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MANAGEMENTCONSEQUENCES
10.1177/0893318904265132
Sewell/MORAL
COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004
Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 99
PARADIGM BUSTING IN
MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION STUDIES?
Although Thomas Kuhn is coming under increasing criticism as
an apologist for institutional elitism and the entrenchment of the
scientific status quo (see Fuller, 2003), one of his more enduring
observations was that a paradigm serves two primary functions.
Not only does it convince researchers (and others) that what they
study is worthwhile, but it also provides them with a blueprint for
conducting their activities, including the self-sustaining activities
of passing on knowledge to their studentsthat is, institutionalizing theory and practice. The combined effect is that researchers
rarely reflect on the validity of their founding assumptions, their
methods, and consequently, the validity of their findings and teaching. Kuhn made the point that the emergence of a new paradigm
effectively rewrites history. This is, moreover, uncompromisingly
written by the victors who create a Year Zero where all aspects of
the previous paradigm are, regardless of their merit, consigned to
the dustbin of history, only to re-emerge if and when they help us
confront the anomalies inevitably thrown up by the new paradigm.
Of course, the foregoing discussion lets one important question
go begging: Is there a paradigm within communication studies? Of
reflecting on the underlying assumptions of their paradigms, students who then go out and use normal science to solve the puzzles
of everyday life. In light of this observation, it is my contention that
we are likely to have the most impact on practitioners when they are
still students through the use of what the communications scholar
Ronald Wendt (2001) has styled as a radical pedagogy (cf. Freire,
1970, 1985). This attempt to reach practitioners through our teaching activities becomes all the more pressing if, as Smeltzer (1996)
contends, few (if any) practicing managers respect, let alone read,
academic journals. This dilemma of relevance sets the tone for the
rest of this essay. What I present from hereon is my assessment of
how we can use the work of Stewart Clegg to inform a project of
radical pedagogy that takes on the considerable burden of
considering the moral dimensions of power and responsibility in a
form that is explicitly aimed at students who are preparing
themselves for a life in management communications practice.
that are resolved through the play of highly localized power relations. In this way, he shows that power comes to be enacted through
the play of discourse itself, in the way in which the available categories for talk in particular contexts were lodged in a particular
form of rationality, constituted within a particular form of life, of
domination (Clegg, 1987, p. 68). For practical purposes, at a
superficial level at least, Cleggs story of power could serve as a salutary case study for demonstrating the idexicality of texts commonly encountered by people in organizations (i.e., that texts have
different meanings depending on their contexts) and that recognition of the need to negotiate the ambiguities surrounding their
interpretation by organizational members would lead to less misunderstanding and reduced conflict. If, however, we were to consider how we might use this article to make a more profound point, I
believe it would stem from its anticipationat this stage not yet
fully developed in Cleggs workof what Foucault called the
productive aspect of power. In other words, the case of the construction workers could be used to demonstrate that the exercise of
power not only negates or constrains but also creates and enables
certain kinds of action, that it is not simply a case of the powerful
versus the powerless but that power is its own presupposition, pervading all aspects of social relationships. This is important because
it gives the lie to the idea of power and resistance in organizations
being about homogenous power blocs (i.e., Capital versus Labor)
slugging it out across a frontier of control, setting the tone for his
more explicitly Machiavellian approach to organization power in
his later work.
POSTMODERN ORGANIZATIONS,
MODERN PREOCCUPATIONS
The second piece I have chosen to discuss1990s Modern
Organizationswas Cleggs first major book after working
through his own misgivings about Foucaults treatment of power.
Indeed, it comes directly after Frameworks of Power, in which
Clegg can be seen thinking out loud about Foucault. One of the
interesting things about Modern Organizations is its departure
from the high theorizing of previous works like Frameworks and its
engagement with the eminently practical consideration of exploring alternatives to the One Best Way narrative of Western bureaucracy. Clegg articulates this view by comparing Western organizations and Japanese organizations. Here Clegg relies on Elliot
Jacques, that most practically oriented of management scholars, to
provide the dimensions by which he makes his comparison.
