creative industries (Eikhof, 2017). The perception of professionalism was reflected in the unofficial smart/casual dress code and the demographics of the event also served to reinforce boundaries of membership (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). The demographics were predominantly male reflecting the gender imbalance in the software sector (Adam et al., 2006). Around 50 developers attended these events; most were over 30 years old, white, and consisted of a mix of freelance developers and employees of local SMEs and large software firms. This perhaps explains why there were few female, ‘new’ or young developers at this event despite the free admission and the open access. The sense of occasion and credibility the organizers created, reinforced by the dress code and demographics, could have presented an intimidating environment for these developers. The older, more experienced, professional demographic of the event meant female or ‘new’ developers may have felt out of place because they did not conform to the distinct membership of the group. On arrival, attendees were presented with a pre-printed name tag which included their job title and business affiliation. This enabled developers to be recognized by their job role and enabled members to seek out others who were ‘useful’ to talk to. This reinforced the purpose for attending and the rules of behaviour at the event. It was instrumental and it was about ‘business’, hence the networking had to be of reciprocal benefit. Predominantly the focus of this event was about “selling ideologically driven entrepreneurialism”, “a tool of neoliberal governance” (Marsh and Thomas, 2017, p. 239). In essence, it sought to encourage developers to understand the evolution of their role and become “enterprising selves” (Du Gay, 1996). Events were orientated on the changing role of the developer from making applications to one which now included the necessity to understand ‘the market’, being ‘flexible’ and considering multiple roles including distribution, marketing and sales. This encouraged attendees to develop entrepreneurial skills through formal learning and job change (Du Gay, 1996). Importantly, the focus was not on creativity but flexibility and embracing the demands of ‘the market’. The events were not so concerned with working smarter or making things easier, but instead they focused on telling the community to understand their changing role. ‘The Scene’ was a bimonthly event, which on the first visit, was in its infancy. It was organized by a group of young freelance developers or owners of small enterprises. Starting with 10–15 developers at the first meeting, it quickly gained momentum to over 150. Many attendees fitted in the myth of the archetypal ‘games geek’. For many, making games was the opportunity to do something developers loved (Peticca Harris et al., 2015), but was also ‘cool’ and reflective of their self-expression and technological prowess (de Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2005). In contrast to ‘The Sector’, on the surface ‘The Scene’ was informal, organic and inclusive. This was reflected in the casual bars that housed the events. The unspoken dress code was casual, and the demographic was generally younger, most were in

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  283 their twenties and were a mixture of full-time developers, freelancers, students and graduates. Albeit still weighted towards males, there were significantly more females attending this event. This community represented an informal side of the sector where networking initially was about socializing first and business second; this represented the ‘rules’ (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984) which established the basis for activities at the events. Alcohol was a focal point of the event; attendees described the event as a bit of piss up’. Party food such as free pizza was served and a DJ set encouraged developers to unwind. The layout of the event encouraged social activity, developers would sit around tables, ‘hang out’ at the bar or have conversations outside of the venue while having a cigarette which became a natural ‘overspill’ of the venue. In support of the informal nature of the community, each event had a ‘Twitter wall’ to encourage interaction. Tweets acted as a discussion point for the event and often reinforced the established rules of behaviour and social order by introducing the ‘heroes’ or ‘stars’ that were to be revered. The hierarchy of ‘The Sector’ was reinforced by rituals that set the terms of what was valuable knowledge and indulged geekiness. A digital game-themed ‘Pub Quiz’ created a competition to demonstrate a knowledge of games where the winners were celebrated as ‘the ultimate geeks’. This practice also had implications for the social order of the group as the questions were set by ‘heroes’ within the community. Most questions were so obscure that only the person setting the questions would know the answers thus enabling heroes to reinforce their position as prominent members of the community. This introduction of these two occupational communities (‘The Sector’ and ‘The Scene’) has illustrated their culture, membership and priorities. Now, we turn to how the practices in both communities socialized members to encourage the adoption of values and beliefs that influence members’ attitudes towards work practices.

SOCIALITY AND COMMUNITY Both occupational communities placed significant importance on sociality. In this sense sociality was ‘catching up’ (Wittel, 2001), picking up crucial information through exposure to ‘industry gossip’ on potential collaborators, appropriate skills and future opportunities. This amounted to ‘know how’, the accumulation of ‘know-whom’ and tacit knowledge and represented the “ears and eyes on the informal market for jobs, projects and relationships” (Grabher and Ibert, 2006, p. 262). Sociality was a vehicle to strengthen the occupational community amid hostile conditions. Organizers at ‘The Sector’ suggested that sociality was instrumental. They created an environment that facilitated the sharing of ideas, but it was merely an intermediary to focus on and discuss industry development. In contrast, for ‘The Scene’ sociality was primarily to establish a sense of a collective identity. The organizers felt that sociality was important and a way to be part of a community amid fragmented conditions. This suggests that marginality strongly influenced the formation of both ‘The Sector’ and ‘The Scene’ (Salaman, 1974). There was evidence of a ‘community of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) where learning and identity formation took place. ‘The Sector’ was a clear example of learning where individuals met to share experiences, knowledge and employment opportunities. This was underpinned by practices such as a demo night and guest presentations. At ‘The Scene’ the ‘community of practice’ was slightly different; learning took place, but it was more focused

284  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations on a ‘gradual’ construction of identity (Lave and Wenger, 1991) of which sociality was an important collective value, policed through rituals such as the Twitter wall, the pub quiz and the actions of heroes. Sociality was therefore integral to the development of both communities of practice; with ‘The Sector’ it was a means of achieving an effective community of practice whereas at ‘The Scene’ it was about socializing expected behaviour. An illustration of how sociality was adopted in the occupational community was found in conversations with developers. For example, a regular attendee at the ‘The Sector’ who also visited ‘The Scene’ on one occasion described his inability to network as a personal weakness and highlighted a success story of a friend who had gained opportunities through embracing sociality: I know there’s another lad who we used to work with who’s been much more successful at that and he’s really good at blagging. So he goes to conferences and he says he’s still getting work from actually turning up to those events and getting his name out. (Alan, Independent developer)

This quotation highlights the importance of sociality in finding work by using the example of his friend as persuasive rhetoric to encourage himself to display this characteristic. Although the developer distances himself from this role expectation by portraying his friend’s networking as ‘blagging’ (to persuade someone in a clever or slightly dishonest way to allow you to do something or to give you something), he is also emphasizing his disappointment at his inability to effectively demonstrate sociality underlining this belief in its importance in finding work and developing his career. Illustrations of sociality were present at ‘The Scene’ to strengthen relationships with members of the community. Comments on the Twitter wall demonstrated social interaction with others in the community beyond instrumental forms: Losing all the quizzes in style and how devilishly handsome the hosts are. #thescene

This example demonstrates sociable and friendly language but also shows that this developer is embracing and displaying the social nature of the event to the community. When organizers read this out it socialized others towards this value and encouraged adoption. This analysis suggests that both communities can be regarded as a close-knit group of individuals who share a mutual belief in the importance of sociality and community. In contrast to an interest-driven and deliberate association, this relates, to some extent, to a group likened to a community evolving around shared norms and values cemented through socialization (Grabher and Ibert, 2006). In the face of challenging market conditions ‘communities of practice’ emerged to strengthen learning, and also sociality and community. Within both the ‘communities of practice’ sociality was demonstrated but expressed in different ways. For ‘The Sector’, sociality was more instrumentally focused and had a clear objective of achieving a better way of working for individuals and finding work. For ‘The Scene’ sociality was more an organic way of being, and way to act, and means of creating community. The importance of sociality and community provide an alternative lens to the descriptions of networking based on personal gain (Wright, 2015). Networking isn’t solely about an individualistic pursuit of work; it is also about connecting with one’s community to respond to industry challenges and maintaining their ‘community of practice’. This provides an additional rationale to understand the intensification of work through networking (Wright, 2015). The actions of this community suggest that networking isn’t just about the building of human or social capital for the pursuit

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  285 of work. For these developers, it’s about demonstrating a shared value and maintaining their community, despite the additional work.

ALTRUISM The objective of maintaining the occupational community also extended to altruism and developing moral standards and what was accepted as ‘good work’. This translated into efforts to assist others and equip them for future success. The altruistic nature of ‘The Sector’ translated into a willingness to help aspiring developers by acting as informal mentors. One senior member of the ‘The Sector’ highlighted its altruistic nature: I’m meeting next week in London a kid who is 19 and just out of college who’s started a little educational gaming outfit and wanted to meet and I said “Look I don’t have too much time but if you want to pop round for coffee then that’s fine” and that is not because I’m a particularly nice person, it’s because I think the industry per se tends to be fairly welcoming. (Victor, owner of Games development SME)

Although this developer makes a point of not describing himself as particularly altruistic it is clear he is displaying himself as an example of the altruistic nature of the occupational community. In this demonstration of altruism, altruism is present because there are no immediate reciprocal benefits. However, this example of altruism presents a contrast to the exclusionary boundaries of membership at ‘The Sector’. In one sense this demonstrates that members of the community are enthusiastic about engaging in ‘good work’. Victor is describing an instance where he, as an experienced member of the community is willing to help the ‘little educational outfit’, motivated by a sense of social responsibility amid challenging conditions. The willingness to help was supported by one-to-one mentoring and group presentations which served to assist others in learning about technological capabilities, skills, market knowledge, and gaining feedback from the community on prototype products during demo nights. Altruism was understood as a crucial element of what sustained the ‘communities of practice’. At the ‘The Scene’ the development of the community of practice was not necessarily intentional but something that occurred as an altruistic outcome of the social process. Established members of the scene shared knowledge and information about funding processes and facilitated links between developers. The altruistic culture fed through into online activities outside meetups. Members of the ‘The Scene’ regularly posted job opportunities on the Twitter wall using the networking event hashtag to communicate opportunities. Attention jobseekers – Team 17 is looking for a programmer for Web/Flash games. #thescene

Social media was also used to communicate opportunities at ‘The Sector’ as a recruitment agent who helped organize the events explained how others displayed altruism in a challenging labour market. I know on Twitter, there seems to be this stigma attached to jobs so they all help each other out. So if someone’s looking for someone and they put it on Twitter they get like 12 or 13 re-tweets. (Sabi, recruitment agent)

286  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations This evidence suggests that developers illustrate their concern for others within their community by demonstrating non-instrumental activities that ‘helped each other out’. This served to reinforce the identification of ‘communities of practice’ but also had wider implications on what being a developer meant within this community. Good work was accepted into the bounded work culture (Lawrence, 1998) of both communities and evidenced within the practices of developers. This contrasts critiques of contemporary work driven by individualism and self-interest (Beck, 1992), and supports evidence of moral motives and principles arising from a community obligation that is evident in accounts of cultural entrepreneurialism (Banks, 2007; Banks and Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Coulson, 2012). However, questions can be raised regarding the lengths that developers would go to demonstrate this characteristic. The willingness to ‘help out’ others for the good of the community was a clear display of altruism and relates to the creation of an ‘economy of favours’ (Ursell, 2000). Perhaps the economy of favours and the value of altruism goes some way to explaining why developers appear to have limited resistance to unpaid work or to working long hours. It seems that the occupational community socializes developers to understand that work is about putting others before themselves and that is representative of ‘good work’ despite its self-exploitative outcomes.

ENTERPRISE This analysis of the occupational communities has focused on the collective values of sociality and altruism which contradict the individualistic accounts of contemporary work (Beck, 1992). However, there was a paradox within the occupational community, as there was also a significant emphasis on the ‘individual’ developing characteristics of ‘enterprising selves’ (Du Gay, 1996) to enhance their career and future success. This represented a means of redefining developers’ subjectivities outside the organizational context (Salaman and Storey, 2008). The ‘selling of entrepreneurship’ was evident within both occupational communities. Over time, ‘The Scene’ came to resemble ‘The Sector’. Consequentially, this changed how developers considered their occupation. In contrast to the sociality first and business philosophy second of ‘The Scene’, in later events, the centrality of enterprise became an established focus and expectation of appropriate behaviour. Question and answer sessions with ‘star’ developers were brought in alongside the ‘pub quiz’ and DJ’s set in an attempt by the organizers to bring an entrepreneurial focus to the event. The Q and A session provided developers with advice ranging from exploiting new technological capabilities and developing games on appropriate platforms to self-marketing. This demonstrated how ‘star’ developers were revered for their experience of enterprise; interestingly success was defined by one’s contribution to a game that was released rather than success in terms of sales. Crucially in later events, a representative from a leading software firm began to gain prominence and took a leading role in the rituals encouraging developers to make games for his platform. He would lead the pub quiz by acting as a quiz master and deliver the prizes. Essentially the objective was to present him as a hero to be revered. Despite my initial assumptions that developers would be critical, given the sector’s anti-corporate culture (Deuze et al., 2007), developers were enthusiastic about this as it gave them increased legitimacy as a community. In essence, social order was being created to establish the construction of occupational identity. Developers

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  287 embraced this change, welcoming the progression of the community and a change in what was considered ‘good work’ and formulating a new ‘bounded work culture’ (Lawrence, 1998). Further examples of enterprise can be found by examining the influence of event organizers. Messages sent by organizers to members of the community highlight how they encouraged enterprising characteristics. Motionless Task is currently working with Indie studios on a new offer. We will do your Music and Sound effects but we won’t charge you an upfront fee. We simply take a small percentage of the takings IF there is any. It’s a no-risk offer, so if you are interested then get in touch. (Bobby, Motionless Task)

In this excerpt, organizers offered to work for no ‘upfront fee’ on the understanding that if the game was to make a profit they would be paid then. This was presented as a ‘no risk offer’. Such messages from organizers communicated their own ‘enterprising’ activity to the rest of the community by indicating their willingness to work for a future share of the profits. By doing so they were encouraging others to use the community to fill skills gaps in their enterprises. However, implicit in this email is the normalizing activity of the entrepreneurial clichés of risk-taking, self-promotion and bravery (Down, 2010) as they encourage working for free. Developers with prominence in the community, by their compliance, are at best legitimizing this practice, at worst they are recommending it to others. The selling of enterprise at ‘The Scene’ translated into enterprising activity as developers openly marketed themselves by promoting their skills. Individuals would regularly use smartphones to visually demonstrate their abilities to others in the community. Self-promotion was extended to the Twitter wall during events as developers showcased their skills to the occupational community: #TheScene is go – grab me if you need a story, dialogue and narrative goodness! #TheScene lovely meeting everyone, shame I’ve had to leave early, remember if anyone needs any audio doing I’m always free. Meeting so many people at #TheScene made me realise how much I need a mac & iOS device. So many more people to market to.

Messages and Twitter wall posts represented an acceptance of enterprising behaviour within the community and a common understanding that working for free was a way of building reputation (Randle et al., 2015). In contrast to a reluctance or uneasiness with this entrepreneurial activity displayed in some areas of creative work (Stanworth and Stanworth, 1997; Coulson, 2012), this was an example of highly individualistic and entrepreneurial characters resembling a popular depiction of creative entrepreneurs (Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999) and taking on personal branding techniques amid precarious conditions (Vallas and Christin, 2018). Developers appear to be responding to the rules set within the occupational community and adopting enterprise as part of their identity. This discussion has illustrated how the culture of the occupational community has influenced and shaped the adoption of enterprising characteristics. This translated into a form of collective and self-driven control (Kennedy, 2010) as individuals were influenced by the established practices and rules of the occupational community, resulting in the adoption of enterprise as normalized behaviour and occupational control (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984).

288  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations In some ways, this represented a community-driven negotiation of an identity narrative which diminished the level of discomfort while presenting a professional identity (McDonald et al., 2008). The acceptance of enterprising characteristics explains why developers might accept exploitative practices; connecting with Umney and Kretsos (2014) who argue that enterprise sets up barriers to the collective contestation of poor working conditions. Being ‘enterprising’ means risk-taking, self-promotion and commitment to their occupation which is normalized and encouraged by the occupational community.

CONCLUSION This chapter sought to analyse how two distinct occupational communities shaped the values, assumptions and beliefs of developers. On the surface, these were communities with very different cultures and values that found ways to adapt amid challenging work conditions. However, the unintended consequences of actions and activities at these events legitimized precarity and contributed to the normalization and socialization of self-exploitative practices. To respond to insecure and precarious work conditions the networking events promoted collective values to strengthen the occupational community and help developers pursue their individual goals. In contrast to examples of instrumental networking in creative industries (Wittel, 2001), sociality translated into the creation of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) to assist in the sharing of ideas, knowledge and opportunities. At ‘The Sector’ it was clear that sociality meant offering guidance to the community to equip developers for the changing nature of work. At ‘The Scene’ sociality taught developers how to behave and acted as an influence on identity formation. Altruism was an extension of sociality in both communities. Developers were encouraged to have a concern for others in their community as altruistic activities were highlighted as ‘good work’ as they supported the ‘community of practice’. This was demonstrated in both communities as examples of goodwill occurred at networking events and permeated onto social media. The presence of values of sociality and altruism contrasts with the accounts of contemporary work that highlight notions of self-interest and individualism (Beck, 1992) and are more representative of community-based sociality (McRobbie, 2016) and moral motives in accounts of cultural entrepreneurialism (Banks, 2007). As a governing principle, this highlighted a sense of community obligation that was necessary for developers to adopt. The communities’ promotion of the individualistic values of enterprise and the ‘selling of entrepreneurship’ represented a paradox, rather than a polarized contradiction. For ‘The Sector’ it was upfront and unambiguous and was encouraging developers to be enterprising. However, in ‘The Scene’ the encouragement of enterprise was more subtle but maintained the intention of encouraging enterprising behaviour particularly as the community of practice evolved. Whilst the formation of occupational communities to deal with work conditions may have represented a positive collective strength in the community it is important to note the unintended consequences. Rather than acting as a source of collective resistance or solace, these communities appeared to legitimize precarious work practices and provide a route to further self-exploitation. Sociality translated into a desire to network and be active within the community of practice, but also intensified work for developers leading to longer hours above and beyond what might be deemed as a ‘regular’ working week. Altruism meant that developers helped others in the occupational community providing a partial explanation as

Rationalizing work through occupational communities  289 to why developers may be willing to accept work without pay. An obligation towards the community meant an economy of favours (Ursell, 2000) was established as developers were socialized to ‘help out’ even if it meant working for free. Working without pay or for a future share of the profit may also be explained by the communities’ focus on enterprise as prominent members of the community endorsed entrepreneurial values of risk and self-promotion (Down, 2010). Furthermore, the desire to be enterprising legitimized precarious work by giving developers a rationale to work for free as the recommendation of ‘enterprising activity’ permeated across different communication channels. This chapter contributes towards the literature on the digital games sector and with a specific focus on entrepreneurialism. It provides a critical assessment of the impact of entrepreneurialism and how the values and beliefs of the occupational community contribute towards the acceptance of self-exploitative practices amid precarious work conditions. This research also has wider implications; it highlights that, in the context of debates regarding the distorted character-forming function of work (Sennett, 1998) and its substance for a permanent identity to be defined or secured (Bauman, 1998), work can still provide a means of identity. It also contrasts with bureaucratic and technical forms of control prevalent in accounts of work in digital games. Furthermore, this study provides original and compelling insights into a community of developers in the digital games sector through the observation of networking events which is often closed to researchers. Given the growing significance of self-employment in the economy and that the creative industries are promoted as exemplifying new trends in the post-industrial landscape (Thompson et al., 2015), further qualitative studies of occupational communities in other settings are necessary to establish whether these findings are indicative of definite trends.

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16. Religion at work: the Quaker paradox Mark Read

RELIGION IN THE ORGANIZED WORLD What counts as religion is highly contested in the social sciences (Woodhead, 2011). Religion can be seen as an eternally abstract notion, an essentially contested concept whose finally agreed upon meaning is forever elusive (Gallie, 1955). In the field of social research, religion is more an “interpretative category that human beings apply to a wide variety of phenomena, most of which have to do with notions of ultimate meaning or value” (Beckford, 2003, p. 4). But, whilst religion in terms of belief suggests a preoccupation with future, distant and post-mortem rewards (Reedy, 2003), how such perspectives are negotiated within the organized social world is academically under-researched and under-theorized (Tracey, 2012). Religion, at least as it is practised in twenty-first-century Western society, is to an extent paradoxical (Ammerman, 2007). Religious expression can be sketched not just in terms of immanence or propositional beliefs, but also as an everyday, relational process (Ammerman, 2007, p. 48). Religion from this angle is not simply a worldview, but is a social process. In practice, what counts as religion is subject to the negotiated terms of other institutional logics, of the family, or the market economy, for example, and lived out as if it existed independently by agentic participants within the organized social world (Gümüsay et al., 2020). Additionally, overt expressions of religiously derived authority within organized life are, in their Western expression, atypical (Ammerman, 2007). So, whilst religious logic is at work amongst the organized landscape, at the same time its perspectives are not, suggesting “religion’s simultaneous presence and absence in the modern world” (Ammerman, 2007, p. 4). The aim of this chapter is to explore whether, and how, the British Quaker tradition might be present and/or absent in the contemporary work organization by analysing the narratives of twenty research participants. A short exposition of the Quaker religious perspective is, therefore, important at this point in order to clarify this analytical lens.

THE LIBERAL QUAKER TRADITION Liberal British Quakers see their theology and contemporary social practices as rooted in the revolutionary turmoil of seventeenth-century England. The Quaker tradition was born as an offshoot of Anglican Christianity expressly in opposition to the idea that God was available only through the mediated authority of the established church. Encounters with God were seen to be immediate and personal for these early Quakers who asserted that the clerical establishment had created a web of ungodly hierarchies which effectively imprisoned their individual theologies. These first Quakers believed that they had been called upon to oppose such corrupted church rituals and their related social practices were intended to tear down ecclesiastical walls between humankind and the divine. 293

294  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations This ‘heterotopic’ religious impulse manifested itself in counter-cultural practices which juxtaposed Quaker normativity against the supposed apostasy of a depraved human world (Pilgrim, 2008). Quakers, for example, refused to take oaths, to pay tithes to the established church, or adopt social conventions which they saw as tied to an ungodly self-interest as opposed to a truly Christian authority. Thus, a soi-disant radical religious tradition was founded whose original claim that mediation between the individual and the divine needn’t exist persists as a raison d’être of the organization to this day. The contemporary British Quaker movement, however, is nowadays much changed. In the twenty-first century, British Quakers form a liberal tradition. It frames the individual as the autonomous, free-thinking author of his or her own religious enterprise. The normativity of Christianity in relation to this highly individualized Quaker self-concept is a contested aspect of how the modern church sees itself (Dandelion, 2007). Whereas the first Quakers expressed an ‘intimate’ relationship with the divine, God is no longer seen as singularly authoritative by church affiliates (Dandelion, 2007). Personal experience is also now more likely to be the foundation of Quakers’ religious claims. In this sense, Quaker beliefs are formed out of the shifting social context and, in theological terms, the faith tradition, tied to worldly experience, is “potentially forever on the move” (Dandelion, 2007, p. 133). Within the church collectively, once singularly Christian expressions of belief have now diversified and a pluralistic, liberal approach to truth is the current Quaker motif. This implicit, kaleidoscopic Quaker religious pattern of individualized personal beliefs has been termed post-modern in its overtones (Collins, 2008). It now forsakes the detail of an overarching and shared view of the world and makes a more provisional, experiential and liberal religious claim. The result today is a liberal Quaker church which has shed theological certainties in favour of the “absolute perhaps” (Dandelion, 2007, p. 152). In other words, the liberal Quaker worldview is predicated on the idea that ultimate meaning is unknowable and that this theological uncertainty is the faith tradition’s only absolute certainty (Dandelion, 2007). British Quakers in this sense are liberal fundamentalists, especially insofar as they seek to live out these worldviews within the everyday. It is this liberal Quaker religious lens through which organized working life and its potential logics are examined in the following sections.

INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS AND RELIGION Whilst “institutional logics” has become a “buzz word” through “overuse” (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008, p. 99), its theoretical approach provides a useful prism through which to analyse the findings of my research into Quakers at work. Religion is seen, from an institutional logics perspective, as but one of multi-various and coexisting logics, such as the family or the market economy, which are negotiated by individuals within the social setting (Boxenbaum, 2014). It is, however, the ordering of perspectives within the process of organized life, as well as what constitutes an institutional logic such as religion, which is important to bear in mind. Institutional logics are not seen as ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered aspects of the world. Rather, organizational life is formed of and by its members’ institutional perspectives negotiated within the everyday. This conceptualization implies that organizations are alive, constituted of meanings grounded in society which individuals bring with them and into formalized settings. These meanings, of religion for example, are then lived out by

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  295 organizational participants within the collective context as if they have independent existence (Friedland et al., 2014). Institutional logics tend to be understood as distinct, enveloping strata within society. Whilst individuals negotiate meaning within the organizational context, institutional logics theories postulate that a third, overarching level actively reaches into social life and “to locate behaviour in a context requires theorizing an inter-institutional system of societal sectors in which each sector represents a different set of expectations for social relations and human and organizational behaviour” (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008, p. 104). Examples of overarching institutional logics are legion in academic analysis but might include markets, the professions, families, the bureaucratic state and religion (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Institutional logics theories assume that social life is lived out by individuals whose perspectives and responses are guided by their aggregated assumptions about the world. Organized life, though, does not constitute a simple, value-free stratification of institutional logics adopted into the social process. Instead, institutional logics can be regarded as contextually negotiated by moral individuals in a complex, living and organizationally contingent everyday world (Tracey, 2012). Individuals within the organized context, from this perspective, are agentic (Gümüsay et al., 2020). Organizational life is, therefore, not predetermined for its participants by ordained factors but is interpersonally fluid, dynamic and processual (Gümüsay et al., 2020). Institutional logics theory also suggests that organizational life is not randomly put together. It is interdependently lived out and meaningfully patterned by individuals according to symbols, shared vocabularies and adopted social identities within the collective context (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). These inter-institutional logics constitute taken for-granted assumptions which shape how individuals understand and, therefore, agentially respond to the social world and its effects (Tracey, 2012). Organized life is, then, not susceptible to analysis in the singular, fixed and settled terms of formalized religion, for example, but is an agentic, complex, fluid and elaborate “inter-institutional system” (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Institutional logics as they are lived out in the everyday remain analytically fuzzy and resistant to simple categorization. A principal theoretical challenge, then, is to “accommodate data at multiple levels of analysis, for example, at the individual, organisational and environmental, making it possible to partition material from cultural effects” (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008, p. 109). Moreover, organizational ordering in practice still tends to be regarded in terms of the assimilation of coexisting and fluid institutional logics, rather than a more specific and multi-faceted focus on the workaday interaction of particularized individual values and beliefs and “few empirical studies have attempted to shed light on this topic perhaps because of inadequate analytical tools” (Boxenbaum, 2014, p. 6). Religion is seen by theorists as a pervasive institutional logic within organized life. It is one of “the central institutions of the contemporary, capitalist West (which) shape individual preferences and organisational interests as well as the repertoire of behaviours by which they may attain them” (Friedland and Alford, 1991, p. 232). Religion can also be categorized as an institutional logic which widely permeates everyday life but, counter-intuitively, is also one which is significantly under-researched and under-theorized (Tracey, 2012; Gümüsay et al., 2020). Moreover, due to its pervasiveness, investigation of religion lived out in the organized world is also a potentially prosperous aspect of any institutional logics inquiry which seeks to explain the everyday extent of logics as they are operationalized within and by the organizational form (Boxenbaum, 2014).

296  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Despite its potential contribution to better understanding organized life, religion, for management and organizational scholars, tends to be marginalized as fundamentally unserious and unscientific (Tracey, 2012; Gümüsay et al., 2020). The case for analysing religion, therefore, in respect of organizational theory is still largely unmade. This is especially the case in terms of how religion forms a competitor logic in relation to other perspectives and whether it shapes the inter-institutional process of negotiation and practice (Tracey, 2012). Indeed, academic research does not yet adequately explain the relationship between organizations and the religious beliefs of frontline employees who seek to balance competing institutional demands in the dynamic and agentic conditions of the work setting (Gümüsay et al., 2020). It seems, then, that the processual, inter-institutional interplay between religion as competitor logic in organizations and other, diverse, “multiple, co-existing institutional logics” (Boxenbaum, 2014), is ripe for academic examination. The following analysis of Quaker aspirations to improve the world through their engagement with organized work aims to close, if only a little, this analytical lacuna.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY My project was conducted as a Quaker insider and this could be seen as hindering my objectivity. However, I believe that no social research can be undertaken from a completely objective standpoint (Denscombe, 2010). Additionally, at least some insider knowledge must be assumed in order to make sense of data (Cassell and Symons, 2004) – and perhaps, drawing on my experience, even to gain access to it! The object of study is differentiated, then, not only by simple, binary insider/outsider classification but rather with regard to degrees of affiliation (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009). All social research seemingly needs some degree of insider-ness. Moreover, boundaries between researcher and researched are ambiguous and this lack of discrimination between investigative categories is significant because it facilitates greater “interpretative possibilities” (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000, p. 8). Overall, although linked to the Quaker movement through my occasional attendance at Meetings for Worship, the research process was conducted with academic rigour and I believe that its findings stand up to academic scrutiny. This qualitative study does not claim, with reference to the Quaker tradition as practice in the workaday world, to test, in a positivist sense, any external reality (Gergen, 2009, p. 14). Methodologically, I did not seek a way to define the Quaker religious tradition as concretized, out there in the world and waiting to be discovered (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). Nor did I simply aim to pursue and re-categorize “what is acceptable in the name of religion” (Beckford, 2003, p. 18). Rather, the subjective nature of the data collected in qualitative study rendered ‘broad guidelines’ preferable to the less ambiguous and rule-governed approach associated with quantitative research (Bryman, 2008, p. 538). This approach is especially pertinent to the study of religion. In its social practice, religion is not only nuanced and relational but also highly implicit and characterized significantly by ambiguity (Beckford, 2003). In order to capture such potential nuance, I employed semi-structured interviews which afforded the Quaker research participants “considerable space (for) interviewees to bring up what they see as relevant and for deeper explorations” (Alvesson, 2010, p. 53). Importantly, this approach tried to avoid as far as possible an implied categorical prescription of Quaker-ness for the participants. From

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  297 this open-ended perspective, the interviewees’ responses could also accommodate religion pertinent to the fluid, liberal tradition “subject to constant negotiation and re-negotiation” (Beckford, 2003, p. 3) especially in non-binary (Day et al., 2013) and relational (Day, 2011) terms. Through constraints of geographical reach and potential access to Quaker interviewees, I employed an opportunistic sampling method in order to acquire participants in the project (Bryman, 2008). I contacted by email the principal church gatekeepers, Quaker clerks, who oversee the administration of local meetings which were within convenient travelling distance. I negotiated permission to address Quaker Meetings for Worship to inform collectively and directly congregants about the research project and to make a request for volunteer participants. The Quaker and Business (Q&B) group, a formal grouping within the British Quaker movement which promoted the tradition’s religious values in relation to the workplace, also emailed their membership for volunteers on my behalf. Overall, between 2009 and 2012, a sample of twenty Quakers participated as interviewees in the study, eighteen of whom were interviewed twice at six-monthly intervals, whilst two participated once before withdrawing without explanation. I adopted a flexible approach to the development of data categories in order to accommodate the emerging fluid complexity of these intimate, Quaker narratives of faith and work. Both the data collection and the theory developed in an iterative co-action as the research progressed. My approach to data analysis, therefore, did not aim to separate data and method at the expense of meaning-making. Rather I saw my data analysis in ongoing and processual terms as “partial, provisional and perspectival” (Mauthner and Doucet, 2003, p. 416). In view of the emergent novelty and richness of the interview data, I was particularly concerned to focus on the process of categorization and codification, but not to do so at the potential expense of wider theory generation. I began and maintained the process of theory generation throughout the interview process. I transcribed all my interview recordings whilst beginning to code and refine emerging themes into the developing categories. My task, in this analytical sense, was to compress the complexity of the data within sensible categories, beyond simple suggestion of religious faith and personal experience of organized work, whilst being careful to attribute meaning to interviewees’ responses “which does not go ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ participants’ perspectives, in all their diversity and complexity” (Hammersley, 2008, p. 46). The data I analysed broadly fell into two intersecting categories: how participants saw the Quaker faith tradition and how far the interviewees claimed to live out this tradition in the contemporary work setting. These findings are briefly laid out in the next sections and then analysed through an institutional logics lens.

RELIGION THROUGH A QUAKER LENS British Quakers tend to be adult incomers into the liberal church from other Christian denominations. Of the twenty interviewees, only three had had any experience of the Quaker tradition before adulthood and two of these had migrated away from the church and then returned. Only one interviewee made a claim to be a life-long Quaker whilst seventeen had found the church in adulthood typically by chance discovery either through a familiar acquaintance or by sight of the writings about the church. This demography accords with that

298  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations of the current tradition in Britain generally where only 17 per cent of the church have had any connection with the tradition during childhood and the average age of first attendance at Quaker religious services was 36 years old (Williams and Hampton, 2016). This analysis is, then, based on a study of working lives observed, mostly concurrently but also retrospectively, through the lens of adult incomers into the British liberal Quaker tradition. Christianity framed the religious narratives of these interviewees. All the interviewees had a Christian story to tell about their past which they used to make sense of their Quaker present. Some Quakers had had only Sunday School experience of Christianity while others had more actively participated in, for example, the life of Roman Catholic parishes, Church of England services or Methodist ministry. But, however they framed their religious understandings, remembrance of mainstream Christian churches was inextricably tinged with disappointment and regret. Previous Christian experience had failed to meet their expectations of organized religion and this sub-optimum perspective was suggested by the interviewees as a principal reason for affiliating to the Quaker church. In contrast to their disappointed view of more mainstream Christian organizations, the interviewees saw the Quaker tradition as an open-minded church, tolerant of different personal theologies and faithful to its diverse religious claims. This new-found church apparently matched far better their religious aspirations and, insofar as it suited this liberal perspective, it deviated from their former Christian experience. From within the Quaker movement, the interviewees now felt able to explore and question religious assumptions that had previously been repressed by clerically enforced conformity to church hierarchies and dogma. These interviewees valued the Quaker motif of spiritual equality framed specifically by the church tradition as “that of God in everyone”. What counted as religious was understood in terms of individual experience that transcended ritual and the supposedly sacralised times and spaces of traditional Christianity. Instead, Quaker claims centred around personalized religious truths lived out as faithfully within the everyday setting. Maddy, who worked in education, said: What being a Quaker is for me? It’s about a person who is very connected to spirituality but has chosen not to define that in any narrow credal terms; for whom, trying to live out what they believe is the right way to live. I always felt when I was involved with other branches of Christianity, that people seemed to me to be far too certain about things that seemed to me far too big to be certain about. All this kneeling down, standing up and singing hymns on a Sunday morning: what has that got to do with connecting with God? I will do as I want all week and then as long as I turn up on a Sunday morning and do the right thing, that’s all right; whereas, with Quakers, it’s almost the other way around; walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

The interviewees did not express especial antipathy towards Christianity as a belief tradition. They were, instead, against its prescription by the organized church. So, these Quakers were now engaged in an ongoing pursuit of a better religion, less tied to church dogma and no longer overrun by professionalized managers who assumed a worldly authority to direct others’ beliefs and practices. Despite this clerical detachment, the interviewees overall still wanted to “have religion” (Carrothers, 2007). What counted as religion, though, had changed significantly for them and they now preferred their church tradition to be available to them on different, more equitable terms. As Denis, a financier, suggested: I do want to continue on that journey. I do think a lot about it, and that’s what Quakers do, you know. I do want to pursue my beliefs, my faith and all that goes with it. There is continuity in that

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  299 I still believe in the same God, inspired by Jesus Christ and his teachings. The bit that changes is the approach and the dogma of Catholicism. So there is continuity in the fundamentals and the belief but the approach really is very different and I am much more comfortable with the approach we have now.

One’s particular beliefs, and their translation into everyday engagement with the world, was seen by these interviewees as a singularly individual concern contingent on the particulars of the immediate context. Church influence over individual conduct was implied rather than prescribed and contact with Quakers was focused upon regular attendance at un-programmed Sunday services (or ‘Meetings for Worship’). In the everyday, though, by contrast, Quakers claimed to exercise individual agency in the world without direct church oversight. If Quakers did claim any special religious insight, it was into their own private condition, in addition to their active relationship with the world and its betterment. Religion was not, therefore, tied to prescribed religious texts framed in non-negotiable terms. Instead, religion for the Quaker interviewees was generally a matter of negotiation between the soi-disant reflective and morally autonomous individual, as active participant in the worldly setting, and the particulars of the social world.

