At the time of publication, the three editors were all at Kings College, London;
the chapters are contributed by different individuals or groups, from locations ranging from
America, through Europe, and to Australia. For more information on the editors,
see the current web pages for
David Grant,
Tom Keenoy and
Cliff Oswick.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|
Intro-
duction
by the editors | 2 | There's a risk that 'Discourse
Analysis', because of its multidisciplinary roots, might appear as if it is
'all things to all people'. [RT: it's an ongoing problem. Academic journal
editors and conference programme committees often prefer stuff they can
categorize neatly. But getting different specialties
together seems increasingly the best route to progress in the grey areas
between science and society = as long as people don't propose 'cocktail
concepts' just for the sake of getting published!] |
| | |
'Discourse' extends from
the spoken to the written text, but shouldn't we also include music, art,
architecture etc? |
| | |
Discourse is implicated
in the 'social construction of reality' |
| | 3 |
"Inter-textual analysis
'crucially mediates the connection between language and social context, and
facilitates more satisfactory bridging of the gap between text and context."
(Fairclough) |
| | |
Mumby and Clair: "Organizations exist only so far as their members
create them through discourse" - but that's not saying that they are
'nothing but discourse'. |
| | 4 |
Related 'keyword' topics are
metaphor, stories, narratives, novels, rituals, rhetoric, language games,
texts, drama, conversations, emotion and sense-making. |
| | |
Discourse analysis isn't
currently fully accepted because: 1) people regard it as a side issue, an
'epiphenomenon'; 2) its range of methodologies is too diverse; 3) it's too
easily associated with post-modernist bullshit; and 4) the prejudice
favouring 'action' over 'talk' still holds sway. |
| | 5 |
"Leading, organizing,
planning, motivating, controlling and coordinating" are all 'actions'.
Austin's 'speech
acts' have been around since 1962 [RT: see also
Searle, 'language-action
perspective' and
ActionWorks workflow software]. |
| | 6-12 |
(Here the editors just
give brief summaries of each chapter in the book.) |
| | 12 |
We should be encouraged "to
examine 'underprivileged discourses' and 'alternative realities' ". |
| Part I |
| 'TALK AND ACTION' |
 |
| 1 - | 15-30 |
'Redeeming the Meaning of
Talk' by Robert Marshak (Consultant in Organizational Change). [RT: This
chapter reads like a polemic against the naïve 'folk' view that
says "action, good; talk, bad".] |
| | 18-19 |
He suggests the bias for
'action' goes along
with a 'path-goal' model [RT: but that model is often appropriate. People
state goals, and want to find a way to achieve them.] |
| | 20 |
He criticizes the simplistic
'temporal' model of 'talk, then action'. |
| | 22-23 |
He suggests three levels
of talk: 1) about the practicalities, 'tool talk'; 2) about plans and
results, 'frame talk'; and 3) about the whole idea, 'mythopoetic talk' [RT:
ugh!]. There are review cycles connecting these (see diagram on the right). |
| | 25-27 |
As an
illustration, Marshak uses the "Great
Chain of Being" model - a historical Christian idea which says that
everything slots into a previously ordained pattern, and that all we do
through thought and action is to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of
things. [RT: that's about as 'mythopoetic' as you can get; I feel I can get
on very well without it. It may not even be a sensible idea in many
practical situations, though it may also resonate with some Hindu
philosophical schools.] For a critical view of the Great Chain of Being, try
this YouTube item. |
| | 27-30 |
Here he takes a slightly
more balanced view, mentioning the purposes of 'organization' and the need
for action to be effective and appropriate, and to allow for learning in
organizations |
| | |
He wonders if, to avoid
being ridiculed by the 'less talk, more action' brigade, discourse
researchers should always try to add the word 'action' into the names of
their concepts. |
| | [RT] |
The whole chapter seems
rather too simplistic. What seems to be missing is any discussion of what
different types of mission, strategies and tactics could be in operation -
and what type of balance and interplay between talk and action might be best
in different cases. For example, things may be different depending on
whether we are 'fixing a hole', counselling, or running a 'for profit'
business. |
| 2 - | 31-50 |
'Workplace Conversations'
by
Jill Woodilla (then at U Mass, Amherst, USA). This chapter describes a
methodology which blends the three specialties of Conversation Analysis,
Pragmatic Linguistics and Critical Language Theory. It is best understood
from the diagram below, re-drawn from the one in the book (a couple of
'dotted arrows' are missing!). |
| | |
ETHOMETHODOLOGY
(Garfinkel)
Study of common-sense understandings
of the accomplishments of everyday life.