According to Jacques (1989), all effective organizations must
satisfy the following seven imperatives:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Clegg (1990) takes each of these in turn and demonstrates how the
Western response to these imperatives represents the apotheosis of
Modernity in that they lead to specialized and hierarchical organizations (Imperatives 1 and 2) ruled through centralized and direct
managerial control (Imperative 3) where employees prefer to identify with outside organizations like professional associations or
trade unions, rather than with their employer (Imperative 4). Add to
this the financial short-term nature of Western organizations
(Imperative 5), their emphasis on individual reward structures
(Imperative 6), and their propensity toward relations of mistrust
between levels in the hierarchy (Imperative 7), and we can see a
familiar picture emerging of all the aspects of organization that
have long been denounced as undesirable or even pathological in
prescriptive management literature. In contrast, Japanese corporations are presented as being in the vanguard of Postmodern organizing in that they are diversified (Imperative 1) and achieve a flatter structure (Imperative 2) through promoting greater autonomy
and responsibility among their employees (Imperative 3), features
that, in turn, lead employees to identify with the corporation as an
extension of their family (Imperative 4). When these are combined
with much longer term financial horizons (Imperative 5), the utilization of collective systems of reward (Imperative 6), and the fos-
107
From
Ideas and Values
Market Environment
Processing and Communication
Orientation
Organization and Control
Measures
Objectives
In
Changing Paradigms
To
many pop management books that seem to think that the knowledge economy has been beamed in from another planet completely new and fully formed, Clarke and Clegg examine how it
involves some new departures but mostly pursues enduring themes.
Significantly, when it comes to their discussion of technology,
from a close reading of their assembled sources, we can take away
the overwhelming message that the Nietzschean will-to-power we
associate with traditional forms of workplace control has been
repackaged in a language of technophilia and normative integrationthat is, new technology now gives us enabling power to do
things rather than the power over things (especially fellow
humans). This is characteristic of the Panglossian stance of much
current management discourse, where closed hierarchies become
open networks through the intermediation of new technology, discipline is replaced by learning, vicious circles are replaced by virtuous circles, administrators become leaders, and bosses become
facilitators (see Clarke & Clegg, 1998, Chap. 1). When considering
the significance of this tendency, we would do well to remember
Heideggers (1977) observation that although technology is ultimately only a means to an end, in pursuing those ends we are
revealing what we believe to be true. In this way, Clarke and Clegg
demonstrate that in setting out a preferred normative program
around matters such as empowerment or learning, we are challenged to devise the means to realize the potential of what
Heidegger (1977) called a standing reservean elusive resource
that already exists out there somewhere and will greatly benefit
us, if only we can find a way of tapping into it. This goes a long way
toward explaining the compulsive force of much of the literature
aimed squarely at management practitionersif we do not do the
things that it exhorts us to do, then we are not only failing in our
moral duty, we are also missing out on a great business opportunity
(the latter point itself being a moral failing under the rubric of
shareholder sovereignty where we place so much emphasis on
managers fiduciary duty to shareholders). Moreover, it suggests
that some, if not all, practicing managers may really believe in the
normative agenda of emancipation and business performance that
they pursue through the kinds of organizational restructuring projects that Clarke and Clegg map out in Changing Paradigms. This
is important for us in avoiding what Sturdy and Fleming (2003)
BACK TO BASICS?
More recently Clegg has undertaken a number of collaborative
projects that are a return to the style of the aforementioned
ethnographic research he undertook on a British construction site
in the 1970s (Clegg, 1987). Of these, perhaps the most interesting is
the study of the development of infrastructure projects in preparation for the Sydney Olympic games of 2000 (Pitsis, Clegg,
Marosszkey, & Rura-Polley, 2003). This examines how managers
attempted to confront a problem that the average MBA curriculum
does not prepare them forthe impossibility of exerting strategic
control over a project that is fraught with uncertainty. For example,
the rationalistic assumptions of most prescriptive approaches to
strategic management inhabit the kind of fantasy world where
things roll out in a sequential and well-ordered manner (Mintzberg
& Lampel, 1999). Drawing on the work of Alfred Schutz and Karl
Weick, Clegg and his colleagues deploy the concept of the future
perfect to understand how managers develop a sense of control
over a project without being brought crashing down by the sheer
frustration of their failures in these matters. This involves a cognitive trick of self-deception in which we think about the project as if
it were already completed, that is, we think about the future as if it
were already the past. From this invocation of the future ends, we
tants act like a parasite (a phrase that they borrow from Serres),
and to be successful, the parasite must disrupt the organization but
not so much that it ends up destroying its host. This reformulates
the relationship between theory and practice to one in which theory
disrupts practice, a relationship where we evaluate theory in terms
of its challenge to the taken-for-granted and its simultaneous
capacity to open new departures for action (Gergen, 1992, p. 218
[italics added]).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In these final two works, Clegg is re-engaging with the sort of
microcircuits of power that he first encountered 30 years ago as a
graduate student undertaking summer vacation work. Drawing
attention to this nice piece of symmetry is, of course, something of
a stylistic conceit on my part; another commentator on Cleggs
career could see things in a totally different way. If, however, we are
to make a meaningful assessment of what Stewart Clegg can teach
us when it comes to the practical aspects of management communication, the surety is that, in exploring the link between discourse
and action, we are showing that the quotidian business of working
through organizational power relationships is not separate from the
abstract systems of knowledge we use to understand organizations.
So next time a student says, Thats all very well in theory, but what
about the practice? we can show that they are but two sides of the
same coin.
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