Modern science is suffering from the symptoms of a deep crisis. Some of the problems that scientific disciplines face affect both the social and natural sciences. If on this point there is a generalized awareness, it is worth asking: why has it become so difficult to build a critical theory about organizations?
1. Disorder in organization theory
To the extent that one accepts, something that is an important trend today in the social sciences, that there is not one modernity but many different trajectories towards what can be called modernity, if we accept the existence of different alternative modernities, we must also accept multiple forms of organizations.
M. Reed (1992: 255) says that organization theory is living "a time in which the definition of both the object of study and the rules for the construction of theories and research practice are open to debate". This particularity dates back 30 years, and in the last decade there has been a locked-in situation that indicates an exhaustion of the analysis, due to the absence of a common floor for debate1. Faced with this problem, three possibilities arise:
- Deepening the disorder that exists in the academic field, choosing the "appropriate method for the problem", opting for paradigmatic incommensurability and developing multiple and irreconcilable theories; or by academic tradition, adapting functionalist orthodoxy.
In the second option, there is an excess of epistemological relativism. In the third, one falls into theoretical polarization. All three are ways to avoid debate and remain cloistered. Ultimately, the question is disguised with the modernism-postmodernism debate. (Dávila, 2000).
The contemporary theoretical disorder due to the acceleration of change and the blow of the hard ram of postmodernity on the traditional theoretical models (paradigmatic crisis) can lead to extreme fragmentation and even the dissolution of administrative thinking.
On this point, Rigoberto Lanz (2001: 168) has expressed:
“The new approaches to organizational processes are expressly placed above the epistemic logic of the disciplines. This logic disrupts the foundations of the old way of thinking of the organization "
And in another passage of his work he adds:
“With what epistemological tools can we address the complex issue of organizational processes today? the nexus between postmodernity and organization is very fruitful in the exploration of possibilities, in the search for solutions to the crisis, in the shared effort to rethink the inherited theoretical baggage ”.
Postmodernism is a philosophical current that quickly gained adherents in the academic field, due to its criticism of the foundations of modernity. In its development, it abandons the trust in science as a means to organize social life, history as a process that tends to material progress and the subject as an embodiment of transcendent goals.
His influence is notable in the social sciences and humanities to which he has contributed new categories, new topics and new positions. In this field, it was able to advance benefited by the absence of philosophical and epistemological training that is easy to perceive in academic departments where the humanities and social sciences are taught. Nor should the weight of fashion and the need to be up-to-date demanded by academic circles (Ossorio, 2009) be overlooked.
When we turn to postmodern studies, we do not think that we are facing the end of the modern paradigm and the beginning of another postmodern. Postmodernity encompasses a rich problematic from which modernity is criticized and new problems are posed.
According to VS Campos (2004), there are different versions of organizational theory that are based on postmodern studies. Within these guidelines, Campos reviews two:
- Social management of knowledge Discursive theory of organizations
The social management of knowledge is based on the idea that knowledge is not found in individual minds but in social relationships, so that the company is considered a hyper-conversation that emerges through social interconnections created by the language.
In this framework, individuals are not connected by a number of relationships (positions and functions) pre-established in manuals, but flow from one conversation to another, in a game of articulations and rearticulations that migrate from one organization to another.
The discursive theory of organizations starts from the previous guideline. It conceives flow-organizations as linguistically realized social relations, but incorporates the notion of discourse as a system of knowledge / power.
Managers from their privileged position of power can participate in the social constitution of the organization. From their enunciative position they use a series of strategies to create a narrative in which the subjects find articulation in instability, “a functional articulation to directive interests” (Sisto Campos, 2004). According to Gergen:
“Managers themselves are never rational. What they say is never wise or realistic. Your rationality, wisdom, and objectivity depend on your colleagues; because it is their colleagues who provide the supplement for their interpretation of what the manager says. Rationality is preeminently a product of social collaboration, it is never written on a rock ”(Cit. Najmanovich, 1994).
It is necessary to reflect on the centrality, both of management and of the manager, those who, wrapped in their tunic of technicians and neutrals, usually impose their disarticulating order in the different social spheres.
It is worth asking, if according to postmodernists there are no absolute foundations for our theoretical constructions, why is it necessary to theorize? Gergen responds to this, followed by Najmanovich (1994):
“If the value of theories does not derive from their supposed truth value, but from their pragmatic implications, then making theory recovers all its meaning. And theoretical work acquires even greater importance in the postmodern era than under the modernist conception. In this last perspective, the applications were carried out by another culture: that of the pilots. In a postmodern context theory and practice are inseparable ”.
It is not about eliminating all forms of organization, since postmodernists distrust individual rationality, it seems logical to them to adopt a radical practice against the idea that the manager's individual technical rationality will lead the organization on the right path.
Donna Haraway opposes diffraction to reflexivity. For her, reflexivity displaces the same to another place. It would be a "bad trope" to escape the false choice between realism and relativism. So, she bets on diffraction that allows to rethink the problem from the perspective of its participants, approaching different voices and not only those of the most authorized (Friedmann, 2007).
Fig. The power of diffraction
The power of diffraction
Source: R. Friedmann (2007).
With diffraction there is no central focus from which an order is generated. Order, for postmodernists, arises from the dialogue between different cultures and subcultures. "Let's imagine a slit through which a beam of light passes" (Friedmann, 2007). Starting from the slit, each point of it acts as if it re-emitted a new wave of light. Thus, science is conceived as a field of study (polysemic and polyphonic) with great differences and disagreements.