Actors constitute organization through their socially based
activities
|
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (Whorf,
Sapir, Malinowski Hymes, Lévi-Strauss) |
SPEECH ACT PHILOSOPHY (Austin)
|
TEXT GRAMMARS (Jakobson)
|
CRITICAL LANGUAGE
THEORY
(Baktin/Volosinov)
Study of socio-political aspects of language use Organization
constrained by social problematic of language and power.
|
|
PRAGMATIC LINGUISTICS
Study of how actors use linguistic strategies (depending on
situation, participants and social relationships) to achieve
interactional goals.
Language contributes to organization. |
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
(Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson, Atkinson, Drew Zimmerman, Boden
Study of formal structuring of how people use talk as part of
their practical sense of everyday events. |
SPEECH ACT THEORY (Searle, Grince, Brown,
Levinson)
Utterances perform acts by being spoken. |
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
ETHNOGRAPHY OF SPEAKING
(Hymes, Gumperz, Tannen)
The meaning of words in this instance depends on
contextualization cues. (SPEAKING mnemonic). |
SYSTEMIC LINGUISTICS
(Halliday)
Functional language variation realizes situational (social)
meanings. |
CRITICAL LINGUISTICS (Fairclough)
Nesting of text, social practice and discursive practice |
CRITICAL LITERACY (Gee)
Relationships among language choices and ideologies
|
| Conversation is a joint accomplishment through
turn-taking. Meaning is both ‘context-free’ and ‘context-sensitive’. |
Conversationalists use language
and linguistic and non-linguistic cues to create aligned
understanding or misunderstanding.
|
Conversation has a moral basis.
The choices of language used by speakers, and guesses of meaning by
hearers, depend on membership in ideologically informed groups |
|
|
|
| | 34 |
The table below shows the
contributions of each of the three specialties. The methodology is then explained in detail on pp 35-41
of the book. |
| | |
|
Table 2.1 Summary of contributions to understanding workplace conversations |
| About conversations |
Conversation analysis |
Pragmatic linguistics |
Critical language theory |
| What kinds of questions are asked? |
How do actors know they are having a conversation? |
How do actors use language and linguistic and non-linguistic cues to understand each other? |
Why do actors make particular language choices when speaking. and specific guesses about
meaning when listening? |
| |
How do actors distinguish one kind of conversation from another? |
|
|
| What kinds of answers? |
'Everyone' uses certain 'turn-taking rules'. |
We can infer how actors are negotiating meaning from their language and contextualization cues. |
Choices and guesses am informed by tacit assumptions of 'normal conversational behaviours'. |
| |
Actors understand this conversation only as it unfolds – they must 'understand' the
previous turn in order to make the next one. |
Speech act theory: utterances perform actions by being spoken. |
All language use constrained by structuring of institutional discourse
and/or moral obligations of membership in cultural groups. |
| |
Actors use ambiguity to construct identity and meaning. |
Sociolinguistics: meaning of words used in this instance depends on contextualization cues |
Distinction among text as linguistic artefact, discourse as actual practice, and
social discursive practices (see note 4). |
| |
Specialized conversations differ from mundane ones by looking at ways 'turn-taking rules' are
both similar and different. |
Ethnography: SPEAKING mnemonic. Systemic linguistics – functional language variation realizes situational
meanings. |
|
| Issues studied within discipline |
How turn-taking rules are used differently in different social settings and by different
classes of people. |
How language used indicates meaning and associated behaviour. |
Reflection on societal practices involving acquisition and use of language. |
| |
How important the wider context is to the social setting (return to a broader ethnomethodological focus). |
How mis/understanding develops and the reasons for this. |
Analysis uncovers linguistic-discursive forms of domination and exploitation. |
| |
|
How spoken and written language form a continuum ('the text'). |
|
| |
|
Difficulties connecting analysis to social situations. |
|
| Methodologies |
Transcript in standardized format. Punctuation indicates prosody. |
Transcript presented according to level of language studied. |
Researcher identifies problematic moments which reveal contested meanings. |
| |
Look for pairs of turns (adjacency pairs). |
Ethnographic detail added as relevant for analysis. |
Analysis links levels of discourse. |
| |
Examine utterance meaning within these turns, then between one pair and the next. |
Issues of how researcher gathers and presents data. |
Less emphasis on transcript and more on argument. |
| |
|
Analysis depends on theoretical focus. |
|
|
| | 42-4 |
Here various conversation
scenarios are introduced, including an example of a transcribed and
annotated tape recording. Part of this is 'The Gloss' which says what the
conversation is all about. |
| | 44-6 |
The methodology performs two analyses; 1)
conversation pair by pair; and 2) between adjacent conversation pairs; then
