"Lives in the Balance":
A Comment on Hinings
and Greenwood's
"Disconnects and
Consequences in
OrganizationTheory?"
Stewart R. Clegg
Universityof Technology,
Sydney, Australia
Hinings and Greenwood's Proposition
In "Disconnects and Consequences in Organization Theory?"
Hinings and Greenwood ask what is the point of organization
theory today? They establish, early on in their essay, that
when it was conceived as the sociology of organizations, the
point was clear. It was to address the question, "what are
the consequences of the existence of organizations?" The
question has two elements: "First, how organizations affect
the pattern of privilege and disadvantage in society; second,
how privilege and disadvantage are distributed within organizations." The latter refer to central issues of power in relation
to organizations. Their proposition is that the former question
has all but disappeared from discussion in the ASQ in the
'80s and '90s, while the latter receives only scant treatment.
The major difference characterizing the present day, they
argue, is that for at least a decade or more, the ASQ has
been largely a journal for professionals located in business
schools, mostly North American ones. In the past, from its
inception in the 1950s until some time in the 1970s, when
the lens started to narrow gradually but inexorably, the journal was situated in relation to the sociology of organizations,
focused on central questions of the societal consequence of
organizational power. Now, they suggest, these questions
have largely been abandoned.
Hinings and Greenwood note an institutional effect: when
questions are asked from a sociological perspective, the
focus is on control and its consequences; when asked from a
business perspective, the focus is on the organizational
design of efficient and effective solutions to the problems of
?2002 by Johnson GraduateSchool,
CornellUniversity.
0001-8392/02/4703-0428/$3.00.
0
I owe the title to Jackson Browne(1985).
The lyricwas writtennearlytwenty years
ago, when the issue was U.S. policyin
LatinAmerica,especiallyin Nicaragua,
but it is remarkablyprescientand well
worth listeningto or readingnow. The
variableweight of those whose lives are
in the balancewould seem to be the key
pointtoday.
I would liketo thankparticipantsin the
AmericanAcademyof ManagementNew
DoctoralStudents Consortium2002 for
theirfeedback on some of the ideas in
this reflection,as well as conversations
with John Gray,Bo Nielsen,TyronePitsis,
MarcTyrell,RayGordon,John Garrick,
CarlRhodes, and ChrisCarter.Especially,
I would liketo thankJohn Grayfor his
appreciationof the finerpointsof an argument and his sober yet learnedcounsel;
RayGordonand CarlRhodesfor the passion of sharedviews; MarcTyrellfor his
systemic insights;and ChrisCarterfor
remindingme aboutthe analytic
formaldehyde,amongst other things. I
remainthe author,however,with all the
usual liabilities.
business owners. One consequence of this shift in emphasis
is the effective marginalization of a capacity to address questions such as the corporate collapses of Enron, WorldCom,
and ArthurAndersen, among many others, as well as the
ability to address the widespread disclosure of corporate
malfeasance that has surfaced in recent months. But we
shall turn first to more significant malfeasance, less historically recent in occurrence but no less resonant of contemporary
events for that.
Organization Studies and Holocaust Studies
Zygmunt Bauman is one of the many great sociologists of
modernity rarely cited by contributors to the ASQ, or many
other organizations journals, for that matter, as a Web search
will show. Given the nature of some of his work, especially
Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), this is surprising. By any
calculus, moral or otherwise, the efficient dispatch of millions
of state-stigmatized people to their deaths by the German
state during World War IIwas an enormous organizational
achievement. It was so in two ways: first, through constructing an organizational politics of identity, whereby identities
could be established through the use of various stigmatizing
"membership categorization devices" (Sudnow, 1972), such
as "Jews," "Gypsies," "homosexuals," and "the feeble."
These are not "natural" categories but were organizationally
produced by a vast organizational apparatus. Second, having
used the devices to produce categories of people that fitted
its membership, they could then be destroyed by an equally
428/Administrative
Science Quarterly, 47 (2002): 428-441
ASQ Forum/Clegg
impressive organizational apparatus. Crude organizational
technologies assisted in this huge project. The Hollerith
machine was used "to track the Jewish populations and
accumulate information regarding the 'success' of the Genocide" (Leventhal, 1995). The machine was "a primitive calculating engine and precursor of the modern computer developed by the statistician and census taker, Herman Hollerith,"
and manufactured by the IBM subsidiary DEHOMAG
(Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft) (Leventhal,
1995). Equally, the destruction of those collected and defined
in their identity as Jews and so forth would not have been
possible without an intrinsically instrumental and value-free
science. Bauman (1989: 8) cited Henry Feingold (1983:
399-400) to establish the impact of value rationality with
great clarity, when he referred to Feingold's argument that
Auschwitz was an extension of the modern factory system:
Ratherthan producinggoods, the raw materialwas human beings
and the end-productwas death, so many units per day markedcarefullyon the manager'sproductioncharts. The chimneys, the very
symbol of the modernfactorysystem, pouredforth acridsmoke
producedby burninghumanflesh. The brilliantlyorganizedrailroad
gridof modern Europecarrieda new kindof raw materialto the factories. It did so in the same manneras with other cargo. Inthe gas
chambers the victims inhalednoxious gas generated by prussic acid
pellets, which were producedby the advanced chemical industryof
Germany.Engineersdesigned the crematoria;managers designed
the system of bureaucracythat worked with a zest and efficiency
more backwardnations would envy. Even the overallplan itself was
a reflectionof the modernscientific sprit gone awry.