WORK THROUGH A QUAKER LENS Quakers in the study framed their engagement with the world of work in religious terms. They suggested an alternative perspective that challenged organizational complacency with its fixed and settled worldliness. The interviewees saw this heterotopic stance (Pilgrim, 2008), inspired by their Quaker affiliation, in personally liberating terms. They believed that affiliation to the Quaker tradition had given form to their heterodox religious claims newly decoupled from mainstream Christianity. Now, as adults, their practice could be re-patterned in relation to, as they saw it, the spiritually effete and sub-optimum everyday world. This liberated approach to living out their religious claims was framed by the interviewees as a modern-day reverberation of the countercultural practices of early Quakers. The interviewees claimed that their own lives, as far as possible, ought to echo the alternative stance of their religious antecedents. Even if it was the individual rather than the divine or the church which was intimately directing the enterprise, it was still important to stand up for the oppressed and marginalized and to challenge the misapplications of worldly authority. It was from this espoused heterodox religious platform that Quakers viewed their engagement with the working world. Quaker engagement with work can be defined narrowly in terms of job roles. Sixteen interviewees worked mainly in non-market funded organizations in medicine, emergency services, teaching, public administration, accountancy and the treatment of mental illness. Four Quakers worked in market-funded, private enterprises undertaking job roles in banking, personal finance and translation as well as one skilled industrial worker, Jojo, an outlier in the cohort, who worked in a manufacturing concern. This Quaker cohort, including Jojo, saw the work setting as a site ripe for pivoting the world towards a more charitable and equitable horizon. Wherever they happened to be working, and irrespective of the job role, the twenty interviewees across the cohort stressed that their engagement with work assisted the re-making of the world in a manner consistent with the liberal re-imaginings of the Quaker tradition. The interviewees were typically well disposed towards the aims of their work organizations and tended to depict the logics of their businesses in generous terms compatible

300  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations with the liberal church tradition. Their working lives were cast as an implicitly religious compact between organized work and the Quaker tradition, allies likewise engaged in an everyday quest to improve the world. Each element, both Quaker and work, seemingly aspired to make the world healthier, more educated, to liberate it from social inequalities and political oppression, hunger, material want and emotional need. As well as purposefully contributing to the overall social good, the interviewees depicted intimately the ends of work as professionally and personally meaningful. “I absolutely love my job; it’s great”, said Jackie who worked with young people. “Music is what I do, music is what I am. I am very comfortable doing what I am doing. I love it. I am lucky I have a job I love”. Participation on these meaningful terms within the work process was seen by the interviewees as a significant and enduring aspect of their lives: work was fundamentally related to how they saw themselves as Quakers. These Quakers were also pragmatic. Engagement with the work process was instrumentalized, a means to an individual and material end. Work was fundamentally a way to earn a living and to satisfy their own and others’ everyday material requirements. Colleen said, “Everybody has to work basically; if you don’t work, you don’t have money to pay the rent, buy food; so you have to work”. The research participants were thus drawn into participation through need but there also appeared to have been a shift in their perspective on work over time. Material necessity had often been met by undertaking precarious work in the past. Colleen, who now worked as a translator, had previously held several jobs, sometimes simultaneously, in order to meet basic costs. “Secretarial stuff”, she said, “waiting tables, dancing on tables, professionally would be stretching it (just) because some people paid me to do it. And when you have a small child you have to earn income”. Work as a merely instrumental struggle to make ends meet was portrayed by these Quakers only in historical retrospect, however, and religious aspirations were now typically no longer crowded out by material concerns. The interviewees framed their work currently as a singularly important and salient aspect of their lives as Quakers. Work and Quaker, in their estimation, coincided fundamentally in the workaday setting. “Work is a vehicle”, said Philip, “that helps me do things in the world”. For these Quakers, ‘doing belief’ (Read, 2019), meant collaborating with others in the world in order to redress its sub-optimum imbalances along philanthropic lines. “Work magnifies what you can do in your life as an individual”, said Tom, who worked with young people. “You have to earn money. You might as well make a difference at the same time”. Their work was framed as an illustration of the Quaker tradition lived out in the world. From this perspective, Quakers were not simply doing a job in the workaday, they were also seeking to realize at the same time a morally better universe. Though the world was in need of special attention, they were – happily, from their point of view – in a position to provide it through engagement with the working world. But this particular view was also confused. Whilst their religious aspiration towards charitable philanthropy was apparently more or less shared mutually within the work organizations, their ambitions to make better the world were differentiated within the particular of the everyday. Philip, a charity worker, had initially joined the National Health Service in order to “save the world”. Later, he moved on to work for a young people’s charitable concern because, overall, “My life is about trying to get things better than when I came into the world [sic]. I like to see things getting better”. His ambitions to make the world better were situated within work contexts which he saw as both implicitly and explicitly supportive of his Quaker intentions. He conversed frankly with colleagues about his faith and openly booked days off in order to undertake Quaker affairs. “We have done quite a lot of talking about Quakerism”, he said,

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  301 “explaining what it is, the way that we do things. I think it’s quite an easy conversation”. Work and religion, commonsensically differentiated as rational and irrational, in the everyday and the Quaker imagination appeared to meld quite neatly. Indeed, and significantly in terms of the research findings, religion and work were conflated so seamlessly by Philip that, if pushed, he found it difficult to distinguish in practice these categorically juxtaposed ways of seeing and being in the world. “Yeah, I feel I fit in”, he said, though “it’s difficult to work out what’s Quaker and what’s not”. Across the research cohort, the Quaker aspirations of the interviewees can be seen as conflated with those advanced by the work organization and their translation into their workaday practice. The Quaker religious logic appeared for the interviewees to be shared with claims to make better the world espoused by the work organization indistinguishably so that, as Martin, an emergency worker, suggested, “There is nothing in my job that stops me being a Quaker”. Moreover, Quaker affiliation was not seen as an impediment to the fulfilling of their job roles. References to Quaker affiliation were included in job applications; friendly discussions about affiliation were undertaken with work colleagues, clients and customers; alterations to work processes, drawn from Quaker church experience, were explicitly suggested. However, it is this professed seamlessness, this apparent coherence in the everyday, which hints at a substantive difference between organized work and Quaker religious logic drawn down by the interviewees into their everyday practice. As Maddy said: I enjoy making a difference to people’s lives in big and small ways. I am putting my philosophy about how society should work into action, and trying to treat people, who don’t get treated with a great deal of respect, with humanity. It’s not about the individual or team or organization. You are there to serve, to do your duty, serving society. It’s about common understandings that are shared by everybody, doing my best for society that has given me a lot and if I can make it a slightly better place for the people who are in it, if I can save one of them from a wasted a life, it’s been worth it for me.

Maddy was unable to pinpoint in exact terms what counted as uniquely Quaker in her job role. Whilst she identified work as a collaborative project based upon aspirations held in common with the organization, she identified singularly, solely, discretely Quaker religious logics as problematic. At the individual level, her religion, lived out in the organizational, could not without difficulty be understood or expressed in singularly Quaker terms. She said: [It is] difficult to disentangle the Quaker and non-Quaker really. I don’t think I can disentangle which bits are Maddy and which bits are Quaker, and which bits are the person who does this job because they are all part of the person who goes out and does this job every day. So, there are instances where I am particularly aware of it. I might be asked why I did that and I will say because I believe in the truth or equality but a lot of the time I am not very conscious of it. Being Quaker is part of how I process the world. I don’t have to say this is the Quaker way. I don’t believe in conflict, but I am not sure I did before I became a Quaker.

Regan, a charity worker, likewise described how what counted as work and as Quaker were difficult to differentiate in her everyday practice, although she did allude as well to a deeper negotiation and more complex everyday confusion. She said: I was the person who put on the silly red nose and raised money for Comic Relief but was that because I was a Quaker? I was the person who pushed disability issues but was that particularly because I was a Quaker, or was that me? I probably work nearer full-time on part-time pay. Now is that because

302  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations I am a Quaker? I am not sure how much of it is because I am a Quaker; indeed how much of the way I relate to people is because I am a Quaker, generally. I suppose now I am not in a job anymore where it’s stressful, and I enjoy almost everything that I do. I work with some lovely people and I’m doing something useful. So I am probably in a situation where my Quakerism underlies everything but I am not having to resource it as I would do in more stressful situations, if you like.

Regan intimated a further apparent distinction regarding how these interviewees translated into the organizational everyday liquid and liberal Quaker religious worldviews (Collins and Dandelion, 2014). She mused that what counted as Quaker in the work context ought to be understood as intimately and relationally situated rather than as transcending the everyday particulars of her worldly engagement. She also implied that the boundaries between Quaker religious logic and the multi-faceted claims of the work organization might also be less discoverable in the research cohort’s typically harmonious workaday contexts. In her current employ, this Quaker religious resource was not of necessity being mined unlike other, discordant workaday research narratives such as the one which Jojo related.

QUAKER RELIGION ON THE FACTORY FLOOR Almost all Quakers in the cohort, except one, worked in service sector, white collar job roles. Nineteen of the interviewees worked as administrators, managers or other professionals, providing services which, in their opinion, facilitated philanthropic causes harmonious with their Quaker ambitions. It is from within these service sector job roles that the interviewees attempted to realize a better world. Jojo, by contrast, was an outlier in the study and, as such, he is significant to its conclusions. As an outlier, Jojo illuminates a difference between himself and the rest of the cohort, as well as expressing potentially “valuable or unexpected knowledge” (Aguinis et al., 2013, p. 275). It is by analysing this outlying research data in relation to the rest of the cohort that a picture of how Quakers typically engage with work and the everyday negotiation of competing logics more clearly emerges. Uniquely, Jojo framed the work organization’s logics as fundamentally dissonant from his own perspectives and related management as oppositional to the logic of the Quaker religion and its workaday practice. Precariously employed, Jojo laboured away on the shopfloor of an engineering company in the industrial north of England as a skilled metal worker. Whilst the rest of the research cohort had jobs providing religiously affirming services in, for example, education, health, and humanitarian projects, apparently collaborating harmoniously with the work organization to improve the world, Jojo’s employer, “were [sic] not the nicest person to work for; if you cost him money, he’d be up in arms”. Moreover, Jojo’s co-workers on the shopfloor “were just talking about their usual banal stuff, about the girls they have slept with or how good they are at fighting”, he said. “I can’t really relate to people, you know”. Jojo strived daily in “an environment which can be hard … because there is a lot of ribbing, there is a lot of taking the Mickey out of people, you know; just the workshop environment. I mean, it gets you through the day. You take the piss, basically, out of each other”. Nevertheless, Jojo gained satisfaction from his engineering work and he generally enjoyed the companionship of his co-workers. Beyond the satisfying particulars of his manual job role, however, his workaday experience was littered with practical complications and latent conflicts.

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  303 Jojo’s religious faith was a pregnant point of confrontation. Jojo had conversed openly amongst his co-workers about his Christian beliefs and Quaker affiliation although he was guarded about the impact of discussing his faith. “I never went into the workshop environment saying I’m big on Jesus or whatever, I just carried myself. You don’t have to go on about religion, Jesus Christ, because people shut down”. He did speak about, though, on the factory floor, his regular participation in Quaker Meetings for Worship, describing to his workmates how unscripted services were open to all-comers and inspired contributions from the congregation were integral to the religious occasion. He revealed that he had ministered publicly at these Sunday gatherings, an admission that provoked curiosity amongst his workmates. There was apparently little overt hostility towards his religiosity from his co-workers, although they occasionally expressed scepticism towards some aspects of religion generally and sometimes, according to Jojo, ignorant opinions about it as well. Overall, though, Jojo believed that his religious views were acknowledged and accepted if not wholly shared or fully appreciated. One day, however, Jojo felt compelled to contend. He could no longer keep his opinions to himself about working conditions in the factory and management’s treatment of a colleague. “The place itself weren’t ideal to work for”, Jojo related. “We had the worst winter in thirty years last year. We had no heating. My bench, the window at the side of my bench, had been smashed by the company next door … but that weren’t the reason I walked out”. In Jojo’s company, the owner intimidated workers on the basis of how dispensable they were to him which had resulted in a high turnover of staff. Jojo said: I enjoyed the job; I enjoyed the company. The lads on the shopfloor were brilliant but the boss; he could be total arsehole. Some of the things that man did to people, you know. I must have had about twenty different assistants in the five years that I was working there – because of the way he treated them.

Jojo mentioned in particular one colleague, Sammy. Sammy was a casual worker who toiled at the bottom of the factory hierarchy and was subject to some of the boss’s worst abuse: When we got busy, they’d get Sammy a ring to come and give us a lift for a couple of months or four weeks. But he was always the butt of all the abuse because he was like, like I say, there was like a pecking order there … The better you were, the less aggravation you’d get off him. You’d have like the skilled men; Dick, who’d been there longest, then myself, then Eric; and then you had the apprentice; the assistant; and then you’d have the whipping boy, you know, who was only there on a four week contract.

Sammy apparently had chronic “problems with his liver and couldn’t get rid of water (that had accumulated in his body). His legs swole [sic] to twice the size they should have been. He was in a bad way”. But, despite his illness, he was not excused work by unsympathetic management who seemingly took advantage of his predicament: We don’t get sick money. We don’t get sick money if you are off. You just don’t get paid; that’s it. So, he was still coming in and he was struggling, like. He was doing a job where he had to crouch down on the floor and it was taking him a long time.

Upon hearing from a colleague that Sammy, while trying to attend to a job, had been called a “fat, slow, dying bastard” by the boss, Jojo complained to the management on his friend’s

304  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations behalf. He also expressed, at the same time, some long-standing grievances about his working conditions on the shopfloor and his hourly rate of pay. Managers, though, perceived his contention otherwise. Jojo’s Quaker affiliation had already reached managers’ ears seemingly from his colleagues on the shopfloor and assumptions about his religious inclinations informed their resistance to his complaints. Conflating his Quaker beliefs with mental illness, management countered Jojo’s arguments by suggesting that his new-found religion was influencing his current oppositional disposition towards them. They suggested, moreover, that the Quaker tradition had acquired a cult-like hold over his senses and this explained, in their opinion, his challenge to their authority, telling Jojo, “We all thought you had been, like, brainwashed by the Quakers”. In response to this disagreement, management unilaterally imposed new conditions on his employment, and, finding these new terms as well as the manner of their imposition unacceptable, Jojo resigned from his post without notice. This discordant experience of work, whilst untypical amongst the interview cohort overall, was not unique in Jojo’s narrative. During his second interview, held six months later, similar tensions were related regarding his next work organization. Whilst in this new employ, Jojo was confronted by further, seemingly intractable, personality-driven disputes. He stated: I’ve copped for probably two of the worst guys I’ve ever met. I mean, I’ve met a lot of people in the manufacturing game, rough and ready guys, you know, arrogant sometimes. This guy’s the most arrogant guy I’ve ever met in my life, final, way head and shoulders above anybody else.

Despite moving jobs, Jojo was apparently trapped in a cycle of everyday discord and organizational alienation from which he had found it difficult to escape. Unlike the harmonious experience of the rest of the cohort, Jojo depicted consecutive work settings which were not only unsupportive of conspicuous Quaker affiliation but, in the everyday, were actively hostile towards religious horizons apparently seen as threateningly oppositional. Individual weakness was brutally exploited by his new co-workers and Jojo had now retreated from making his Quaker affiliation or general religious sensibilities visible within this company: I don’t say I go to Quaker meetings. I just don’t want the abuse in my life. But, like I say, I don’t mention it. Oh my God, I can just imagine if I said I go to church and I’m a Quaker. That would make my life even more of a misery than what it is, you know because I have never worked with a bigger bunch of piss-taking bastards in my life.

In such a discordant context, Jojo suppressed any articulation of his Quaker affiliation in case it was framed by management or co-workers as oppositional and alternative and subsequently used to excuse his marginalization. He said: I try not to stand out too much. Now I just ignore, try not to say anything. I don’t want to say “you are out of order”. I am a bit of a coward. I deal with it the best I can but some days I just dread going in.

This evasive approach to his colleagues left Jojo feeling conflicted. He found it difficult to maintain a coherent Quaker disposition with regard to his co-workers in this discordant context or even to maintain functional working relations without oppressive inner turmoil.

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  305 He suggested that the everyday was almost unmanageable as a Quaker citing the example of a current colleague who was: All the things you dislike in a human being; nothing is off limits to him, nothing is sacred. I focus on the good things in a person sometimes. It’s hard to find much good in some people. The guys I work with; a lot of it is just beyond forgiveness, beyond redemption.

It appears that Jojo was not only a Quaker outlier in terms of his occupational and industrial profile as a worker in a manufacturing factory. His experience was also an outlying example in terms of how the Quaker religious tradition was regarded with suspicion within organizations by both management and co-workers. Whilst Quaker affiliation in the cohort was typically conspicuous at work and seen as a good fit for organizational ambitions, Jojo’s religious claims were apparently regarded mistrustfully in relation to the dominant logics of the organization and as non-negotiable in relation to their everyday exposition in the work context. Atypically, Jojo did not frame the everyday and Quaker claims as practically frictionless. Instead, management belligerently juxtaposed its sectional logics against the perceived irregularity of Jojo’s religious claims. Jojo’s narrative was, though, not the only outlier in the research which illustrates how religious claims are situated within and by the contending logics of the work organization. The second outlying case in the study is perhaps even more illustrative, as it indicates not only how Quaker religious logic is situated by the process of organized work, but also the fluidity of the organizational workaday in relation to the negotiation of inter-institutional claims.

QUAKER RELIGION IN THE TOXIC OFFICE Serendipitously, my research was conducted during the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. As the global fiscal turmoil crashed onto the economic shores of the UK, disrupting fundamentally British public finances, it also reached far into the interviewees’ working lives. It shaped Patsy’s workaday narratives in particular and ultimately the effects of the global banking crisis had everyday repercussions leaving him feeling religiously, as well as professionally, bereft. Patsy had worked in education for decades describing in his initial interview the “wonderful work supporting schools” which his organization had promoted over many years. Now, due to the financial cutbacks induced by the financial crisis and implemented by his local public authority, this once commendable department was scheduled to close. By the time of his second interview, as the impact of the cuts were starting to affect intimately the working and domestic lives of his department, Patsy was deeply unsettled and questioned fundamentally the ethics of a work organization he had previously lauded as admirably in tune with his Quaker ambitions. Patsy had formerly depicted senior staff as examples of professional virtue and moral rectitude but he had changed his mind as an impending redundancy programme began to take shape. Management were instead now framed as turncoats, approaching the redundancy process with an apparently overwhelming lack of moral concern. He admitted being angry with the managers tasked with administering the financial plans and he reported that: The council owes us a great deal for how we worked and gave nothing in return and this isn’t the way to be. And there’s a real paradox, that we are, that educationalists, are supposed to be caring about

306  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations these sorts of issues, of respect and motivation and all this sort of thing. But we couldn’t organise those sorts of values for ourselves. When the chips were down, we went back to a nineteen fifties model. The things we had done over the last few decades, to understand how people are motivated, and this sort of thing – conveniently forgotten.

The result of the redundancy process was a department that had become “a deeply unhappy place where people are just left to find their own salvations” in a “toxic” office of “heads down, not talking … nobody says hello”. The effects of the discordant situation had become widespread and “everyone is turning round, looking at what’s happening behind their backs”. Although he was approaching retirement, he felt that the imposition of compulsory redundancy was a diminishing and destructive process which had left him feeling professionally destitute and suffering a “terrible” way to end a career. He complained that indifferent management provided no practical support for staff on a jobs “hit-list” who, as a consequence, now suffered a “lack of motivation, loss of jobs, loss of dignity”. According to Patsy, the way in which the cuts were implemented resonated with “rampant capitalism at its worst and this was the local authority”. Colleagues, stated Patsy, still had mortgages and bills to pay: and on our last day, which makes me very angry, when people were really quite screwed up, nobody said thank you for the work you have done. Nobody said goodbye. There were no presentations, no senior managers around. You hung around and you buggered off and that was the end of a lifetime’s career; and even before that you were a non-person.

Although, he had admitted to becoming “bitter” and “angry” as a result of this redundancy process, initially, during his first interview, and prior to the implementation of the cuts, Patsy had described Quaker and work horizons, in common with the other interviewees, as aligned and harmonious with those espoused by the work organization. He remarked, too, again similarly to the other participants, that practical differentiation between work and religion was unclear. He said: I think the two [work and Quakers] are not dissimilar. I don’t see any dividing line there. The connections blur but some of the work I do, you don’t use labels, you just behave. It would be very difficult to quantify where Quaker attributes come into a work day. It’s the generic qualities that people have then they can do the job well. You don’t have to be a Quaker. Some of my colleagues have faith, some don’t. What makes their work good is their integrity, working with people, respecting people. That comes from a wider range of background than simply faith.

Moreover, in Patsy’s view, the redundancy process illustrated how impotent liberal Quaker aspirations actually were in this discordant work context where once apparently compatible logics of religion and work had become dislocated and functionally dissonant. Patsy also railed against the perceived failings of the liberal Quaker tradition for its lack of moral leadership which in practice effectively abandoned the workaday to the individual. He characterized the current manifestation of the Quaker church as largely a betrayal of its original mission. It had, he believed, forsaken its claimed “zealotry, revolutionary ardour … and we are reaping the effects of that now”. In his opinion, the practical complexities of engagement with the contemporary work organization could not be managed coherently in Quaker terms. He believed that the liberal Quaker community tended nowadays to “wringing their hands and deploring this sort of thing; solemnly worrying about global issues”. However, these worthy but distant responses

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  307 were insufficient on their own to tackle practically the discord that he had experienced in the world of work. “I am not sure Quakerism has an answer to this to be honest”, he lamented, extrapolating from his experience of working life a generalized view of the contemporary church tradition: Quakers were apparently “too nice about lots of things”. Patsy saw the putatively laudable intentions of the Quaker movement as practically impotent in the face of the local authority’s redundancy process. If Quakers were to make society better through work, practical collaboration appeared essential. It appeared, however, that the work organization was apt to change its mind about what counts as worldly improvement and, equally significantly, how worldly ambitions are ordered within organizations and, ultimately, who decides. Patsy suggested that he had been blindsided by the disguised aspirations of the work organization which, if it ever really had done, no longer shared his Quaker horizons and no longer facilitated dependably the articulation of religious claims and their realization within the everyday. The Quaker religious logic upon which Patsy, trustingly, had grounded his workaday practice turned out to be intemperate. Quaker claims were revealed as contingent upon the shifting liberal mores of a church which had become gradually remote from its radical roots. As a result, he said, “nice liberal Quaker values are out of the window”. The vagaries of work organization, revealed as a consequence of financial retrenchment and dispassionate managerialism, had prevailed whilst an apparently insipid form of Quaker well-wishing was more suited to “happier economic times, when you can afford to do that”. Finally, as a result, he concluded, “Quaker values are way parked”.

THE QUAKER PARADOX Jojo and Patsy’s narratives serve to highlight the idea that the Quaker religious tradition was present as a living aspect of the negotiated organizational process. These two outlying examples reveal Quaker working lives in focus. They suggest that Quaker religious claims and their everyday exposition are intimately situated within and by the organizational process “because you really can’t”, in Denis’s words, “separate Quaker faith from business, from life, from politics: it’s all intertwined”. This everyday connection between Quaker ambitions and the espoused aspirations of the work organization was generally viewed by the interviewees as almost seamlessly entwined. Whilst the particulars of the organizational contexts varied in time and place, differences between what counted as Quaker and what counted as work, according to the interviewees, melded together in the workaday. From their point of view, Quaker religious ambitions and the work organization’s direction of travel became almost indistinguishable. Frankie, for example, identified wholeheartedly with her work in mental health. “I absolutely love it”, she said. “It’s very compatible with myself, you know. The word they use in person centred therapy is congruent. It [work] matches Quaker concepts very perfectly. It’s such a good match”. In this sense, patterned within their occupational roles, the Quaker religious logic can be seen as paradoxically both present and absent within the organizational process, infused with work but not differentiated from it as aspiration or as practice. The religious claims of the Quaker individual stood not apart from the espoused ambitions of the organization whilst the everyday work process was seen to facilitate harmoniously the exposition of their mutual, worldly ends.

308  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations However, although these Quakers saw their religious claims as both present in the organizational everyday and harmoniously assimilated within its processes, the harmony between these apparently compatible logics was revealed not to be unending. In discordant contexts, Quaker and organizational logics were not seen by the respondents as compatible and the everyday process no longer as facilitating the interviewees’ religious ambitions. Quaker religious logic was still regarded by these outlying research participants as present in the work context but it was juxtaposed disharmoniously against a less accommodating organizational setting. The Quaker religious logic was still present in the work process within the everyday but now only conditionally so and only in accordance with the emergent everyday terms of the work organization. Outlying narratives framed the organization’s terms upon which they pursued their religious ambitions also as fundamental to the exposition of their aspirations. Jojo moved from precarious employ to precarious employ. His Quaker religious ambitions, though, in the organizational context had narrowed and now “I just want to work for somebody who appreciates how hard I work”, he said, “and how good quality my work is”. Patsy had also changed his views, about the liberal Quaker tradition and about how far it was harmonious with the contemporary working world. His employer, the public local authority, had substantially cut jobs in his work organization and “I think when the chips were down”, he opined, “they went back to a 1950s managerial model as if all the things that we had done over the last, you know, few decades, to understand how people are motivated and this sort of thing, were conveniently forgotten”. The work process, it appears, was no longer believed to liberate these two interviewees’ religious concerns. It has been suggested that, in order to foment conditions for a better world, “all that is required is that we are unhappy with the present state of affairs and prepared to acknowledge that there are always alternatives” (Parker, 2003, p. 218). Unhappiness with the sub-optimum human landscape might have motivated the interviewees to engage with the work process in order to make the world a more equitable and charitable place. However, alternatives to the status quo were ultimately proffered to these Quakers only on the work organization’s terms and religion, when perceived as heterodoxy, was oppressed. The interviewees as workers, seeking to redress injustice, were present within the work process but as Quakers they were absented by the apparently inescapable, dominating and marginalizing logic of the work organization. As such, these Quakers in the study, through their unfolding participation within the organized work process, can be seen as paradoxically both present and absent in their highly individualized, but organizationally highly contingent, religious quest to improve the world.

FURTHER RESEARCH This study raises some important pointers for further research. It is a nascent exploration of Quakers as a case study of religious logics translated into practice within the contemporary work organization. It suggests that religious logics are present amongst other, multiple logics within the working world even if the detailed claims of this highly individualized and pluralized liberal faith tradition are invisible in the everyday. The study also connotes that the organizational workaday is a site of complex interpersonal negotiation of logics and that multiple and competing logics are at play within and between individuals in the fluid

Religion at work: the Quaker paradox  309 organizational process. However, my study is limited because it draws only on the narratives of one, post-Christian, minority British church tradition to suggest this conclusion. Other religious traditions, Christian and non-Christian, monotheistic and polytheistic, might view their workaday engagement in ways alternative to this instrumentalized pursuit of a better world in the here and now. Whether other religious logics concede or recognize the authority of the work organization or live out their traditions according to a different ordering in relation to the divine is another area which could be investigated. The institutional logics of the work organization in the everyday in relation to religious perspectives also lack precise definition in my study and this is another question ripe to be academically pursued. And, lastly, perhaps there is a discernible category of logics which draw upon people’s beliefs outside the religious paradigm but are as yet theoretically undefined. Maybe further investigation of the beliefs and values of those outside the religious tundra might lend clearer definition between what counts as religious logic and those whose workaday practice organizational participants colour with a determinedly less religious hue.

REFERENCES Aguinis, H., R. K. Gottfredson, and H. Joo (2013). Best-Practice Recommendations for Defining, Identifying, and Handling Outliers. Organizational Research Methods, 27(2), 270–301. Alvesson, M. (2010). Interpreting Interviews. London: Sage Publications. Alvesson, M. and K. Sköldberg (2000). Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. London: Sage Publications. Ammerman, N. (ed.) (2007). Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. New York: Oxford University Press. Beckford, J. A. (2003). Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boxenbaum, E. (2014). Toward a Situated Stance in Organizational Institutionalism: Contributions from French Pragmatist Sociology Theory. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23(3), 319–323. Bryman, A. (2008). Social Research Methods (3rd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carrothers, R. M. (2007). Social Typing of Religious Changers: The Impact of Motivation on the Stories of Alternators and Converts. Sociological Spectrum, 27(2), 133–150. Cassell, C. and G. Symon (eds.) (2004). Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research. London: Sage Publications. Collins, P. D. (2008). Accommodating the Individual and the Social, the Religious and the Secular: Modelling Parameters of Discourse in Religious Contexts. In A. Day, C. Aune, and P. Dandelion (eds.), Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice and Identity (pp. 143–156). Abingdon: Routledge. Collins, P. D. and P. Dandelion (2014). Transition as Normative: British Quakerism as Liquid Religion. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 29(2), 287–301. Dandelion, P. (2007). An Introduction to Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, A. (2011). Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Day, A., G. Vincett, and C. R. Cotter (eds.) (2013). Social Identities Between the Sacred and the Secular. Abingdon: Routledge. Denscombe, M. (2010). The Good Research Guide: For Small-Scale Social Research Projects (4th edition). Maidenhead: Open University Press. Dwyer, S. C. and J. L. Buckle (2009). The Space Between: On Being an Insider-Outsider in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8, 54–63. Friedland, R. and R. Alford (1991). Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions. In W. Powell and P. DiMaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (pp. 232–263). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

310  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Friedland, R., J. W. Mohr, H. Roose, and P. Gardinali (2014). The Institutional Logics of Love: Measuring Intimate Life. Theory and Society, 43(3/4), 333–370. Gallie, W. B. (1955). Essentially Contested Concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56, 167–198. Gergen, K. (2009). An Invitation to Social Construction (2nd edition). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Gümüsay, A. A., M. Smets, and T. Morris (2020). “God at Work”: Engaging Central and Incompatible Institutional Logics through Elastic Hybridity. Academy of Management Journal, 63(1), 124–154. Hammersley, M. (2008). Questioning Qualitative Inquiry: Critical Essays. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Mauthner, N. S. and A. Doucet (2003). Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis. Sociology, 37(3), 413–431. Parker, M. (2003). Utopia and the Organizational Imagination: Eutopia. In M. Parker (ed.), Utopia and Organization (pp. 217–224). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Pilgrim, G. (2008). British Quakerism as Heterotopic. In P. Dandelion and P. Collins (eds.), The Quaker Condition: The Sociology of a Liberal Religion (pp. 53–68). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Read, M. J. (2019). “Doing Belief”: British Quakers in the Twenty-First Century Workplace. Quaker Studies, 24(1), 141–159. Reedy, P. (2003). Keeping the Black Flag Flying: Anarchy, Utopia and the Politics of Nostalgia. In M. Parker (ed.), Utopia and Organization (pp. 169–187). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Thornton, P. and W. Ocasio (2008). Institutional Logics. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, R. Suddaby, and K. Sahlin-Andersson (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 99–129). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Tracey, P. (2012). Religion and Organization: A Critical Review of Current Trends and Future Directions. The Academy of Management Annals, 6(1), 87–134. Williams, P. G. and J. M. Hampton (2016). Results from the First National Survey of Quaker Belief and Practice in Australia and Comparison with the 2013 British Survey. Quaker Studies, 21(1), 95–119. Woodhead, L. (2011). Five Concepts of Religion. International Review of Sociology/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 21(1), 121–143.

17. Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations Dinara Tokbaeva

INTRODUCTION The relation between charisma and institution building is considered one of the most critical challenges that Max Weber’s work poses for modern sociology. Weber (1864–1920) developed the concept of charisma for sociological analysis, having derived it from its original Greek meaning: ‘the gift of grace’. The concept of charisma is essential for understanding modern institutions. Weber noted the role of interpersonal relations for organizations: For Weber, freedom, creativity, and personal responsibility did not lie outside the scope of the society, of social relations and activities. On the contrary, interpersonal relations, organizations, institutional structures, and the macro-societal setting constituted the arena in which freedom, creativity, and responsibility could become manifest. (Eisenstadt, 1968, p. xvi)

Charisma forms the basis of a specific leadership style – charismatic leadership. Charismatic leadership is surrounded by many assumptions, thanks to popular science and media culture. Yet, it is not entirely clear how applicable this leadership style is in organizational settings. For this chapter, an extensive systematic literature review was performed, aiming at answering the following research questions: RQ1: In which contexts and settings does charisma exist in organizations? RQ2: How does charismatic leadership manifest itself in organizations? Five hundred academic sources were identified and selected in the fields of business and management studies. The titles were selected based on the perceived publication impact, and the criteria were that the study discussed charismatic leadership. This chapter is structured in the following way: 1. The introduction introduces the scope and limitations of this study. 2. The second section discusses Max Weber’s understanding of charisma as a way of legitimizing one’s power in institutions. This section also brings highlights the contemporary studies on charisma. 3. The third section reviews different nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical schools on power, authority, and reason to develop a critical understanding of charismatic leadership. 4. The fourth section looks at two aspects of charisma in organizations – leaders’ emotional intelligence and leader–follower co-dependency – as they contribute to the emergence of charismatic leadership in organizations. 311

312  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations 5. The fifth section discusses how charisma and charismatic leadership are viewed in business and management literature. 6. The sixth section observes the manifestations of charismatic leadership in the context of media and tech firms. 7. The seventh section analyses to what extent the current understanding of charismatic leadership in organizations is socially constructed and, thus, differs from the Weberian ‘charisma’ as a natural gift. 8. The final section summarizes the findings of this study and proposes further research areas within the sociology of organizations. The range of attributes and abilities conventionally associated with charismatic leaders1 includes the following: ● Extraordinary personal qualities such as courage; talents or skills such as profound legal knowledge. ● Emotional intelligence and ability to intuitively feel what others want. ● Energy, confidence, and endurance. ● Interdependence relationship with subordinates. ● Leader’s status quo and limited ideological, legal-rational, or traditional constraints (Bryman, 1992, p. 64) allow him/her to pursue their vision. In management research, qualities such as deal-making and negotiation skills are applied to charismatics yet are not central to the concept. What is more important, and there is an agreement in scholarship on that, is that charisma is a form of an exchange relationship between a leader and followers, in which both sides satisfy their needs. Charismatic leadership is a complex social relationship in which a naturally emerged leader, using limited means and relatively unconstrained, can motivate and inspire others to overcome political, bureaucratic and resource barriers. This is achieved through institutionalizing the power of, in this case, a charismatic individual over others in organizations. Whereas previously, power (‘macht’ in German) was often viewed negatively alongside domination (‘herrschaft’) and leadership (‘führung’), now there is a tendency to look at both power and leadership from a neutral standpoint (Imbusch, 2006). It is done by emphasizing that power always denotes a social relationship, and it only exists in connection with the free will of followers to follow a (charismatic) leader (Imbusch, 2006). This chapter attempts to look at charisma as a sociological construct from a neutral standpoint, yet also by pointing out that charisma and charismatic leadership are used by managers, journalists, and biographers in a way that deviates from the original Weberian notion of charisma as a natural gift. Modern management scholarship rationalizes charisma as a social construct to suit particular agenda(s). Therefore, charismatic leadership may be mistaken for what is transactional leadership or legal-rational authority, as understood by Weber (1947). Speaking of personality traits that allow a charismatic leader to succeed in institutionalizing power in organizations, this chapter looks at two specific personal characteristics, namely a leader’s emotional intelligence and leader–follower co-dependency. Charismatic leadership emphasizes leaders’ emotional intelligence, ability to build networks and recognize



1

These qualities of a leader are subject to followers’ validation (Bryman, 1992).

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  313 opportunities and threats amid the turbulent environment. Yukl (2013) discussed such qualities of leaders as political tactics, commitment, and compliance regarding more legitimate business leadership types, such as, for instance, transactional leadership, within the framework of institutionalization of power. These qualities are beyond the scope of this study. Therefore, this chapter is more concerned with the organizational-level relationship dynamics between leaders and followers, which will be discussed particularly in the case of media and tech firms.

UNDERSTANDING CHARISMA Weber studied the problem of individual freedom and creativity and developed the concept of charisma (1947).2 He described charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” (Weber, 1947, p. 358). This definition was presented within a typology of three different types of legitimations of authority: authority based on rational (legal) grounds, on traditional grounds and charismatic grounds: 1. Legal-rational authority – it is not based on obeying a specific leader. This authority is empowered by observing the principles of law (legal and rational). 2. Traditional authority – it is based on the sanctity of tradition and is irrational. The ability and the right to rule does not change over time, and it is usually passed down through heredity. 3. Charismatic authority – it is based on a leader who inspires others. This leader is perceived to possess extraordinary individual characteristics of divine or supernatural origin (Weber, 1947, p. 328). Which types of organizations did Weber associate with charismatic authority? Speaking of the organization of labour, Weber (1947) stressed that two out of three types of communal or associational organization of work – the army and the religious community – are “based on the direct feeling of mutual solidarity” (p. 265). The first type of communal organization is family; however, Weber (1947) did not consider it based primarily on charisma. According to Weber, the army and the religious community “rest primarily on a specific emotional or charismatic basis” (p. 265). “These types of organization of work have been developed based on common value attitudes of primarily non-economic character” (p. 265). This definition implies that the primary motivation of workers in a media company led by a charismatic leader is emotional rather than rational. Weber (1947) considered charisma to be one of the ways of legitimizing power. Charisma is discussed within the contemporary academic debate concerning politicians and business leaders. Willner (1984) emphasized that charismatic authority develops through a transformation from one of the alternative types of authority: legal or traditional. In her model, Willner (1984) suggested that a combination of conditions is required for the genesis of charismatic authority (Figure 17.1). The first set of conditions is related to

2 Weber’s The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation was first published in the early twentieth century in German. The 1947 English version is the first published translation.