it summarizes the analysis of the whole conversation. |
| | 48-50 |
The author adds her
conclusions, and explains the coding system for the transcripts. |
| | [RT] |
This is much like what the research group (led by by
Paul Swatman, and in which I participated marginally in my last couple
of years as a university lecturer)
tried to do, using video-recorded conversations. A limiting factor was the effort it took to code up even 10
minutes of recorded conversation. |
| 3 - | 51-64 |
'Emotional Discourse in Organizations' by
Iain
Mangham (since deceased; he was Emeritus Prof at Kings College London and also Bath Uni,
UK). Inevitably, emotion plays a role in organizational conversations. So
this chapter is a really useful contribution. |
| | 51 |
He admits he is 'pushing his
luck' by suggesting a role for morality as well as just the good of the
organization. He describes managers as "heroes of our time". |
| | 51-2 |
He recommends 3 books:
Arne Johan
Vetlesen (1994) 'Perception, Empathy and Judgment';
Roger Crisp (ed,
1996) 'How Should One
Live' - especially a paper by
Michael Stocker; and
Justin Oakley
(1992) 'Morality
and the Emotions'. |
| | 52 |
He gives an example of an
emotional discourse between a Tom, a Dick and a Harry - part 1! |
| | 53-4 |
He dismisses
William James' idea
that 'emotion follows immediate bodily changes' and
Hume's of
'un-analyzable passion'. |
| | 55-6 |
Sartre thought
that emotion is deliberately chosen as a strategic device; Mangham thought
that might go a bit far, but was on the right track. |
| | 56 |
Perinbanayagam points to moments in a conversation where the defences
have to go up, and there's no time for a well-considered put-down. |
| | 57 |
In part 2 of the
Tom-Dick-Harry example, Harry (the boss) is trying to avoid the fight, but
he is largely to blame for it [RT: for not communicating better earlier in
the story!] |
| | |
What matters most is how
the 'other side' takes one's show of emotion. |
| | 58-9 |
A fundamental problem in
talking about emotion is that we don't have the language for it - we are
still fazed by the mind-body dualism problem. |
| | 59 |
Perinbanayagam: Emotion
"limns" (i.e. gilds, or highlights) the social acts. |
| | 59-60 |
Failing to appreciate the
emotions and hurts may also contribute to the problem, e.g. Harry in the
example, or us as readers of emotional discourses. |
| | 60-2 |
Mangham gives as an
example two reviews of play performances - one of which totally failed to
rouse the audience's emotions. |
| | 62 |
Vetlesen: "Emotions are
active in disclosing a situation to us." They are a "fundamental first cut". |
| | |
Charles
Taylor: "We can feel entitled to say, on the strength of certain
feelings, or inferences from what we see through certain feelings, that we
know X is right, or good, or worthy, or valuable". [RT: but haven't such
feelings changed over human history and social development?] |
| | 63 |
Hampshire
(1971): "Emotions are not immediate data of consciousness, uncorrupted by
reflection and description. The emotion is partly constituted by the act of
description". If the description turns out to be unfounded, one's sentiment
will also change. We can also evaluate our emotions. |
| | |
Vetlesen: Irrationality
means "unwillingness to engage in any self-evaluating process" - and we
ought to be prepared for others to question us as well. |
| | 64 |
Emotional 'shows' may be a
good early warning that something needs fixing. One needs to have emotion
oneself to spot such things. "Practical wisdom is likely to be deeply
informed by emotion." |
| 4 - | 65-83 |
'Conversations and Narrative
in Inter-organizational Collaboration' by
Cynthia Hardy,
Thomas Lawrence and
Nelson Phillips
(then at McGill and U Victoria, Canada). |
| | 65 |
They ask "if our world is
purely social, can we simply think up - or talk up - a new one?" They say
'no'. For a start, some natural disasters will still happen. [RT: I have
some experience of 'thinking up a new world' - see my personal website. But
at least I don't seriously think it exists, unlike certain idealist
dictators of recent and less recent history.] |
| | |
"Our experience of an
organization's strategies and mandates is as much through written and oral
stories as by (directly) observing decisions and actions." [RT: but
will that give a reliable enough impression for future action?] |
| | |
"Discourse and talk are
central to organization and organizing - but so is non-discursive action." |
| | 67 |
'Micro-sociologists' contend
that "concepts such as 'culture', 'state', 'economy' or 'collaboration' are
only real to the extent that they are enacted in the micro-contexts of
individuals interacting". |
| | |
Collins: Social
structure lies in "the repeated actions of communicating, not in the
contents of what is said; those contents are frequently ambiguous or
erroneous, not always mutually understood or fully explicated". |
| | 68 |
Stories can both constrain
and enable action, e.g. to repair a motorcycle [RT: like in
Pirsig's Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'?]. |
 |
| | 70 |
With group activity, a
collective identity emerges. |
| | 72 |
A participant's energies
rise and fall with the emotional feedback received. |
| | 73 |
The authors offer a rather
simplistic model linking conversation and action (see diagram on the right).