As Leventhal (1995) noted, "The role of IG Farben and other
industrial corporations in the research and development of
Zyklon B Gas, as well as their complicity in the formation of
slave labor sites has, of course, been common knowledge for
many years" (see also Borkin, 1978; Hayes, 1991). If a central aspect of the Holocaust concerned its organizational possibility, wouldn't one think that this might be a central theme
of contemporary organization studies (Lammers, 1988)?
Wouldn't organization studies want to focus on this case as
an exemplification of how what was best in organization
could produce what was worst in human action? Here, then,
is one point of departure that connects with the essay by
Hinings and Greenwood: Where in the world of organization
theory focused on questions of organizational design of
efficient and effective solutions does one find a concern with
the implications of moral questions of power and responsibility?
A further point of connection is that many students today are
raised on a cult of novelty that pervades the journals. Cut off
from the genealogies of their own subject area, they become
marooned in the current eddies and prevailing winds of fashion, abandoning the broader home of social science to which
they might belong. Bauman (1989: x-xi) suggested that:
A frequent and well-knowneffect of the branchingoff of scholarly
disciplinesis that the linkof the new specialism with the mainareas
of research becomes tenuous; the mainstreamis littleaffected by
the concerns and discoveries of the new specialists, and soon also
by the peculiarlanguageand imagerythey develop. More often than
429/ASQ, September 2002
not, the branchingoff means that the scholarlyinterests delegated
to specialist institutionsare thereby eliminatedfrom the core canon
of the discipline;they are, so to speak, particularized
and marginalized, deprivedin practice,if not necessarily in theory,of more general significance;thus, mainstreamscholarshipis absolved from further preoccupationwith them.
It is throughmoves such as this, Baumansuggested, that
sociology and history,as generic root disciplines,have
become relativelydivorcedfrom Holocauststudies. His argument is that the concerns of scholars who do Holocaust
studies have become ever more specializedand differentiated from their generic root disciplines.Still,in this instance, it
is the root disciplinesthat suffer from the hiving-off,through
neglect of morallypowerfultopics. The specialist concerns,
with all their attendant moraland scientific obligations,thrive
in their own scientific institutions,foundations,and conference circuits.
Now, conduct a small thought experiment. Substitute "organizationstudies" for "Holocauststudies" as the subject of
the previous quote. Recollect that the Holocaust,above all,
was a triumphof the organizationalwill, a testament not only
to effectiveness but also to efficiency-think of all that endof-life person recyclingthat was achieved:the reuse of skin,
gold fillings,hair,and other material.Then, once more ask the
obvious, if curious question, why has organizationstudies not
focused more often on large and significantmoralquestions
concerningthe natureof power and responsibility?The obviousness, in lightof the previous remarksabout the Holocaust, should be apparent;the curiousness may need a little
teasing.
First,we should note that the question posed is not the one
that we should expect to find ourselves asking from Bauman's analysis. Bauman'sassumption is that the more acute
moral questions will be raised in the more specialist domain.
Yet, perversely,as Hiningsand Greenwood hypothesize, the
reverse is the case in organizationstudies. Here, the
genealogical development of the disciplinehas focused on
the efficiency and effectiveness dimensions to such an
extent that the moraldimension has been neutered. The discourse of efficiency, originallyderivedfrom classical mechanics, has imbued much of contemporarymanagement discourse. Efficiencymay be defined as the accomplishmentof
predeterminedgoals accordingto market-informedopportunities. Thus, efficiency has been constructed in such a way as
to slice off the value dimension, serving to still discussion by
makingthe goals that any particularefficiency serves out of
bounds. In effect, the dominantinstitutionalizations
of North
Americanorganizationtheory discourse have resulted in the
rationalization
of rationalitywithout a moraldimension (see
also Clegg, Linstead,and Sewell, 2000). Such an institutionalizationhas been achieved throughseeing truthas something
that is outside of social practices, being instead located in an
autonomous sphere of science. Inthis way, theorists can
absolve themselves from any moralresponsibility-their analyticalactions, as well as those to which and to whom they
attend, are legitimizedby the "naturallaws of science." They
are not the actions of interpretivesubjects makingsense
430/ASQ, September 2002
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with the tools that are availableto them (tools often taught,
picked up, or reinforcedin business school), but the workings
of the market,naturalselection, structuraladjustment,or
some other grandand abstracted narrative.
Hiningsand Greenwood see that issues of power and
responsibilityhave ceased to be as salient as they had been
in the parentdisciplineof sociology when appliedto organizations. Hence, the pertinentquestion should be, why has the
disciplinaryspecialism that has been spun off neglected the
issues concentrated on by the mainstream?Or,in Bauman's
terms, why have the less acute moralquestions been raised
in the more specialist domain? How has value reticence
become established as a desirable norm?
