7.

The Interpretive Paradigm

and the Study of Organisations
As will be clear from our discussion in the previous chapter, the intellectual history of the interpretive
paradigm is as complex and conceptually as rich as that of the functionalist paradigm. The underlying
assumptions of the interpretive paradigm with regard to the ontological status of the social world reject
the utility of constructing a social science which focuses upon the analysis of 'structures'. It rejects any
view which attributes to the social world a reality which is independent of the minds of men . It
emphasis that the social world is no more than the subjective construction of individual human beings
who, through the development and use or common language and the interactions of everyday life,
may create and sustain a social world of intersubjectively shared meaning. The social world is thus of
an essentially intangible nature and in a continuous process of reaffirmation or change.
Such a view does not allow for the existence of ' organisations' ill any hard and concrete
sense. Whilst certain schools of thought accept the concept of organisation and its use as an
'accounting practice' by which people attempt to make sense of their world. they do not recognise
organisations as such. From the standpoint of the interpretive paradigm, organisations simply do not
exist.
Strictly speaking, therefore, the notion of there being a theory of organisations characteristic
of the interpretive paradigm is some what contradictory. However, in recent years a number of
theorists located within this paradigm have involved themselves to a debate about various aspects of
organisational life. They have done so as sociologists concerned to demonstrate the validity of their
point of view as against the prevailing orthodoxy characteristic of the functionalist paradigm . As will be
apparent from our discussion in Chapter 5, most organisation theorists tend to treat their subject of
study as a hard, concrete and tangiable empirical phenomenon which exists 'out there' in the ' real
world '. The interpretive sociologists are firmly opposed to structural absolutism', arguing that social
science should be based upon fundamentally different assumptions about the ontological status of the
social world. In order to demonstrate this point, they have engaged in research designed to illustrate
the fallacy of the functionalist standpoint. They have sought to show how the supposedly hard,
concrete, tangible and 'real' aspects of organisational life are dependent upon the sUbjective
constructions of individual hUman beings. In doing this they have produced a certain amount of
Iiterature which has considerable relevance for our analysis here, since it opens up a debate about the
assumptions which underwrite the contemporary orthodoxy in organization theory. This literature,
however, is not without its problems, since In attempting to undermine the notions informing more
orthodox functionalist approaches to the study of organisational life, the Interpretive sociologists have
often been drawn into a battle fought upon their opponents' ground. In adopting a reactive stance they
ften endorse, by implication, the validity of certain background assumptions which define the
functionalist problematic. Consequently, their stance is often somewhat contradictory , and there
tends to be a divergence between theoretical pronouncements and
the assumptions reflected in empirical research.
In this chapter we hope to move some way towards clarifying the issues involved here. We
shall review some of the literature and we shall attempt to evaluate it in terms of the assumptions upon
which It is based. This Iiterature is confined to the perspectives described the previous chapter as
ethnomethodology and phenomenological symbolic inleractionism, though, as we have suggested ,
we do wish to place too much emphasis upon the importance of this distinction .

Ethnomethodological Approaches to the study of Organisational Activities

One of the earliest ethnomethodological critiques of functionalist
sation theory is found in Egon Bittner's article, 'The Concept of Organisation' , first published in 1965 .
in this article Bittner argues that organisation theorists, who define organisations as stable
associations of persons engaged in concerted activities directed to the attainment of specific
objectives' , tend to take the concept of organisation structure as unproblematic. He argues that this
notion of structure represents no more than a common-sense assumption of certain actors within a
given situation. To take this common-sense assumption at face value, and use it as a basis for
organisational analysis, is thus fraught with difficulty. He argues, in effect, that the sociologist who
uses such a concept as a'resource' for explaining organisational activities is committing a fundamental
error, and that such concepts should be the 'topic' rather than the tool of analysis. In the course of his
argument Bittner illustrates his case in relation to the work of Selznick and Weber, and suggests that
their theories are based upon a whole set of unstated presuppositions and theoretical shortcuts which
build a protective mantle around the subject of study. The concept of bureaucracy, for example. builds
upon background information that normally competent members of society take for granted as
commonly known. in building upon this Bittner suggests that Weber is in collusion with those about
whom he theorises. He summarises his views very forcefully in the following terms: 'If the theory of
bureaucracy is a theory at all, it is a refined and purified version of the actor's theorising. To the extent
that it is a refinement and purification of it, it is, by the same token, a corrupt and incomplete version of
it: for it is certainly not warranted to reduce the terms of common-sense discourse to a lexicon of
culturally coded significances to satisfy the requirements of theoretical postulati ons' (Bittner, 1974, p.
74).
In the place of this 'corrupt' and 'incomplete' version of the actor's theorising about
organisational structures, Bittner suggest the study of organisation as a common-sense construct in
which the 'methodologist' must be concerned with the procedures and considerations which actors
invoke in the construction of their world. In the last part of his paper Bittner goes on to develop an
explicitly ethnomethodological approach to the rational constructions subsumed under the concept of
organisation, which reflects a programme of enquiry rather than a specific interest in producing a
theory of organisations as such. In this Bittner assumes that the actor in an organisation is not a
disinterested bystander but a toolsmith using the concept of organisation in a certain relatively
specific way and for certain variable reasons. He suggests that organisational actors can, for example,
use the concept of rational organisation as a 'gambit of compliance', in which certain rules of conduct
are invoked simply by lIsing the term. On the other hand, there is an 'open realm of free play' within
and outside these ruirs which presents us with the opportunity 'to attain a grasp of the meaning of the
rules as common-sense constructs from the perspective of those persons who promulgate and live
with them. Moreover, the concept of 'formal organisation' acts as a 'model of