314  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations

Source: Willner (1984, p. 208).

Figure 17.1

Conditions for the genesis of charismatic authority

a persona: it has to be surrounded with sanctity, or it has to be heroic, or it has to have an exceptional character. The second set of conditions is related to what happens to the order or the external environment either prior to a persona’s actions (revealed order) or because of them (established order). According to Willner (1984), at least one quality out of the first set has to be combined with either revealed or established order to create a charismatic authority.

THE ORIGINS OF AUTHORITY, POWER, AND REASON Descartes, Nietzsche, Freudians, and neo-Freudians offered a wide range of views on human stimuli to increase one’s power. Descartes on the Power of Intellect In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes analysed human behaviour and emphasized that humans have both intellect and will at their disposal (Descartes, 1999, p. 91). He equated will with the freedom of choice and differentiated it from the intellect. As he put it: [The intellect is …] simply the faculty of being aware of ideas, or of apprehending things simply and without any affirmation or negation, [while the function of the will or freedom of choice is] … to affirm or deny, to give or withhold assent. (Descartes, 1999, p. 91)

Descartes also used ‘power’ in the connotation of the “power of understanding” (p. 42) or the power of the intellect. To sum up Descartes’ points, Descartes’ ideas can be understood in Weber’s terms as exposing the contradiction between charismatic authority and a legal-rational authority based on intellect or ratio. Nietzsche and the Will to Power In his late nineteenth-century work Beyond Good and Evil and especially in the volume titled The Will to Power, Nietzsche developed the idea of power as a human instinct to become stronger (Heidegger, 1991). Known for his critique of the concept of free will, Nietzsche neglected the word ‘will’, considering it an ideal category of mythology. Using the protoplasm example, Nietzsche argued that will is utilized when a human actualizes their desire for power

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  315 (Heidegger, 1991). That is why, in Nietzsche’s view, every willing is a willingness to be more, and every power is only power if it remains a willingness to be more powerful. According to Nietzsche’s metaphysics, a will to power constitutes the basic character of all beings. “Will to power is the ultimate factum to which we come” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 3). By conceptualizing the will to power Nietzsche provided his answer to the eternal philosophical question “What is being?” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 4) According to Nietzsche, being on its own is the will to power. Freudian and Neo-Freudian Concepts of Power: Power as an Instinct Freud viewed individual human actions as well as historical and societal events through the prism of psychoanalysis – he considered them as a manifestation of unconscious, usually sexual motives. Freudian scholar Alfred Adler changed Freud’s concept of the sexual unconscious to the concept of unconscious will to power. Adler (1992) believed the urge for power defines people’s behaviour within family and society. According to Adler, power is an instinct that ensures people’s survival through compelling others to their own will. This way, an individual guarantees his/her survival and the security and prosperity of his/her children. Erich Fromm, a representative of psycho-cultural Freudianism, argued that socio-cultural life conditions shape the motives of people’s activity and behaviour (Fromm, 1988). In other words, power is not only shaped by innate irrational dispositions but also by rational stimuli. Fromm argued that Freud did not acknowledge that the notion of common sense and rationality differed depending on context (Fromm, 1988). At the same time, Fromm recognized the role of the unconscious and instincts in human behaviour. Fromm (2013) summarized the idea of identity being based on one’s possessions as “I am what I have”. Other Concepts of Power In the late twentieth century, power was primarily studied in relation to politics, political science, and international relations. The “differences between political systems, or profound changes in the same society, can often be interpreted as differences in how power is distributed among individuals, groups, or other units” (Robert Dahl, cited in Lukes, 1986, p. 37). Foucault defined power in terms of strategic relations. He made two critical arguments: “first, that power relations involve a confrontation or struggle between opposing forces; and second, that there is an instrumental logic to these struggles, such that each party to the struggle aims to get the other to do what he or she wants” (Michel Foucault, cited in Allen, 2010, p. 80). Foucault concluded that power is always present in any “human relationships, whether they involve verbal communication … or amorous, institutional, or economic relationships … I mean a relationship in which one person tries to control the conduct of the other” (Michel Foucault, cited in Allen, 2010, p. 81). Additionally, Anthony Giddens (1938–) argued that the most all-embracing meaning of power is the capability of an individual to make a difference (1984, p. 14). For Dahl, power amounts to the control of behaviour. “His ‘intuitive idea of power’ is that ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’” (Robert Dahl, cited in Lukes, 1986, p. 2). These arguments by Giddens and Dahl support Weber’s ideas and the discussion of this chapter that power is a form of making a difference either through individual action or through encouraging others to act. It is interesting to note that Foucault’s

316  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations research adds drama to any power relations as Foucault viewed power relations as a struggle between opposing forces.

THE ORIGINS AND CONTEXTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP Research on the antecedents of charismatic leadership usually observes either specific leader characteristics or specific contextual characteristics. Walter and Bruch (2009) used the affective events model to study charismatic leadership and explore interrelations between various factors affecting charismatic leadership behaviour. The affective events model is based on the affective events theory. This theory was developed by organizational psychologists (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996) to study affective experiences at work and has been taken on board by scholars to discuss broader issues in management such as emotions in organizations (Fineman, 2000), implications of leader–follower relations (Avolio et al., 2004) and emotional intelligence (Goleman et al., 2013). The theory explains the links between internal motives and reactions to occurrences in the work environment that affect job performance, commitment and satisfaction. It is believed that a leader’s activities and the level of bonds with employees affect how the latter perform and how motivated they are. Walter and Bruch (2009) suggested that charismatic behaviour is a result of interrelations between internal and external factors. In Walter and Bruch’s model, the essential elements are contextual characteristics and leader emotional intelligence. Once these are interlinked with work events and leader personality characteristics (Kotter, 1982), a certain attitude to work is created by a leader. This attitude later is transferred to employees and becomes a typical work pattern. If a leader’s position is stable, s/he engages in charismatic leadership behaviour, which in turn shapes leader–follower need. The most widely cited contextual characteristic for the origin of charisma is a crisis. Weber (1947) suggested that crises constitute a prerequisite for charismatic leadership. The research revealed that often charismatic leaders are often found in those organizations that are undergoing a crisis. For instance, De Cremer and van Dijke (2010) studied 531 Dutch employees and found that charisma is a crucial leadership quality when distrust and a lack of moral courage are very noticeable. One of the main reasons why respondents felt this way is because, in their view, charismatic leadership helps to strengthen moral and ethical values, which they see as necessary during a political crisis. Therefore, Dutch employees see a charismatic business leader as a person with a clear moral compass (De Cremer and van Dijke, 2010). When the management is based on close inter-worker communications and a minimum standardization is involved, charisma is a valuable business resource. Research by Shamir and Howell (1999) specified what kind of ‘crisis’ is necessary for charismatic leadership in organizations. They argued that: [C]harismatic leadership is more likely to emerge and be effective in situations that are exceptional, unique, dynamic, or otherwise ‘weak’ in the sense of not providing clear guidelines for behavior, as well as in situations where the primary method of coordination is shared values and the organizational task inconsistent with these values. (Shamir and Howell, 1999, p. 263)

Charismatic leadership is favoured in difficult business circumstances, whereas subordinates are stressed about uncertainty. As they lack self-confidence, they become more receptive to

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  317 charisma (Gill, 2011) and yield the right to make decisions to a charismatic leader. The research on situational variables that determine which type of leadership will occur has found that charismatic leadership is more likely to evolve and flourish under highly critical conditions. These conditions are, for example, the birth of business at the backdrop of a dynamic and unpredictable market, or the cases of high uncertainty (Bryman, 1992; Conger and Kanungo, 1987; Pillai and Meindl, 1998; Gill, 2011; Yukl, 2013), when it is necessary “to bring rapid, dramatic, and lasting change with limited resources” (Kim and Mauborgne, 2006, p. 26). Hunt et al. (1999) revealed that not all leaders respond to a crisis by demonstrating their charismatic side. According to Hunt et al. (1999), there are four types of leaders depending on how they respond to a crisis: 1. Crisis-responsive leaders (response may come in various forms, excluding new vision). 2. Visionary leaders under crisis (a new vision is a response to a crisis). 3. Leaders are choosing exchange (any forms of social exchange including bureaucratic interaction). 4. Crisis-unresponsive leaders (this includes no decision-making). Hunt et al. (1999) argued that the first two types, the crisis-responsive leaders and the visionaries, can be described as charismatic leaders, unlike the last two types. At the same time, they argued that a leader lacking in perceived Weberian-type (1947) charisma can also develop a vision in more stable settings. There is an agreement in the literature that charisma works only in specific settings – these are not necessarily settings characterized by a crisis but involve complex transitions (Conger and Kanungo, 1987) or a feeble social order (Barhaim, 2012). Irrespective of whether there is a crisis or not, Conger and Kanungo (1987) state that sensitivity to contextual factors is vital for a leader if s/he is going to develop a strategy for change: leaders find themselves “creating a charismatic image for themselves” (p. 645) as it enables them to advocate radical change. Conger and Kanungo (1987) suggest that organizations, especially those in developing countries, where more significant organizational change would be necessary for adopting new technologies and transforming traditional operations, should pick managers based on charisma. More recent studies reaffirmed the interrelation of charisma and transition. Barhaim (2012) researched media coverage in the post-socialist states of East-Central Europe and argued that charisma was coexistent with the feeble social order of these struggling states in transition. Charisma was remarkably consonant with the predominance of informal social networks that arose as a new form of social order in post-totalitarian societies (Barhaim, 2012). These social networks form the basis for a range of socio-economic practices such as entrepreneurship. Emotional intelligence is generated through both leader’s experience and his or her psychological motives (Aberbach, 1996; Kets de Vries, 1988). In a changing company, emotional intelligence is based on a leader’s ability to understand the followers’ needs and their state of mind. A leader creates a narrative that there are common interests between a leader and followers. Then the leader persuades the followers to act in favour of completion of a common goal using a range of techniques of stage management and dramaturgic performance (Lindholm, 1988; Sharma and Grant, 2011; Schutte and Loi, 2014). Conger and Kanungo (1987) presented a model of behavioural components of charismatic and non-charismatic leaders. De Vries et al. (1999) studied 958 Dutch employees in the service sector, trade, hotels, restaurants, banks, and insurance and established that charismatic leadership and the need for leadership are related. The subordinates of charismatic leaders

318  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations have a higher need for leadership than those of non-charismatic leaders. A more recent study on Danish news organizations’ middle managers that was carried out in 2003–2005, revealed two things (Lund, 2008). The first finding was that the middle managers could be change-makers in an organization; moreover, the success of change management depends on the more significant involvement of middle managers in the process. The second finding was that the Danish middle managers considered themselves lacking in charisma and knowledge of management tools. They therefore felt that they were unable to motivate change and inspire their subordinates or influence members of executive boards and top management (Lund, 2008, p. 207). They thought that successful change was only possible if there was a charismatic senior leader in an organization who would be responsible for all those tasks they were not confident enough doing. The research on change management in Danish news organizations revealed that the middle managers defined charisma as a leadership quality. They described charismatic people as those that possess energy, professional creativity, sociability, the ability for multi-tasking, analytical capability, motivational skills, curiosity, and intuition (Lund, 2008, p. 206). There is an agreement in the literature that positive charismatics efficiently help an organization deal with short-term crises. However, if leaders keep imposing themselves on the situation for long periods, it might cause stress among followers and break the pre-existing leader–follower bonds (Gill, 2011, p. 309). Should charismatics make more risky decisions than the situation requires, it can be a cause of severe failure to a company and the charismatics themselves (Gill, 2011). For example, John DeLorean was forced out of GM, and his own company was a failure too. To explain how the leader and follower relationship works, Zaleznik (1977) integrated leadership and organization studies with the theory of psychoanalysis. He argued that every leader finds a way to actualize what he or she is driven by through psychological conflict and struggle facing difficult choices and resource limitations.

MANAGEMENT SCHOLARSHIP’S PERSPECTIVES ON CHARISMA AND CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP Charisma is a distinct aspect of any institutional framework (Eisenstadt, 1968, p. xvi), meaning that it can be found in any social institution – as big as a state and as small as a family. Economics and business studies scholars apply the concept of charisma on a microeconomic scale of any business or public entity, which involves the organization of labour and leader– follower relations (Bass and Bass, 2008). Early studies of charismatic leadership in business entities rather than in political arenas or religious movements emerged in the early 1990s. Since then, charismatic leadership has been studied alongside other leadership types such as ‘visionary’ or ‘transformational’. As already mentioned, collectively, all these leadership types are referred to as ‘The New Leadership’. Bryman (1992) contributed to the field by differentiating charisma from other leadership types. Visionary leaders are concerned with transforming organizational culture according to their vision (Bryman, 1992, p. 107): charismatic leaders typically create new organizations (and hence new cultures) whereas transformational leaders are concerned to change existing organizations and their cultures. (Bryman, 1992, p. 105)

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  319 Yet, in modern theory, several labels such as ‘charismatic’ and ‘visionary’, may be applied to a single person simultaneously (Goleman et al., 2013). Charismatic leadership3 is unstable and transitory by nature (Eisenstadt, 1968). For this reason, charisma is observed in those leaders who act as agents bringing radical change. From a change management perspective, leaders and managers differ in motivation, personal history, and how they think and act (Zaleznik, 1977). Conger and Kanungo (1987, p. 644) referred to one more type of authority in a company – an ‘administrator’ whose role is slightly similar to that of the manager, yet with a leaning towards more conservatism compared to more opportunity-seeking managers. The authors defined all three types of authority in an organization as follows: Administrators act as caretakers responsible for the maintenance of the status quo. They influence others through their position of power as legitimated by the organization. Managers direct or nudge their followers in the direction of an established goal. Charismatic leaders transform their followers (instead of nudging them) and seek radical reforms in them in order to achieve the idealized goal. (Conger and Kanungo, 1987, p. 644)

Following this logic, a leader’s position may be one of the shakiest among the three. When a leader loses sight of reality, and his or her unconventional behaviour fails to achieve his or her objective, the leader may be instantly degraded from charismatic to ineffective (Friedland, cited in Conger and Kanungo, 1987, p. 643). Also, charisma over time inevitably becomes routinized (Weber, 1947). Conger and Kanungo (1987) found evidence that the routinization of charisma turns charismatic leaders into administrators (caretakers) or managers (nudging followers), and as soon as it happens, their charisma wanes. Following this logic, charismatic leaders lose their charisma, the more immersed they become into the structures which emerge with routinization. Furthermore, charismatic leaders legitimize themselves among followers through their self-sacrifice (De Cremer and van Knippenberg, 2004; De Cremer, 2006).

CHARISMA IN TECH AND MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS Academic research has looked at charismatic leadership in media projects, including established media corporations like Apple and short-term media projects such as film crews. The research on the charisma of media executives focuses on three issues: leadership, creativity, and power abuse. Leadership is explored through the example of charismatic film directors. The creativity of charismatic leaders is discussed through the example of leaders of tech start-ups. Moreover, power abuse is discussed in relation to heads of large, influential media corporations such as News Corporation.

3 It is important to distinguish between two terms that are frequently used in this chapter – ‘charismatic authority’ and ‘charismatic leadership’. The concept of ‘charismatic authority’ was coined by sociologist Max Weber (1947). It refers to a specific authority type which is characterized by unconditional acceptance of a leader’s decisions by his or her followers, based on the leader’s perceived supernatural talents. ‘Charismatic leadership’ is a widely used term in organizational studies (Bryman, 1992) to refer to a leadership style which can often be observed in organizations undergoing critical situations. It is also believed that both are short-lived, and both can be explained in simple terms as a strong-bonds relation between leaders and their followers.

320  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Of all media industries, the movie industry has provided the most abundant material for studying charismatic leadership. Alvarez et al. (2004) illustrated the concepts of co-leadership and social sources of power with examples of idiosyncratic movie directors Pedro Almodóvar and Francis Ford Coppola. First, the researchers compared two distinct styles of organizing film production: the craft-like European style and the gross- and agent-driven Hollywood one. Second, the research compared in-depth cases of two directors. Almodóvar is described as a visionary leader, “a control freak” looking for freedom and control over all aspects of his artwork (p. 345). For instance, for Almodóvar the social sources of power are “embedded in peculiar relational patterns” – they are “tightly coupled, nested in each other, nuclei of trust and affection” (Alvarez and Svejenova, cited in Alvarez et al., 2004, pp. 343–344). Once these patterns of trust and affection were created, they allowed Almodóvar to influence others beyond the strength of his positional and personal power. It explains why the cast would, at times, commit beyond regular job duties to make sure Almodóvar’s vision came into being (Alvarez et al., 2004). There is a distinction between positional and personal power. Almodóvar’s sources of power include “his self-taught expertise in scriptwriting and film directing; his reputation in the industry as an idiosyncratic, maverick film director; and his charisma” (Alvarez et al., 2004, p. 345). Almodóvar’s positional source of power is his authority in the industry. In turn, his authority as a film director is based on communal patterns of solidarity and sociability. The study has shown that: although a film director may have the formal authority to influence the behaviour of the film’s cast and crew, his influence can also reside in a peculiar community pattern he has managed to create. Through a relationship built on trust and affection, his followers are committed to his vision and support it unconditionally. (Alvarez et al., 2004, p. 340)

Alvarez et al. (2004) applied the career jungle framework to the highly uncertain and volatile film industry. They state, “jungle gym competencies require greater functional dexterity, focused personal loyalties, emphasis on lateral rather than upward mobility, power based on personality, and skills rather than position” (p. 341). Further studies by Alvarez and Svejenova (2005) explained why charisma works in specific settings. The authors argued that charisma – as a social phenomenon – is always a phenomenon of small numbers. In other words, one cannot be perceived as charismatic by the entire population but rather by a limited number of people. For instance, a film director may be considered charismatic by members of the film crew with whom s/he worked, but not necessarily the ones s/he’d never worked with or seen before. Charisma is not reputation, and it cannot be transmitted through word of mouth. A charismatic appeal is vested through interaction between individuals. The same goes with social power or corporate power – it extends over the limited number of people with whom a leader interacts in a particular place and time (Alvarez and Svejenova, 2005). Moving on to another example, film director Francis Ford Coppola is identified as an influential leader, considering his role in reshaping Hollywood in the 1970s and the way he dealt with crises. Coppola described the role of the film director as “the last remaining dictatorial role in a democratic society.” However, Alvarez et al. (2004) showed that Coppola himself did not appear to behave like a dictator when dealing with actors like Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper. Instead, he used his sense of humour and considerable handholding to let the big names feel they led the scenes. Therefore, Coppola’s case is another example of a filmmaker who arguably managed to create intimate, heart-warming relational patterns with his film crewmembers (Alvarez et al., 2004). Coppola’s leadership style may not be as intense

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  321 and vivid as that of Almodóvar, as the former was arguably much more pragmatic when making decisions than the latter. Yet, still, Coppola relied on his power, charisma, and cognitive skills to deal with the complex challenges of the film industry, which brings him into the ranks of charismatic leaders. The comparison between these two film directors is yet more evidence for the existence of various forms and degrees of charisma, which different charismatics may represent at different stages of their lives depending on situations and contexts (Yukl, 2013). Charisma and creativity intermingle in the media industry, as demonstrated by the transformation abilities of Apple’s Steve Jobs (Sharma and Grant, 2011). Sharma and Grant (2011) argued that charismatic leadership is a dramaturgic performance that peaks during a leader’s public performance. It is not one’s desire to perform but rather one’s very profound narrative and storytelling skills that are key to constructing a charismatic identity. Sharma and Grant (2011) studied keynote speeches delivered by Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple Inc., at Apple special events. The research found that these public speeches were an important tool for inspiring and influencing Jobs’ followers – the Apple employees. In general, the narratives that a leader delivers during his/her public speeches are a product of creative imagination. These narratives, in turn, create motives, express emotions, and establish casual links (Gabriel, cited in Sharma and Grant, 2011, p. 6). These narratives create and maintain special psychological relations between the storyteller and the audience, which guarantee two things: (1) the speech resonates with the audience and (2) as soon as the audience feels it can relate to it, it begins to implement the storyteller’s vision. For instance, Steve Jobs’ speeches resonated well with his followers (Sharma and Grant, 2011). Apple employees accepted his vision, felt part of the team, and took responsibility for performing at a high standard to create the Apple product. This phenomenon of interpersonal bonds created using public speaking is referred to as a ‘narrative contract’ or a ‘psychological contract’ between leaders and followers. Lindholm (1988) and Maccoby (2000) argued that there is a degree of narcissism in charismatic public speakers’ behaviour. Gardner and Avolio (1998) and Garvin and Roberto (2005) found that public speaking creates strong relationships between leaders and followers and helps the former influence the latter. The phenomenon of psychological bonds between leaders and followers was analysed in detail by several scholars in studies of charisma, leadership, and narratives (Goffman, 1959; Kets de Vries, 1988; Meindl, 1990; Bryman, 1992; Gabriel, 2004). It is necessary to consider background, education and assets of leaders at the start of a business when assessing the impact of charisma and other personal qualities on business growth (Kotter, 1990). For instance, some charismatic leaders of media corporations come from privileged backgrounds. For example, this is the case of Rupert Murdoch, an executive chairman of News Corp. Having studied the discourse of Rupert Murdoch in his public speeches, Craig and Amernic (2014) found that when addressing others Murdoch “possibly experience[d] low anxiety as [he] strived to manage impressions of [himself] by inducing the outside world to ‘know’ what [he was] seemingly utterly convinced about –[his] own superiority” (2014, p. 69). This is consistent with earlier studies in psychology linking charisma to light forms of sociopathy (Lipman and Pizzurro, 1956). Modern business psychologists and researchers of organizations name addiction and judgement dilution among the dark sides (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2012) or the shadow sides (Conger and Kanungo, 1987) of charismatic leadership. Rupert Murdoch’s ‘charisma effect’ has been studied by other scholars arguing that charisma as personal charm does not have a powerful and lasting effect on other people unless it is continuously preserved through leaders’ actions such as public speeches (Leigh, 2011). In other words, not every naturally charismatic person has a chance of leading others in

322  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations a business environment. The continuous maintenance of a personal power base is a prerequisite condition for leading organizations (Kotter, 1990, p. 104). This power base includes broader networks of allies and supporters both inside and outside of the organization. A leader relies on this network to pursue his or her agenda (Kotter, 1990, p. 139). According to Kotter (1990), Bryman (1992) and Leigh (2011), charismatic leadership can only work when a leader holds a combination of these three attributes: 1. Charisma, 2. Plus a strong desire to become a leader, 3. Plus a strong character to commit to investing him/herself into the process of leading and expending his/her energy into influencing others. There is some discussion in the academic literature about whether charismatic leadership or, instead, “the leadership style based upon the leader’s (perceived) possession of charisma” (Vaughan and Hogg, 2014, p. 296) can account for failures to ensure ethical conduct. For instance, Murdoch’s empire has often been criticized for breaking the law and intruding into the private lives of celebrities and members of the public, a recent case in point being the phone-hacking scandal in 2011 involving Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper News of the World in the UK (Vaughan and Hogg, 2014). Apart from the ethics violation, media studies scholars (Wolff, 2008; Lisners, 2012; McKnight, 2013) criticize Rupert Murdoch’s business for power abuse. Murdoch’s conglomerate, which includes hundreds of media companies united under News Corp, 21st Century Fox and Fox News, was the world’s second-largest media conglomerate. It makes Murdoch’s case of charismatic leadership an exceptional circumstance in terms of global reach and influence.

CRITICISM OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP AND ITS DEVIATIONS FROM THE WEBERIAN NOTION OF CHARISMA In organizations, there is a tendency to romanticize leadership, especially when a company is confronted with complex, unclear dynamics (Meindl et al., 1985). Besides, a charismatic leader has more tools at his/her disposal to project his/her image and vision to followers in the media and on social media. Therefore, the image of a charismatic leader may be socially constructed, which is a deviation from the Weberian original notion of charismatic authority. Following this argument, for example, Spector (2014) questioned the popularity of Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler Corporation, in the 1980s. Identified as an essential American hero and one of the most outstanding automotive entrepreneurs, Iacocca pulled Chrysler out of economic catastrophe by making several critical decisions, such as cutting costs and seeking government funding (Spector, 2014). However, Iacocca neither borrowed foreign innovations such as kaizen (a Japanese managerial concept of continuous improvement) nor created operational innovations. Moreover, Spector (2014) argued that the lack of specificity and consensus on the dimensions of leadership results in mistaken attributions within management theory, which often lacks a broader historical background. Lee Iacocca is portrayed as a heroic figure who captured public attention and behaved as a ‘macho bully’ to impose his will in the time called “the crisis of confidence” that permeated American society in the late 1970s–early 1980s

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  323 (Spector, 2014, p. 372). According to Spector (2014), his charm was more about the ability to impose his will on others rather than changing the company. Furthermore, the evidence from other industries also points to the overestimation and romanticizing of leaders’ behaviours. For example, Küng (2008) described BBC’s Gregory Dyke as a charismatic leader who established the typical leader–follower relationship based on emotional attachment within the team. Although Dyke’s strategy encouraged the use of creative thinking skills, Dwyer (2016) argued that it also discouraged the intrinsic motivation or the creation of an inclusive culture within the organization (p. 359). Dyke’s creative strategy brought “very modest” (Dwyer, 2016, p. 358) changes to creative performance. The BBC’s creative output during Dyke’s four-year service aroused much criticism (Küng, 2008; Dwyer, 2016). This controversy was – among others – one of the reasons for Dyke’s resignation in 2004. In another context, a study of 128 CEOs of major US corporations questioned the links between CEOs’ charisma and staff performance in established firms (Agle et al., 2006). This study found that financial performance does not correlate with the presence of a charismatic CEO, or at least, it is not yet scientifically proven that charisma impacts a firm’s performance in established markets. Within the corporate world, charisma has become yet one more trait viewed as a self-evident CEO characteristic alongside strategic thinking, political persuasiveness, connections and industry insight (Khurana, 2002a). Journalists and biographers often construct charisma as the essential leadership quality. The widespread assumption of such figures as Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca, General Electric’s Jack Welsh, and Apple’s Steve Jobs as “superstar CEOs” (Khurana, 2002a) in the media has had a negative impact on what is expected from CEOs. It has led to over-expectations and unsupported demands from stakeholders on hired top managers. For instance, “the charismatic leader [is] supposed to have the power to perform miracles – to bring a dying company back to life, for instance” (Khurana, 2002a). Research by Khurana (2002b) on how American corporations choose their CEOs based on the analysis of CEO turnovers in 850 corporations and interviews with directors, search consultants and CEOs themselves resulted in the following findings. There is a trend of investors’ increasing intervention into company management. Investors were more likely to influence the choice of a CEO, preferring someone from outside who is not encumbered by organizational history. The investors were looking for a saviour or messiah to lead the company at risk. From the investors’ point of view, it was usually not only the candidate’s knowledge of a firm or a field that they were looking for but the high-profile ‘star’ status of a leader. The latter becomes an overweighing factor of attributing the leader with ‘charisma’. Crediting Goffman, Khurana (2002b, p. 147) stated that not even the social structures but the socially conditioned perceptions and beliefs are crucial in the CEO market. In other words, the emphasis is put on perceived rather than natural qualities. Besides classifying charisma as a perceived feature, Khurana (2002b) also argued that the market for CEOs is culturally determined rather than driven by calculations of supply and demand. Hopes about charisma bring high expectations and translate into high salaries and power, but in fact, may weaken long-term corporate strategies. This leads to an argument that charisma is used by CEOs themselves both to influence employees to admit to followership and convince investors of their own self-worth within a company. Unlike the Weberian notion of charismatic authority, the natural driving force of events, charisma is not the driver of business innovations in large organizations. It instead is a rationalized construct used to suit the agenda of different actors who hold power. The

324  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations corporate version of charisma may, thus, be more artificial than natural, with some exceptions. According to Stadler (2011), when the big company is heading in the right direction, charisma can help get there faster. However, when the company is underperforming, charisma only creates more problems since there is little resistance to what the leader does. A good example of the first case is Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple. Sharma and Grant (2011) discussed Steve Jobs’ enormous public appeal to employees through his public speeches. An example of the second scenario is Dick Fuld, final chairperson and CEO of Lehman Brothers. According to Clark (2010), Fuld served as Lehman Brothers’ CEO for 14 years up until the bank’s implosion and was “known for his uncompromising [negotiating] style”. It is thought that Lehman’s 2008 bankruptcy is partly due to his management (Clark, 2010). Research from Europe also points at caution towards charisma in large organizations. Stadler’s analysis of top managers of 100-year-old European corporations shows that the preference is given to ‘intelligent conservatives’ rather than charismatic leaders. The ‘intelligent conservatives’ are described as those who achieve enduring success because of their long experience in their companies. In addition to that, Kotter (2012) argued that even though a charismatic leader may enjoy credibility within an established organization such as a corporation, charisma on its own is not enough to break through the ‘granite’ walls of non-willingness to change, which can be found in almost all established enterprises. The longer a company has operated, the thicker these walls get (Kotter, 2012, p. 135), and the harder it is to change the organizational culture. In summary, based on the reviews presented in this section, there is an agreement in the literature on the following three limits of how CEOs’/managers’ charisma manifests itself in organizations: 1. CEO charisma is less valuable for established organizations in stable economies. 2. Charismatic leaders are likely to be better equipped to overcome such extremes as financial and/or political crises than non-charismatic leaders. 3. Management cases need to be examined within their broader historical context.

CONCLUSION There is broad agreement in the academic literature that charismatic leadership is more frequent in organizations operating in chaotic economic and legal environments such as those typically found in countries transitioning from one form of economy to another. For example, post-Soviet states fall into this category. Charismatic leadership has also been observed in organizations facing the challenge of operating in highly competitive markets and seeking to disrupt the industry. For instance, leaders of tech/media start-ups and leaders of companies that substantially reinvented the industry, like Apple and SpaceX, may benefit from charismatic leadership at certain stages of their development (Kets de Vries, 2003; Sharma and Grant, 2011). From the point of view of management scholarship, charismatic leadership is often seen as one of the essential qualities of an effective CEO. At the same time, established firms still prefer detailed insight to charisma in hired top managers. It needs to be noted that the management scholarship is mainly concerned with the effectiveness of leaders’ decisions. Therefore, the sociological phenomenon of charismatic leadership in business ventures has been scarcely studied and is either criticized or rationalized and misused. At the same time, there is a broad agreement in academic literature that charismatic leadership tends to be

Charisma and charismatic leadership in organizations  325 short-lived. It eventually fades or morphs into other types of authority, such as, for example, Weberian legal-rational authority. In other words, a charismatic leader eventually loses influence over his or her followers. Depending on the context, these leaders who have lost their charisma can either morph into managers or administrators if there is an opportunity or step down and hand the reins to someone else (Tokbaeva, 2018). They may also remain influential in the eyes of their followers by leaving the companies for good. Also, charismatic leadership can have a detrimental effect on a company. It can lead to the development of a form of ‘addiction to charisma’ both for a leader who gets used to being adulated by his/her followers and for the followers that get used to following orders rather than thinking independently. Based on a narrative literature review, this chapter argued that charismatic leadership features in leaders of creative enterprises, including film, art, media, and tech companies. An interesting finding is that, to some extent charisma and creativity intermingle. At the same time, charismatic leadership influences organizational performance in specific contexts and usually for relatively short periods. Further empirical studies on charismatic leadership in specific geographic contexts and organizational settings are needed, considering the significant role this leadership style plays in times of uncertainty. Based on the findings of this study, the following further research avenues are proposed in the field of the sociology of organizations: ● To explore the connections between individual manifestations of Weberian (1947) notions of charisma and domination in institutionalized contexts with Freudian (2013) studies on preconditions and consequences of individual psychodynamics and Nietzsche’s ideas on the will to power (Heidegger, 1991). ● To explore the connections and further discuss Weber’s sociology of charisma and domination and Foucault’s mechanisms of power, knowledge, and freedom (Lemke, 2001; Collier, 2009).

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18. Organizations and power: a critical evaluation of the rise of performance measurement Guy Redden

Performance measurement (PM) is now common practice across organizations. Key performance indicators (KPIs), targets and performance data inform the institutional lives of millions of people around the world. Metrics are found to track almost anything that can be seen as pertinent to the success of almost any kind of activity in the private, government and non-government sectors. But this new normal is surprisingly recent. Techniques of quantification have long been integral to the rationalization of modern organizations, principally in the forms of accountancy, operational statistics and engineering calculations upon which production processes depend. No doubt they have also included attempts to track and record how well actors undertake activities and with what degree of success in outcomes (such as classic time and motion studies in industrial production). However, only in recent decades has measurement become a core method by which managers routinely track how well organizations and those within them are ‘performing’ across functions, units and levels. Digital corpus analysis of texts on Google shows that before the 1980s terms such as performance indicators, accountability, transparency, benchmarks and metrics were hardly used (Espeland and Sauder, 2016, p. 3; Muller, 2018). That decade saw the rapid development of thinking around the concept of ‘performance’ and its measurement. This discourse normalized assumptions that performance levels can be transparently quantified, that actors can be held accountable for them, and that organizations can use performance data to improve future performances (Redden, 2019). In other words, it assumes that quantitative methods can reliably represent how effective an organization itself is across multiple dimensions, resulting in information that helps to improve that effectiveness. This chapter traces the emergence of performance measurement, showing how developments in management accountancy and strategic management led to a demand for better information that the new field answered. However, I argue that there is little evidence to support the normative idea that PM can generate valid, reliable and useful representations of performance from measurement of complex, changing activities and social situations that are shaped by numerous agents and factors. I propose that it has emerged in close association with the ingression of market logic into organizations under the influence of neoliberal economics. In this, PM has promised to be a key mechanism to enforce imperatives that organizations be more responsive to demands made of them. There are grounds to question how successful it can be, given the range of ways quantitative methods can be configured and responded to, including potentially dysfunctional ones and those that enforce the sectional interests of certain actors over others in an era where increased social insecurity and inequality pervade organizations.