The vertiginous epochal change has originated a radical change in the theoretical referents, with the presence of many more scientists than those mentioned here and who work from different perspectives. Faced with the emergence of new issues, many scholars abandoned old theories that they considered superseded by the new times, therefore new formulations are shown as theoretical revolutions that inaugurate a new stage of knowledge.
Modern theory has a holistic claim, to find the unity of the universe. Postmodernists emphasize the singular and the diverse, leaving the sciences as receptacles for fragmentary and contingent reflections. In this way, the little story and fragmentation are re-signified, and any search for general explanations is neglected. For the postmodern, reason cannot know the real, or only know it in part, because the truth is accessed through other knowledge, such as intuition or the heart.
“It is important to recognize the existence of thousands of stories and perspectives told on managerial and administrative topics and that such a variety of perspectives is impossible to be sheltered by a single unified paradigm and brilliantly monitored and governed by Mr. Jeffrey Pfeffer or NATO, North American Theory of Organization. (Friedmann, 2007).
Thus, a rejection of the causal and the approach of the totality is evidenced, considering it - in its most extreme versions - is synonymous with totalitarianism. It can be beneficial, he says (Medina, 2010), to accept the lack of paradigmatic unity and take advantage of it to recover necessary tools to form a general field of organizational theory, and even go so far as to incorporate new theoretical bodies from other disciplines. That is, use a toolbox to solve organizational problems. However, we must not forget the warning of Pfeffer (2000: 265-266):
“… This absence of a well-developed scientific paradigm makes experimenting with anything new or different more desirable. It also has the undesirable property of allowing preferences practically unrestricted by scientific norms and standards to spread unbridled, the lack of a strong support in a discipline or in phenomena, they are susceptible to being caught by passing fads and novelties. ”.
The structure tells the members of an organization what to do, but does not tell them how to do it. The structure is the framework that supports the whole, but it needs channels through which the fluids circulate that make it work.
Gilly et al. (2007: 53) compare the structure with the bone system and the processes with the muscles of the organization. Postmodernists, like Deleuze, go much further. For them, an organization cannot be seen as something “that functions structurally, in an orderly fashion, with fixed and closed limits. The image of the body without organs illustrates well the configuration resulting from a flexible form of organization ”(Friedmann, 2007).
Deleuze wants the organs to be left out of the analysis: “the organs are stabilizations, fixations, that stratify the experience, the vital flows Deleuze contrasts rhizome with tree. In the field of study of organizations, we have begun to think of Keiretzus (networks of Japanese high-tech companies with links of all kinds but without common capital) and of the Networks of high-tech companies with many suppliers, partners in research, etc. where decentralization is very broad. " (Friedmann, 2007.a).
Both common sense and practice resist abandoning the idea of rationality. Management practices arose from the need to achieve the survival of organizations.
2. Summing up the debate
Martínez Nogueira (1993) identifies two positions:
- A world built on the basis of a vision, of what was traditionally interpreted as the model of natural sciences, clinging to the notion of causality, following utopias that "instead of reproducing paradise, they ended up building uncomfortable hells"; and, on the other hand, Postmodern nihilism "devoid of common assumptions, dissimilar projects and insurmountable communication difficulties may be in the present with an immature theory of organization" "that resembles dissolution, limitless fragmentation and destruction of hope ”.
Consequently, there is a need to have a research program to recover a normative pattern that regains the capacity of reason, but of a reason that is affirmed from the differences in dialogue, helping organizations to become in areas conducive to creativity, innovation and collaboration.
If you want to build a comprehensive vision about a complex phenomenon such as organization (with its multidimensionality and transversality), resorting to views taken from different reading angles is an essential need. A task that, although difficult, is facilitated because the different objects of study are constructs, that is, conceptual systems.
Footnotes
- The common ground is usually considered as the contrast between the logic of action and the logic of the system. One system is incommensurable with another, with respect to certain rules of comparison, when three conditions are met: 1) The radical difference between orientation systems; 2) Competition or conflict between systems and 3) A certain course of action. There are no standards of comparison that rationally solve a conflict problem (Agüero, JO, 2012). Of course, in this work we do not pretend to find the solution to the problem. Reed (1992) proposes to reconstruct the story of the history of organizational theories and consider the organization as an intellectual practice, in which managerial discourse will provide important resources. It is not that postmodernists have little knowledge of epistemology (quite the contrary),What is affirmed is that the ignorance of this discipline, by other teachers, contributed to the rapid diffusion of this current in certain academic circles. In these affirmations there are undoubtedly subsumed value judgments. In addition, all this is complicated when Maturana (1995: 66-67) tells us that even the bases of very rational ethical discourses rest on fundamental premises that are outside the rational, that are emotional "In physics, diffraction is a phenomenon characteristic of waves that consists of the dispersion and apparent curving of the waves when they encounter an obstacle ”. Open conceptual system.value judgments. In addition, all this is complicated when Maturana (1995: 66-67) tells us that even the bases of very rational ethical discourses rest on fundamental premises that are outside the rational, that are emotional "In physics, diffraction is a phenomenon characteristic of waves that consists of the dispersion and apparent curving of the waves when they encounter an obstacle ”. Open conceptual system.value judgments. In addition, all this is complicated when Maturana (1995: 66-67) tells us that even the bases of very rational ethical discourses rest on fundamental premises that are outside the rational, that are emotional "In physics, diffraction is a phenomenon characteristic of waves that consists of the dispersion and apparent curving of the waves when they encounter an obstacle ”. Open conceptual system.
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