Identity, skills and emotions mediate the transition. |
| | 74 |
They offer the case study
'Community Partners' which was a joint venture to give counselling, training
and support to unemployed in an area in Canada. |
| | 75 |
Lack of progress over 18
months led to a 'workshop' of 3½ days spread
over 6 weeks. This made more progress than in the previous18 months. |
| | 76 |
In the workshop, a 'leader'
threw in a few threats aimed at people 'fighting for the pie' (i.e. to grab a
bigger share). |
| | |
On the morning of the
third day they hit an impasse over widening the mission - but this was
resolved by compromise. |
| | 77 |
One post-workshop comment
said "Because we came together to learn, it 'levelled the playing field'
somewhat. But it was often emotional. |
| | 79 |
Having a 'facilitator' was
new to most participants. |
| | 81 |
Among the conclusions were:
1) one needs to include social skills as well as other skills; 2) one needs
to take a balanced view of emotions, both positive and negative. |
| | 82 |
Being 'representatives' of
one's organization means having to transcend personal motivations and
emotions. |
| Part II | |
'STORIES AND SENSE
MAKING' |
| 5 - | 84-103 |
'Same Old Story - or
Changing Stories?' by
Yiannis Gabriel (Bath Uni). The author's general message is not to
regard all discourses as 'stories' in the same sense as 'folk story telling'
- there are several major identifiably different variants. He has also
published a video on organizational
storytelling. There is also his
personal blog - which includes a recipe for Moussaka. |
| | 84-5 |
Some of the variants
are: 1) Elements of organizational symbolism and culture; 2) Expression of
unconscious wishes and fantasies; 3) Vehicles for organizational
communication and learning; 4) Expressions of political domination and
opposition; 5) Dramatic performances; 6) Occasions for emotional discharge;
and 7) Narrative structures. |
| | 85 |
Stories "create, sustain,
fashion and test meanings in and out of organizations". There is some
privileging of narrative over fact. |
| | 86
| Gabriel's 8 'misgivings' about privileging stories are: 1)
Stories are not the only things that generate and sustain meaning; 2) Not
all stories generate and sustain meaning - some stories may actually
undermine and destroy it; 3) Not all narratives are stories - in particular,
factual or descriptive accounts of events which aspire to objectivity (rather
than emotional effect) must not be treated as stories; 4) Stories are
relatively special narrative phenomena in organizations, where discourse is
dominated by other forms; 5) Stories should not be seen as automatically
dissolving 'facts' - instead, narratives and experience must be treated as
having a material basis, even if this material basis is opaque or
inaccessible; 6) Not all stories are good stories, nor are all individuals
effective story-tellers; 7) Organizational stories rarely achieve the depth
and complexity of myths and should not be treated as part of a mythology -
instead, they may be profitably treated as folkloric elements; 8) The
importance, quantity, quality and character of folklore differs across
organizations. |
| | |
"By obliterating
distinctions between stories and other types of texts and narratives,
stories lose precisely the power which they are meant to possess ... They
then disintegrate into chic clichés into
which meaning disappears." |
| | |
There has been a
'radical transfusion' between 'folkloric', modern and postmodern stories. |
| | 87 |
Joseph Campbell:
"The folk tale, in contrast to the myth, is a form of entertainment". |
| | 90 |
The 'modernist narrative
pantheon' incorporates "scientific theses, vast novels and painstakingly
detailed historical texts". |
| | 91 |
Benjamin:
"Story-telling has been silenced by facts" ... and "Modernity devalues
subjective experience in favour of information". |
| | 92 |
'Interpretivism'
is defined as analyzing the 'hidden symbolism' of stories |
| | 93 |
"If modernism
questioned the survival of stories,
postmodernism sees
stories everywhere", including in advertisements, material objects, images,
human bodies (especially if modified [RT: or clothed?]), consultants'
reports, performance appraisals, official documents, works of art, legal
arguments and scientific theories. |
| | 94 |
"Postmodern discourses have
privileged stories and story-telling as sense-making devices; in so doing,
many have lost sight of the qualities of story-telling as entertainment and
challenge, and have blurred the boundaries between stories and other types
of narratives, including interpretations, theories and arguments." |
| | 96
| Ancillary narrative devices include "clichés,
platitudes and labels." There are also "arguments and explanations, slogans
and soundbites, lists (especially acronymic ones on slides) and big numbers,
logos and images, opinions and stereotypes, metaphors and metonymies,
symbols and signs, fragments of information, puns and jeux de mots,
fantasies and daydreams, displays of emotion". |
| | 99 |
Of the narratives collected
in his practical research, Gabriel found 3 types which he distinguished from
'true' stories: opinions, factual 'flat' descriptions and 'proto-stories'.