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THE PERFORMANCE TURN Today numerous domains and constructs are subject to intense statistical mapping that is afforded by computer-mediated data capture and processing. Enormous data sets promise to count all items and make statistical sampling methods a thing of the past, while digital collectability of information simultaneously promises a microlevel of granular data about detailed phenomena. Everything can be logged, quantified and computed from sports plays to research outputs, logistics, worker movements, web usage and consumer preferences. Recent scholarly interest in big data has recognized how data collection and computation start to merge through algorithms that continually transform quantitative data and feed it back into all kinds of activity and further calculation. There is no doubt that digital technology has profoundly shaped recent forms that quantification can take, but it cannot tell us everything about those forms. In the last three decades research in the ‘sociology of quantification’ (Espeland and Stevens, 2008) has come to view measurement as a social practice that has complex relationships with the social situations in which it is used, and is often used to represent. Ethnostatistics, science and technology studies, for instance, have examined the rich social lives that numbers enjoy in sites as diverse as the marketplace, school or laboratory. They highlight how data is generated – how statistical forms are fashioned practically via multiple actors, agendas, views, and forces beyond the purely ‘technical’ (Winiecki, 2008, p. 181). When it comes to the cultural politics of numbers Anglo-Foucauldians have notably stressed the performativity of calculative practices in organizations and government (Doria, 2013, p. 15). Through work examining the explosion of statistics around the third decade of the nineteenth century, Ian Hacking influentially argued that quantification of social domains is inseparable from ways of intervening in society. In this argument, statistics do not convey objective knowledge of states of affairs so much as produce categories through which persons and groups are understood through enumeration of selected measurable constructs, and this in turn has a bearing upon how people are treated in various forms of social management. How people are known through measurement cannot be separated from questions of how they may be acted upon through data. For instance, ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ groups such as the sick or the poor were defined first in populations through statistical inquiry into life conditions, allowing for related ways of managing and reforming those groups based on quantified knowledge of their features (Hacking, 2015). With regard to recent decades, Foucauldians have posited a numericalization of public discourse and institutions, in particular through the rise of economics. This has ostensibly occurred to the extent that “there is a constitutive interrelationship” between quantification and government (Rose, 1991, p. 675). Conduct of public life is seen as mediated by quantitative techniques “purporting to act as automatic technical mechanisms for making judgements, prioritizing problems and allocating scarce resources” (Rose, 1991, p. 673). In this perspective, quantitative methods that appear technical and neutral have the capacity to effect social ordering though unleashing calculative power in the circumstances they are used to surveil and manage (Beer, 2016). In these terms, what sense can we make of a shift towards measuring ‘performance’? Miller and O’Leary (2002) highlight that specific technologies for intervening in organizations are linked with programmatic attempts to shape both the beings and units that comprise them. In their case study of a large equipment manufacturer, all kinds of systems from training to

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  331 accounting ones were implicated in an attempt to make factory production more customer responsive, flexible and quality focused. Part of this was to transcend concerns with merely refining existing manufacturing processes and instead benchmark activities with concepts of international best practice and customer demands, with manufacturing cells reporting performance data on a daily basis (Miller and O’Leary, 2002, p. 112). Rose also views performance measurement as an inventive, hybridized technique in which metrics articulate indirect forms of power over the conduct of actors (Rose, 1999, p. 142). Performance objectives are set for actors who will be held accountable for them and responsible for finding means to achieve them. Subsequently performance data may be used to evaluate apparent performance outcomes and make decisions that affect the fortunes of those regraded as accountable, thus ensuring that they strive, as actively calculating subjects, towards achieving what matters as defined through the frame of quantification. In light of key themes in the sociology of quantification, a useful starting point for thinking about the measurement of performance is to question any assumption that it can be a neutral technique that creates objective knowledge about the state of the world. Instead, we can ask how and why it has formed in social practice as a method for intervening in organizational life, and with what possible effects. As Alan Desrosières (2001, 2002, 2010) highlighted in numerous publications (as have others working in the sociology of conventions), the changing ways that statistics are configured are intimately tied to socio-historical circumstances, interest groups, and the allocation of resources. Significantly – given its focus on measuring human performances in organizational activities – social scientists were not a group greatly involved in the emergence of performance measurement. In fact, in the 1970s researchers in the fields of ‘organizational effectiveness’ and ‘performance studies’ set out to establish factors that determine the success of organizations and reliable measurement methods that provide the evidence. But organizations are dynamic collectives of actors that constantly change in response to varied and changing internal and external environments. It proved difficult to build evidence-based models that predict what constitutes effectiveness across organizational functions, types and contexts. There could be no academic consensus regarding features of successful organizations and how to measure them. Indeed, research led to a “persistent result showing effectiveness to be multidimensional, which precluded using any single or simple performance measures” (Meyer and Gupta, 1994, p. 312). Numerous criteria for organizational effectiveness had been identified, but they did not cluster. A valid and reliable set measures of ‘performance’ remained elusive, and after the mid-1970s very few social scientists continued to believe they could be determined in ways that carry over from organization to organization, due to the contingencies of any given organizational context. Effectiveness research increasingly became viewed as being outside the bounds of scientific inquiry (Hannan and Freeman, 1977). But this did not signal the end of performance measurement. Rather, it was a cue for the rapid emergence of the “performance measurement industry” (Meyer and Gupta, 1994, p. 309). Desrosières (2001) points out that statistical discourses vary in the standards by which they claim quantitative data be considered can be realistic. Science demands methodological integrity and expert peer scrutiny regarding data collection, accuracy of instruments, theoretical validity of constructs, reliability of measures, robustness of calculations and safeguards against bias and manipulation. At the other extreme, ‘rhetorical’ use of statistics in order to persuade, such as in wilful cherry picking of numbers taken out of context to support political positions, exhibits little concern for such standards. It relies instead on crude

332  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations suppositions that numbers automatically make for facts. In between, are pragmatic statistical practices that fall short of the standards of science but develop quantitative methods to address social exigencies. Accountancy, for example, helps organizations to evaluate their resources and analyse their allocation. The integrity of performance measures could not be demonstrated with reference to the social scientific standards of organizational effectiveness research. However, the practitioner field of performance measurement developed in more pragmatic business and accountancy circles (Desrosières, 2010). Here anything that might lead to pecuniary benefits is worth modelling through numbers. In the face of global competition and increasingly complex organizations, managers sought ways to comprehend multiple issues within their spans of control. From the 1980s onwards, business gurus and consultants met that demand for better information with the alluring message that PM can provide clear, comprehensive and relevant data about anything managers consider important, including intangibles such as service quality, flexibility, or innovation levels. For instance, writing in the Harvard Business Review, Robert Eccles (1991), argued that fully integrated PM frameworks were the new way for corporations to get an edge, and anyone who failed to acknowledge the ‘revolution’ would be left behind. According to Eccles, manufacturers should be adding areas such as “customer satisfaction, quality, market share, and human resources to their formal measurement system” and “measures such as defect rates, response time, delivery commitments, and the like to evaluate the performance of their products, services, and operations” (1991, p. 132). The theory was that measures of critical factors across the organization reveal whatever is going well or isn’t. They were also taken to create the shared focus necessary to improve things. Performance metrics supposedly made for superior management information and control systems, and they rapidly became a lingua franca of the modern corporation.

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: BASIC CONCEPTS The new field bypassed the problems of social scientific inquiry. PM was framed as a practical tool for managers to enhance whatever they deem matters strategically, leaving standards and decisions to them. They would decide what to measure, why and how in situ. Meanwhile PM experts, like other business gurus of the time created hype around knowing what ‘high performance’ looks like. For example, the 1980s business Blockbuster In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982) provided case studies of outstanding businesses supposed to exemplify it. Performance also became the variable de jure in business and management studies – as an adjunct to management practice, in a way that reproduced the idea that managers determine the meaning and measurement of performance in context. In reviewing 213 management journal articles including performance variables, Richard et al. (2009) found 207 different measures of performance were used, averring that “What stands out from this examination is the lack of clarity in the theoretical definition of performance and the absence of methodological consistency in the formulation of the construct(s) use” (2009, p. 719). In fact, none of the organizations chosen by Peters and Waterman sustained above average stock market performance after publication and a third hit significant difficulties within two years (Richard et al., 2009, p. 726). From the beginning, performance measurement was far from being an evidence-based practice. Indeed, it is rarely even subject to rudimentary cost-benefit analysis. Instead, its formation depended on self-evident ideas.

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  333 On the information side, performance indicators were taken as capable of monitoring any process or outcome insofar as data is collectable. This meant financial metrics could be supplemented by non-financial ones seen to represent the factors that lead to financial results. For instance, if customer satisfaction is seen as key to strategy, indicators could be found to model it, or perhaps quality or speed are vital, or all three. Data could then inform appropriate decisions and interventions. On the control side, the frameworks locked in priorities. “What gets measured, gets managed” became the mantra. This leaves workers in no doubt of what the goals of activity are and the criteria by which outcomes will be evaluated. In addition, as most measurement scales have no effective maximum, there could always be a better score. This creates performance pressure that, in theory at least, spurs workers towards continual improvement. Setting targets and consequences for performance levels is seen to close the loop by ensuring all have motives to improve the numbers (Eccles, 1991). Off-the-shelf measurement frameworks such as Kaplan and Norton’s The Balanced Scorecard (1996) (the world’s most popular) were developed to help managers. They established principles and templates for defining and implementing measures, with managers left to fill in the details. Yet studies also suggest that many companies are dissatisfied with their scorecards. In fact, many practitioners admit that performance measurement is actually hard to get right. Analysis of practitioner discourses shows how authors and consultants routinely list numerous conditions to be met for performance measurement to work (Redden, 2019, p. 28). Performance indicators, for instance, must be (depending on the given commentator’s view): relevant, clear, accurate, aligned, correlated, verifiable, timely, consistent, comprehensive, comparable, owned, controllable, game-proof, actionable, simple, standardized, strategic and reliable. The correct mix must cover everything with a bearing on strategic priorities and intended outcomes, and it must be carefully coordinated and reported across levels, units and functions. Using too many metrics causes information overload and weak focus; too few risks an incomplete picture. Trade-offs between indicator types must be resolved – for instance, can high quality and low cost really be achieved? And there is a fundamental tension between the imperative to make measurement consistent over time and the imperative to alter it as business needs change. Then there is the human element: leadership, worker buy in and communication are seen as essential to avoiding bad design, poor data, arbitrary decisions, superficial analysis, political manipulation or token implementation.

DOES PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT WORK? Such discourse belies assumptions that quantification is factual, reliable and useful as a matter of course, and makes the question of whether PM actually ‘works’ somewhat fraught. Academic research into existing performance measurement frameworks cannot resolve the issue. Studies comprise mainly observational cases of single organizations at a moment in time, or surveys of managers. Arguably, neither are sufficient to conclude that performance measurement improves organizations. And studies with positive findings – where implementation of measures correlates with some kind of organizational success – are cancelled out by those with negative ones, or by methodological failure to isolate causal factors (Redden, 2019, pp. 28–31). Measuring performance itself should not be conflated with the idea that measurement increases the capacity of an actor to perform, or the likelihood they will perform more

334  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations effectively. With regard to knowledge work, Power cites Sitkin’s and Stickel’s finding that scientists in commercial laboratories are less likely to produce patents if the number of patents is made an “explicit performance measurement goal” (2004, p. 775). Logically one might expect the scientists held to KPI metrics to be able to prioritize the kinds of activities that lead to patents, in line with the standard PM idea that measures focus attention on what matters. However, in practice there is reason to doubt whether creativity and innovation can be made to order, even if rewards are attached to outcomes so as to motivate actors to channel their efforts more efficiently. Kachelmeir et al. (2008) found in experiments that setting targets and rewards for the solving of creative puzzles does not boost creativity, but only reduces the overall number of puzzles solved, i.e. the quality remains the same, but quantity reduces. Both studies suggest that desire to improve outcomes can be wishful thinking that does not in itself boost cognitive capacities or improve their deployment, and that adding performance pressure can instead reduce productivity in creative processes. This is to say that social relations based upon accountability for performance values do not necessarily effect improved performance (aside from issues around how actual performance levels could be proven). And there is little empirical work that aims to establish how people respond to measurement initiatives behaviourally speaking. Research based on an actor-network theoretical orientation finds that when actual networks of actors interrelate through measures, efforts to implement ideal systems actually involve much ambivalence, accommodation and negotiation (Dambrin and Robson, 2011; Qu and Cooper, 2011). In theory, clearly defined measurement frameworks allow all to agree on what matters and to pull in the same direction. In practice, PM systems intended to be clear and stable may instead ‘drift’ into unsettled forms because of the very interpretations and adjustments through which refinement is sought among all involved – who have a range of investments, views and understandings (Andon et al., 2007). PM inscriptions circulate and have effects, but the latter are not guaranteed amid the multiple languages, contingencies and techniques in play in a setting. This leads to the view of, “performance measurement systems not as the implementation of an optimized system of measurement and control, but as constructed chains of transformation between objects, actions, technologies and numbers” (Dambrin and Robson, 2011, p. 429). Cynicism and technicist compliance are also possible when people decide measures cannot properly capture and foster what they believe really matters (Townley et al., 2003). Even if data is good there is no guarantee it is used well. Tuomela (2005, p. 308) notes that while some meetings in their case business involved “thorough discussions about strategic metrics, assumed cause-and-effect relationships and strategic uncertainties underlying these” others simply treated performance data superficially. However, this is not to say PM can never have ‘positive’ effects. The point is more that there seems to be little assurance that they are easily or routinely achieved, or outweigh effects that might be considered negative. The practitioner literature is also littered with instances of dysfunctional and perverse effects. Dysfunction is performance measurement’s underbelly, potentially its everyday hidden inconvenient truth. Its incidence is not established (asking to research it would be like asking to go through an organization’s dirty laundry), but it is at least great enough for a group of experienced PM practitioners to write a book of case study examples titled Measurement Madness (Gray et al., 2015). Those who are evaluated by measures are usually among those who can, if they wish (in the general absence of scientific standards) manipulate the way measurement is defined, conducted and reported (Redden, 2019). Dysfunction ranges from the misleading information

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  335 derived from inadvertently bad measures and inaccurate data to deliberate falsification and gaming. Workers seeking to ‘make good numbers’ can be led to adopt instrumental tunnel vision that eschews hard cases when easy ones have the same value on a performance scale (‘creaming’). Doing a comprehensive good job can be displaced by meeting narrower targets through shortcuts. Collaboration can be replaced by individualism, conflict and sectional interests when stakes are high. Performance pressure can cause decisions to be rushed and risks to be taken, or avoided. Complexity can be bypassed through superficial concern with reductive, decontextualized hard data or bureaucratic compliance to measurement imperatives, and data can be cherry picked, used rhetorically, or plain ignored.

THE ECONOMIZATION OF ORGANIZATIONS Townley et al. (2003) view PM as an extension of technical rationalization throughout modern bureaucratic organizations. However, an account of its emergence with particular ideas about accountability and maximization of quantified performance values also suggests its conjunctural association with changing conceptions of organizations in management, a profession that in the second half of the twentieth century moved away from the influences of social science and engineering towards finance and economics (Khurana, 2010). Accountancy provides tools that change in line with changing methods for overseeing organizations (Hopwood, 1987). Taylorist Scientific Management applied an engineering model to industrial production processes, measuring them in order to optimize factory assembly lines further. The measurement of operating procedures was the flipside of the cost and works accountancy that reckoned their financial value in the production process. By the 1970s management accountancy had developed all kinds of metrics to facilitate rational planning and efficient resource utilization in large corporations. Yet, the turn towards PM as such was tied up with a critique of that kind of post-war industrial bureaucracy and its dominant accountancy methods. New economy discourses depicted it as inflexible in the face of global competition. PM was among techniques advocated by those who sought to make organizations more enterprising than bureaucratic (Salaman, 2005). PM advocates tapped into these concerns, depicting the established measures of management accountancy as unrelated to strategy and improvement initiatives, and above all concerned with lagging financial outcomes rather than critical success factors (Ghalayini and Noble, 1996). In the mid-twentieth century neoliberals also promoted the idea that markets are superior to collectivist arrangements as mechanisms for the allocation of goods. Such thinking was applied to organizations through the New Institutional Economics, which, following Ronald Coase ([1937] 1995) generated theories regarding how firms could harness the supposed benefits of markets by adopting enterprise structures that subject organizational actors to forces of demand and supply that firms were previously shielded them from. They believed enterprise was unleashed when people maximize their private interests in market exchanges regulated by the price system. Applying the economic idea that people in any setting are always seeking to maximize benefits to themselves, agency theorists argued that firms could be made more enterprising if performance contracts were set for measured outcomes and aligned with variable remuneration (Jensen, 2002). In this, the role of the numeric values of performance metrics was to act both as proxies for prices and as ready-made monitoring tools

336  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations to designed to motivate agents (workers) to maximize their private interests and the goals of principals (owners) simultaneously. In the 1980s era of deregulated capital and labour markets such ideas caught on with investors. Neoliberals like Milton Friedman (1962) famously viewed the only purpose of the corporation as being to maximize returns to owners. There was to be no inherent obligation to the workers who supply the labour, nor the customers who supply the revenue in this ‘shareholder value’ model of the firm that emerged with financialization. It revolved around the language of value per se, in the sense that investors (as principals) normatively demand that businesses do whatever it takes to expand the financial value of the firm for owners. As Bourguignon (2000) shows, performance measurement accordingly provides a lingua franca that highlights apparent quantities of value created (or not created) at every level of the firm, creating a mechanism for value creation to be managed through the monitoring of quantified performances. And, as “there is no limit to value”, quantification of performance can be used to generalize expectations that those values should always demonstrably increase, that performance should “continually improve” (Bourguignon, 2000, p. 373), rather than be judged against specific standards of achievability. PM in these terms is an imperative of the new contractualism within organizations that motivates agents to deliver value – a first principle that takes priority over questions of accuracy in measurement (Power, 2004, p. 776). In these terms, ‘accountability’ amounts to the shaping of organizational life through subjective internalization of system norms that guide the conduct of actors striving to achieve good performance numbers. This can be seen as an attempt “to reorder the collective and individual selves that make up organizational life” by designing regulatory control into organizational systems (Power, 1997, pp. 41-42). For Porter (2013, p. 593) “indicators and benchmarks provide means to judge dispersed actors engaged in a common project under a central authority such as a government or corporation” taking place distinctively in neoliberal contexts stressing decentralization of authority. Espeland and Sauder (2007, pp. 4–5) similarly argue for a subtle but telling difference between a Weberian view of the calculability that describes relations to enhance prediction and control of processes, and quantifications that judge (evaluate) relations so as to control them. What is more, in emphasizing accountability, performance metrics are largely designed to evaluate outcomes of activities (defect rates, levels of customer satisfaction, cases resolved, etc.) rather than quantify features of the activities themselves. This focus on ends is what allows those deemed responsible for the means to be evaluated for their performance. It also means PM systems tend to “make visible and valuable only a part of a complex whole” (Power, 2004, p. 774). They do not tend to adjust representations of performance for inputs, resourcing levels, full ranges and variations of internal and external causal factors, and shared responsibilities. Such complexities would disturb the myth that given agents can unambiguously be held responsible for outcomes. This inevitably raises the question of how fair it is to hold actors accountable for apparent performances.

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND POWER Practitioners stress that PM can be configured to work with different organizational cultures and management styles, whether collaborative or coercive (Bititci et al., 2006). For Spitzer (2007, p. 50) when ‘done right’, it is a lingua franca that supports a balance between self-responsibility

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  337 and cooperation: “Virtually everyone is part of a self-managing high-performing work team, and managers no longer need to micromanage, because performance is highly visible to everyone.” Yet it is unclear how often PM ‘lifts all boats’ this way, which implies enthusiastic buy in to a shared performance improvement culture among empowered, accountable workers. While Taylorist process measurement had long been used to squeeze greater efficiency out of workforces, it seems that in neo-Taylorist environments with prescribed work routines, performance measurement can become a tool to compel greater outputs by assigning variable rewards and punishments to measures. For instance, remuneration levels and employment prospects of contact centre workers commonly depend on their meeting ambitious targets for processing times in combination with high ratings for service quality, despite the contradiction between speed (minimizing time spent talking to customers) and quality (subjective ratings of managers or customers around dimensions such as friendliness, politeness and case resolution) (Winiecki, 2008). From critical management and organization studies perspectives, the common assumption among practitioners that measurement frames are neutral tools that can be used in a range of ways distracts from their potential to serve the interests of power. When organizations are viewed as incomplete sites of organizing subject to conflict and multiple forces, including those that may advance sectional or dominant interests (Parker, 2002; Böhm, 2006, p. 73), PM ideals invite further scrutiny. Kelemen and Rumens (2008, p. 128) emphasize that “Organizational worlds of all kinds involve quantifiable data, but in the last two decades numerical control mechanisms” that operate through measurement of performance “have permeated organizational discourse like never before” while positivist research has taken little account of them as cultural artefacts imbricated with political and power relations. There is increasing acknowledgement that in a world marked by their increasing prevalence “data systems are rife with relations of inequity, extraction, and exploitation” (Sadowski, 2019, p. 2). The comparative frames created by metrics allow measured units to be separated into spreads of higher and lower values that map onto judgements like ‘better’ or ‘worse’ that can be used to decide about fates of those assigned certain values. In fact, PM emerged in a context where the demand for ‘shareholder value’ was continuous with expectations of more output from less resource input, leading to work intensification and extensification, with workers and units deemed to deliver the least value also seen as dispensable through extensive downsizing and restructuring, all in the name of enterprise (Redden, 2020). The shareholder value paradigm legitimized the removal of those deemed dispensable and created standards controlled by those in charge (McCann, 2015). PM has often been configured to pressure workers to compete with each other to improve performance in the face of non-guaranteed rewards. GE, for instance, pioneered the popular corporate practice of forced ranking, where 10–15 per cent of all managers were sacked each year for having the lowest performance ratings of their cohort, regardless of context or substantive performance standards. Enron employed an extreme version of this ‘rank and yank’ combined with theoretically unlimited performance bonuses, until, in 2001, fraud was revealed to be the main means by which its traders had made their outstanding numbers. There is no reason to expect evaluation of performance relative to standards of maximization and continual improvement is fair. And it should be of little surprise that the pay of senior executives has increased enormously in recent decades through performance-related pay systems that reward implementation of the shareholder value model, including suppressing the average pay of workers at the same time an enjoining them to excel (Redden, 2020).

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PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR But performance measurement is not exclusively a business affair. Neoliberal economists also reimagined the public sector, and performance measurement played a crucial role in its reform. Large government service bureaucracies had been justified by the idea that markets alone cannot adequately provide important public goods like education, health and safety. The challenge of ensuring their distribution throughout populations was seen to require professional collaboration and public service ethics. However, public choice theorists argued that public servants act out of self-interest just like everyone else. In this perspective, they are bound to deliver poor value for money unless subject to market forces. Accordingly, one of the key planks of neoliberalism has subsequently been the adoption of market proxies to reform public sector institutions (Jessop, 2016, p. 487), and performance indicators can be considered among the “mundane practices through which neoliberal spaces, states, and subjects are […] constituted in particular forms” (Larner, 2003, p. 511). According to public sector PM expert, Harry Hatry (2002, p. 357), “achieving accountability has been the primary purpose to date for most results-based performance measurement”, while data can also be used for decision-making and to drive internal efforts to improve service outcomes. Since the early twentieth century there had been on-off efforts to measure the efficiency of government services such as in the municipal research movement (Williams, 2002). However, by the 1990s, governments already adopting neoliberal spending restraint were receptive to the idea that business management practices could make public agencies more effective. Performance measurement became a central strategy of the New Public Management (NPM) (Hood, 1991, 1995). Publicly released performance data allowed agencies to be held accountable for measured outcomes. Funders could make budgetary decisions accordingly and service clients were often encouraged to make consumer choices based on the data so that agencies bear market-like consequences for their apparent performance. In the early 1990s major government initiatives in numerous countries introduced NPM structures that included requirements for performance monitoring of public services (Haque, 2004). Again, the idea was that measurement would lead organizations to improve things that matter. In the US, federal departments had to set quantifiable goals, measure programme performance against them and report progress. The UK set central criteria by which the performance levels of government units could be compared. Thatcher preferred measuring outputs relative to deliberately constrained resources, while Blair preferred service quality metrics, and targets. The ‘results’ of public service can be represented by quantifying outputs: services accomplished, units produced, clients served, etc, or through indicators of outcomes – more qualitative measures of benefits for stakeholders such as client satisfaction, disease rates, and student achievement (Lancer Julnes and Holzer, 2008, p. ix). However systems were configured, they centred upon the idea that the extent to which public agencies deliver value can be measured. Whatever the chosen approach, the claim was that democracy is enhanced when governments test how well they deliver what citizens need. Yet this elegant linear model seems abstract, general and assumed rather than justified by evidence. Indeed, NPM reforms themselves rarely came with evaluation or rigorous justification of their effectiveness, and the idea that the public sector bureaucracy inherently tends towards inefficiency is a longstanding unevidenced myth (Pollitt, 2003). Measuring public services involves unique challenges, because financial outcomes (and related measures such as profit or share price) cannot easily act as a terminal value when the social effectiveness of the services is the primary aim. The

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  339 services are themselves multidimensional and answerable to numerous stakeholders (from funders, clients, professionals, taxpayers) with potentially numerous and subjective views about what constitutes good outcomes. Many of the tasks involved are composite, complex and vary greatly by context. Overall, “Such a balance of forces creates a situation with both multiple and vague goals, which end up complicating the identification and measurement of performance” (Ersson, 2007, p. 7). Many of the public goods that public services are designed to assure, from safety to justice, are intangible and subject to democratic and professional debate regarding the forms they can and should take, and what methods achieve them. But in practice service metrics are often chosen on political and managerial expediency, not democratic consultation, robust theory or independent evidence of validity or reliability (Redden, 2019). They promise to impose clear quantifiable order on the messy public service realities of complex issues with multiple causes, ambiguous tasks with multiple dimensions, overlapping responsibilities, diverse populations and different, potentially conflicting aims and priorities. Issues that should be subject to democratic scrutiny can be whittled down to appealing measurables, and policies reduced to contracts to deliver. As Kerssens-van Drongelen and Fischer (2003, p. 55) note, good data comes with high collection costs, and thus it is often tempting simply to measure outputs rather than qualitative outcomes, for instance ‘houses built’ over experiences of people ‘finding good homes that satisfy their needs’. Indeed, it is only logical that maximizing output of units might actually reduce their quality, assuming resource levels remain equal. Public servants often get locked into narrower attention to things that are easy to count, and when those don’t make sense they must either try to resolve contradictions or let dysfunction run its course. Much public sector activity deals with unique people in dynamic life contexts. Given the difficulties of measuring how agency interventions actually influence each of those people’s life situations, generic dimensions are chosen. In social care, counting of outputs is often taken to represent life quality. Proportion of meals delivered on schedule comes to stand for quality of aged care, or number of children removed signifies protection. Some of the most important work aims at prevention. For instance, social work with marginal youths requires ongoing relationship building, trust and situational discretion to reduce alienation by building esteem, mutual recognition and belonging. None of these are easily quantified under the performance paradigm, so attention shifts from the thing itself to countable things about the thing. Indicators of compliance to generic task protocols portray an impression of comprehensive engagement, while in reality the paperwork takes up huge blocks of social workers’ time, time that is taken away from the core but hard-to-measure activity of relationship-building (Keevers et al., 2012). Through a study of a decade-long initiative to establish PM in Italian universities, Arnaboldi and Azzone (2010) show how the constant negotiations between technical, managerial and professional staff about what matters in knowledge work and how to measure it led to ongoing translation, controversy and revision rather than a clearly agreed framework. In other cases a rational response to demands for clear measured values is a dysfunctional level of instrumental conformity to measured values. Espeland and Sauder (2007) coined the term ‘reactivity’ to describe the ways people respond to measurement in ways that are often different from the abstract and behaviourally naïve model of accountable agents being motivated to use performance data to effect performance improvement. Hopwood (1972) showed that as stakes rise people are responsive to the biases of measurement and prone to manipulate variables that help improve performance ratings. As measurement often involves

340  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations measurable proxies for abstract performance constructs it can allow ‘goal displacement’, described in Merton’s (1936) classic work as the tendency for instrumental values to become treated as terminal values, or in other words, influencing a target by whatever means appears attractive even if that does not necessarily enhance the genuine performance goal. This can also be labelled ‘surrogation’, the phenomenon whereby people “lose sight of the strategic construct(s) the measures are intended to represent” (Choi et al., 2013, p. 105). Blau’s (1955) study of indicators used in a government employment office is often cited as a paradigmatic example. The agency’s recruiters were initially rewarded for the number of interviews with prospective employees that were conducted, but this did not translate into successful work placements. To overcome the problem of prioritizing a single criterion, numbers of referrals to employers also became an indicator. However, in motivating recruiters to place as many interviewed people as possible, this, in turn led to poor screening practices and the referral of poorly qualified workers, plus a focus on easy cases at the expense of difficult time-consuming ones. One measure led to a low level of placements, the other to high numbers of inappropriate ones, and neither promoted quality of placements for employers or employees. In the face of simplistic caseload metrics, recruiters had rationalized their efforts to maximize only the formal measurable results. Accordingly, a measurable quantity was prioritized over case-dependent quality of outcomes in the form of suitable workers being placed in suitable posts: the ultimate social goal of the agency. Unlike business management research, much work in public administration and service fields has highlighted dysfunction, and in particular “pathologies of creative compliance” (Elliott, 2001, p. 202). Policing provides a good example of the complexities involved in assuring public goods such as safety and justice. It has multiple aims that must be combined to avoid trade-offs. It involves appropriate balance between prevention of crime, protection of the public and capturing offenders – though the priorities may vary due to politics and professional norms. Creating measurement priorities designed to improve outcomes in such an environment can create perverse incentives (Redden, 2019, pp. 102–104). In the 2000s, after recognition that conviction rates give police perverse incentives to pursue guilty verdicts, in the UK the preferred metric became detection rates (i.e. rate of identification of offenders) as a ratio of recorded crime. But crime rates were reduced by a form of ‘denominator gaming’ called ‘cuffing’ – choosing not to believe a victim’s report or deciding there is insufficient evidence to record incidents as crime, while detection rates were boosted by arresting more suspects, focusing on easy-to-solve crimes (‘skewing’) or negotiating confessions for unsolved crimes as a bargaining chip in agreements made with suspects of other crimes (‘nodding’). In one case a school student who pocketed a few hundred pounds of sponsorship money was charged with a crime for each sponsor – all 452 showing as detections – when one may have sufficed. Inquiries uncovered widespread gaming. England and Wales finally dispensed with central targets for policing in 2010 and stopped publishing force detection rates in 2014. Crime rates in England and Wales subsequently rose steeply while detections fell (Redden, 2019). It seems highly unlikely that is was a coincidence, but we will never know, as PM – whether in the public or private sector – is not held to the methodological standards of quantitative social science. Nor will we know how many possible crimes were ignored to chalk up easy arrests for minor ‘resolvable’ incidents. It is only logical that if resourcing levels are unadjusted, metrics that count all case outcomes as equivalent give those held accountable incentives to prioritize simpler cases over difficult or risky ones. In health, when mortality rates of surgeons are published some simply engage in ‘offlisting’ or declining to take on

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  341 serious cases more likely to die in surgery. The real complexities of medical care are often bypassed through generic quality-of-care metrics, such as waiting times. For instance, the proportion of ambulance response times meeting an 8-minute benchmark increased markedly in England and Wales after targets were set and comparative ratings published. But what does this actually amount to when it was achieved by reducing training budgets, concentrating resources in urban areas, and employing less qualified and poorly equipped first responders (Wankhade, 2011)? And what if restoring discretion to dispatch ambulances according to case needs (without targets) is what actually saves lives, as has been demonstrated through policy change in Scotland (BBC, 2019)? In the absence of actual evidence, performance measurement relies on people taking measures as self-evident. This is particularly notable when market ideology takes over education. The results of standardized literacy and numeracy tests are commonly seen to represent the overall educational effectiveness of schools or the quality of the education they provide, even though there is little evidence that they do and much evidence that they don’t (Redden, 2019, pp. 107–110). It is assumed the public circulation of test results means stakeholders successfully demand improved performance. Funders can apply targets, rewards and sanctions and students can transfer to ‘better’ schools in what has become known as the school choice model (Buras and Apple, 2005). But such clarity derives from distortions. Standardized tests come with random variation from measurement error and limited confidence intervals make distinctions between scores statistically misleading. They cannot capture the long-term or diverse abilities of students, or isolate the influence of schools on student achievement. When such testing regimes are introduced scores inevitably inflate. But they do so because coaching for tests displaces rounded education and ‘offrolling’ sees weaker students deliberately excluded from exams, expelled from schools or reclassified as disabled. And when apparently successful cohorts take tests for which they cannot be prepared they more often perform worse than previous cohorts, not better. Even the narrowly coached skills to which schooling becomes reduced do not last. Meanwhile Finland continues to illustrate how professionally autonomous teachers achieve outstanding outcomes without standardized testing. Yet policy in anglophone countries remains fixated on the illusion that school systems improve from ‘accountability’ rather than resourcing.

CONCLUSION Ultimately public sector performance measurement glosses over costs, distortions and dysfunctions, like its private sector equivalent. It crowds out collaborative, inquiry-based professional practice with contracts to deliver superficial measurables, as though sheer performance pressure is a universal panacea for complex social challenges. Of course, it is not that all measurement is inherently inaccurate or bad, so much that the rush to measure almost everything has licensed the generalization of simplistic measurement practices that do not stand up to scrutiny. Some organizations, both public and private, handle metrics thoughtfully. Crime statistics can help experts understand and act upon patterns of crime in context. Standardized testing can be used diagnostically to identify needs of students and cohorts rather than for spurious league tables. And in 2007 mortality rates up to 45 per cent higher than expected highlighted how managers at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital

342  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations had been neglecting serious emergency patients to prioritize waiting time targets that trigger government performance-related funding. This ‘creaming’ of easy countable cases equated to up to 1,200 additional deaths, but it was only revealed because analysis of mortality statistics showed an anomaly (Gray et al., 2015). Indeed, the modern world depends upon appropriate methodologically robust uses of measurement and statistics. But the idea that metrics can easily act as reliable representations of ‘performance’ – act as ready-made assessments of the complex matter of how well humans coordinate activities and influence their environments – is deeply flawed magic-bullet thinking. The aim of this chapter has been to demystify performance measurement, a practice that otherwise often assumes technocratic legitimacy because of longstanding associations between numbers and objectivity. As Desrosières warns (2002, p. 325): “Statistical information did not fall from the sky like some pure reflection of a pre-existing ‘reality’. Quite the contrary it can be seen as the provisional and fragile crowning of a series of conventions of equivalence between entities that a host of disorderly forces is continually trying to differentiate.” The practice of performance measurement has become part of organizational common sense, but it has never been driven by methodological integrity. Rather, it has risen because it is a tool of social control that favours models of social order adopted by those who have particular interests in shaping organizational life. Making people responsible for quantified performance levels and motivating them through related targets, rewards and punishments crowbars a version of the neoliberal spirit of enterprise into organizations. It compels people to strive for the selective performance priorities of the ‘principal’ without guaranteed fair rewards, and with possible costs borne by end users exposed to the downsides – whether they be passengers in ambulances, or aeroplanes. The fate of Boeing’s 737 MAX airliner after two fatal crashes in quick succession acts as a final cautionary tale about performance regimes can lock in perverse priorities (Robison, 2019). A key plank of Boeing’s performance makeover in the 2000s was how it reshaped its workforce in an all-consuming focus on shareholder value. Executives were uncertain about the company’s future narrow-bodied passenger aircraft. The old 737 was its most profitable model, but based on ageing technology. Designing something completely new would be expensive and time consuming. Then in 2010, arch-rival Airbus unexpectedly announced its new fuel-efficient A320neo. A year later Boeing announced a fuel-efficient revision of the 737, the 737 MAX. A market challenge had been transformed into a strategic opportunity. The strategy was to develop the MAX cheaply with unprecedented speed in order to leverage the 737 customer base before Airbus could leverage its innovation. Yet, according to former employees, rather than merely urging engineers, machinists and installers to do what they do but as quickly and cheaply as possible, costs and time were insistently measured. Performance metrics throughout the organization would show who was advancing the high-speed, low-cost strategy, in spite of workforce cuts. Ambitious targets would be set, including so-called ‘stretch’ targets that spur workers to find ways to break through to higher levels of performance than currently achievable. By March 2019, with a swelling order book, Boeing’s share price hit a high of $440. The strategy had succeeded. But given what appeared to be an inherently complex engineering challenge, the question is how could this be? In fact, the rushed design was flawed, and inadequate safety systems and training were implicated in the 2019 crashes, leading to global suspension of the aircraft by authorities, followed by mass cancellation of MAX orders by airlines, and a stock price as low as $95 in 2020.

Organizations and power: the rise of performance measurement  343 It is possible that excessive performance measurement may be a passing fashion. Leading business thinkers including quality guru Edwards Deming and strategy expert Henry Mintzberg have long warned that reductive, superficial reliance on performance numbers makes for bad management decisions. Deming argued overemphasis on ‘visible numbers’ comes at the expense of contextual interpretation and leads to misattribution of causality and misconstrual of variation (Edwards Deming, 1986). Mintzberg (2008) attributes the Global Financial Crisis to a hard data fetish with simplistic goal setting and ‘management by deeming’ based upon it. Meanwhile forced ranking has been successfully challenged in class actions on behalf of workers, and corporations like Microsoft discontinued it because it damages collaboration (Ovide and Feintzeig, 2013). Yet, on the other hand, digital surveillance promises a new era for those who calculate performance to exploit others by controlling the ad hoc definition and measurement of those deemed ‘performing’ and ‘underperforming’. Platform firms like Uber are creating algorithmically managed labour forces of gig economy workers assigned jobs on-demand relative to strict performance criteria. Their every action is logged to create rolling performance metrics used to limit future work opportunities to those who comply with low pay, continuous availability, insecurity, unsafe conditions and customers with arbitrary power to rate (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). Controllers of measurement systems routinely configure themselves to serve their own interests. Lyotard (1984) noted how management of institutions had veered away from substantive values towards the overarching value of ‘performativity’. Indeed, ‘increasing’ performance can be seen as the principal substantive value of value-based management. Perhaps the main reason performance metrics have become so naturalized is that they serve senior managers so well. Political principals and owners in the shareholder primacy model need representatives in organizations. Just as they squeeze more value out of workers on behalf of the principal, executives continue to reward themselves generously by negotiating performance-related pay packages dominated by stock options that align with interests of owners and executives. US CEOs earned 20 times their workers’ average wage in 1965. In 2018 it was 312 times (Rushe, 2018). In fact, the emergence of performance measurement is constitutively linked to the emergence of a new class. Thomas Piketty (2014) calls it the supermanager class. It compromises managerial members of the 1 per cent generously remunerated by narrow quantifiable criteria through which they run both public and private organizations. When there is so much money to be made by executives for ‘making the numbers’, making the numbers can become the very modus operandi of the organizations they steer. With this leadership you get a world organized around elite interests, not innovation from below. And the problem this leaves for the rest of us in an era of declining investment, productivity and pay growth (while executive pay and profit shares rise prodigiously) is that performance measurement works, but largely in terms that suit those who sit astride the disciplinary performance monitoring pyramid it allows and who benefit disproportionately from soliciting quanta of ‘performance’ from others – the 1 per cent who lead almost all organizations in the world today.