These latter ones didn't have much of a plot, and/or didn't lead to any
denouement. |
| | 101 |
Distinguishing a) 'facts as
information' from b) 'facts as experience': in a) loyalty rests with the
facts (are they accurate?); while in b) loyalty is with the story (is it a
good tale?). Even
Schliemann and
Arthur Evans tampered with their findings to improve the 'effect' of
their stories. |
| | 102 |
Journalistic, experimental
and archaeological practices are 'factually challengeable' - whereas
story-telling isn't. |
| 6 - | 104-18 |
'And God Created the Earth
... A Saga that Makes Sense?' by
Miriam Salzer-Mörling (Sweden). It's
about the IKEA story and the
implications of such 'organizational sagas'. |
| | 107 |
The IKEA story is a bit
like Genesis - "how it all came into being. It creates a sense of meaning
and purpose. It seems as if all events can be explained or understood in the
light of this saga. The saga makes sense of the past and depicts a glorious
future. The creator has even provided his community with moral guidelines
..." There are 9 such guidelines [RT: but 10 in the Bible - in Exodus! But
is this how most of us regard Genesis?]. |
| | 109 |
The saga's author was a
copywriter who used short spoken-like sentences and made it sound a bit like
a fairy tale. It creates a 'corporate ego' - uniqueness as against the rest
of the world. |
| | 110 |
Such sagas (there are
several other notable examples) are "managerial monologues" - perhaps hoping
to shut out alternative voices. |
| | |
IKEA has "strict rules
about who is allowed to speak to the press". |
| | |
"Personal profiling is
about the worst thing you can do" (in IKEA; they don't want anyone to be
seen as an individual, except for the founder). |
| | 111 |
The Chinese sign for 'boss'
is "man with two mouths" - one for himself, the other for his organization. |
| | |
"Leaders can be said to
define the reality of others." [RT: Just like they try to do in religions.] |
| | 112 |
"Myth factories ... as a
wish to manage the hearts and minds of the employees ... in order to control
and integrate people." |
| | |
When the monologue gives
things 'labels', like "we're one big family", it implies "you stick to the
family". |
| | |
" 'Management' as
the use of language to persuade." |
| | 113-5 |
"Polyphony" might
sometimes be preferable (to a monologue), [RT: e.g. if a new direction is
needed]. Differences from the IKEA rules had to be applied in Canada because
of different customer expectations. |
| | 118 |
[RT: In practice,]
"managerial meanings mix and mingle with local meanings". |
| | |
"How is it that we
sometimes give up our own voice to let someone define reality for us?" |
| | |
"It is not a matter of
how 'real' or 'accurate' a story or definition is. Rather it is a matter of
how 'persuasive' or 'attractive' the meanings are." |
| | |
"The only thing we can
do as managers is to give some hope." [RT: I assume this means "when telling
stories"?] |
| 7 - | 119-33 |
'The Struggle with Sense'
by
Anne Wallemacq (Univ de Namur, Belgium) and
David Sims. |
| | 120 |
Stories describing life in
an organization as a 'madhouse' are common. |
| | 121 |
"Sense is always tenuous
... we make sense as we go along." |
| | 121-2 |
People may get 'robbed'
of their sense-making capacity, e.g. by persecution. |
| | 122 |
Making sense is always
harder in 'virtual' organizations. |
| | 123 |
Widdershoven: "We
remember entirely in stories". |
| | 124 |
"...Only those with
something to hide are likely to restrict themselves to consistent stories." |
| | 124-8 |
Sense-making through
intervention: consultants can act as a mirror for an organizational person
to re-focus their sense of things 'phenomenologically' (in Merleau-Ponty's
sense). |
| | 127 |
The 'shock' of adopting a
new metaphor. |
| | |
"Did we discover an
embedded sense, or did we create one? Was the one that got adopted the only
one, or one of many, or necessarily the best one?" It's often unclear. |
| | 128 |
"Phenomenology is based on
the assumption that we are inside the world we perceive." |
| | 129 |
'Non-sense' is part of the
sense-making process. |
| | |
With stories, "the
border between fiction and fact is not clear." |
| | 129-30 |
"There is not an
un-meaningful world, on the one hand, and a production of meaning, on the
other. The world we experience is given to us as meaningful." So, it comes
down to management of meaning, not creation - it's about finding a
(more) convincing interpretation. |
| | 131 |
Garfinkel: "The
objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment of the
concerted activities of daily life ... is a fundamental phenomenon". |
| | 132 |
This process may result in
us feeling that it (the reality of social facts) is objectively already there. |
| Part III | |
'DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL
THEORY' |
| 8 - | 134-51 |
'Linearity, Control and
Death' by
Gibson
Burrell (then at Univ of Warwick, UK). The general message is "Linearity
kills". |
| | 138 |
"The body is pitted against
the eye" [RT: i.e., what we feel or hear competes with what we see]. |
| | 140 |
"Modernism generated a
frenzy for the visible" (Martin
Jay 1994) |
| | 144-9 |
One alternative to linearity is
Deleuze and
Guattari's 'Nomadism'. |
| | 144-5 |
Deleuze and Guattari (D &
G) contrast a 'plane of consistency' (PoC) against a 'plane of
organization'. The PoC "contains no forms and structures, no genesis and no
development. There are only relations of rest and movement". There are,
however, 'collective assemblages'. |
| | 145-6 |
Their analogy is between
rhizomes and
tree branches. |
| | 146 |
"The
war machine is exterior to the state apparatus." [RT: Is it like
Eisenhower's
Military–industrial complex (MIC)?] |
| | 148 |
"One is labelled a deviant
if one refuses to be an organism, refuses to be organized ..." |
| | 149 |
"Every time desire is
uprooted from this (consistency) plane, 'a priest is behind it'. The latest
in a long line of priests is the psychoanalyst." |
| | |
Burrell sees D & G's
ideas as too unbalanced [RT: but then, so was his 'linearity is death'
diatribe; he failed to say that there are a lot of other things that lead to
death, and a lot of of the things linearity leads to, not all of them bad]. |
| | 150 |
D & G have "too many
neologisms" [RT: maybe not as many as Heidegger]. They are basically just
anti-organization. [RT: I too agree that we need a bit more nomadism, but
how do we encourage just its best aspects?] |
| | |
'Punk'
might be thought of as nomadic, but Burrell felt that phenomenon owed more
to Malcolm McLaren's
career and income interests, as revealed by
Vivienne Westwood's
autobiography [RT: she herself might be described as 'nomadic'!]. |
| | |
It's pretty hard to be a
'nomad' in academia these days [RT: easier in the fashion industry]! |
| 9 - | 152-79 |
'An Organization is a
Conversation' by
Gerrit Broekstra (Univ of Nijenrode, NL). This sometimes reads like an
advert for his methodology for organizational change. |
| | 152 |
"Playing God is a
self-appointed role that many top managers tenaciously cling to." |
| | 153 |
"Control-oriented managers
hold a common background theory, perhaps even subconsciously, of how to
change their companies based on control and 'instructionist'
intervention from the outside." |
| | |
"... The problem with
the practice of management is the dominance of theories ... (that are)
largely untested." |
| | 154 |
Change programmes have the
"fallacy of confusing the domain of the system's experiential phenomenology
with the domain of description". |
| | 155 |
"... Theories are not
representations of the world at all; they are a way of world-making, of
constructing a world, not the world." |
| | 156 |
'Second
order cybernetics' says that "instructive interventions will fail
because an essentially organizationally
closed
system responds by compensating for the imposed disturbances in ways
that are determined by its own structure, and that do not reflect the
intentions of the intervenor". |
| | 157-8 |
This gives an
introduction to the science of 'organized
complexity'. |
| | 159 |
Complex dynamical systems
usually evolve 'bottom up' into some de facto organization, e.g.
birds flocking. |
| | 162 |
Broekstra's 3-level
structure of the organizing process. Bottom level: 'grammar' - local
activity rules; middle level: 'interactive phenomenology' - social system of
local interactions; top level: 'cognition' - emerging conceptual systems
(theories, frameworks etc). |
| | 164 |
One can have 'explicit' and
'tacit' at each of these levels: at middle level, 'tangible structure' and
'intangible deep structure; at top level, 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'. |
| | 169-70 |
One can talk about the
'tacit organization'. |
 |
| | 171 |
Broekstra's 'deep sea'
analogy (see diagram to the right). Above the waves is the field of action - 'Doing'
- which is manifest, ever-changing and relative. Floating on the waves are
'Concepts'. Just below the waves is the field of explicit knowledge. Then
there is a sub-stratum of little waves, with 'Vision' floating on them.