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19. Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands Meghan Elizabeth Kallman1

INTRODUCTION For many years, research on leadership in organizations focused its attention mainly on conventional hierarchical and/or professional leadership in the Global North. In doing so, it clearly neglected the organizational practices and principles that emerge from other sites of organizing. In the past twenty years however, there has been a surge of research to exploring shared leadership: a shift from understanding the actions and interactions of leaders to understanding the intersubjective leadership, undertaken by group members themselves (Choi et al., 2017; Contractor et al., 2012; Drescher and Garbers, 2016; Fletcher and Kaufer, 2002). Relying on ethnographic and qualitative data from nine street US brass bands, this chapter analyzes shared leadership practices within leaderless, democratic groups in a North American context. Specifically, it theorizes these practices as autonomist leadership, seeking to understand the political and ideological values that inform group processes, and how those processes enable the bands to meet both their functional and interpretive needs in the absence of a single leader. By engaging with the daily practices that constitute organizing life for these musicians – practices that also shape the identities of their participants – I argue that political principles of collective decision-making and commitment to inclusion can produce organizational practices and habits that are as durable as they are complex, including significant organizational learning. That is, I show how autonomist groups are enabled by prefigurative organizational practices that are based in political principles. The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. First, I provide an empirical overview of the contemporary HONK! band movement. I then move on to a theoretical orientation of autonomist and shared leadership practices. After describing my methods, I present my results. In the final section of the piece, I use the insights of this study to reflect upon our assumptions about the nature of shared leadership, and the role that politics and values play in it.

EMPIRICAL BACKGROUND: STREET BANDS AND HONK! This chapter takes as a case study the relatively new, and fast-growing brass street band network in the United States. These bands are comprised of anywhere between 5 and 35

1 I am grateful for the assistance of Prisca Tarimo and Susan Telingator, as well as Martha Ehrich, Chris Walker, Carl Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard, and the many groups within the HONK! community that have been supportive of this project.

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348  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations musicians, playing primarily brass and reeds.2 Such groups frequently define themselves as “activist” bands, although, as we will see, they understand activism differently. A primarily urban phenomenon, bands are deeply linked to contemporary urban justice issues. They are often considered part of the burgeoning global justice movement, within which a sort of “tactical carnival” (Bogad, 2010) has emerged. This tactical carnival often involves protests, as well as street parties/processions that occupy public space. Such events are designed both to assert the right of music and ordinary people to occupy public space, as well as to disrupt state or corporate events and business-as-usual. Seattle’s Infernal Noise Brigade, for instance, aims to “provide tactical psychological support through a ‘propaganda of sound.’ The street is the venue for action and symbology” (Whitney, 2003, pp. 221–222). Indeed, one of the most striking things about such groups is how they tend to engage space with a fusion of music and political meaning. Brass band traditions are, of course, older than this contemporary trend – in the nineteenth century they flourished all over the US and Europe, often appended to towns, congregations, and even factories, serving as both a creative outlet and a symbol of community solidarity (Burns, 2008). In the United States, bands also have a deep and particular connection to the southeast and Black history especially: benevolent societies (also known as mutual aid organizations) were social organizations that emerged in the late 1700s to support free and enslaved Africans Americans and help them cope with financial hardships (including illness and funeral costs) in New Orleans and elsewhere (BMOL, 2018). These groups eventually expanded into “social aid and pleasure clubs,” which, in addition to supporting community members, were the community force behind the parades for which New Orleans became famous. Beyond the colorful parades, however, clubs have been central community events among working class black communities for more than a century (Dinerstein, 2009). For instance, Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society – the Somerville, MA-based street band – is named for the Second Line and social aid traditions of New Orleans and elsewhere. Second line parades are descendants of New Orleans jazz funerals; the term “second line” refers to people who join into a parade. Those who are hosting an event are the “first line” of the parade (at a jazz funeral, this would be family of the deceased, the hearse, and band). Those who follow the procession, often dancing and singing, are the “second line.” A major national convening of street bands occurs annually through a festival called HONK!, held in Somerville, Massachusetts since 2006. Supported by an all-volunteer organizing committee, the festival hosts about 30 groups from around the world to participate in a free three-day event that showcases acoustic and ambulatory bands, performing in public spaces throughout the city. HONK! is supported by the community through lodging for musicians, food, volunteer labor, and donations; it envisions itself as “grassroots” and outside of the logic of consumerist, sponsored festivals. Bands are not paid, although they receive financial aid from crowdfunding to cover trip costs, and typically on a sliding scale that accounts for their region of origin. During the festival itself, major open public spaces within the city are saturated with unavoidable sounds and images. HONK!’s annual three-mile parade intervenes on the public with openly left-wing messages and countercultural art. All the bands parade with activist groups intermixed, including groups like Occupy Boston, Veterans for Peace, and Food Not Bombs (Snyder, 2018). 2 Instrumentation typically includes trumpets, trombones, tubas, saxophones, clarinets, piccolos, and percussion, although composition can vary.

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  349 Since its inception, HONK! has inspired additional festivals in other locations, including in Austin (HONK! TX), Seattle (HONK! Fest West), Rio de Janeiro (HONK! Rio), Australia (HONK! Oz), Toronto (HONK! On), Vancouver (HONK! BC), Detroit (Crash Detroit), Pittsburgh (Pittonkatonk) and Providence (PRONK!), among others. A large piece of this popularity is HONK!’s resonance with broader urban themes and struggles – with which both European bands and US social aid and pleasure clubs are also linked. The HONK! website offers up its self-understanding in the following terms: Acoustic and mobile, these bands play at street level, usually for free, with no stages to elevate them above the crowd and no sound systems or speaker columns to separate performers from participants. These bands don’t just play for the people; they play among the people and invite them to join the fun. They are active, activist, and deeply engaged in their communities, at times alongside unions and grassroots groups in outright political protest, or in some form of community-building activity, routinely performing and conducting workshops for educational and social service organizations of all kinds. (HONK! Fest, 2018)

Nearby PRONK! defines itself as “a heartfelt antidote to mainstream culture,” and aims to invite “people from all walks of life to come together for a day set aside for the celebration of music … [and] to blur social boundaries between audience and performers as well as between musical genres, resulting in a joyous reclamation of public space” (PRONK!, 2018). HONK!, PRONK!, and their sister movements, musicians, and participants around the world provide strong evidence that, at least at some level, there is active movement towards a new “right to the city” from within street bands and street band festivals. The HONK! network also has roots within less politicized, countercultural spaces, such as Burning Man, the large week-long countercultural festival in Nevada. While bands such as the Seattle Infernal Noise Brigade, Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Band, and New York’s Rude Mechanical Orchestra all orient themselves to engaging in left-wing protest, the meaning of “activism” varies from band to band. Some of these groups define “activism” as “engagement in protest.” They view their bands as political projects and see the HONK! festival as a nice countercultural gathering of the extended family (rather than, for instance, an activist intervention in a city). Festival organizers in Boston have sought to reframe the activism of the festival more towards protest since 2014 by organizing political actions, in which the bands touring to the festival participate musically in political campaigns. From 2016–2018, for instance, they have organized hundreds of musicians to play outside of an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention center for those destined for deportation (Snyder, 2018). Both the composition of the bands and the orientation of HONK!, as well as the many interpretations of it, speak to the multidimensional nature of these groups themselves. Street bands are mixed institutions – at times they are vessels of public political confrontation, part of a “repertoire of contention” (Snyder, 2018, p. 121; Tilly, 2008). At some points during the year, bands play private events in their communities for pay. At other points they function as community support – as in the case of community festivals, holiday parades, or even fundraisers. At times they serve purely internal purposes, as collectives in which musicians explore their own personal (musical) growth, or simply blow off steam. Within this political context, however, they are frequently ongoing experiments in prefigurative forms of leadership and decision-making, which drives my analytic focus on organizational and self-governance practices. A distinguishing characteristic of these bands is that their political engagement is, in part, defined by their internal organizational processes.

350  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations For many of these groups, self-governance is part of prefiguration: street bands try to make the world they want to see by enacting it. Thus, the organizational practices themselves are prefigurative – through their methods of self-organization, bands actively work to instantiate political values into their regular practices (and do so with varying degrees of success). “Prefiguration, the creation of alternatives in the here and now, enacts an interplay between theory and practice” Maeckelbergh (2011, p. 3) writes. It is an ongoing experiment in how to create different interpersonal, political, and urban relationships. Indeed, some of the most interesting texture of HONK! bands is visible within the internal organizing structures of the groups themselves. The practices that both govern them and shape the identities of their participants are (a) deeply political, and (b) represent prefigurative commitment to participation and inclusion, which is itself political. All bands in this study are leaderless (or “leaderful,” as one respondent said). Importantly, not all street bands operate this way, though an outsized proportion of them within the HONK! network do. Together, these experiments in alternative leadership produce organizational practices and habits that are as durable as they are complex: they create organizational processes that carry bands through decades of existence, although not without flaws. That is, this chapter aims to show how autonomist groups are enabled by organizational practices, and how such practices can serve as both functional and interpretive leadership.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: AUTONOMIST LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Brené Brown (2018, p. 4) defines a leader as “anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and ideas, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” This chapter theorizes and explores what happens when people collectively take responsibility for their group and its ideas, developing the potential through group-based organizational practices rather than individual leadership behaviors. It explores how decisions are made in the context of intentionally leaderless groups that express political commitments in part through group processes. There is increasing attention within organizational studies to leaderless groups; gone are the days that saw organizations as “machines” (cf. Baum and Rowley, 2002), and leaders as heroes of the hierarchy. More expansive scholarship on leadership recognizes the different versions of collective and communal leadership that exist outside organizational contexts in the Global North (cf. Ncube, 2010), and new work explores how organizations are living, dynamic systems of relationships (cf. Liu, 2020), arguing that “effectiveness in living systems of relationships does not depend on individual, heroic leaders, but rather on leadership practices embedded in a system of interdependencies at different levels within the organization” (Fletcher and Kaufer, 2002, p. 21). Work also increasingly acknowledges identity – and the power relationships that shape identity – as foundational to leadership (Abrams, 2019). As scholarship evolves, many alternative models of leadership have emerged: transformational leaders, who inspire and stimulate (Bass, 1999; Bass and Riggio, 2006), transactional leaders that emphasize the role of supervision and organization (Avolio et al., 1999), and servant leadership, which combines a need to serve with a motivation to lead (van Dierendonck, 2011). Specifically, new work explores how leadership can be shared – with responsibilities rotating to the person with the knowledge or skills on issues facing a group at a given moment

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  351 (Avery and Bergsteiner, 2011; Pearce and Conger, 2002; Zhu et al., 2018). This kind of thinking – of leadership as a fundamentally community-based process, rather than sited solely within individuals – is foundational to many Global South contexts, but has not yet been widely acknowledged within leadership studies (Burges, 2006; Msengana, 2006). And indeed, groups that share leadership responsibilities in one way or another often “work” better: research indicates that poor-performing teams tend to be dominated by a single team leader (Pearce, 2004), while high-performing teams often have more dispersed or shared patterns of leadership (D’Innocenzo et al., 2016). This thinking about leadership emphasizes its distributed, participatory and independent nature, which depends on a set of organizational tasks that can be assumed by different people at different levels (cf. Badaracco, 2001). It is a perspective that emphasizes the practices that scaffold whatever leaders may be visible, a collective activity embedded within existing social relationships (Suchman, 1987); a sort of collaborative underwriting of a relational whole. What’s more, current societal structures are characterized in general by a turn towards horizontal forms of organization, also termed “network society” (Castells, 2011); although they differ politically, both Marxist and capitalist leadership patterns are hierarchical and elite, and are increasingly challenged by participatory forms leadership that occur throughout economic and civil society (Newman, 2001). In other words, contemporary cultural changes are linked with conceptions of leadership as less hierarchical generally. And although this understanding of leadership – as being a collective phenomenon – would seem to encourage research on the nuts and bolts of group process, such work remains somewhat sparse, a gap that this chapter aims to remedy. The term “autonomist leadership” has recently been marshalled to describe leaderless or shared group processes (Western, 2014), emerging as a concept from anarchist analyses of organizing. I prefer this term over “shared” leadership because of its emphasis on prefiguration – the concept of autonomist leadership implies a set of political principles (other than economic efficiency) that inform leadership structures. In general, organizational and social movement scholarship has tended to look at resources rather than ideologies or political principles to understand movement processes and outcomes (Schock, 2005). But autonomist leadership is often explicitly political, distinguishing it from the kind of shared leadership that many firms typically use in pursuit of efficiency and profit. Autonomist leadership should be seen as a kind of interpersonal “politics beyond the state” (Shantz, 2009). Building on this thinking, I show how these shared values produce organizational practices and norms that are a crucial, enabling piece of autonomist process. I argue that autonomist leadership cannot be understood without considerable attention paid to the (in this case, politically-informed) organizational practices and group processes that scaffold it. In other words: group processes matter, and so do values. The term “leader” often has negative connotations both within street bands and within anarchist groups generally, because it is seen to reflect hierarchy and authoritarian orientations. I take as a premise the anarchist insight that being “leaderless” within a collective is a myth; so-called “leaderless” groups still always have (informal or stealth) leaders, or there are processes of autonomist and collective leadership playing out that serve a leadership function (Bakunin, 1970; Kallman, 2020a; Western, 2014). That is, leadership always occurs, although it may not always be transparent, visible, or even recognized by those who engage in it (see also Bufe, 2000). Leadership is shaped by identity and power relationships, even when that power is explicitly disavowed (Acker, 1990; Fletcher, 2004).

352  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Alvesson and Spicer (2012) have argued that scholarly perspectives on leadership generally take one of two forms: functionalist and interpretive. Functionalist approaches explore how tasks are enacted and handled, while interpretive approaches focus more on the meaning associated with such tasks. This project looks at both simultaneously: it explores how leaderless groups handle both the functional and interpretive tasks involved in their operation. That is, if leadership is partly about delegation of tasks (Bass and Riggio, 2006; Klein et al., 2006), partly about critical assessment of problems and causes (Barker et al., 2001), partly about the “management of meaning” (Weick, 1979), including dissent (Zoller and Fairhurst, 2007), partly about eliciting the potential of groups (Brown, 2018) and partly about enacting a moral order, I show that autonomist practices can – and do – serve all those purposes. I will argue here that leaderless groups can enact collective functional and interpretive leadership precisely because of the stable, durable, and complex organizational processes that develop around shared values. And I suggest that inclusive organizational processes can serve, in and of themselves, as leadership – complicating the notion of leadership as something that only individual people may possess or exercise. Like some other social movements, many HONK! bands reject a distinction between social process and social outcome. Anti-authoritarian traditions – of which the street bands in this study are a part – generally challenge the idea that hierarchies are somehow intrinsic to human organization (Purkis, 2001). Among these groups, prefiguration emerges in many forms: in democratic and collective leadership, which is seen as a way of altering and re-constructing the world. Though prefiguration is generally understood to be cultural, unorganized, and without any goal beyond the enactment of new cultural relations in the here and now (cf. Yates, 2015), I argue that it actually creates its own types of organizational relationships that prioritize and draw attention to different parts of bands’ political and cultural critiques. What’s more, the organizational processes that govern bands’ collective lives only work because of those political and cultural critiques. In contrast to the so-called “tyranny of structurelessness,” which “becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony” (Freeman, 2013, p. 232), I argue that prefiguration produces durable organizing norms and values, as well as interpersonal connections, that hold highly disparate groups and people together. Graeber (2002, p. 70) captures this point best when he writes about such movements as: reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties, or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, nonhierarchical consensus democracy. Ultimately, it […] aspires to reinvent daily life as a whole [emphasis mine].

Alternative forms of leadership in street bands focus primarily on inclusion: how leaders and community members can be empowered themselves without simultaneously disempowering others (Kallman, 2020a). Theories of autonomist leadership are an emergent way of understanding such practices. Western (2014) characterizes autonomist leadership as having five characteristics: spontaneity, autonomy, mutuality, affect and networks. Accordingly, autonomist leadership is: ● Spontaneous, in that it arises spontaneously, is temporary, without fixed roles, and is not instantiated in any key actors or form of governance (emphasis mine);

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  353 ● Autonomous, in that anybody and everybody can lead; there is no ranking or hierarchy; and there is a heightened awareness and commitment to the autonomy of all; ● Mutualistic, in that leadership is enacted with mutual consent, mutual responsibility and for the mutual benefit of the group; ● Networked, in that it emerges, disappears, reappears, and exists beyond any given group, or indeed potentially within everyone; and ● Affective, in that participants have self-narratives and emotional attachments to specific ideas (including freedom, and a resistance to abuse of power). The movement also generate collective affect, including hope, solidarity, and love. This chapter adds organizational resolution to our understandings of autonomist leadership. Whereas Western theorizes spontaneity as “not stabilizing in a form of governance,” I argue that it is precisely these (dynamic and non-hierarchical, but nonetheless stable) governance practices that are the conditions for successful autonomist leadership. In other words, there is evidence in this data that organizational processes themselves can elicit the potential from both people and situations. Specifically, I show how autonomist leadership is necessarily supported and enabled by organizational practices, which are based on shared values. In my data, organizational processes are crucial to autonomist leadership, and in some cases may function as leadership itself: in other words, groups with good organizational processes do not always need leaders, as those group processes serve the functions of leadership.

METHODS The project is formally an “activist ethnography,” influenced by feminist approaches to research, and in particular, the notion of participatory action research (Chevalier and Buckles, 2019; Fals Borda, 2006; Kemmis, 2006). Activist ethnographies focus on examining movements from within, using rigorous qualitative methods, in order to understand and analyze them from the standpoint of an activist (Sutherland, 2013). For me, the most important component of this participatory action and activist research is that the goals of the research were generated by those in question (see also Juris, 2008). This piece is about leadership and decision-making: because these processes have been the topic of debate, innovation, and consternation in such bands over the many years that I have been a participant. This chapter draws upon thirty semi-structured interviews with participants from nine street bands. Interviews were fully confidential and lasted approximately one hour, with current and former members of the bands. Data has been anonymized, and names of people, bands, and places have been altered. As the genesis of the HONK! scene, New England and its environs has an impressive density of bands, which, when coupled with my longtime participation in the community, made access straightforward. Additionally, the chapter is based on participant observation. My time as a musician in a street band predated my academic focus on HONK! by approximately six years; in other words, my role is in both interpreting and creating this movement, as an organizational theorist and a musician. This piece is written from within the world of street bands, which has enabled me to practice what Wood (2003) has termed “participant comprehension” (in Maeckelbergh, 2011, p. 3). For this project, I started at the center of the spiral and wrote my way outwards – reflecting on my time in my own band, and on hundreds of conversations both within my

354  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations own band and with musicians from other groups. I used those experiences to develop a set of questions to ask others. Though this was undoubtedly an asset in terms of access – as well as in terms of comprehension – those experiences may act as a barrier as well as a benefit. To partially address this barrier, the actual work of the interviews themselves was largely done by two research assistants. Additionally, I had a former bandmate interview me using the same interview schedule that was used for interviews with other interlocutors. I had originally planned to have a research assistant do this work as well, but the bandmate expressed interest in hearing my responses to the questions, so I shared the interview schedule with them and had them conduct the interview instead. This approach had two benefits. First, it permitted me to answer the same questions – systematically – that I had asked my interlocutors. Second, it permitted my interlocutors to hear what I thought about the same questions that I was posing to them, creating a more equitable research experience among us. And yet, the power relations within any democracy (including street band democracies) are shaped by surrounding political and economic systems (Briscoe, 2012; Fletcher, 2004). That is true within these groups: despite their general avowal of radical politics, HONK! bands are a highly self-selected group, within which can be found microcosms of other, larger social structures and patterns of the United States. Both the scene as a whole, and bands in particular, are subject to social processes that weed out those whose politics, musicianship, and identities are not at least synergistic with the broader threads of the movement. While there is a great deal of age diversity, as well as a great deal of diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity within these bands, they tend to be relatively racially homogeneous – and in New England, relatively white. While many bands articulate explicitly anti-racist messages and values, their whiteness suggests that structural and social barriers to racial inclusion are present and persistent. Related, the HONK! scene in general has been grappling with the consequences of the #MeToo moment, and being forced to confront some highly gendered patterns in how it operates, particularly given the correspondingly gendered history of brass music (cf. DeCoste, 2017). At the time of writing, questions of gender representation and inclusion were one of the most salient aspects of debates within the broader community. The decision to select nine bands represented a desire to have a basis for comparison, but sufficient detail within each case to say something substantive about the experience of leadership in this context. Three of the bands were women’s bands, broadly defined (open to women and nonbinary people). Data was coded according to the best practices in qualitative sociology, in which data analysis is understood to be an integral part of data collection (Weston et al., 2001). I conducted a basic content analysis of the resulting transcriptions to identify major conceptual themes. Though these themes are quite general, they permitted me to home in on sociologically important aspects of responses. Secondary readings of data helped me refine those broad themes into more precise codes and categories, permitting construction of a suitable analytic framework that drew from and remained tightly linked to case study data (Eisenhardt, 1989).

RESULTS For groups in this study, the process of sharing leadership and decision-making responsibilities becomes part of the prefigurative political goal: prefiguration in the form of shared leadership

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  355 is a way of both altering and reconstructing the world. Consequently, it assumes both a functional and an interpretive leadership purpose. As one woman describes her group: There are people who take leadership in different areas of the band. But there’s no one or two people in charge or anything like that. So, it’s very horizontally structured, in that leadership and power are kind of distributed across band members. Which is nice. And then, band meetings involve taking votes for even pretty small decisions. It seems like we always take a band vote, and everyone gets one vote. So, that says ‘direct democracy’ to me. It’s participatory democracy. And though I don’t think your vote maybe technically doesn’t count before you become a true member of the band, you’re still invited to participated in the decision-making process from day one, which is really cool.

These processes vary among bands, but broadly understood, they create the context for autonomist leadership. Organizational Practice as Functionalist Leadership Functionalist leadership perspectives consider how organizational work is enacted. In general, bands’ commitments to autonomist and shared leadership are instantiated in organizational practice, but rarely explicitly defined as leadership. In other words, there is not a shared definition of “leadership” in many groups, but rather a set of structures that encourages participation that is generally defined as “running the band.” That, coupled with a lack of hierarchical leader, creates a nexus of participation that becomes “leadership.” For instance, groups often rotate responsibilities for arranging gigs, securing payment, arranging scores and new music, managing conflict, or leading rehearsals among the entire membership, or among a subset of it. One person’s group rotates the responsibility of leading rehearsal on a weekly basis: So, each practice is run by a different band member, and the rotation goes through alphabetically. […] So, like the next person alphabetically […] is the one that’s going to lead practice the next week. With some exceptions. Like, as we get close to really big gigs, sometimes the more experienced members kind of have to run the practice because they know more about how to prepare for these big gigs. But I really enjoy that the practice leadership is rotating, and that no one is discouraged from running practice. I’ve seen a lot of pressure for people that don’t feel so confident to run practice and to take the leap of faith, and take on the challenge. Which I think is really awesome. And it’s great to see that that power is being shared, and that responsibility and privilege is being shared.

Someone else describes how their band handles rehearsals through a similar process, but on an annual rotation: We have a practice leader. So the practice leader does an email every week saying, “What are some songs people want to rehearse this week?” So people in the band email back and say what songs they want to rehearse. Also, we have something called the “A to Z list,” where we just slowly work our way through our whole list of songs and make it to the bottom and start again. So every week we’ll just be working on songs that are sort of on the schedule that we haven’t played in a while. The practice leader is the person who, at rehearsal, they help move things along and tell us what song we’re playing next.

This band also rotates responsibilities for specific musical arrangements on a shorter timeframe. The same respondent continues:

356  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Then there’s song leaders. Song leaders at rehearsal will usually volunteer on the spot to lead a song that we’re practicing, or it might be someone who wanted to practice leading a song before being in a gig situation. Maybe it’s a song that they want to lead in an upcoming gig but they have never really led it, so they need to work through how to lead it. Then there are people who are bringing songs to the band for the first time. Maybe someone in the band just arranged a new song and they’re introducing it to everyone, and they’ll do that.

Collaborative processes are also used to decide on which gigs to accept. Most HONK! bands play a variety of gigs, ranging from protests, to festivals, to community parades, to conventional concerts at indoor or outdoor venues. The process of selecting those gigs is typically based on joint considerations of political implications, compensation, and availability. As one person says: Gigs are handled using this really cool online platform called Gig-o-Matic. And everyone can make their own account on Gig-o, and sign up for which gigs they want to attend. And so, it’s like a green [circle] means “I’m going.” A green outlined circle means “probably.” There’s a question mark that’s like “I’m not sure.” Red circle means “likely not.” And then a solid red circle means “definitely not.” So, you can see all the gigs that are coming up and you can kind of […] pick which ones you’re going to go to […] And you can also see who else is going. So, you can see like, “oh, it looks like we’re pretty light on percussion at that gig. I should probably try to make it there to fill in that gap.” So, it’s very collaborative in that way.

Gig-o-Matic is a widely used online app within the street band community. In this excerpt as well as many others, the Gig-o-Matic app is both a logistical tool, enabling bands to assess their members’ availability, and also a decision-making tool, enabling comments about the gig. It thus becomes a deliberative space as well. That is, the actual technological infrastructure of gig management enables some additional logistical and some interpretive work relative to gig selection. As bands’ reputations have grown, however, many groups report having to become more specific about what sorts of gigs the group will accept, and why. Some bands have a sliding fee scale, ranging from free (for something like a protest) to several thousand dollars (for private events). Even still, conflict often emerges around groups’ political orientations in public. My own band, for instance, has been uninvited from community events for messaging that was perceived as too provocative by event organizers; musicians have been threatened mid-performance because of signage, and sometimes for the music itself. A respondent from another band reported that her group was developing an explicit statement on their website about the groups’ politics as they relate to gigs in attempt to weed out bad-fit gigs upfront: “we’re working towards having language akin to AfroPunk … that [is] really, really clear up front with venues and gig-seeking parties about what we value.” Most of these functional leadership processes are iterative; they emerge and are refined based on need. That is, the organizations are set up to be learning organizations precisely because of the processes that encourage participation and deliberation. One woman recalls how a new band member changed how set lists were created: at a meeting she said, “I find it really frustrating that we don’t get our set lists until the day of [the performance]. I’m still learning all this music and it’s a lot. […] I just want to know what I should be practicing the week before!” I think my response at the meeting was, “Do you want to be in charge of set lists?” […] Now she is the person who – she doesn’t write the set lists, [… but] she gets the information about how long the gig’s going to be. Are we going to be walking or stationary? […]

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  357 Which instrumentation is available? That makes different songs ideal or not ideal to play. And she gathers information and then either gets somebody else […] to write a set list or she writes it herself. But eventually, something gets sent out to the band saying what we’re playing.

Here, an individual request for timely set lists gave birth to a new organizational process. Someone else describes how the specific requirements of activist performances provoked a rethinking of roles within her group. In many protest situations bands are asked to lead chants (for instance “Show me what democracy looks like? This is what democracy looks like!”). This need required that the band reconfigure its responsibilities. Another person recounts: Activist gigs sometimes require a little bit more coordination. We recently made a new role called Tactical Coordinator, and also a new role called Chant Leader. This is because there are gigs where chanting is really important, but chanting can be really tricky to figure out, depending on the nature of the gig. What chants are you going to do? What songs do they fit in? How can we get the people around us to also chant? Is there an organization that we’re parading behind, for example, and are we going to try to coordinate with them with our chanting? Lots of factors like that. And Tactical Coordinator is a role where a person in our band will be in touch with the person leading the action on the day-of. So maybe it’s an action where you’re protesting in front of somewhere and you’re parading around a certain area of the city. So that person would be in touch with the person leading the action, finding out, where are we going to parade? When should we be playing music? When should we stop playing music?

This band created a shared/rotating role to serve the activist and protest needs of the group and the public in this context. Some leadership responsibilities, instead of rotating, belong to the whole group all the time. These sorts of systems mean that everyone is responsible for each other continuously, rather than each person performing a discrete task on a rotating or ad hoc basis. One woman, for instance, reflects on a new system of hand signals that her band developed to communicate with each other when music is too loud or when speech is otherwise impossible. She recounts how these practices are designed to ensure people’s safety while performing – safety being both a political commitment, and a practical one: We’ve developed hand signals for moments when there are issues either while we’re playing or after a show when it’s hard to use your words for logistical reasons. And on our most recent tour they came in really useful when we had some issues. [On this] past tour [… there] was a person, who [… was not well, who] rushed the band during a song. They came into […] me in a way that I knew – having played for so long – meant they weren’t just a bro being a jerk. And so one of our motions is this [indicates slicing across her throat], which means “cut the song.” We actually finished the song, but right when it was done I did that, which meant that Garrett3 took his tuba off, Mark took his snare off, people got kind of ready and so I just said loudly, “That person needs to go.” […] And we had murmuring support from the audience. But while that was happening, the person rushed again and people had their instruments up, which meant they were able to contain him and get him out. […] So that worked really well.

The concern with safety is both a practical and a political commitment, when groups play so frequently in non-commodified spaces (without, for instance, security staff). This group also considered adopting a buddy system, wherein two bandmates are responsible for each other



3

All names are pseudonyms.

358  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations during shows, looking after each other as part of a shared (political) commitment to wellbeing during performances and with a particular attention to the gendered dynamics of performances. In both of these illustrations, a collaboratively developed organizational practice emerges to meet the functional needs of the group. That is, the responsibility for ending a song due to safety issues, or for ensuring group safety through a buddy system, is shared on a continuous basis. These sorts of processes are distinct in that they are an ongoing, collective responsibility rather than a hierarchical or commodified one. The point here is that a great deal of intricate – and emergent – organizational practice is what enables participation and autonomist leadership, especially here, in its functional form. Having, for instance, a Chant Leader – a job that is shared depending on the gig, the day, or the specific type of activist gig – meets a need, and its rotating nature is designed to encourage participation from many. It both meets the group’s practical needs for coordination, and is based on the political principles of participation of both the audience and the band members themselves. Partly because of this though, bands tend to struggle with what interlocutors delicately term “personalities” – which becomes a proxy word in conversations about leadership and power. Leaderless groups still always have leaders to some extent, and nor are they free from the effects of power structures that exist elsewhere in the world. For the most part, bands try to solve those problems by building more inclusive structures, and in many ways seem to explicitly avoid talking about leadership in the context of conflict – as though even naming it would itself invite in some sort of hierarchy. Rather, people describe leadership as emerging in the form of strong voices or confidence. One man says: I think leadership shows up in the way that certain people have more assertive personalities. Partly it’s a function of people who have been in the band longer than others. Partly it’s the function of people who are just more confident in expressing themselves and in taking charge. For me, taking a leadership role is [something] I’m not entirely comfortable with it. I think sometimes it shows, but I try to “fake it until I make it,” as it were, but there are definitely people in our band in particular who are […] more reserved, there are some people who are more forthcoming and assertive and kind of naturally gravitate towards taking a leadership role.

The “more assertive personalities” within groups are often white, and often male – following a long-entrenched social pattern of “who is more confident expressing themselves and taking charge,” and the ways in which they do so. When explicitly asked what makes a leader, most respondents refer to the ability and willingness to meet the functional needs of the group. However, the lack of explicit discussion about what leadership is and who assumes it in an ostensibly leaderless space, can muffle a group’s ability or willingness to talk about these patterns, creating a perverse sort of organizational gender- and color-blindness. One man reflects on the ways that these unseen patterns emerge for his group: I mean I think part of the problem is that we haven’t – like, this conversation about decision making and leadership has mostly happened not explicitly. So, it hasn’t been necessarily part of the overt conversation. It’s definitely been part of the conversations afterwards with people as we, like, process [conflict].

There is a widespread understanding among interlocutors that doing things that need doing – often proactively – makes a leader, suggesting that people see “leadership” largely through

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  359 a functionalist lens. But discussing it sits uneasily with these bands’ explicit commitment to leaderlessness, producing, as the respondent above suggested, “conversations about decision-making and leadership [that] happe[n] not explicitly.” In general, women’s bands in this dataset are less explicit about being democratic and autonomist, but communication, transparency, and friendship within the group – processes that undergird autonomist leadership – are both more prevalent and subtler. All-gender bands seem to need to talk about leaderlessness more frequently as an explicit part of their political commitments. One woman cites the lack of democratic leadership in a previous band as an impetus to co-found a new band, which was ultimately built as a women’s-only space. She recalls: I mean honestly, I think part of the problem was that [my former] band was run by or founded by a dude. The leadership was sort more – well, he comes out as more of a dictator. But I don’t know, we quit fighting with that, and we didn’t feel very heard when we opposed him.

This experience – of feeling unheard when she posed alternative views – influenced the formation of this woman’s new band. She continues: [In our new band] we welcome everyone to put their feedback there on what [is]n’t working and how you’re not just posting feedback, but you’re posting solutions too. Then from there we formed a committee to go through the feedback and to make actionable items and make improvements of the things that people were not feeling great about. So that’s all a work in progress right now … [our band] definitely leaned – and we still do – towards really very communicative or very open.

These findings dovetail with a lot of what we know about women’s organizing spaces (cf. Rosener, 2011), suggesting that these interpersonal autonomist politics are still conditioned, and to an extent limited by, other power dynamics – in this example, by gender. Shared Responsibility as Interpretive Leadership In addition to organizational practice serving as functionalist leadership, autonomist leadership in street bands is often able to fulfill a role of interpretive leadership as well. This is because: (a) the fact of the shared responsibilities serves, itself, an interpretive function, and shared responsibilities are means to develop shared values, and (b) the musical link to the city and the streets is, itself, a part of the interpretive frame. First, the idea that participation and inclusion are such prominent themes, and the expectation that everyone is supposed to participate in managing their band, automatically does significant interpretive work. The group processes themselves – of rotating responsibilities, of collective decision-making – continually express and reinforce values of democracy and participation. Related, that groups continuously adhere to, iterate, and develop organizational processes reinforces values of adaptability and group learning. A crucial piece of this, however, is a system of shared values. For many groups, those shared values are intentionally explicated as the band makes decisions, and are part of the framework through which participants make sense of their experiences. In other words, talking about group values – including the “why” of organizational processes – is the interpretive work. There are many examples of this throughout the data. A focus on equitable gender representation, for instance (in conflict resolution, or among those taking musical solos during

360  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations performances), is part of the interpretive framework that values gender representation, and emerges in many bands. One woman says: Our band makes a very conscious effort to encourage women to step up and lead more. Lead more gigs, and take on more roles. Also, we try to keep in mind age and gender balance on the Issue Resolution Committee.

This focus on gender emerges repeatedly; another person comments on the representation of musicians taking solos: Something that [a bandmate once] brought up was, ‘Hey, no women took any solos while we were performing.’ I never thought of it that way myself. It’s like ‘people just step up and take solos!,’ but I never thought of ‘we have a lot of women in this band and they deserve to have as much out-front attention as the men do.’ But it’s something that just didn’t occur to me. (Kallman, 2020a, p. 120)

In this band, those who were feeling confident to take solos had historically “just stepped up” to do so during a break in the music; they were largely male. In response to the conversation about solos, the group began to intentionally identify soloists prior to performances, rather than having them come forward spontaneously. This enabled it to foster more gender balance during performances. Another respondent describes how the fact of being a women’s focused band changes the dynamic of interaction within the group itself: I do [think being a women’s band affects how we work]. And again, I think part of it is the safe space of like, we’re not trying to compete with … I don’t want to say that my other band is full of mansplainers, but there are definitely a few. So I think the way that we communicate is a little bit different. Like again, there’s another bandmate that I know is much quieter in our [mixed gender band]. And she’s much more open here, in ours. In fact, most of the people (there’s four of us who are in [several] bands), and I’ve definitely noticed we have different communication patterns in each of those bands. I think that we feel more empowered [here].

In this excerpt, the framework of “women’s band” helps draw a distinction between a collaborative space, juxtaposing it against an environment of “mansplaining.” That is, the framing of the group as a women’s space in itself does some interpretive work. Another person reflects on how choice of gigs demonstrates an expression of political values: Most of the HONK! bands will play at different queer events. We have a really big queer scene, LGBTQ [here]. So we’ll often play at the official Pride Parade. There’s another kind of parade/ demonstration called QueerBlitz. We’ll play at that. And so we’re amplifying voices, and some of us are queer, so we’re sort of doing double duty there. Representation matters. […] I do think that HONK! has a positive effect on politics, that it amplifies voices. It fosters a sense of inclusion.

Here, the choice of gigs (which is a collective decision) is important: playing at a queer event is understood as “representation” and “amplifying voice.” Talking collectively about what decisions mean, and figuring out a way to handle them as a group, emerged in the data as a critical part of sensemaking and framing. Additionally, framing brass music as deeply democratic, and playing in the streets as an act of liberation, is an interpretive frame that also orients group decision-making. This interpretive orientation emerges, in part, from a complex ethos about what music is, who it is for, and what it does. Part of that ethos within the HONK! community is that playing brass instruments

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  361 does not require amplification, which enables musicians to mix with their audience and create a shared and participatory experience. Part of it, for many bands, is a commitment to playing in the streets at least some of the time, bringing music outside of both systems of capitalist exchange, and offering a musical disruption in an unexpected place. HONK! musicians have been known to play while sitting in trees, on bridges, in alleys, in malls, or on boats or atop retaining walls. Most bands have had experiences with police that object to unsanctioned public performances, even apart from protest environments. One person says: [Our] band was partly founded with the idea that a mobile project that wasn’t tied to a bunch of gear would be really cool, because then it could be a band that would play anywhere. And that’s a pretty awesome concept. So we never play with mics or there are no instruments that would require any kind of gear like that.

As much as the groups’ orientations themselves act as framing devices, when group values are not explicated or processed collectively, the interpretive foundation of autonomist leadership is weakened. In other words, autonomist leadership falters when groups fail to create a shared interpretation or shared understanding of what is happening and why, implying a need for incorporating reflexive processes within the organizing itself. For instance, one person described the conflict about her band’s identity, attributing it as emerging from different values. This particular band – let’s call them Pandemonio Platino – experienced a period of profound interpersonal conflict, and this respondent attributes that conflict to values that went unarticulated and unexpressed. Ironically, values were particularly difficult to talk about because of the group’s commitment to being leaderless. In other words, being leaderless in this case begat confusion, because nobody wanted to start the conversation about sensemaking. This conflict was about a fundamental piece of the group’s identity, and about how they wanted to show up in the world. Pandemonio Platino had debated at length what, in the words of this respondent, “it means to actually be an activist street band, and not just a political marching band that shows up to things. Some people were like, ‘Oh, I don’t think we want to do that’. […] And a few of us were like, ‘oh’. Because they were like, ‘We want to be a community band that shows up and has political leanings’.” Ultimately, this disagreement produced a great deal of upheaval in her group. Reflecting on the conflict several years later, this respondent continues: I think that there was an assumption [among members of the group] that we were all on the same page, and we never were. […] We all thought the other person knew what we were doing was the same thing that we thought we were doing. In the end, I think we all had really different opinions about [what we were each doing].

For Pandemonio Platino, self-definition (are we an activist band, or are we a community band with political leanings?) is interpretive work. The answer to that question defines, in turn, the organizational processes: an activist band and a community band may approach tasks, delegation, gigs, and even money very differently. Correspondingly, conflict in that interpretation spelled conflict for the group, and sensemaking is impeded when definitions of what people are doing and why diverge. Another person from Pandemonio Platino reflects: I think things are less contentious when you have less [sic] competing values at stake. You know, because people value different things: our band’s really multi-faceted mission of, like, making good

362  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations music and activism. There’s just a lot more value stuff that you have to figure out […] I actually really like the concept of the [organizational] structure we had. And I think it can be used really well to like, to handle contention. But I think what that takes is everyone really understanding the structure and how to use it and like, you know, building some awareness about not just the conversation, but like the meta-conversation.

While Pandemonio Platino’s illustration was striking, this theme showed up repeatedly in the data. In fact, the most common account of conflict that emerged within data analysis was around issues of interpretation and sensemaking. However, the themes are interlinked: good functional leadership in a group is based on good interpretive leadership; without a shared interpretation of what is happening and why, functional leadership becomes difficult or impossible. This is as true in autonomist situations as in hierarchical ones. By the same token, respondents report that tackling issues within the committed space of their bands can be energizing for their engagement with other contexts. One person reports: The band is a microcosm of the way we want the world to be, or imagine the world might be. And I think that’s a thing that, at least for me, and I think for others too, it makes us all continue to commit to it, and commit to making it better. Because there’s some hope in there that maybe the world could be this way, we could take care of each other and have fun and do hard things and have hard experiences, but also come out of those feeling bonded.

This final excerpt alludes to the trust – in addition to the political commitment – that can be a sufficiently strong foundations for bands to undertake difficult internal work.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS I have shown that autonomist leadership works, in this case, through ideological or value-oriented organizational structures and practices. While those practices are non-hierarchical, they are deeply complex and durable. What’s more, their ideological and interpretive basis is what makes them strong. In these spaces, organizational practices that are built on shared values can provide a nexus of participation that serves the purposes of both functional and interpretive leadership. Indeed, without those practices or those shared values, the foundation of autonomist leadership falters. These processes are somewhat unique; many organizational initiatives to forge shared values frequently fail to realize them because they are exercises in indoctrination rather than being fundamentally participatory (cf. Kallman, 2020b). This research suggests that bands can invite organizational change that more genuinely incorporates more equality of perspective – as long as those conversations are held explicitly. It may also be that, because these groups share political values to begin with, processes of sensemaking and organization-building are easier. This finding dovetails with other work arguing that effective coordination of shared leadership also requires cognitive and behavioral coordination, meaning that people must continuously develop shared understandings of what they’re doing and why (Burke et al., 2002; Nordbäck and Espinosa, 2019). Shared understanding is crucial for effective group work. What’s more, we see here that autonomist leadership can also enable a great deal of organizational learning, but that it happens largely through those shared commitments and values. Bands are committed to participation and inclusion, which means that, by default, when the participation yields a new need, the organization is likely to take it on (as imperfect as the

Autonomist leadership and organizational practice in leaderless street bands  363 execution frequently is). This as well is consistent with limited previous research showing that shared leadership promotes internal adaptability (Burke et al., 2002). More than that, though, the social processes supporting autonomist leadership are a kind of social-relational ideal that support learning and (at least in principle) positive organizational change (see also Marsick and Watkins, 1999). This as well is consistent with the literature (Bass, 2000; Bass and Riggio, 2006). It bears reiterating, however, that autonomist leadership differs from shared leadership in the salience of political and ideological values. Autonomist leadership is distinguished from other forms of shared leadership in political principle. In this case, autonomist leadership structures imply a deep critique of hierarchy, often capitalism, cities, and (in this case study) public space. Prefiguration is a defining factor of bands’ group processes, which is not an assumption that can be safely made about other environments. In some ways, group conflict over “what we’re doing and why” is a conflict about shared cognition, which the literature has recognized as relevant across many environments (Burke et al., 2002; van Ginkel and van Knippenberg, 2012; Tindale et al., 2004). However, the prefigurative political commitments that scaffold street bands’ group process meaningfully differentiate them from other models of shared leadership. Autonomist leadership is deeply principled. Specifically here, we see that bands value inclusion and participation and that these values inform how they make decisions. But they also value music, and being a disruptive presence within cities and public space. Their commitment to playing in the streets, to playing non-amplified brass music, and to public performance, is a significant component of both how and why they operate as they do. For example: the need for Chant Leaders only emerges because groups play at protests. This work also underscores how alternative visions of leadership (including various forms of anarchy) are highly organized rather than chaotic; it is precisely these intricate group processes that enable leaderlessness in a conventional sense. More specifically, this research challenges the idea that autonomist leadership is sporadic or unenduring. While specific instances of persons leading (as in the case of a single practice, chants at a gig, and the like) may themselves be sporadic or unenduring, such instances are undergirded by a semi-formal set of prefigurative systems that are both durable and complex. Finally, and despite this somewhat rosy assessment of the clearly principled approach to collective leadership that HONK! bands evidence, it is also clear that such principles have limits. Identities – and the interlinked power relations that create them – shape leadership and group process in every context. Street bands (like every other collective) exist in a society structured powerfully by inequality of various sorts. These group processes – participatory as bands may intend for themselves to be – are contoured by power relation(ship)s that strongly condition who joins, who feels comfortable, and why. This is particularly apparent in the gender and racial dynamics of the groups. In general, organizations are racialized and gendered (Acker, 1990; Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Kallman, 2019; Ray, 2019; Seamster and Ray, 2017), and while autonomist leadership may create more dynamic and fluid environments with more opportunity for participation, it by no means ensures that such groups are anti-racist or wholly inclusive of women. This research suggests, furthermore, that although there is growing recognition that leadership is about creating the conditions where collective learning can occur, such learning is contoured by who is a part of the collective: their perspectives, experiences, power relationships, and identities. In other words, social change cannot emerge entirely through a politics beyond the state.

364  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations And while the shift towards collective learning is significant and highlights a need to expand individual skills and characteristics (for instance, self-awareness), it also evidences a need in such groups to acquire new skills related to dismantle systemic oppressions (specifically here, entrenched gendered and racialized power) that are present within a given group. Although such groups envision and enact autonomist leadership as a political project, more work is needed to both understand and support conditions of collective learning in the face of systemic inequities.

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20. Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment Simon I. Singer and Stuti S. Kokkalera

INTRODUCTION All organizations have objectives, such as making money if profit oriented, or if not, meeting a host of human service-oriented goals. Criminal justice is in the business of upholding the law by identifying, prosecuting, and punishing. The means to do so takes the form of state agencies that are universal to all modern-day societies. Police, prosecutors, and courts all have their ways of identifying, arresting, charging, and sentencing. These may be seen as decision-making systems that operate within a specific field of knowledge and action (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012). For those sentenced to prison, correctional officials and their subsequent decision-making powers await them. Our focus is on the discretionary release practices of state correctional systems in the United States to illustrate the social organizational aspects of parole. We draw on research we have conducted on the cases of parole eligible juvenile lifers. The status of a juvenile lifer has not always been there and is a good illustration of how legal labels like juvenile offender as opposed to juvenile delinquent become institutionalized. The institutionalized life of a juvenile lifer begins the moment they are judged to be criminally responsible for a crime that makes them eligible for adult maximum punishment, where retributory and incapacitative objectives of an adult life sentence are applied. But of late, the process of identifying and labeling juveniles as deserving of the maximum adult punishment has come against a new set of legal concerns. These concerns are based on a series of Supreme Court decisions that call for a “meaningful opportunity for release” that recognizes the adolescence of youth facing the adult maximum of life. That meaningful opportunity should not only occur at time of sentencing (Miller v. Alabama, 2012), but also be made available to juveniles previously sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, through resentencing or parole board hearings (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016). But what is meaningful in the mindset of a state parole board may not be meaningful to juvenile justice advocates who have called for a specific recognition of adolescence even in the most serious of criminal cases (Bell, 2019; Caldwell, 2016; Russell, 2014, 2016). We begin by relating aspects of organizational theory that we see as relevant to understanding the institutionalized context of parole board decision-making. Specifically, we follow Zucker’s (1977, p. 728) recommendation to not just look at the structure of institutions, but how structures produce processes of what is and what then becomes a “taken-for-granted” part of organizational life. The taken-for-granted we refer to as the 3Rs of a parole board hearing, which require a candidate to express Remorse, admit full Responsibility and provide evidence of Redemption. As we illustrate in the case of Chris R, who received multiple life sentences for crimes committed at age 14, full compliance with the 3Rs is not necessarily a ticket to parole. 367

368  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The process of deciding may be focused exclusively on the perceived severity of the offense, precluding consideration of a candidate’s age at time of offense and rehabilitative efforts. We conclude that like other realms of organizational life, the process for a segment of cases may be viewed as more ceremonial than real in expressing a parole board’s autonomous decision-making powers. The decision to deny an eligible candidate’s parole is more tightly coupled to the sentencing offense than to consideration of the candidate’s adolescence at time of offense. Our conclusion further highlights how a juvenile lifer’s lesser culpability and rehabilitative efforts can be better recognized through comparative organizational analyses of state discretionary release practices.

THEORIZING PAROLE As noted, parole is a field of decision-making that exists within the larger system of criminal justice. It exists within layers of status-making decisions that dictate who shall be released. By the time a parole candidate appears before the parole board, several decisions have been made in earlier stages of the criminal justice system to produce a case file. For juvenile lifers, whose status has been determined by one set of decision makers after another, the case file can be especially thick. For instance, a criminal court conviction would not be possible if the decision had not been made by prosecutors to charge the juvenile in criminal court instead of juvenile court. In states that require judicial waiver, a juvenile court must make the decision. Fast forwarding to the decision to convict and to sentence a juvenile to life means that decision-making will be in the hands of correctional officials. Decisions will be recorded as to whether an infraction was committed, i.e., a violation or offense while incarcerated. There are programming and job performance decisions as well that all become part of an incarcerated individual’s case file. All these correctional system decision-making bodies exist on the grounds of what has already been decided in not only identifying a minimum and maximum sentence, but also in typifying the incarcerated. No juvenile is convicted in criminal court for a non-serious offense. To receive the penalty of life, a juvenile must have committed a violent offense. To repeat, all these programs, units, and divisions within a state system of corrections exist as a system within the larger system of criminal justice. The complexity in the subsystems of criminal justice system represents the bureaucratic as defined by Max Weber (1946). For Weber, the enabling force of bureaucracies resides in their administrative capacities “to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret” and by hiding their “knowledge and actions from criticism” (Weber, 1946, p. 233). The least visible aspects of organizational life exist within the discretionary release practices of state parole boards. Like other organizational black boxes, there is no legal requirement for state parole boards to reveal their deliberations. In only a few states are hearings transcribed (e.g., California). Access to a parole board hearing is generally quite limited. There is no one identifiable board member who can be considered responsible for a decision since decisions are usually made by majority vote. Due process requirements and formal avenues for appeal, as is the case for criminal court, do not typically exist. Still as the next section reveals, state discretionary release practices along with their stated objectives have shifted over time. Like other modern-day institutions, best practices have become homogenized (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991).

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  369 Bureaucratization emerges “out of the structuration” as DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 147) relate to minimize uncertainty. The point is particularly relevant in that minimizing the risk of a parole candidate committing another horrific crime is of utmost concern. In the case of our juvenile lifer subjects, the horrific in their offense is juxtaposed with the fact that they were adolescents at the time of their offense. Of late that fact of adolescence has been recognized in a series of US Supreme Court decisions. Our point is that structuration is an ongoing process. Institutional structures are subject to modification based on new sources of information, events such as pandemics, and for the subject population of juvenile lifers – Supreme Court rulings that recognize their adolescence. But to know how much of a state’s discretionary release practices is a product of the times requires a consideration of the historical. While parole initially emerged in the early part of the twentieth century with a focus on the rehabilitative, it has of late been impacted by determinate sentencing, three-strikes, and truth-in-sentencing legislation. A few states have even abolished parole, displacing the decision to release onto correctional officials and commutation boards (Reitz and Rhine, 2020). In those states that retained parole, discretionary release is supposed to be based on legislative and administrative guidelines. Of late, these guidelines require parole boards to consider the nature of the offense, as defined by its seriousness (Ruhland et al., 2017; Simon, 1993). So, one way to view this loosening of parole’s initial rehabilitative focus is to consider how incapacitative and retributive objectives continue to dominate. As we will detail in the case of a juvenile lifer subject, the parole board’s decision-making processes reflects little in the way of autonomous decision-making. There is the play of a parole board hearing which we identify in three acts that we refer to as the 3Rs, and then there is the case file with details of a horrific offense to have produced the juvenile’s life sentence. The parole board hearing operates as a space where the rehabilitative becomes secondary to the sentencing offense, and decision-making is tightly coupled with earlier prosecutorial charging and judicial decisions. In the next section, we reveal how the once autonomous discretionary release decision-making powers of a parole board with its rehabilitative focus became more in line with incapacitative and retributive sentencing objectives.

AN AGENCY CALLED PAROLE The term “parole” is derived from the French language meaning “spoken word” and implies taking someone at their word that they will do well post-release from prison (Armstrong and Durnescu, 2017). In England, parole was introduced in pre-industrial times and referred to generally as “probation-pass,” “ticket-of-leave”, and “license” (McCafferty and Travis III, 2014; Witmer, 1927). In the 1840s, a “mark system” was developed in Australia where prisoners were released by earning “marks” for good behavior and denied release if they lost marks for bad behavior (Morris, 2001; Rubin, 2018). The “mark system” would influence the development of parole as its own agency including in the US (Rubin, 2018), though exact procedures vary across countries (Dunkel, 2014). For instance, in Denmark, parole is a “regular element” of any sentence with low rejection rates (Oleson and Storgaard, 2017). On the other hand, in Scotland, parole can be mandatory release for some sentences or a discretionary decision in other cases following which individuals are “on license” under the supervision of a social worker (Schinkel, 2017).

370  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations In the US, parole as a system of discretionary release could not exist if not for the creation of penitentiaries as places of imprisonment. The early nineteenth-century reformers favored a form of imprisonment that was conducive to doing penitence, enabling a type of religiously rooted rehabilitative ideal. The Eastern Penitentiary initially advocated complete isolation, but as a model soon fell out of favor due to its high cost and the fact that a segment of the incarcerated showed signs of severe mental health issues, more so than when first admitted (Witmer, 1925). In contrast, the Auburn System in New York was introduced as a congregate prison based on doctrines of “separation, obedience and labor” (Rothman, 1990, p. 106). The congregate prison system was less expensive to administer, minimizing cost to the point where the prison could act as a profit-making factory that could freely exploit inmate labor (Simon, 1993). Yet, concerns emerged early on about the effectiveness of the penitentiary as a place of rehabilitation. Issues of overcrowding, violence, abuse, and lack of rehabilitative programs would lead to calls for shortening sentencing time (Rubin, 2018; Witmer, 1925). A system of pardons and commutations was introduced as one possible way to reduce prison overcrowding. But these options were limited, so states began to institute sentences that were less determinate (Witmer, 1925, 1927). By the latter part of the nineteenth century, indeterminate sentencing was seen as the preferred method for making punishment more effective (Witmer, 1925). Effectiveness was defined in terms of a rehabilitative ideal. The indeterminate sentencing scheme fit a medical model approach to imprisonment; sentenced individuals would serve just the amount of time that was deemed necessary for judgments to be made that they were sufficiently rehabilitated (Rubin, 2018). Advocates of the rehabilitative ideal were defined as progressives who believed that government institutions could make a difference in the lives of the least fortunate. The penitentiary, the House of Refuge, and then the juvenile court along with probation and parole were part of a progressive agenda that not only operated with the rehabilitative ideal in mind, but also with the organizational practicalities of an industrial society on the move (Schlossman, 1977). The rehabilitative ideal was reflected in the fact that the juvenile court could not exist without probation as a dispositional option, and similarly the prison as a correctional institution without parole. The initial experiment seemed to work. Juvenile courts expanded to every state and the rehabilitative ideal extended to probation and parole as the key to community treatment. But community treatment was another term for controlling the formerly incarcerated through a system of supervision. Community supervision had the advantage of significantly reducing the cost of incarceration. Fewer guards would be needed to maintain order, and the incarcerated would need to prove themselves by dutifully laboring in assigned prison jobs (Rhine, 2012). The possibility of parole provided the incarcerated an incentive to redeem themselves and avoid the maximum sentence (Ball, 2011). Initially, parole relied heavily on the discretion of correctional officials to make highly subjective decisions (Tonry, 1995). Most notably decisions to release fell along race, social class, educational, and religious lines. In response, states shifted the authority to those outside of correctional institutions, giving rise to parole boards (Witmer, 1925). Parole boards did not operate in isolation because sentencing statutes defined when parole boards could decide release. Correctional reports citing good behavior, efforts to program well, no violations, and no new offenses were requirements for granting parole (Hier, 1973).

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  371 By 1942, all states and the federal government had instituted a system of parole (Rhine, 2012). The motives for introducing parole varied, where parole could be viewed as a humanitarian offering in the form of sentence mitigation; as a reward to control in-prison behaviors; an economic incentive for states since street supervision is much less costly; and for reformers, the rehabilitative ideals of parole enabled supervised reentry instead of simply releasing the convicted (Newman, 1972). The organizational arm of parole boards would also extend into the community by establishing conditions for parole supervision (Reitz and Rhine, 2020). The task of supervision was assigned to the newly created position of a parole officer, where community treatment would become synonymous with community control (Rudes, 2012). In the later part of the twentieth century, a lengthy period of heightened concern about crime emerged – not just about crime generally, but violent juvenile crime specifically. The legislative response was swift and emphasized policies that were “tough on crime” (Hagan, 2010; Singer, 1996). The get-tough response was rooted in a rationality that treatment was ineffective, culminating with the political misuse of Robert Martinson’s (1974) widely cited article that nothing works in correctional programming. Media, policymakers, and legislatures increasingly questioned rehabilitative ideals of correctional agencies. James Q. Wilson (1975) and Ernest Van den Haag (1975) would emphasize the deterrent value of punishment. Determinate sentencing was presented as a solution to the arbitrary decision-making of parole boards (Dharmapala et al., 2010), resulting in a penological shift from the rehabilitative towards the retributive as well as the incapacitative. Truth-in-sentencing and three-strikes laws reflected more of the incapacitative part of get-tough sentencing laws. In states where parole was eliminated as a formal agency, discretionary release decisions often shifted to a commutation board. In states that continued to offer parole, legislative guidelines emphasized the nature or the seriousness of the offense as a reason to deny parole (Reitz and Rhine, 2020; Ruhland et al., 2017). Along with limits being placed on parole boards, newly created rationalities emerged – ones that focused on assessing risk and surveillance (Rhine, 2012). The new penology became one of risk management (Feeley and Simon, 1992; Simon, 1993). State parole statutes explicitly required parole boards to release candidates that were deemed as the least likely to reoffend. Several states’ parole practices that relied on data driven risk assessment tools further complicated parole board impressions of a candidate’s suitability for release (Isard, 2017). An added criticism of risk assessment tools is the “serious possibility of race and social class biases in their design and administration” (Rhine et al., 2017, p. 281). The saliency given to prior legal system involvement in actuarial tools reveals a bias against racial minorities, where risk becomes a proxy for race (Harcourt, 2015). New penology produced more of a law enforcement perspective to emphasize surveillance and a managerial focus on risk. Embedded in the parole process as well is the traditional social work function (Lynch, 1999; Petersilia, 2014). Conditions of parole today not only focus on avoiding new crimes, but can be more specific such as securing employment, non-consumption of alcohol or drugs, and locating housing prior to release (Travis III and Stacy, 2010). As Lynch (1999) notes in her ethnographic study of parole officers, negotiating successful reentry post-incarceration is not solely based on presentation of risk. Parole officers may have adopted a law enforcement approach in some ways, but their assumptions of parolee behavior are based on individualized assessments. In summarizing the nature of parole supervision, Reitz

372  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations and Rhine (2020, p. 290) point out that “rehabilitative efforts are maintained within a web of punitive regulation,” one that begins with a decision made by parole boards. Extending Parole to Juveniles In 1899, the first juvenile court was established with the main goal of “saving children” through rehabilitation (Curtis, 1976). Over the next few decades, juvenile courts emerged across the country in conjunction with newly created legal avenues for controlling youth. Nearly all juvenile courts instituted a form of “waiver” which allowed youths to be prosecuted and sentenced as adults. Initially, decisions to waive juvenile court jurisdiction were reserved for the most serious cases involving older youth (Bishop and Feld, 2014). Critics of judicial waiver criticized it as arbitrary because of the wide latitude given to juvenile court judges in deciding who could be transferred (Feld, 2001). The Supreme Court intervened in Kent v. U.S. (1966) and specified certain due process rights as one way to mitigate the unpredictability in waiver decisions. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, youth violence in inner city neighborhoods received an extraordinary amount of attention from the media (Bishop and Feld, 2014). At the same time, the center cities were becoming more segregated as suburbanization would facilitate white flight. Adolescents charged with violent felonies were deemed as superpredators – more often if they were kids of color and resided in the impoverished sections of the inner city. The “tough on crime” response raised a competing conception of juvenile justice and a juvenile’s criminal responsibility – one that was based exclusively on the nature of the offense. Increased criminalization produced a criminal justice track of legal labels that no longer referred to adolescents as delinquents but as criminals (Singer, 1996). This criminalization of youthful offending meant that a violent felony would trigger automatic transfers to criminal court, without any juvenile court intervention. Several states introduced statutory exclusion laws that removed the jurisdiction of the juvenile court over specific offenses committed by juveniles, especially those considered to be serious (Rovner, 2016). Direct file laws further shifted the discretion to prosecutorial offices to determine if the crime was serious enough to warrant criminal justice intervention (Zimring, 2010). The expansion of transfer and waiver laws meant that more juveniles would become eligible for adult maximums including life (Arya, 2011; Zimring, 2010). The most draconian was the imposition of mandatory life without parole (LWOP). A series of Supreme Court decisions challenged the prevailing rationality that a segment of juveniles could be sentenced to adult maximums. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Supreme Court banned the imposition of juvenile LWOP sentences for non-homicidal offenses and then two years later, extended the ban to mandatory LWOP sentences for homicide offenses (Miller v. Alabama, 2012), as violative of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. In enabling the possibility of parole when sentencing juveniles, the Supreme Court emphasized an adolescent’s reduced culpability and rehabilitative potential. Graham (2010) emphasized the need for a meaningful opportunity for release. Miller (2012) listed a set of factors that were to be considered in providing a meaningful opportunity. In Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), the Supreme Court reasoned that a meaningful opportunity for release should extend to juveniles already sentenced to LWOP. Graham and Miller left it up to states to choose how they wished to decide the procedures for determining a meaningful opportunity.

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  373 Montgomery also left it to states’ discretion to choose between resentencing and parole board hearings for juveniles previously sentenced to LWOP. Twenty-one states have opted to make juvenile LWOPs immediately eligible for parole once they have served a minimum term, whereas twenty-seven states conduct resentencing proceedings to determine parole eligibility or release based on time served (Kokkalera and Singer, 2019). States that offer parole board hearings are in a position to revisit the structure and processes for determining release for juvenile lifer candidates. Some state parole boards revised statutes and administrative guidelines in response to the Miller decision (Bell, 2019; Kokkalera and Singer, 2019). But the criteria are loosely constructed around the Supreme Court’s general reference to youth factors that mitigate culpability and potential rehabilitation. There remains an ongoing debate to clarify the terms of a meaningful opportunity for release (Binder and Notterman, 2017; Caldwell, 2016; Russell, 2014, 2016). To produce a meaningful opportunity for release, there must be a meaningful review. But it is debatable as to the exact criteria for determining that meaningful review. How much of adolescent’s mitigated culpability and rehabilitative potential should be taken into account is the question. State parole board administrative guidelines avoid being specific about the criteria for release, as previously noted. Appellate courts when confronted with issues of the legality of parole decisions defer to the judgment of parole board members (Newman, 1972). Complexity in parole decision-making is further associated with its reliance on input from multiple players, including victims, prosecutors, and judges (Rhine, 2012). The ability to pick and choose justifying reasons is a defining quality of state discretionary release practices (Ball, 2009; Rhine, 2012). The point being that parole board decision-making is loosely structured to satisfy a variety of organizational concerns and interests. Still there are identifiable sets of institutionalized logics (Thornton et al., 2012), as we detail below and subsequently illustrate in the case of Chris R.

DISCRETIONARY RELEASE PRACTICES As we have repeatedly emphasized, a state parole board’s discretionary release practices are embedded within a complex nexus of decision-making processes. These decision-making processes are located in the narratives contained in a candidate’s case file, which can run into hundreds of pages since they include arrest reports, trial documents, appellate records, correctional staff reports, and treatment records. A parole candidate can also submit their own brief outlining rehabilitative efforts in prison with or without the assistance of counsel. There is variation in how the process is enabled based on time and place (Kokkalera and Singer, 2019). We noted the late twentieth-century shift from the rehabilitative to the incapacitative in a state’s highlighted discretionary release objectives. Some states have abolished discretionary release practices but have retained a form of mandatory parole organized through parole officer agencies. States that have retained parole board hearings can limit who is eligible to appear and their supporters or opposers of release. Parole boards may conduct a hearing inside prison, limiting appearance to the incarcerated candidate. They may also conduct a hearing via video conferencing. In other states, like the one we examine in the next section, a hearing is conducted in a centrally located office outside of prison for candidates who are serving life sentences.

374  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Prior to the hearing, parole board members review the case file summarizing all aspects of a candidate’s life. The hearing itself is a performance taking place within a field of action that has its assigned players. Actors not only include the candidate and parole board members, but also representatives from the media, district attorney’s office, police, courts, and supporters of the candidate. The parole candidate may also be legally represented, and their attorney may hire experts to present testimony. The audience includes all these players but also the larger community that may be interested in seeing who is being released. A parole candidate is advised that there is an ordering to the hearings and that parole boards expect expressions of what we term as the “3Rs” – remorse, responsibility, and redemption. Parole candidates learn the 3Rs of parole like elementary school students learn the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Candidates are expected to express remorse and take full responsibility for their commitment offense. They are further expected to provide evidence that they are sufficiently redeemed. The presentation of the 3Rs must appear credible for the candidate to be viewed as deserving of release. According to Martel (2010, p. 428), discretionary release is then “negotiated partly by playing the parole game, that is actively managing the parole board’s impressions, and participating in the (re)construction of one’s identity as a parolee.” The makeup of the parole board at the time of the hearing matters in influencing whether the primary goal of the hearing is to elicit the situational and rehabilitative needs of candidates, or if the purpose is to reinforce retributive and incapacitative sentencing objectives. Even if parole members are focused on reexamining the commitment offense, the onus is on parole candidates to present a credible version of themselves through appropriate emotional cues, words, and behaviors during the hearing (Lavin-Loucks and Levan, 2015, 2018). Their performance should impress on a narrative of the 3Rs: remorse, responsibility, and redemption. Remorse Parole candidates know that they must display remorse (Maslen, 2015; Rossmanith, 2013). For example, Massachusetts parole board guidelines stipulate that parole candidates are rehabilitated to the point that they appear to be no longer at risk of reoffending and express a “degree of remorse and understanding of harm caused” (Massachusetts Parole Board, 2014, p. 2). Remorse is defined as a “distressing emotion that arises from acceptance of personal responsibility for an act of harm against another person” (Proeve and Tudor, 2010, p. 41). Regret and remorse are often used interchangeably because both require an intention to avoid causing harm in the future (Warr, 2016). However, regret unlike remorse can be felt for morally neutral or morally virtuous actions and for circumstances that are not the consequence of one’s actions (Maslen, 2015). Remorse is expressed for morally negative actions that result in harm to others. Therefore, remorse can be described as deep regret, i.e., the intensity of remorse distinguishes it from regret (Warr, 2016). In other words, remorse might involve regret but regret alone does not imply remorse (Maslen, 2015). A display of remorse can also be described as a “moral performance.” Weisman (2009, p. 66) defines a moral performance as the “showing of remorse in front of an audience where the audience actively shapes the presentation by virtue of its power to credit or discredit, and the crediting or discrediting of this performance contributes to whether the offender is included within or expelled from the moral community.” But, as Rossmanith (2013) points out, treating expressions of remorse as “moral performances” can result in mischaracterizations. It is no

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  375 longer about a candidate’s capacity to identify with the social genre, like the parole board hearing, but the authenticity of an emotional expression of remorse. Biases may be produced towards those who present themselves via prepared statements with assistance of attorneys versus those who are indigent or suffering mental health issues. A greater bias emerges against individuals who generally lack the capacity to articulate remorse in public settings. Prior research on assessments of remorse has found that judges tend to rely on behavioral cues (Smith, 2014). In Zhong and colleagues’ study (2014), some judges explained that they looked for specific behaviors from the defendants such as crying or making eye contact to determine the authenticity of remorse. Parole board members are equally affected by unspoken visuals, like shedding a tear, wiping eyes, or looking away when spoken to. Hawkins’ study (1983, p. 120) of a state parole board hearing found that a display of remorse at best may be perceived as “just words” being said by the parole candidate because it is what is expected, and at worst, “manipulative” where tears and expressive emotions have the opposite intended effect on the parole board. Responsibility Closely associated with a display of remorse is accepting responsibility (Medwed, 2008; Presser, 2003). A good performance is when a parole candidate does not shift their blame or moral responsibility onto others or mitigate culpability (Warr, 2016). Criminal and personal responsibility are assumed by the fact that the parole candidate was already found guilty (Martel, 2010). An appropriate statement of responsibility would be in an “active voice,” as in, “I am responsible for the harm caused to the victim, to the victim’s family and the community.” In contrast, a lack of responsibility may be characterized by a “passive voice” presentation, like, “The crime was committed, and I was involved.” Taking full responsibility involves narrating the reasons for the offense. An inability to relate mindset at the time of the crime can be viewed as indicative of a lack of remorse (Marquez-Lewis et al., 2013). Expecting candidates to categorically accept all recorded facts of crimes that took place years before and under a myriad of circumstances can be discriminatory. Those who are unable to accept all the facts of the crime are viewed as lacking remorse, even if they empathize with victims and have lowered their reoffending risk. Overvaluing the acknowledgment of responsibility produces an “innocent prisoner’s dilemma” where candidates are compelled to admit facts that may not be true (Medwed, 2008). Redemption Accepting responsibility is linked to redemption. The concept of redemption can be traced back to the Judeo-Christian belief in atoning for sin. As noted, the introduction of the penitentiary was to instill repentance, by seeking forgiveness and contemplating the impact of the harm caused (Latessa and Holsinger, 2011). Redemption reflects thoughts and actions that attempt to make good for a committed harm. For parole candidates, proving redemption involves a reconstruction of a criminal identity into a non-criminal one. As Maruna (2001) notes, a positive self-image is necessary to enable desistance from offending – one that produces a coherent narrative of self-transformation. A narrative of redemption shows “insight” into reasons for the offense and is believed to be linked to desistance (Paratore, 2016). A denial may be justified on a candidate’s lack of

376  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations insight, where such insight is tied into a narrative of taking responsibility and showing remorse (Bell, 2019). Thus, the process of identity reconstruction entails understanding the reasons for the crime and capacities to avoid its repetition. A credible narrative of redemption includes a compelling apology. The expanding recognition of victims’ rights has enabled a candidate’s statement of apology as instrumental in proving their path to redemption (Medwed, 2008). During the parole board hearing, it is expected that a candidate will seek forgiveness (Friedman, 1998). An apology narrates deep regret, signaling empathy for the victim, their families and community. An apology encompasses a range of mental states and behaviors beyond “feeling bad” for the crime (Smith, 2014). If a candidate’s expression of redemption appears disingenuous, then self-transformation into a law-abiding individual is deemed as not possible (Weisman, 2009). Credibility can be enhanced by evidence of rehabilitative efforts by means of avoiding disciplinary infractions and engaging in programs and treatment in prison. Parole board members view program involvement as an important marker of redemption, especially if those programs targeted specific criminal behavior, like sex offender treatment programs (Connor, 2016; Paratore, 2016).

REPRESENTING PAROLE Some parole candidates are more attuned to the “game of parole,” while others require assistance in narrating their suitability for release. Candidates can be coached in strategies by in-prison case managers, fellow inmates, and legal counsel (Aviram, 2020; Martel, 2010). In the remaining section, we illustrate the case of Chris R. His transcribed hearing is one of about 100 recorded parole board hearings for 65 juvenile lifer candidates, who had hearings between 2005 and 2012. We also personally observed about 10 juvenile lifer hearings. Because of ongoing research efforts, we prefer to maintain the confidentiality of the state. We draw on our current research, which so far has produced 25 coded and transcribed parole board hearings. Each hearing runs from anywhere between 1 hour and 2.5 hours and averaged about 40 pages of transcribed text. Transcribing, coding, and observing hearings revealed a spectrum of parole candidates whose adolescence is more or less recognized. Closely linked to our coding of when and for whom adolescence is recognized are capacities for the performative. The performative we define in terms of a candidate’s narrative as it revolves on the 3Rs. The case that we highlight is one that falls low along a continuum of adolescence recognized, despite credible narratives of remorse, responsibility, and redemption. This is the case of Chris R who has been denied parole multiple times based primarily on the severity of his sentencing offenses. His concurrent life sentences are for multiple rapes committed as a fourteen-year-old. He would be considered developmentally in early adolescence (Steinberg and Scott, 2003). The Case of Chris R Chris’ hearing and subsequent decision reveals how the 3Rs operate to lead to his denial of parole despite the saliency of the facts that relate to his adolescence. When desegregated bussing was introduced in the mid-1970s, Chris was one of several black students regularly

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  377 bussed to the city. For three years, starting when he was 9 years old, Chris faced mobs of angry white residents, who would throw rocks at his school bus and shout racial epithets. When he turned 12, Chris refused to board the school bus, and subsequently was transferred to his neighborhood school. But Chris was traumatized. He looked back and recalled that he became less interested in attending school, and spent more time hanging out with an older group of youths who were into drugs and petty crimes. Chris at the age of 14 turned into an extremely angry teenager. He acknowledges as a middle-aged adult that he was having trouble controlling his impulses and was not fully conscious of the implications of his actions. It was at this time that Chris committed a string of violent rapes in the city. Soon after, he was convicted and sentenced to ten concurrent life sentences. Expressing remorse At his third parole review hearing in 2012, Chris begins with an apology to his victims, their families, and the impact on the community: I want to say that I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering, and the fear that I have caused Ms. V****, Ms. F******, Ms. B****, Ms. Y***, when I violently raped them. I realized that these women may never recover from the trauma that I have caused them. I also apologize to Mr. G***** for the fear I put him through when I robbed and threatened him at gun point. I’m sorry for the frightening experiences that I must have put all of these people through during my escapes from custody. And I apologize to their friends and families for the suffering and pain that I caused them, and the impact that my actions may have had on their relationships with their loved ones. I’m sorry for the fear and anxiety that I created on the N******* street community at the time of these attacks. And I would also like to apologize to my own family and my community for the dishonor and disappointment that I caused them in attacking these innocent women. I know I can never erase the damage that I have done but I’m truly sorry for the unspeakable pain that I have caused, and I hope that you accept this sincere apology.