Below are 'Values' and the field of tacit knowledge. Under the sea bed he
has 'Being' - the field of silence - which is un-manifest, never-changing
and absolute, and which corresponds to 'pure' knowledge. [RT: this all seems
very fanciful, and possibly religious - especially below the sea bed. I
suspect we wouldn't all agree on the pure knowledge.] |
| | 173 |
Companies don't just have a
'problem' to be 'solved'; any diagnosis is usually too theory-laden. |
| | 174-5 |
His 6-step methodology ('VVC
- Values, Vision, Concepts) is: 1) Contextual appreciation; 2) Systems
appreciation (core values); 3) Values-based visioning; 4) Concept formation;
5) Action projects (not targeting the tacit organization to begin with); 6)
Closure - drawing a line under this 'round' of changes, expecting
another one sometime later. |
| | 176 |
"... Managerial focus
should be on dialogue and self-organization ... a process which I
characterize as un-management." |
| | [RT] |
It's not so different, in
practical terms and effects, as the sort of 'business-based strategy
planning' I used to be involved in the 1980s, following the ideas of
James Martin
and others. |
| 10 - | 177-92 |
'Metaphor, Language and Meaning' by
Didier Cazal (Univ of Lille) and
Dawn Inns (Univ of Westminster). |
| | 177-9 |
Metaphor has been claimed
to be valuable for: 1) bypassing too historicist a view of Organization
Theory, suggesting there are "a number of schools"; 2) enhancing "our ability
to develop multiple interpretations" (Gareth
Morgan); 3) helping in the three ethnographic stages of a) penetrating all
the meanings, b) sorting them into some structure and c) presenting the
results to readers. |
| | 178 |
"The world is not already
there waiting for us to reflect on it." [RT: does it just seem
like that?] |
| | 179 |
Metaphors also: 1) help
reveal thoughts that are hidden, barely conscious or difficult to
articulate; 2) enable researchers to see beyond their existing models; 3)
help convey meaning to readers of texts. |
| | 180 |
Criticism 1: metaphors are
too imprecise, drifting , subjective. |
| | 182 |
Criticism 2: metaphors are
not theories, and don't provide any knowledge. |
| | 183 |
Criticism 3: the idea of 'injunction
of metaphor', i.e. a deterministic indicator implying some appropriate mode of action, does
not seem realistic; "metaphors require interpretation". |
| | 184 |
Lacan was extremely
pessimistic about meaning. "Metaphors reveal the
instability of meaning in language." |
| | 187 |
Lacan: "There is a
'subtext' beneath conscious discourse which the conscious subject is not
able to control in terms of what he or she conceals or reveals". [RT: sounds
similar to my 'Lenses and Filters' in my essay 'What
Did They Mean?'] |
| | |
Sartre: "Reading is an
act of collaboration between the reader and the author" [RT: same comment]. |
| | 188 |
The 'relational nature of
metaphor': metaphors don't have creative power by themselves; they give
access to 'webs of significance ... (they) put in contact areas in
disconnected fields". |
| | |
Some of the metaphors
that have been used for organizations include "anarchies, seesaws, space
stations, garbage can, marketplace, savage tribe". |
| | 189 |
We take for granted
metaphors like 'mouth of a river', 'head of a pin'. Metaphor "points to the
complexity of meaning". |
| | 190 |
"... Organizational
researchers are involved as much as anything in games of rhetoric; they do
anything but produce 'plain texts' - they are mixed up in the sharp practice
of rhetoric." |
| | 191 |
Metaphors help 'seeing and
expressing' - but these are not thinking, only preliminary steps. |
| | |
The interest is in the
metaphor's function, not in the metaphor itself. |
| 11 - | 193-213
| 'Organizational Analysis as Discourse Analysis: a Critique' by
Mike Reed (then
at Univ of Lancaster, UK). This is the most difficult paper in this
book. It's an evaluation of
Foucault's ideas on discourse analysis as an
approach to finding an understanding of organizations. The author's overall message
seems to be that he doesn't think much of it. |
| | 194 |
Foucault (F) 1) refuses to
prioritize or isolate "linguistic, rhetorical, symbolic and communicative
components of discursive formations from their physical, technical,
organizational and political elements; 2)) treats discourse as
constructive of social reality; 3) ties construction, articulation and
reformation of discourse to the exercise of power and control in micro-level
sites of 'dividing practices' which become organizational nodes in a web of
relations through which individual minds and bodies are normalized and
disciplined" (It's an inherently political conception of discourse);
and 4) "promotes an 'agentless' conception of discursive formulation; 5)
tends towards a localized, even de-institutionalized form of
discourse" (meaning discourse is only 'bottom up'). |
| | 196 |
F's example, a 'clinic', is
the product of "a new carving up of things". |
| | 198-203
| This is a long section on ideas of 'self' in organizations. How
does a person fit in with a corporate style? F talked about a trend away
from 'occupational' identity (i.e. grouped by skill set or expertise) to
'organizational' (i.e. we are all employees first). However a more recent
trend is away from being a bureaucrat (inward looking within the
organization) to 'customer-oriented' (thinking first about the the outside
world which we serve). |
| | 204-5 |
Foucault talked about a
move in organizational discipline to skeletal 'panopticon
control' (see particularly
this part of the same web page). |
| | 205-6 |
Likewise in Government,
there's a shift towards 'professionals' and 'centralized decentralization'
(i.e. lots of quangos and specialist units). |
| | 207 |
Criticism 1 of Foucault:
His "nominalist conception of power is fundamentally circular - it's 'the
very nature of the game itself'". It doesn't really explain the existence of
continuing power structures. |
| | 208 |
Criticism 2: F's "general
movement towards internalized and indirect - as opposed to externalized and
direct - forms of surveillance and control" suggests that it's impossible to
have any stabilized regime of any durability. [RT: It seems regimes do in fact
acquire durability and inertia - it takes effort to topple them.] |
| | 209 |
Criticism 3: F's
"inadequate treatment of the 'agency/structure' relationship" (he rejects
any differentiation between social action and structural restraint) makes it
"unable to distinguish between 'open doors' and 'brick walls'. |
| | 210
| Criticism 4: " 'Rational ontological constructivism' " (i.e.