Chris’ apology is unconditional, and he does not minimize his actions. His expression of remorse covers all salient points, as expected from parole boards. His apology acknowledges harm caused to each of his victims, their families, and the impact on the community. Chris received legal assistance and is represented by counsel at his hearing, although his attorney is largely silent. Taking responsibility As the hearing progresses following Chris’ apology and his attorney’s opening statement pleading for Chris’ release, parole board members continued their questioning about reasons for the crimes. Before what may be a largely white parole board, he discusses his racial animosity, and how that may have contributed to his crimes. In response to one parole board member, Chris states: I never connected the whole racial aspect, you know of my whole experience with the sexual assaults, the rapes that I committed. But I also knew that at the time I confronted the first victim in her apartment and she was pretty much in fear, begging for her life, you know, I felt that impulse and I felt that control, you know that I had over her at that time and I knew that um … well in my mind, you know, this was a white woman who was pretty much you know just considered off limits to blacks, you know. It was a racial aspect to the crime, and it was also … a very deviousness … to the crimes …

378  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Chris is forthcoming about the motivations behind his crimes, reflecting on the reasons for his rapes. Chris makes no excuse for his crimes and presents himself as taking full responsibility. Reasons take the form of repressed feelings that he had during a time when he felt victimized by the racist hateful words of white adults. He is fully conscious of his role in attacking his victims and when pressed to explain why he committed the crimes, he states that as a child and then as a teenager, he hated white people. His attorney reinforces the point in opening and closing statements that Chris’ lingering racial animosity was due to bussing. Displaying redemption To the parole board, Chris explains that he is no longer the angry 14-year-old that he once was, and that he has matured into a highly responsible adult. His narrative is one of redemption by making good. He explains that part of his redemption is that he has found religion: I think for me the key was my religion. I mean it gave me a moral center. I mean even though I wasn’t acting out violently, I was pretty much relying on techniques and relying on, you know, things that I had learned in the programs to help, you know, avoid or get out of situations. But my religion gave me, it gave me a moral standing, a way I could really conduct myself in a way that I never have to worry about losing my anger, or get angry about things I never have control over, and how to talk to people, how to treat others, how to respect authority, how to comply with rules. It wasn’t until I grasped that, that moral development, that you know, I was able to use, utilize the program skills that I learned.

Chris’ story of redemption is rooted in his religiosity. He presents his rehabilitative efforts which includes involvement in sex offender treatment programs and consistent employment in light of his pursuit of a “moral understanding” through his religious studies. Prior research has also noted that religious conversion can trigger desistance from offending (Eshuys and Smallbone, 2006). Denying Chris Chris is able to present the 3Rs in a version that we view as rather convincing. He was only 14 years of age and would seem to be particularly eligible for mitigation based on his adolescence at time of offense. However, the parole board does not view Chris as a suitable candidate for release, because of the nature of his offenses. The horrific aspects are emphasized during the hearing, as one parole board member states: … these were all stranger rapes which is probably the most … no such thing as a … there is no justifying any crime of this nature. But those particularly, stranger rapes, um … there’s absolutely no … um … no reason … If there is ever a valid reason, that one could point to, to say look, you know, there was some personal motivation, there was a date rape situation, there was a history, there was domestic … there was absolutely no underlying rationale for why someone is targeted … In terms of the number of crimes that you committed, in terms of the um … the type of violence … the random selection of your victims … a random stranger is targeted … that’s pretty scary, that’s pretty frightening. For a community in general.

The seriousness of the crimes is emphasized repeatedly through words like “scary” and “frightening.” Chris is viewed as someone who generated a community’s fear of violence. The randomness of his offenses heightens his perceived blameworthiness, as does his race. But his age, lifestyle, peer dependency, and substance abuse do not mitigate his culpability. The written decision denying release makes little mention of Chris’ expression of the 3Rs:

Contemporizing the social organization of parole: a critical assessment  379 He said that he benefited from sex offender treatment in the 1990s because it caused him to think about his violence and anger, and he started to disclose some of his criminal behavior and “make some progress.” It was during this time that he “admitted that I always hated white people.”

Chris did not discount the racialized context of his crimes, and he relates them in a clear manner particularly when pressed by parole board members. Yet, none of Chris’ reflections are viewed as sufficiently meaningful. Chris’ narrative of remorse, responsibility and redemption are seen as less significant than that which is related as horrific about the offense. The decision statement places in the record his words, “I always hated white people.” The words were stated to be taken as evidence of his rehabilitation; that is, he has developed insight into the reasons for his offense. But they can also be seen out of context to suggest that Chris is too dangerous to release. Not only is a written denial selective of the parole candidate’s words, but also the points raised by parole board members. Chris’ formal designation as a sex offender means he must complete all stages of his sex offender treatment program before he can be released. One parole board member discusses this point during the hearing as a reason for why Chris may not be released. A more nuanced view is expressed during the hearing, relating that a disciplinary infraction in the early years of his incarceration prevented him from completing the treatment program. Chris cannot be transferred to the institution that provides the sex offender treatment program because it is a minimum-security setting. To be eligible, he must first be granted parole. But to grant parole, parole board members must be convinced of the candidate’s rehabilitated self. Though Chris’ case represents one extreme of juvenile life sentences, it shows the choice that parole board members make not to recognize his adolescence, and in turn to lessen culpability and rehabilitative efforts. Race is a factor as well as type of offense. A racialized view of dangerousness in Chris’ case appears related to the fact that the victims were white and lived in affluent neighborhoods far removed from his own. Chris is not alone. For instance, in all states except Michigan, black individuals are more frequently included in sex offender registries than white individuals (Ackerman and Sacks, 2018). African Americans are also significantly more likely to receive LWOP sentences as juveniles especially if their victims were white (Nellis, 2012). As noted, actuarial risk assessment scales have been found to be biased against racial minorities (Rhine et al., 2017; Harcourt, 2015).

CONCLUSION Our intent is to identify elements of organizational structure and decision-making processes that lead to discretionary release. First, we identified those aspects of institutional theory that emphasize parole as a sub-system within the larger field of criminal justice. The system of deciding discretionary release is complex, ambiguous, and contains more than one set of rationalities or institutionalized logics. Parole decision-making is both dependent and independent on other fields of decision-making. Parole can be seen as tightly reproducing the decision-making that led to a juvenile’s life sentence or producing autonomous decision-making that is more closely aligned with its initial focus on evaluating the rehabilitative. The swing between tight and loose coupling with earlier stages of the criminal justice system is rooted in the history of parole. The rehabilitative ideal is still critical to determining release,

380  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations but legislative and administrative guidelines limited the discretionary powers of parole boards. An emphasis on managing reoffending risk emerged to take the form of a new penology – one that is more tightly focused on the sentencing offense along with criminal history. Supreme Court decisions have technically caused the restructuring of discretionary release for juvenile lifers based on the mandate for a meaningful opportunity for release. The justification can be generally divided into a recognition of adolescence that is rooted in a youth’s lesser culpability and rehabilitative efforts. Based on our observations, we identified the parole board hearing as the performative place for exhibiting all that is required to meet the state’s rehabilitative mandate. In the case of Chris, we see the 3Rs as largely ceremonial. The rehabilitative as exemplified by 3Rs is a minimum requirement, but still not reason for release. Instead, Chris’ denial is based on the nature of his crime, as emphasized by parole board member statements of its seriousness in hearing and decision statement. An exclusive focus on the offense is supported by administrative guidelines that emphasize the saliency of the crime irrespective of the candidate’s age at the time of offense. What is meaningful in the form of the 3Rs is more ceremonial than in producing a real shift in how culpability and rehabilitative efforts should be considered. As Chris’ case reveals, the retributive and incapacitative sentencing objectives that led to his life sentence superseded consideration of reasons that may be related to his adolescence. The how and why in decision-making in Chris’ case is a fact that he cannot change, so he like many other juvenile lifers may end up spending their lives incarcerated. In other words, Chris is considered too dangerous to release not because of his behavior in prison as a middle-aged incarcerated adult, or because of his presentation of self in a parole board hearing. Rather he is seen as too dangerous because he has already been identified as a too dangerous adolescent. Applying institutional theories in the historical and contemporary context of parole suggest that the ongoing process in organizations should be continually revisited. This is a fast-moving organizational train, as appeals begin to mount, and states are increasingly forced to recognize the adolescence of their criminally responsible juveniles. A candidate’s capacities to express remorse, take responsibility, and display redemption should also be revisited in the wake of recognition that segments of the incarcerated suffer from intellectual disabilities and various mental illnesses. For parole to be a meaningful process for an eligible population of incarcerated juveniles, discretionary release practices should become less ambiguous and more in line with recognizing adolescence. Events, legislation, and judicial rulings matter in institutionalizing a meaningful opportunity for release not just in the cases of juvenile lifers, but virtually all who are subject to minimum sentences that allow for the possibility of parole.

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21. Professionalization and the politicization of civil society organizations in Sierra Leone Michelle Reddy

INTRODUCTION Though participatory approaches improve upon crises, international humanitarian response in practice hardly collaborates, if at all, with local organizations (Barnett, 2010; IFRC, 2015). International humanitarian organizations point to a lack of technical capacity and the political nature of local organizations – citing a violation of humanitarian neutrality – as reasons not to collaborate with local organizations. Concurrently, expanded professionalism in the nonprofit sector increases demands for performance metrics and specialization (Hwang and Powell, 2009). Professionalization is driven by full-time, paid managers with credentialed expertise integrating private sector practices, such as strategic plans, evaluation, and audits into their everyday work (Hwang and Powell, 2009). Professionalism, therefore, should enhance capacity and therefore cooperation between local and international organizations. However, professionalization of social movements, signaled by the “creation of permanent staff” moves advocacy organizations towards more moderate goals and tactics (Jenkins, 1998, p. 212) such as service delivery. As a consequence, professionalism is argued to depoliticize civil society (Roy, 2016; Vuković, 2015; da Glória Gohn, 2011, 2015; Alvarez, 2009). Professionalism leads to more procedures, formality and centralized decision making, while voluntary associations focusing on advocacy have more member participation (Edwards, 1994). Thus far, most discussion of professionalization of civil society focuses on middle-income countries. However, does professionalization depoliticize civil society in low-income countries dependent on foreign aid, given the importance of contacts and networks in the international aid relationship? In this chapter, I draw upon semi-structured interviews with 54 national and local organizations in Sierra Leone, to examine the extent to which organizational professionalism and politicization correlate with funding during a humanitarian crisis (Ebola). Drawing on Hwang and Powell’s (2009) measures of professionalism, I develop measures for professionalization and politicization of local civil society organizations in Sierra Leone that also may apply to similar contexts. I then examine the extent to which these measures correlate with receiving new international funding during the West Africa Ebola epidemic. I find that while organizational professionalism correlates with new international organization contracts during Ebola, professionalism does not necessarily indicate depoliticization in heavily aid-dependent countries. Defining NGOs and CSOs in West Africa A major challenge for civil society scholars is defining civil society (see, for example, Viterna et al., 2015; Dagher, 2017; Kaldor, 2003; Cox, 1999; Allison, 1996; White, 1994; Mudde, 384

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  385 2003; among others). According to Diamond (1994), civil society is the “realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules” (Diamond, 1994, p. 5). Civil society, by definition, is situated between the state and the market, and is commonly referred to as the “third sector.” Daniel and Neubert (2019) state that in Africa, civil society mostly refers to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and that the majority of these organizations are service providers and not politicized. However, during my pilot study, I found that there were very few organizations specialized in education or health and delivering these services in Sierra Leone. In fact, missing from Daniel and Neubert’s (2019) conceptualization of civil society in Africa are the numerous civil society organizations and community-based organizations. These organizations are likely far more numerous than national NGOs as they exist at the local level and, at least in Sierra Leone, have fewer operational requirements in terms of funding than nationally registered NGOs. I define an NGO as a non-governmental organization operating in a developing country. My research in Sierra Leone indicates that NGOs are usually international or national, whereas local organizations are more commonly referred to as civil society organizations (CSOs) or community-based organizations (CBOs). In Sierra Leone, a local organization needs to have a certain amount of funding and technical capacity, and operate in more than one district, to be considered an NGO.1

PROFESSIONALIZATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SIERRA LEONE Sociological institutionalism emphasizes external environmental influences in shaping organizational structures (Hwang and Powell, 2009; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Organizations often times adopt rational tools and elements from their environment to enhance their legitimacy, regardless of whether or not these tools are efficient in enhancing coordination and control in collective action (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). If the external environment of important funders advocates use of formal management practices, then organizations are more likely to adopt these practices to enhance their legitimacy (Meyer, 1994). As educational access expands, educated and credentialed professionals increasingly manage modern, complex organizations (Meyer, 1977), and ideas and practices related to formal management are more likely to transfer. The expansion of formal organizations led to the rise of a professional class (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Freidson, 1986) to manage these organizations. As these professionals move across organizations, their networks expand as does their exposure to administrative, management, and evaluative norms, facilitating the diffusion of these norms and practices which become taken-for-granted (Khurana, 2007; Hwang and Powell, 2009). Social, political, and economic pressures facilitated the circulation of ideas and practices regarding efficiency, scalability, and performance metrics, from the for-profit sector, into the nonprofit sector (Powell et al., 2006), and therefore from the Global North to the Global South. Despite existing studies of nonprofits in developed countries, limited empirical work exists on the circulation of for-profit management ideas and practices in developing country contexts. However, given weak state capacity to deliver social services and respond to crises,



1

This definition also extends to Guinea, where I also conducted field research.

386  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations further study of the emergence and evolution of the nonprofit sector in developing countries is important. Just as funders of domestic nonprofits in Western countries focus increasingly on outcomes and metrics (see for example Porter and Kramer, 1999), Western funders of third sector organizations in developing countries emphasize similar ideas and practices. However, as Powell et al. (2006) note, nonprofit organizations do not have equal exposure to these ideas and practices, rather, the ideas and practices are mediated through variation in interactions and organizational characteristics, particularly as increasing professionalism leads nonprofit managers to actively seek information. In the West African context, this is more likely achieved in capital cities where domestic NGO managers have more access to governmental and international networks, and may have lived or studied in the West themselves or worked for an international organization. In an exploratory study on planning as strategy in nonprofit organizations, Stone (1989) found that organizational structure reflects “prevailing norms, practices, and beliefs of wider social systems of how organizations work” (Stone, 1989, p. 299). In a later study on the “rationalization of charity,” Hwang and Powell (2009) observed that exposure to planning through interactions among managers was associated with the existence of planning in nonprofits. In addition, Lerch (2017) indicates that the growing professionalization of education development, for example, addresses both the people doing the work (Chabbott and Ramirez, 2000) and the activities of the organizations themselves (Bromley, 2010). On the other hand, Skocpol (2003) notes that professionalization may result in doing for others rather than with them. As noted by Chahim and Prakash (2012), professionalism creates dualism among domestic civil society organizations. In their study of NGOs in Nicaragua, modern professionalized NGOs increasingly seek legitimacy from donors, and grassroots-based organizations continue to draw their legitimacy from citizens (Chahim and Prakash, 2012). Skilled professionals are more able to cultivate relationships with the government and international organizations to advance policy objectives. Similarly, in Bosnia (Vuković, 2015), and in Brazil (da Glória Gohn, 2011), when civil society became depoliticized and professionalized, local and national NGOs focused their outreach on individual citizens rather than social movements, and created relationships with state institutions and public officials. While professionalism enhances technical capacity and reduces politicization in contexts with more state capacity to deliver social services (da Glória Gohn, 2011, 2015; Alvarez, 2009; Roy, 2016; Vuković, 2015), does it reduce politicization in an aid-dependent context? Ebola as a Test As institutions tend to reveal themselves during times of crisis (Mauss, 1916; Burawoy, 1998; Klinenberg, 2003), I take the example of the Ebola crisis to investigate the relationship between international organizations and local organizations, as well as processes within these organizations themselves. Since organizations are the building blocks of larger institutions, particularly in developing countries given the marginalization of the majority of the population from institutions such as schools and hospitals, Ebola surfaced everyday micro and macroprocesses, such as professionalization, among organizations in the poorest region of the world. During my first round of interviews, I noted two main external influences: professionalism and politicization, on social sector development in Sierra Leone. In a second step, I examined

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  387 levels of professionalism and politicization of local and national organizations in Sierra Leone, and whether they received a contract from an international organization during the West Africa Ebola epidemic.

DATA AND METHODS Selection Strategy All of my data are original. Overall, there is a lack of original data, as well as theory, on nonprofits in developing countries (Salamon and Anheier, 1997). Therefore, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with local organizations across Sierra Leone in 2017 and 2018, one year after the official end of the epidemic. My first-round interviews from June–August 2017 serve as a pilot for my second-round interviews, which took place from May–August 2018. All first-round interviews, and most of the second-round interviews in Sierra Leone2 occurred in person so that I could observe the office of the organization. I select only domestic civil society organizations, officially registered with the national or local NGO/CSO governing body, that were founded and managed by nationals, which are

Figure 21.1

Map of field sites

2 If second-round interviews occurred over the phone (approximately 3 organizations), it was because of the rainy season or due to rescheduling due to phone theft.

388  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations widely understudied, particularly outside capital cities. I also selected a town in the interior at the epicenter of the epidemic, Koidu, the district capital of the region bordering the Ebola epicenter. Freetown and Koidu comprise the two “hubs” of international aid and civil society organizations resulting from the peacebuilding process: Koidu (which has been a hub for international aid as an epicenter of the civil war and due to its proximity to the Ebola epicenter), and Freetown, the capital city, where most international NGOs (INGOs) and national NGOs are concentrated. Figure 21.1 shows the location of my field sites, Freetown and Koidu, Sierra Leone, as well as the origin and epicenter of the epidemic, Guéckédou, Guinea. Measures of Organizational Professionalism and Politicization From interviews with 54 civil society organizations in Sierra Leone, I develop measures of professionalism and politicization. In a context of under-development and limited internet and electricity access, I delivered my survey instrument in person during a second round of fieldwork. I then coded my interview data into measures of professionalism and politicization, and the outcome of receiving a new contract during Ebola. I examine organizational professionalism as a measure of local capacity, given the proclivity of professionalized organizations to adopt managerial practices and measurable activities. I draw upon the existing measures by Hwang and Powell (2009), the number of paid full-time staff, project-based staff, volunteers, and whether the director attended university. I also reference a survey instrument on civil society capacity in Mozambique, developed by Bellucci (2002) for UNESCO. I use the official criteria to register as an NGO with the Sierra Leone Association of NGOs (SLANGO) or CSO with the Kono District Council, including qualities such as the size of the organization and whether the office is separate from someone’s home. I ask questions related to the use of strategic plans and audits, if these are up to date, and whether there is a finance or budget officer, as well as funding and collaboration and examine variables related to the director’s prior position, which in the majority of my cases, was teacher, student, or an international NGO employee. I note whether the organization has a website or Facebook page. I discuss the politicization of organizations, which as my interviews reveal, at times occurs when organizations are unable to professionalize, or when civil society leadership is viewed as a means towards political power. The Influence of Organizational Professionalism and Politicization on Receiving International Contracts during Ebola To what extent did international aid for Ebola reach domestic CSOs and NGOs in Sierra Leone? In total, there was over $3.6 billion in aid for the Ebola response, across the three countries, by the end of 2015 (CDC, 2019). However, from my interviews with the main organizations in Freetown and Koidu, only 16 national and local organizations out of 54 interviewed received a new contract during Ebola. Five organizations had their funding rediverted from existing partners. Three organizations received government funding, while three refused government funding when offered due to concerns about corruption.

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  389

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ORGANIZATIONS IN FREETOWN AND KOIDU Freetown Organizations receiving a new contract during Ebola: larger staff size, long-established national NGOs In Freetown, the organizations that received a new contract during Ebola all focused on youth, had a full-time paid director, and were long-established national NGOs. They had higher professionalism than political scores; however, they ranked rather high in terms of political activity given that they are advocacy groups. The three organizations were the Center for the Coordination of Youth Activities (CCYA), the National Youth Awareness Forum (NYAF) and the Advocacy Movement Network (AMNET). The executive directors of two of the three organizations, the CCYA and NYAF, became technical advisors in the education and youth ministries of the new government elected after Ebola, perhaps reflective of political networks. Two of the three organizations received a new contract from a previous partner, while the third organization had an innovative approach. CCYA received a contract from UNESCO, a previous partner, during Ebola. NYAF received a contract from the Rockville Foundation, a previous partner, to conduct classes for students over the radio because school was closed. AMNET did not initially receive funding for their active volunteer work during Ebola. AMNET received funding in a more creative way. When the BBC aired a documentary featuring their work with disabled children during Ebola, a neglected dimension of the response, they were invited to meetings with international donors and funding came in. All organizations that received funding had a permanent staff of over 25 people. CCYA was established in 1998, the NYAF in 2001, and AMNET in 2004, all to address youth and peacebuilding following the war. CCYA was founded by a group of students following the civil war to address the core victims – women and youth – as well as to address the lack of education as a root cause for youth violence during the war. The students met with the guerrilla group, the RUF (Rebel United Front) as well as the Government of Sierra Leone during the peace talks on the role of youth in solving social problems. Overall, the organization has brought in over one million young people as part of a national internship program, training many to work for national and international NGOs. In addition to creating regional networks for youth in every district to foster civic engagement, CCYA runs campaigns to increase first time voters, and conducts campaigns for girls’ education, sexual reproductive health, HIV/AIDs, and youth livelihoods. Similar to CCYA, NYAF focuses on youth rehabilitation (following the civil war and beyond) and lobbying the government to increase teacher salaries while also running community schools. The Advocacy Movement Network, which also emerged after the civil war, focuses on child protection. The Sierra Leone Teachers’ Union and the Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission also received a contract with an international organization during Ebola. Though these are not registered NGOs, both had a full-time paid director, an important measure of professionalism according to Hwang and Powell (2009). The Sierra Leone Teacher’s Union received a contract from Education International, a US-based NGO, to do sensitization during Ebola. The Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission received funding from UNDP Sierra Leone. The Human Rights Commission refused to take funding from the government during Ebola to conduct

390  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations response-related activities because it wanted to remain politically neutral. Similarly, CCYA and Don Bosco Fambul also refused funding when the government offered. Organizations with only redirected funding: smaller staff size than organizations receiving new contracts during Ebola Six other organizations had their existing funding redirected towards Ebola efforts. Given the large amounts of international aid that poured into the region during Ebola, these were not new funding sources. These organizations include Health for All Coalition, Health Alert, Foundation for Urban and Rural Transformation (FoRUT), Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), Program for Children Sierra Leone, and Education for All Coalition. These organizations all had a full-time paid director, though Health Alert’s director also co-founded NYAF, which received a new contract. UNICEF, UNFPA, and World Vision redirected funding from existing grants to Health for All Coalition during Ebola. The same individual who founded NYAF founded Health Alert. FoRUT emerged out of a Norwegian NGO funded by NorAid, as a separate, local entity in Sierra Leone 2015. NorAid redirected funding to FoRUT to Ebola response activities. The Education for All Coalition, similarly, received redirected funding from UNICEF, also a pre-existing partner. FAWE, an education advocacy NGO, halted existing activities and had an addendum with partners Plan Sierra Leone and DfiD to engage in Ebola response activities. Program for Children Sierra Leone received funding from pre-existing partners, Schools for Salone (US) and the Danish Children’s Fund. Of the organizations with redirected donor funding, two had a staff of five permanent employees, in contrast to the other organizations with a new contract, all of which had at least 25 permanent staff. The only organization that had 25 permanent paid staff members, or more, that did not receive an Ebola contract, Don Bosco Fambul, preferred not to accept international donor funding or government funding due to concerns about transparency. Koidu (Kono Province) In terms of Koidu, KOCEPO, ASJD-Sierra Leone, the Civil Society Network, Focus 1000 (headquartered in Freetown), Community Action for Rural Development (headquartered in the neighboring district, Bo), the Ebola Survivors Group, Wellbody Alliance, WANEP, Shine on Sierra Leone, and CAPS received new funding from international organizations during Ebola. Political affiliations and Ebola funding in Koidu All of the organizations receiving funding in Koidu voted for the All People’s Congress, the party in power. The only exception is the Ebola Survivors’ Group, which was a new organization formed during the response and an outlier in many instances. All organizations not receiving funding, supported the opposition party, the Sierra Leone People’s Party, which was elected to power in the first election following Ebola in April 2018. The only exception is the near-defunct Sierra Leone Poverty Alleviation Agency (SILPAA). Political dynamics are key to understanding civil society in Kono Province (where Koidu is located). Kono is an important swing state often deciding election results, and the previous election results in the district were close, called too early, and there were several individuals killed. None of the civil society organizations in Koidu received funding from the government for Ebola response efforts.

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  391 Rediverted funding from international donors during Ebola Three organizations had their existing funding rediverted to Ebola activities. The Community Initiative for Rural Development, founded in 2007, received an addendum from their partner UNICEF to do sensitization during Ebola. Similarly, the Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) and the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) had funding rediverted for sensitization activities during Ebola from DEC, Christian Aid, and Handicap International, respectively. iEARN, similar to Focus 1000, has an office in Koidu but headquarters in Freetown. Smaller organizations in the interior Organizations in Koidu are much smaller than in Freetown, in terms of permanent paid staff. CAPS by far had the most paid staff members, at 21, and received funding directly from the UN Mission for the Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER); however, it has not received funding since Ebola. CAPS is one of the oldest organizations in Kono, providing psycho-social support to victims of trauma since the civil war. Of the other organizations receiving funding during Ebola, KOCEPO has twelve permanent paid staff members, ASJD-Sierra Leone has six, Focus 1000 has five, and Community Action for Rural Development (headquartered in the neighboring district, Bo) has six. The Ebola Survivors’ Group is entirely volunteer-based. Wellbody Alliance and Shine on Sierra Leone are both 501(c)3 organizations registered in the United States. Both have a US-based director who is unpaid and a local executive director or coordinator who is paid. Shine On is partly funded through a sustainable eco-hotel that the coordinator also helps to manage. Wellbody Alliance officially merged with Partners in Health (PIH) following the Ebola response. PIH provided Wellbody with technical support during the epidemic given their desire to expand operations rather than replicate existing efforts in Sierra Leone during Ebola. More politicization among organizations in the capital In Freetown, there are several high professionalized, high-politicized organizations that received funding, and in Koidu, there are also low professionalized, high-politicized organizations that did not receive funding. In general, the higher level of politicization among organizations based in the capital is likely due to more international aid and access to government ministries and international NGOs. Many Freetown-based directors studied or worked in Europe or the US, and/or previously worked for an international NGO. Though organizations in the capital are more professionalized, they also tend to be more political. At the same time, while organizations in the rural regions were less professionalized, they were much more involved in Ebola response activities and in general in hands-on development trainings and activities. Thus, the organizations receiving a new contract in Koidu tended to be highly professionalized, low politicized. Professionalism, therefore, might be more of a determinant in receiving funding outside of the political networks in the capital. Together, this suggests that access to political and international networks in the capital favors new funding for domestic organizations. At the same time, the political connections of these organizations do not mean that they are not professional. Therefore, professionalization, at least in the Sierra Leonean context, does not ensure that an organization is not political, and indeed international donors are already contracting with politicized national and local organizations, despite their stated reticence.

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Figure 21.2

Sierra Leone organizations: measures of professionalism and politicization

Supporting the finding that professionalism does not necessarily depoliticize national and local organizations, Figure 21.2 shows a cluster of high professionalized, high politicized in the capital, Freetown (upper right corner). Given that these organizations have more access to international and governmental networks, practices of professionalism spread, and they are familiar with the language of international donors. However, in order to access these networks, they need a certain number of connections, since, as noted in my interviews, government ministries choose which organizations to present to international donors. In fact, it is clear from Figure 21.2 that the most professionalized organizations, which are in Freetown, are also the most politicized. Figure 21.2 also shows that organizations in Koidu (gray) have slightly lower levels of organizational professionalism, and lower levels of politicization. There are also several organizations in Koidu that have high politicization and low professionalization. Professionalization of Civil Society The most professionalized organizations tend to be in the capital, Freetown, and are more likely to be sector-specific. Out of the ten most professionalized organizations, eight are in Freetown. Organizations in Koidu tended to be less specialized and have more sectors of intervention. Therefore, if local organizations are looking more to their community’s conceptualization of legitimacy, then during interviews they were more likely to cite many different sectors of intervention, to show that they were doing – or capable of doing – many things, as a strategy to win as many grants as possible. However, intervening in too many sectors and lacking specialized expertise in any one sector leads to inefficiency, both in achieving the objectives of the intervention and in securing grants from international development agencies. Given the competition for funding, the district office for SLANGO, the national NGO registry, in Koidu, noted that while organizations were willing to share strategic plans with their office, they were unwilling to attend workshops aimed at fostering collaboration for fear of having their ideas and strategic plans replicated. Therefore, this limits the transfer of knowledge in terms of how to professionalize and win grants.

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  393 Politicization of Civil Society Organizations in Freetown, rather than in Koidu, were more likely to receive new contracts or have funding redirected during Ebola. These organizations are more proximate to government ministries and international organization offices in the capital. There is a cluster of high political – high professional organizations in Freetown, and a cluster of high political – low professional organizations in Koidu (illustrated in Figure 21.2). These results counter assumptions elsewhere that professionalization depoliticizes civil society organizations. Earlier work by da Glória Gohn (2010, 2015) and Alvarez (2009) refers to the depoliticized civil society organizations that became NGOs, in contexts that are more developed where the state has capacity to deliver and contract out social services. However, in Sierra Leone, given weak state capacity, international organizations remain the major provider of contracts to national and local organizations to deliver services such as education and health. Professionalism does not ensure depoliticization of civil society in Sierra Leone As expected, organizational professionalism correlates with Ebola funding. However, professionalism is not necessarily apolitical. In fact, the interviews illustrate that highly professional organizations, namely those in the capitals, can also be very political. In a context where international NGOs oftentimes need to pass through the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, or the Ministry of Gender, political relationships are important in terms of getting the appropriate national certification to operate. With increased calls for monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning, and audits, nonprofits face more attempts to measure and formalize their activities (Hwang and Powell, 2009). Exposure to the cultural scripts of international donors and on the job training are particularly salient in a setting like West Africa, where there is limited opportunity for educational specialization such as master’s degrees, certificate programs, workshops or seminars. International organizations usually favor organizations that look similar to them in structure. Some organizations achieve this by having previously worked for an international NGO, while others are aware of the tide of professionalism due to their proximity to government ministries and international NGOs, which is more easily achieved in the capital city. At the same time, professionalism unintentionally led to the politicization of organizations unable to professionalize in Koidu, as they increasingly became co-opted by political parties during elections due to their increasing inability to secure international funding. In contrast, when more professionalized national organizations came from the capital into the interior, they lacked capacity to mobilize communities because of the lack of previous trust-based relationship, and the population viewed them suspiciously, as was the case with international organizations. The ability of national NGOs based in the capital to mobilize communities in other regions may be particularly common in areas with ethnic divisions, like Sierra Leone and elsewhere in Africa. In Sierra Leone, communities in the interior view national organizations based in the capital as being connected to government, and less trustworthy. In addition, while aimed to strengthen civil society, international aid, particularly given professionalization, may lead to inorganic structures and less local commitment and trust. By initially circumventing local organizations at the expense of national organizations that are better connected, the international response to Ebola may have been met with more social resistance. Similarly, in both Sierra Leone and Guinea, civil society organizations provide an opportunity for individuals outside of the government and civil service to access power.

394  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations The Professionalization of Civil Society Comparatively The professionalization of civil society not only has implications for crisis response, but also for inclusion in wider development processes. Across diverse national contexts, individuals use associations and large demonstrations to mobilize for inclusion in the state (Avritzer, 2017). However, my interviews reveal that large membership-based organizations, as well as small community-based organizations, have the most difficulties to match the increased demands of donors in terms of professionalization, despite their mobilizing power. Overall, the professionalization of civil society may facilitate vertical networks of engagement by creating communities of experts, rather than the horizontal networks of engagement necessary for vibrant civic participation in democracy, as suggested by Putnam et al. (1993). Participation in different forms of associations yields various political consequences (Krishna, 2000). However, there is limited data on whether organizational structure shapes political socialization across various forms of nonprofits (Clemens, 2006). For instance, the depoliticization of Brazilian civil society has in part been attributed to the rise of NGOs and third sector organizations, given the concentration of resources, in terms of human capital and financial, in these CSOs as compared with other CSOs. In Brazil, da Glória Gohn (1997) notes that professionalization has produced contradictory effects: it reinforced social movements leading to democratization, but also it has created a layer of leadership that each time distances itself more and more from the base of social movements and moves more towards NGOs. More specifically, da Glória Gohn (1997) states “supported by both public and private financial resources, and by teams of competent professionals – not selected for their ideologies, but for their work experiences – these organizations [NGOs] came to work differently than how social movements acted until now” (da Glória Gohn, 2011, p. 341, translated3). In general, larger organizations are more likely to be formal and procedural, while smaller organizations are more likely to have higher rates of participation and member consensus on decisions, facilitating democratic participation (Edwards, 1994). In contexts that are less aid dependent than Sierra Leone, such as India, Serbia, and Brazil, numerous civil society and social movement scholars indicate that professionalism and the “NGO-ization” of civil society depoliticizes civil society. My findings show that in heavily aid-dependent contexts such as Sierra Leone, professionalism does not mean an organization is apolitical. External aid to civil society has the unintended effect of politicizing civil society in some instances. In Sierra Leone government ministries funnel access to international contracts and in general the technical knowledge of how to win contracts. In contrast, in instances where the state begins to take on more of a contracting role in terms of the delivery of services such as education and health, particularly through the adoption of conditional cash transfer programs, professionalism leads to depoliticization, as the state favors organizations that have more technical capacity. However, further longitudinal work is needed to show whether professionalism in more developed contexts necessarily leads to depoliticization, or if advocacy groups that are amenable to the party in power also receive government contracts. Civil society may also become an additional power structure. In Sierra Leone, civil society also becomes a means to access power, as civil society leaders critical of the government are



3

All translations are my own.

Civil society organizations in Sierra Leone  395 at times offered important government positions. As a result, civil society lost legitimacy with communities, and this compromised their efforts to an extent during the Ebola response.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I find that professionalization favors organizations in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, who have more exposure to international organizations and state ministries. However, in the case of Sierra Leone, as opposed to contexts with more state capacity to deliver and contract out social services (as existing studies of Bosnia, Brazil, India, and Nicaragua indicate), professionalization does not necessarily depoliticize civil society organizations. Founders and directors of national NGOs in capital cities serve as brokers between the international and the local, speaking both the language of international aid as well as local languages. They are able to access international networks and contracts, through previous education and employment as well as relationships with government ministries and political parties. At times, however, and quite apparent during Ebola, national organizations headquartered in the capital are trusted less by communities far from the capital, which at times view them as profit-seeking. Funding, due to professionalism, increasingly favors organizations in the capital that are able to learn from international organizations and produce similarly structured organizations. Sierra Leone as a case highlights this – with a high number of organizations formed in Kono, the area that was the epicenter of the civil war, and a high number of organizations in Freetown. Despite economic growth and quality of life improvements resulting from development, inequalities persist between regions and countries globally (Deaton, 2015). With professionalism, organizations delivering services such as education start to resemble donors more than constituents. As civic organizations become more professionalized with economic development and exposure to external pressures of professionalization, evaluation, and metrics, they become more involved in service delivery. For instance, in Latin America (Alvarez, 2009; da Glória Gohn, 2010) and in other more middle-income countries, professionalized civil society organizations move away from their advocacy and mass mobilization from their democratization origins, to becoming more like international NGOs and state ministries. Economic development brings more human capital with the expansion of education, leading to a more professionalized civic participation. As observed by Skocpol (2003) in the United States, the decline of large membership-based voluntary associations and the emergence of professionalized organizations transformed the relationship between civic organizations and political participation. Similarly, in Sierra Leone, large, membership-based organizations face external influences to professionalize. Civil society has been praised for its ability to shift the balance of social and political power away from the state, oftentimes omnipresent in societies transitioning to democracy. In contexts where there is a more sizable and growing middle class than Sierra Leone, and when the state has the capacity to contract with NGOs, the professionalization of civil society may lead local and national NGOs to become less concerned with civic mobilization and more concerned with public policy. This may lead them to attract more middle class professionals than the prototypical activist that swelled its ranks during democratization movements. As a cautionary tale, once organizations institutionalize and take on more service delivery

396  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations activities rather than advocacy, do they contribute more to civic participation of the elite rather than all of civil society? The depoliticized approach of NGOs may result in a limited ability to mobilize civic participation and to establish institutional preconditions of government accountability, due to dependency of service delivery NGOs on short-term government, or international contracts. While depoliticization of civil society might not have positive results for civil society, professionalization, as this chapter illustrates, does not always lead to depoliticization. Further work could explore the relationship between professionalization and politicization of civil society in other low-income, aid-dependent contexts, since the assumption that professionalization depoliticizes civil society does not necessarily hold in Sierra Leone.