maintaining that 'everything is socially constructed') "rules out any
possibility of conceptualizing the social world as consisting of entities"
... and "denies itself the very opportunity to understand and explain
the generative properties which make social practices and forms ... what
they are and equip them to do what they do." |
| | 211-2 |
Reed favours 'realism'
over Foucault, i.e. "social reality consists of real structures which exist
and act independently of the pattern of events that they generate". |
| | 212-3 |
F's 'domain assumption',
that "there is no ground beyond the discursive realm to prevent the
collapse of structures" is "breathtaking ontological hubris" and an
"explanatory cul-de-sac". |
| | [RT] |
When the verbiage gets as
tough as this, one suspects that 'ontological hubris' is highly likely (but
followed by ontological nemesis?). Reed wrestles gamely with the Foucaultese
but even his criticisms are hard to follow. Would it be any easier in the
original French? I doubt it.] |
| | |
Reed
now (2011)
seems to be participating in a campaign against modern forms of 'Leaderism'
as an evolution of 'Managerialism'. |
| Part IV | |
'A CONCLUDING
DISCOURSE' |
| 12 - | 214-21 |
'Discourse, Organizations
and Paradox' by Richard Dunford (Macquarie U) and Ian Palmer (U Tech
Sydney), both Australia. |
| | 214-5 |
Paradox 1: Talk both
enables and constrains action; the latter because too many alternative
interpretations can lead to stalemate. |
| | 215-6 |
Paradox 2: Talk is
action (at least, in the context of organizational activity). But it can be
antithetical. |
| | 216 |
"The absence of emotional
'buy in' may impede action." |
| | |
"What constitutes
'success' is not internal to the action, but is provided by associated
'talk'. |
| | |
Marshak (see chapter 1):
Talk and action "are linked in self-referencing cycles of meaning and
experience". |
| | 216-7 |
Paradox 3: Stories both
create and destroy meaning, the latter when they "disintegrate into clichés".
[RT: but also, when a new story, which may have some 'objective' content,
renders an old meaning untenable - or just less useful.] |
| | 217 |
Paradox 4: Organizational
stories are both unique and general, e.g. the 'rebel organization', (i.e.
breaking the mould, or disruptive) is quite common [RT: but some
organizations hype it up as something unique]. |
| | 217-8 |
Paradox 5: Non-sense is
sense (or, at least, can be part of sense-making). Some such non-sense is
due to the appearance of emotions. |
| | 218 |
Paradox 6: Organization is
conversation (or at least, conversations 'constitute' organizations).
Especially if the organization is customer-oriented, much of the
conversation may be external. But 'conversation overload' can be a problem. |
| | |
In view of these
paradoxes, researchers need to be reflective and self-critical of their own
assumptions. |
| | 220 |
Paradoxes may result from
different hierarchies of meaning getting intertwined [RT: I'd say that was
the normal reason for paradoxes]. |
| | |
On the issue of whether
or not 'talk is action', one might need to recognize that "action which goes
beyond 'talk' is more powerful than action which is only talk". |
This book, like most 'edited' collections of conference(?) papers on some
theme, is very much a mixed bag. There is a
later (2004) book with
much the same pattern (and many of the same authors), but I haven't yet seen a
book that puts it all together in a consistent way.
What I learnt primarily was not to overdo the use of the word 'stories', and
to take paradox 3 on pages 216-7 to heart.
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.