REFERENCES Allison, L. (1996). The Concept of Civil Society in Georgia, Thailand and South Africa. South African Journal of International Affairs, 4(2), 18-38. Alvarez, S. (2009). Beyond NGOization? Reflections on Latin America. Development, 52(2), 175–184. Avritzer, L. (2017). Participation in Democratic Brazil: From Popular Hegemony and Innovation to Middle-Class Protest. Opinião Pública, Campinas, 23(1), 43–59. Barnett, M. (2010). The International Humanitarian Order. New York: Routledge. Bellucci, S. (2002). Governance, Civil Society, and NGOs in Mozambique. Management of Social Transformations (MOST). Discussion Paper 56. https://​unesdoc​.unesco​.org/​ark:/​48223/​pf0000125280. Bromley, P. (2010). The Rationalization of Educational Development: Scientific Activity among International Nongovernmental Organizations. Comparative Education Review, 54(4), 577–601. Burawoy, M. (1998). The Extended Case Method. Sociological Theory, 16(1), 1–33. Center for Disease Control (CDC) (2019). Cost of the Ebola Epidemic. https://​www​.cdc​.gov/​vhf/​ebola/​ history/​2014​-2016​-outbreak/​cost​-of​-ebola​.html. Chabbott, C. and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). Development and Education. In M. T. Allinan (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Education (pp. 163–189). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Chahim, D. and Prakash, A. (2012). NGOization, Foreign Funding, and the Nicaraguan Civil Society. Voluntas, December 7. https://​ssrn​.com/​abstract​=​2186536. Clemens, E. (2006). The Constitution of Citizens: Political Theories of Nonprofit Organizations. In W. W. Powell and R. Steinberg (eds), The Nonprofit Sector, 2nd edition (pp. 207–220). New Haven: Yale University Press. Cox, R. W. (1999). Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order. Review of International Studies, 25, 3–28. da Glória Gohn, M. (1997). Teoria dos Movimentos Socias Paradigmas Clássicos e Contemporâneos. São Paolo: Edições Loyola. da Glória Gohn, M. (2010). Movimentos Sociais e Redes de Mobilizações Civis no Brasil Contemporâneo. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes. da Glória Gohn, M. (2011). Movimentos sociais na contemporaneidade. Revista Brasileira de Educação, 16(47). da Glória Gohn, M. (2015). Brazilian Social Movements in the Last Decade. In P. Almeida and A. C. Ulate (eds), Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America (pp. 361–372). Dordrecht: Springer. Dagher, R. (2017). Civil Society and Development: A Reconceptualisation. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 38(1), 54–71. Daniel, A. and Neubert, D. (2019). Civil Society and Social Movements: Conceptual Insights and Challenges in African Contexts. Critical African Studies, 11(2), 176–192. Deaton, A. (2015). The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Diamond, L. (1994). Towards Democratic Consolidation. Journal of Democracy, 5(3), 4–17.

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398  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Vuković, D. (2015). The Role of Civil Society in Fostering Government Accountability in Contemporary Serbia: On the Limits of Depoliticized Social Activism. Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology & Social Anthropology, 57(4), 637–661. White, G. (1994). Civil Society, Democratization and Development (I): Clearing the Analytical Ground. Democratization, 1(2), 375–390.

22. Getting real about research: lessons learned from a worker training evaluation project Deborah B. Smith

INTRODUCTION As part of our professional preparation, we social scientists enroll in methods classes to learn the steps to conduct research. Then when following these steps to execute our first research project, we discover many steps critical to successful research project execution were absent from our formal schooling. This is the nature of the social scientific enterprise; our projects will never go exactly as planned because we investigate people and their behaviors – which inherently are messy, unpredictable, and unfortunately even shocking. Recent research submits the most valued aspect of a mentor/mentee relationship is the transfer of tacit knowledge (Ma et al., 2020). A frequent concern voiced by graduate students on social media is that critical knowledge necessary to a productive career in the social sciences is simply omitted from university curriculum. Only when they must execute a research project, whether as an assistant or a principal investigator, do graduate students become aware of the multitude of decisions required for the successful execution of a research project. This chapter employs a reflective case narrative analysis (Becker and Renger, 2017) in which I use a specific project, the evaluation of a statewide worker training initiative, to demystify the “black box” of social science research project execution. The aim is to smooth the path for the next generation of organizational and other social science researchers by offering them, prior to the start of a research project, strategies to have at the ready in order to adjust approaches, actions, and assessments quickly when circumstances require; typically materializing at moments least convenient to the researcher. I share our experiences of the project including lessons learned from our missteps, flat-out mistakes, and an extreme external event over which we had no control. To set the stage, this chapter begins with an overview of the purpose and content of The Missouri Family Development Training Initiative, the worker training program we evaluated for the research project. (In this chapter, the term “initiative” refers to anything directly related to the written curriculum, training, credentialing, and implementation and the term “project” refers to anything related to the accompanying scientifically rigorous evaluation research.) I discuss how a wide variety of items, both internal and external to the research project, impacted our execution experiences, statistical analyses, and ultimate research outcomes. The chapter concludes by discussing how the project benefited from ethical decision-making at all stages of the process as well as the flexibility and protection offered to the researchers due to the project’s location within a university setting. Throughout I hope to make accessible a large amount of tacit knowledge required for success. So let’s get real about research!

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THE FAMILY DEVELOPMENT TRAINING INITIATIVE Social service workers have stressful jobs. Providing training that teaches how to build positive relationships with the clients they assist, their supervisors, co-workers, and community partners may relieve some of the burden of their inherently emotionally-taxing work. The Family Development (FDC) Training Initiative reorients social service practice to the strengths-approach, in which worker and client family are equal partners, and is tailored to employees including Head Start family advocates, child protective service workers, domestic violence shelter workers, and public health nurses, who work on the front lines with the most vulnerable of American families. The FDC Initiative gathers together workers from various organizations in a local community into one classroom to instruct them how to move through the family development process, which recognizes both family and worker possess assets with which they can form a beneficial power-sharing partnership. Unlike other social service approaches, a family judges its unique strengths and needs then sets its own major goal; the worker does not set the family’s goal. The worker then assists the family in creating a written plan to achieve this goal with the responsibility for tasks divided between family members and worker; progress is reviewed, and the plan continually updated. This family development process increases families’ self-reliance, boosting their confidence in their abilities to handle future challenges. The FDC Training Initiative uses a curriculum developed at Cornell University, Empowerment Skills for Family Workers (Forest, 2003, 2015). This curriculum directly addresses issues such as emotional exhaustion and depersonalization among social service workers, which the organizational literature has consistently shown to be related to low job satisfaction (Maslach et al., 1996, 2016). Factors related to higher job satisfaction and lower levels of burnout include a sense of professional mission (Acker, 2012), recognition of a skill or talent (Huang et al., 2015), feelings of self-efficacy (Smith and Day, 2015; Zunz, 1998) and building mutually respectful relationships with co-workers (Jia et al., 2020). Curriculum chapters entitled Helping Families Set and Reach Goals and Communicating with Skill and Heart provide workers who participate in FDC classes concrete suggestions on how to proactively manage the stress intrinsic to assisting others.

IMPLEMENTATION OF FDC TRAINING INITIATIVE IN MISSOURI We implemented the FDC Training Initiative in the state of Missouri, using the franchise model offered to individual state partners by the FDC Training Initiative National Center based at the time at Cornell University. (The National Center is now housed at the University of Connecticut.) The franchise’s typical implementation model arranged for a non-profit organization, such as the Community Action Agency or Cooperative Extension, to host FDC Training Initiative classes throughout the state. The hosting organization would then partner with an educational institution within the state to assess the FDC class participants’ knowledge of strengths-based principles and issue a state-specific Family Development Credential or FDC. In the state of Missouri, however, we created a unique configuration. The Family Studies Program located at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) College of Arts and

Getting real about research  401 Sciences, for which I served as Director, entered into the franchise agreement with the National Center; but distinct from other states, Missouri university employees oversaw every aspect of the FDC Training Initiative. Slowly, but steadily, over the course of a decade we built partnerships between our university and state welfare agencies, not-for-profit social service organizations, and agency coalitions located in both rural and urban Missouri communities. We trained the trainers with whom local organizations contracted to provide the FDC classes to a group of social service workers from their community; workers who frequently served the same families. We also assessed the FDC participants’ knowledge of strengths-based principles taught through the FDC curriculum using multiple-choice exams and portfolio reviews. To those participants who successfully completed all assessment elements, we issued the UMKC Family Studies Program Family Development Credential, more commonly referred to as the Missouri FDC. Housing all aspects of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative within the university provided the organizational foundations necessary to undertake the outcome evaluation of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative as an academic research project. Selected findings from the Missouri FDC evaluation are discussed in this chapter in order to create a rich case narrative; but for thorough discussions of the FDC Training Initiative, the process by which we created training networks and implemented the FDC Training Initiative in Missouri, and additional evaluation results, see our final program report (Smith et al., 2007) and published articles (Smith, 2009; Smith and Day, 2015).

OPENING THE “BLACK BOX” OF RESEARCH DECISION-MAKING Although many smart colleagues contributed to the success of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative evaluation research project such that I appropriately present this post-hoc postmortem frequently invoking the first-person plural, as Principal Investigator (PI) I ultimately made all decisions final. This section provides a candid description of how we made some of our most consequential decisions which impacted the research project for the long term. A Quasi-Experimental Research Design to Evaluate the FDC Training Initiative in the state of Missouri The first big decision made was to house all aspects of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative and the related evaluation project completely through my university. Why was this decision made? I had a pre-existing professional relationship with the curriculum’s author and the timing was right; she was looking to expand the FDC Initiative state by state and I needed a research project for my tenure and promotion process. (But note, this 100 percent in-house running caused consternation to some funders; I was rejected for an important grant award to theorize generally about program evaluation because I was simultaneously the Director of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative and the Principal Investigator of the evaluation project.) Another fundamental decision made was for the Missouri FDC Program Evaluation to be executed using a quasi-experimental research design. Why not a classic experiment? The answer is that conducting the evaluation was secondary to implementation of the FDC Training Initiative in the state of Missouri. The long-term goal of the FDC Training Initiative

402  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations was to promote the curriculum as an ongoing worker training to social service organizations throughout Missouri, rather than running a set number of classes to evaluate the efficacy of the initiative. Had conducting a classic experiment been the original impetus for the research project, the funding streams would have had to have been structured much differently. To execute a classic experimental design, we would have had to identify a large group of social service workers who were similar on important variables and then randomly assign workers to either the treatment group, where they would participate in the six- to nine-month FDC classes in their communities, or be assigned to the control group and receive no training. But the FDC training curriculum was expensive to deliver and the cost was usually borne by the participants’ workplace (more on this later). Because the monies used to finance the locally based community FDC classes were primarily generated by the FDC participants’ employers, it would have been very difficult if not impossible to randomly assign workers to treatment and control groups. Most organizational executive directors would refuse to fund any of the training if not all similar workers had access to the training or if each organization’s supervisors did not have authority over who was assigned to the treatment or control groups. Realistically, the structure of our funding sources prohibited the implementation of a classic experimental research design for the evaluation project. But truth be told, my initial conceptualization of the FDC evaluation project research design was even further away from the classic experiment. The original design planned to gather data on the experience of the FDC participants only, with no comparison group at all; the technical term is a one-group pretest-posttest research design (Babbie, 2004). At the very beginning of our Wave One of data collection, I was only gathering data from Missouri social service workers who were enrolled in the FDC training. Only when our paid evaluation consultant (a faculty member at another university) remarked we should create a comparison group of social service workers to gather similar data, did I realize we would need two groups for the evaluation to have the most merit. Even though I had learned this in school, even though it made complete sense; being absorbed in the many details required to manage and implement the FDC Training Initiative while also designing the FDC evaluation project, I had not previously considered including a comparison group. But when our evaluation consultant noted this, I realized she was absolutely right. Fortunately, I had an excellent pre-existing relationship with a coalition comprising social service agencies where I was able to quickly recruit workers for the comparison group thereby officially modifying the research project to have a quasi-experimental design. It is considered “quasi-experimental” because, unlike a classic experiment, no respondents were randomly assigned to either group; this is also the reason for labeling the group that does not receive treatment “comparison” rather than “control” group. Fortunately, these workers were overall quite comparable to our “treatment” group, the FDC participants. Strengthening the research design through discussion with another researcher only reinforced my already firmly held conviction – research projects must be conducted within a collaborative scholarly community. I feel so passionate about this I wrote an article analyzing the success of a research collaboration I had with another non-profit organization, completed prior to the FDC evaluation project (Smith, 2003). I don’t know it all; you don’t know it all. As we mature as researchers, our understanding of our own knowledge base transforms from “I know it all” into a more nuanced, “I know what I do know and what I do not know; and when possible I will reach out to experts to assist me with what I do not know.” In theory, the purpose of university graduate programs is to provide access to the wisdom of subject-matter experts. In

Getting real about research  403 reality, most programs need to strengthen their commitment to creating a community which freely shares knowledge. I am making my contribution to the wider knowledge base by writing this chapter. Sharing the specifics of this research design process offers a more comprehensive understanding of the decisions made and the changes required during the envisioning and early execution stages of our evaluation project to ensure its success. The lesson learned is that enormous effort and exertion is embedded in the seemingly straightforward statement, “this evaluation project employed a quasi-experimental design.”

USING THE DATA TO ANSWER ADDITIONAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS The main purpose of this research project was to evaluate the FDC Training Initiative. In Wave One we gathered quantitative survey data from 226 Missouri social service workers, some enrolled FDC Training Initiative classes (45 percent) and others members of the comparison group (55 percent). Wave One data were collected from the comparison group at roughly the same time as the FDC participants data which were collected on their first day of FDC classes. The quasi-experimental design meant we had to wait three to six months for the FDC classes to complete before we could collect Wave Two data (gathered on the last day of FDC classes) to evaluate the efficacy of the FDC Initiative. But it was unnecessary to wait to analyze data. From the viewpoint of the PI of the research project, failing to take advantage of these Wave One data from 226 social service workers in Missouri would be poor stewardship of the information provided by our survey respondents. Wave One offered a built-in dataset to support graduate student training. Subsequently, two master’s theses analyzed Wave One as cross-sectional data of a sample of social service workers in Missouri; both were ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals (Magennis and Smith, 2005; Smith and Shields, 2013).

ONE SMALL DECISION AND DATA ANALYSIS OPPORTUNITY LOST FOREVER It is every researcher’s nightmare to have gathered data that cannot be analyzed but that is what happened to me; and I did it to myself. Collecting Wave One data prior to participants beginning FDC classes was not a monolithic event; each FDC Training local site began classes on different dates. After 52 respondents (a combination of FDC participants and comparison group members) completed the Wave One Version 1.0 (W1V1) survey instrument, we decided to make changes to the instrument which altered the research project forever. Sending W1V1 survey instrument to the FDC curriculum’s author spurred one change. At my request she pilot-tested the survey with similar social service workers in New York State; some comments received were critical of survey items not directly related to the work experience. For example, we asked two questions about religiosity and spirituality (similar to those found in more general social surveys) and a pilot tester remarked that asking these questions seemed inappropriate in a survey about work experiences. At the same time, we happened upon a specific matrix measure in the literature very closely aligned to our research question. Shapiro et al. (1996) published the Human Services Job

404  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations Satisfaction Questionnaire (HSJSQ), designed to measure job experiences specific to social service workers. Factor analysis identified five subscales that capturing various aspects the social service work experience. We were delighted to find this measure as our evaluation project also sought to investigate the work experience of social service workers; accordingly we modified our survey instrument to include this questionnaire. Critical to the success of the research project, we combined two of their subscales, Futility/Avoidance and Affect, to create our own measure for burnout (Magennis and Smith, 2005; Smith et al., 2007), which is an issue of worker concern for which the FDC curriculum was originally created (Lee et al., 2019; Zunz, 1998). In our publications, we wrote that we chose the HSJSQ because it was an excellent measure for gathering data on social service workers’ job experiences such as affect, futility/avoidance, and job satisfaction as it had been created for and tested on the same population of workers the FDC Initiative hoped to serve. This stated reason sounds straightforward enough; however another reason just as important but less-often mentioned was that purchasing the rights to use the better-known Maslach burnout scale (Maslach et al., 1996) was simply beyond our budget. It was for both these reasons the HSJSQ became a cornerstone of our survey instrument moving forward. We decided making these changes – removing some general questions and adding the HSJSQ matrix – were substantial enough to edit the W1V1 survey instrument into the Wave One Version 2.0 (W1V2) survey instrument. At the time, we were genuinely excited to be adding to the survey meaningful measures appropriate to our research project. But when pilot-testing W1V2 survey instrument we found a problem; including the HSJSQ rendered a survey instrument too long to complete in a reasonable time. To be respectful of the respondents’ time we decided to trim more questions than just those raised as problematic in the New York State pilot test. Consequently, we removed the W1V1 survey instrument measure on job satisfaction (a key outcome variable) that had been used in previous work and employment surveys (Quinn and Staines, 1979) because it had become redundant (or so we thought) when adding the HSJSQ which included the measure “I am satisfied with my job.” (See Appendix for exact wording of both measures.) Even though those 52 respondents had already answered the W1V1 job satisfaction measure, we removed it from our W1V2 survey instrument and replaced it with the HSJSQ measure. Thereafter, we included only the HSJSQ matrix in all subsequent data collections, including Wave Two and Wave Three survey instruments. The unintended consequence of this change was that we lost the ability to gather longitudinal data on the original job satisfaction measure and obtain data to determine change in job satisfaction over time for 23 percent of our sample. We were very sad; what researcher wants to leave data unanalyzed? Cobbling together an “aggregated” measure by combining the two measures related to the concept of job satisfaction, I would have been able to conduct both cross-sectional and longitudinal statistical analysis on a larger sample size. I discussed this measurement conundrum with several people, including a much-respected social science statistician. While the possibility of a larger sample was tantalizing, I ultimately decided to adhere to the strictest of ethical research behaviors and refrained from combining the data from these two measures of job satisfaction. Fortunately the number of respondents (N=124) who answered the HSJSQ job satisfaction measure in the W1V2 survey instrument was sufficiently large to analyze

Getting real about research  405 using statistical methods for the cross-sectional Wave One research (Smith and Shields, 2013) as well as assess change over time for the FDC evaluation (Smith, 2009). The lessons learned from our experience are to always pilot test survey instrument changes and to be respectful of respondents’ time, but also consider the long-term ramifications of changes in measures, especially of key variables. Including the HSJSQ ultimately enhanced the research project in the long term and allowed us to gather much more appropriate data from 77 percent of the sample. But losing the ability to analyze changes in that original job satisfaction measure still pains me to this day.

ALWAYS COLLECT (EVEN A SMALL AMOUNT OF) QUALITATIVE DATA Organizational researchers frequently have individuals as the units of observation and/or the units of analysis (Babbie, 2004); therefore, in a quantitative research project collecting and analyzing even a small amount of qualitative data collection will always improve our understanding of our respondents’ lived experience. Even as one primarily trained in quantitative methodologies, I now include both qualitative and quantitative approaches in every research project as I have come to understand and value qualitative data for amplifying the respondents’ voices thereby lending a humanity to the quantitative data findings. A full discussion on creating a viable mixed-methods research design is beyond the scope of this chapter. But we found the focus group to be an efficient qualitative data collection methodology (Edwards et al., 2019) as one focus group participant’s comment may spark another participant’s memory to elaborate on the similar topic/concept, providing richer data to analyze (Royse et al., 2016). Focus groups are especially effective for evaluation projects as they “can give evaluators access to the reasoning processes that make it possible to understand what works and also how and why it works … focus groups provide a dynamic means to portray programs in action” (Ansay et al., 2004, p. 315). Qualitative data can also identify outcomes that researchers failed to consider previously. In our case, two unexpected outcomes/unintended consequences came to light through analysis of the qualitative data: (1) FDC participants, wives and mothers themselves (87 percent of the FDC participants identified as female), implemented the strategies taught in the curriculum to better relationships with their own family members in addition to using the techniques to improve interactions with their clients and co-workers as originally intended; and (2) FDC participants became a support network for their classmates. Better Relationships with Own Family Members I am very thankful for having an opportunity to be a part of this class and I know it will help me throughout the rest of my life, not only in my work but also with my own family. I think at my home … I feel more like an equal now whereas before I felt like … my decisions didn’t matter. Now that has changed. [In the FDC class I realized] I wasn’t actually listening to my [own family]. They would talk and I would shake my head and I really wasn’t listening, [but now] when you’re talking to me I’m looking at you and I’m listening and I learned to repeat back what they’ve said so they understood I knew

406  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations what they were saying. [Because of this change] we don’t yell anymore. There’s no more yelling; there is … talking. My kids, I just started having them do more things for themselves. And I didn’t realize how much I really did for them until I started making them–maybe they didn’t realize how much. They do their own laundry now, they make their own phone calls, they you know, just getting them ready for the real world. They didn’t like it at first but it gives them self-worth. Just like my daughter came in and “I did this and this happened” and she was just all excited about the fact that she completed it herself.

FDC Classmates Provide Social Support [T]he group was … key for stress reduction and just realizing that other people are having the same struggles as you are. I think that all social [service] workers need to be able to realize that other people are under same types of [stress] and … that for many, the group has been a little bit of a support group; we need to be able to … step back and realize that we’re not crazy for feeling a certain way and then learning little tidbits about how they deal with it … sometimes (about) even the smallest little thing. The treasure that I take from this is the folks that I met and what they do and the jobs that they work and the networking that’s available. One of the things is what social workers need is a little support … to really vent their frustrations; … social services organizations … need … to let those folks get together and talk. And it needs to be well facilitated so it doesn’t just become a gripe session. [So] they had a way of developing their own support systems. And I think that’s lacking. But that’s what I’ve seen in the little group I [took FDC classes] with.

Furthermore, integrating qualitative and quantitative methodologies can be pragmatic for a faculty member responsible for a full research agenda as it can also provide a means of graduate student training. If your research question will be mainly answered through quantitative data analysis, a graduate student can take responsibility for gathering data using a qualitative method such as focus groups. To continue to unpack the black box of the process for our specific research project, focus groups were not a part of the original project design; it became part of the research design only when a graduate student requested a summer research project. Fortunately at the time of her request, the status of the FDC Training Initiative implementation allowed for enough flexibility such that we could incorporate focus groups. If not in the position to gather a sizable amount of qualitative data, I suggest at the end of every survey instrument to include at the very least an open-ended question. Much insight related to respondents’ experiences have been gained by including the simple question: “Do you have anything to add?” (My all-time favorite answer came from a survey on couples’ retirement experiences where a wife responded: “He doesn’t know how to live in my world.”) In a practical sense, answers to this question can provide powerful quotes for future grant applications. Some answers to the open-ended survey question: [The FDC] class taught me a lot about myself. I am continuing my education because of some of the important points in this training. I really enjoyed the FDC program. I use it every day not just professionally, personally also. I hope more people “front line workers” want to take this class they will be surprised how it will affect their everyday lives.

Getting real about research  407 Finally, if you are a hard-core quantitative researcher and cannot or do not want to take the time to transcribe the answers to this open-ended question, then at the absolute minimum create a dichotomous variable in your dataset for this question with values of 1 = something written and 0 = nothing written/response is “no.” Therefore, if you or other researchers return to analyze these quotes, you can easily determine which individual surveys need to be accessed.

UNEXPECTED EXTERNAL EVENT A major consideration for any social science research project is the extant social milieu. A horrifying event occurred in Missouri which impacted the whole of the state’s social service sector at the same time as our research project. We can make a compelling case that it impacted our evaluation data. A Tragedy with Wide-Ranging Consequences About the time we began the first FDC classes in Missouri, a heartbreaking event occurred: a foster father murdered a two-year-old foster child in his care (Missouri Task Force on Children’s Justice, 2007). This tragic and unexpected event sent shockwaves through the entire Missouri social service sector; and the subsequent legislative aftermath caused a cloud of sadness and uncertainty to cover the entire Missouri social service worker population – at the same time our data collection was in full swing. Legislative Fallout In the first state legislative session that began 5 months after the gut-wrenching incident, a bill was introduced that would hold an individual social service worker personally liable for a foster child’s death if such an appalling event ever happened again. The events that transpired over the next two years, from the introduction of this bill to the policy finally implemented at the state welfare agency, were within the extant milieu we had to consider when analyzing our research project data. The Missouri legislature regrettably does not record committee proceedings so we do not have official documentation on what transpired in those meetings. But the Springfield News-Leader, the primary newspaper in the Missouri county where this crime occurred, followed the story over the course of the next two legislative sessions. Their dispatches provide trenchant information about the political fallout. The 2003 legislature passed the first bill designed to revamp the foster care system with workers’ personal liability a significant component. The governor vetoed this version of the bill due to the fact that its harsh employee guidelines would have direct implications on the ability to recruit employees. The primary reason given for the veto was that: [S]tate Department of Social Services [officials] were … afraid [the bill’s] section allowing workers to be fired if their actions put children at risk would scare away potential employees. (Deslatte, 2003)

Indeed, there was an acknowledgment that protecting workers was key:

408  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations [Some problems exist in the foster system] “hide” what goes on in [this] closed system [which] must be made more open to protect the rights of parents, foster parents, children – and even professionals who may be scapegoated in the case of a child killed in foster care. After Dominic James died, professional heads rolled like gumballs with the dispenser chute stuck open. (Overstreet, 2004, emphasis added)

Two years and two legislative sessions later, a new policy which included a mechanism to hold individual workers personally liable for their actions was implemented. The bill introduced in the second legislative session had been modified from the earlier version with greater protections for workers than originally proposed the year prior: Among other things, the bill would raise the standard by which children could be removed from their homes in suspected cases of abuse or neglect. Officials would be required to show a “preponderance of evidence”, a higher bar to jump than the current standard of “probable cause”. (Goodwin, 2004)

The final policy named after the murdered child, the Dominic James Memorial Foster Care Reform Act, was passed by the legislature and signed into law by the Missouri Governor in 2004 (The Associated Press, 2004). Issue of Internal Validity (History Effect) Within this unsettling milieu, our quasi-experimental evaluation project outcomes were threatened by one type of internal validity discussed in most research methodology books but rarely admitted to in journal articles: the history effect, in which external events during the experiment (things that happened outside the experiment or “history”) could change respondents’ answers in the survey instrument. Examples are newsworthy events that concern the focus of an experiment and major disasters to which subjects are exposed. Events external to the study that influence post test scores, [could result] in … invalidity. (Royse et al., 2016, p. 12)

Every social science research methodology book mentions this history effect, but never refers to a specific research project. The experience detailed here provides an actual example of the history effect and how we ascertained its impact on our findings.

POWERFUL PARTNERS: COMPARISON GROUP AND CHANGE SCORES The Comparison Group There are several specific implications for worker-training program evaluation research projects that arise from the results of our project. To put it bluntly, incorporating a comparison group and change scores saved this evaluation from being a complete disaster. Because Dominic James’ murder and aftermath were newsworthy events directly related to our research project, we were forced to consider the impact of the confluence of these two events. In the majority of cases, Wave One data were collected in 2002, prior to the tragic event, and Wave Two data were collected over the course of the two legislative sessions (2003 and 2004) during

Getting real about research  409 which the final policy legislation was forged. Between Waves One and Two, the comparison group members reported an overall increase in feelings of futility and other negative job experiences. That the FDC participants did not report much change in their feelings about their job experience during this time suggests the participation in the FDC classes may have somehow buffered the impact on them of this terrible external event. The use of a comparison group allowed us to demonstrate, using statistical analyses of change scores, that the FDC classes may have shielded the participants, at least partially, from the influence of the negative social milieu caused by Dominic James’ death. To be honest, incorporating a comparison group saved this evaluation from being a complete disaster. As other evaluators have noted, “It is easy to see the importance of obtaining groups that are similar not only in the skill, behavior, or characteristics being observed, but also in other major variables” (Royse et al., 2016, pp. 247–248). Change Scores Change scores also served us very well; this robust measurement enabled us to investigate change over time (Johnson, 2005) in reports of job experiences between FDC participants and members of the comparison group. This mechanism allowed us to capitalize on the data we had painstakingly gathered throughout the state over the course of several years by providing the ability to capture how, and to what extent, the devastating events surrounding our research project differentially impacted the two groups. Our findings suggest the meaningful differences in the change scores between the FDC and comparison groups on several measures derived largely from the greater magnitude of changes in the reports of the comparison group's job experience between pretesting (Wave One) and posttesting (Wave Two) rather than the more modest change in the reports of the FDC participants’ job experience over the same time period. Recall we combined two subscales from the HSJSQ to measure burnout, a negative feeling about one’s work situation. FDC class participants reported, on average, a small – almost negligible – decrease in burnout (change score = -.04; Wave One mean = 1.48; Wave Two mean = 1.44) while comparison group members reported, on average, a sizable increase in burnout (change score = +.22; Wave One mean = 1.4; Wave Two mean = 1.64); with the change scores being significantly different at the .05 p-level (F = 4.83, df = 123). Global mastery captures positive feelings (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978); the mean averages of this measure also saw differential changes. FDC participants’ feelings of mastery increased, on average (change score = +.10; Wave One mean = 3.2; 5 Wave Two mean = 3.35) while the comparison group’s mean average suffered a decrease (change score = -.11; Wave One mean = 3.40; Wave Two mean = 3.29) with the two change scores being significantly different at the .01 p-level (F = 9.25, df = 164). That the change scores indicated a positive increase in reported job experience (very small decrease in burnout, increase in global mastery) for the FDC participants between pretesting and posttesting is valuable data for this evaluation project. But if our analyses had stopped there the evaluation results would have been of limited value because there would have been no way to determine how the newsworthy outside events might have impacted the FDC participants. (Remember this one-group model was actually the original research design!) A similar critique can be leveled at a research projects that do include both treatment and control/comparison groups but compare only differences between the mean scores of the two

410  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations groups at Wave Two, a frequent analytic strategy for experimental and quasi-experimental research projects. By investigating change scores (the differences in means of scores between Wave One and Wave Two data for both groups), the usefulness of our project greatly increased as it enabled us to analyze how each group changed over time in relationship to the other group within the extant chaotic social milieu. Interpreting our results at the most basic level, a reasonable conclusion was (and still is) that being a social service worker is a difficult and personally taxing job. These findings also provide some evidence the disorder in the Missouri social service sector occurring at the time did impact our research findings. The FDC participants’ change scores were of a small magnitude, indicating participation in the FDC classes possibly provided protective buffering to lessen the negative influences of the chaotic atmosphere following Dominic James’ murder, perhaps due to the curriculum’s focus on workers self-care or that the classroom provided a safe space for workers to support each other during the uncertain times. It follows then statistically significant differences in the change scores between the two groups arose mainly from the large magnitude of the comparison group’s change scores in the direction opposite from the FDC participants’ scores. The large decreases in positive feelings about job experiences suggested the comparison group members’ exposure to the considerable stress stemming from the shock and sorrow following the murder and the resulting uncertainty as the legislature discussed which corrective actions would be implemented in the foster care system, took its negative toll. Said another way, in the face of this tragic circumstance and its aftermath, FDC participation resulted in little change in workers’ perception of their job experiences while the comparison group change scores revealed major declines in members’ positive feelings of job experiences. Can we say with absolute conviction that the difference between our two groups’ change scores resulted directly from the Dominic James horror? No, with our existing data we cannot definitively claim this tragic event did change workers’ responses to our survey; but the circumstantial evidence strongly indicates it did impact our research outcomes.

DISCUSSION: ETHICS AND FLEXIBILITY This narrative demonstrates how the totality of a research project is created from the many small decisions made continuously throughout the process. Ultimately ours was a successful evaluation because responsible research ethics and flexibility guided this project at all stages. Allow me to elaborate on these lessons learned. Ethics Adhering to the most rigorous ethical behavior fundamentally simplifies all academic endeavors, including the execution of research projects. While I would like to hope I have always held myself to the highest ethical standards, teaching research methods to undergraduate students who express great surprise when confronted with the many considerations required for ethical social science inquiry reinforces my resolve to behave ethically. Serving on my university’s Institutional Research Board (IRB), a combined board for Adult Medicine and Social Science, has also strengthened my conviction adhering to the highest possible ethical standards is always the correct call. In the case presented here, decisions with ethical implications were

Getting real about research  411 necessarily made at all levels of the FDC evaluation research project and we did our best to take the high road every time. We have the freedom to be open about our experiences; we have never needed to be opaque when sharing our experiences and results from the FDC evaluation project because we were as transparent as possible in all decisions at every stage. Primary consideration of respondents Because I aspire to be a role-model for ethical research behavior, I feel obligated to adopt a broad definition of protection of research subjects. For this evaluation project, this manifested itself through acute sensitivity to the length of time it took respondents to complete the survey instrument as well as the appropriateness of some questions. Hence, we removed from the Wave One (W1V1) those survey items deemed to be overly intrusive as well as other, seemingly redundant, measures to add the HSJSQ matrix to the W1V2 survey instrument. As detailed earlier, the primacy of consideration for respondents unfortunately led to our inability to gather the full complement of data on a key outcome variable, job satisfaction. But at the time I could not ethically justify combining the two job satisfaction measures for the sake of a higher sample size because the W1V1 measure’s possible responses included both the terms “satisfied” and “dissatisfied” and the W1V2 HSJSQ did not. Newer empirical evidence suggests factors that influence job satisfaction differ from factors that influence job dissatisfaction (Herzberg, 2003; Kovacs et al., 2018), confirming my decision to hold myself to the highest ethical standard and abandon the combination of these two measures was the most appropriate course of action. Report out unexpected findings If we social scientists are dedicated to “uncovering” and/or “bringing to light” the human experience, then we must build in opportunities for our respondents to show us potential research outcomes we failed to consider ourselves. Our research fundamentally exists to reveal the lived experiences of our respondents. We were not expecting the positive impact on the workers’ own family interactions or the bonding among the FDC class participants. Thinking about these findings afterwards, it became obvious that these were a logical outcome of engaging with the curriculum. But, as we did not anticipate these outcomes, the survey instrument did not include closed-ended questions about personal family relationships. It was through qualitative data collection via the focus groups and that one simple open-ended survey question that these project outcomes came to our attention; again reinforcing my conclusion to always include some qualitative data collection method however small. We academics cannot know how our respondents will engage with our work; we must provide respondents opportunities to tell us what outcomes we missed; our research will be better for it. Report out potentially unpopular findings Because of my exposure to the family science literature, I became aware of the SIME/DIME experiments, which set out to determine if and how income maintenance policies impacted job-seeking behavior in Seattle (S) and Denver (D), only to find that adequate income support increased divorce among married couples. These unanticipated but highly controversial outcomes were discussed thoroughly in the final report (US Department of Health and Human Services, 1983). The ethical standard is to report out all research findings, even when inconvenient. Reporting out findings when potentially uncomfortable is always difficult; in my

412  Research handbook on the sociology of organizations case holding both the role of Director of the Missouri FDC Training Initiative implementation as well as the PI of its evaluation research project created the greatest potential for conflicts of interest. As mentioned previously, in most instances employers paid for the employees to participate in the training. But some of our research findings suggested that employers might be reluctant in the future to pay to send their workers to the FDC classes. Turnover rates. When marketing the FDC Training Initiative to employers in Missouri we referenced lower staff turnover as a benefit because a previous evaluation of the FDC Training Initiative in New York State found that supervisors reported decreased turnover of workers who participate in FDC classes (Crane, 2000). But our Missouri evaluation results indicated no difference in turnover rates from Wave One to Wave Two between FDC participants and members of the comparison group. Wave Two to Wave Three rates were similar: No difference in turnover rates between the two groups existed (analyses not shown). Our results not only contradicted the earlier FDC evaluation results but also implied paying for the FDC classes might not be good financial stewardship for employers. Fairly paid for work. Another outcome that could have been seen as problematic, at least from the perspective of the financial officer of the organization paying for workers to participate in the FDC, came from the answers to a HSJSQ measure: “I feel fairly paid for my work.” The difference in the change scores between the two groups trended toward statistical significance, with a decrease in feeling fairly paid for their work reported by the FDC participant group and an a small (almost negligible) increase reported by the comparison group (change scores = -.29 vs .08 respectively; F-score = 2.81, df = 123, p