Retrieving a Genealogy for Moral Questions
Inthe process of collecting a set of contributionsthat might
make up CentralCurrentsin OrganizationStudies (Clegg,
2002), I had, within certain limits,the opportunityto test out
Hiningsand Greenwood's hypothesis that increasinglyless
acute moralquestions have been raised in the more specialist domainof organizationstudies. My task was to construct
a genealogy of organizationstudies. Havingdone so, I
became much clearerabout the ways in which the field is a
complex and heterogeneous language game. Nonetheless, it
is a language game whose root is very clear.
The parametersare evident: industrialcapitalism,as it
emerged in the West, was the harbingerof modern organizations. A classical debate emerged aroundthe significance of
this process and left an enduringlegacy in the work of Marx
(1976) and Weber (1976). AlthoughMarxhas not proven particularlyfertile as a resource for organizationswriters, outside
of dialecticalapproaches (Benson, 1975) and a post-Braverman (1974) concern with the laborprocess, Weber's work
has been developed in two ways: in interpretativeenquiry,
throughresearchers such as Merton (1940) and Gouldner
(1955), and in the development of functionalism,as Hall
(1963) demonstrated.
One reason why functionalistcontingency theory became so
widely debated was because the Aston Research Program
was so successful. Its findings dominatedthe pages of the
journals,especially the AdministrativeScience Quarterly,during the 1960s and 1970s. And, perhaps a little ironically,
given the role of Professor Hiningsin that research project,
its statics allowed littlefocus on power. Although,subsequently,some contingency theorists were to address power
(Hicksonet al., 1971), as were some resource dependence
theorists, they mostly did so throughconcepts of power that
remained marginaland somewhat quirkyin terms of the
broaderevolution of social theory. Oddly,they addressed
power without once ever addressing its hierarchicalqualities.
Notably,they constructed their conception from within the
discourse of organizationtheory, ratherthan in dialecticwith
the central role that power was assuming in more sociological accounts, particularlythat of Lukes (1974), which ineradicably linkedpower to issues of responsibility,a matter to
which we shall returnshortly.First,however, there are some
detours that organizationstudies took that removed it even
431/ASQ, September 2002
1
Towhat extent this is an accidentof
translationhistoryis a moot point:
Weber'soutlineof interpretivesociology
was not availablein Englishtranslationin
its entiretyuntil1968 in a volume that
had very limitedcirculation.Itwas not
until1978 that a widelyavailablepaperbackeditionbecame available,with the
Universityof CaliforniaPress editionof
Economyand Society (Weber,1978).
Even by 1968, when the Bedminister
Press editionbecame available(Weber,
1968), and certainlyby 1978, the dominanttendencies of variousforms of functionalismwere well established in the
specialistfield. Hadthe editionbeen available in the immediatepostwarera, rather
than the extractthat Parsonsand Henderson (Weber,1947) translatedas The Theory of Socialand EconomicOrganization,
which was heavilycoloredby Parsons'
functionalistview of the world,a more
nuancedreceptionof Weber mighthave
led to a more nuancedinstitutionalization
of an interpretivesociology of organizations. Forreasons that I shallgo on to
elaborate,however,my hunchis that the
institutionalenvironmentinto which it
was receivedwould still have been the
dominantfactor.It is easy for intellectuals
to overestimatethe importanceof intellectualism,as Bauman(1987)argued
elsewhere.
2
Hadthe debate with Weber occurredin
the late 1970s, then it would seem
almost inconceivablethat it could have
neglected those parallelsbetween Foucault and Webergeneratedby theircommon debt to Nietzscheand a stress on
discipline.It is intriguingto considerwhat
mighthave become of structuralcontingency theory had scholarsfocused on
Weber on disciplineratherthan on Weber
on formalstructuresof authority,interAnd, hadthey
pretedas formalization.
done so, then the linkbetween power
and responsibilitywould have been that
much easier to make.The rules might
have been seen in theirhistorical,sedimented provenance,ratherthan being
seen as just there, in a wonderfullytimeand-motionlessmode.
furtherfrom the core issues that one might want to construct for an alternativegenealogy to that which has become
implicitlyinstitutionalized.
It is evident that the more sociologicalaccounts of Weber
have been less influentialin NorthAmericanorganizationtheory than those that stressed functionalism.It is notable that
for most researcherswho used Weber, few remainedcommitted to his "interpretivesociology" (an honorableexception
is Bittner,1967).1 Fromthe sixties on, framed by the concerns that influencedinterpretationsof Weber on bureaucracy in the early-1960s, an interpretivesociology was clearlyin
decline.2With the decline in an interpretivesociology, the
fact/value readingof "Science as a Vocation"(Weber,1948)
has become an instrumentalistand positivistorthodoxy
whose unanticipatedconsequences hauntthe texts of its
progenitorin ways that Weber's subtle, liberalmoralitycould
barelyhave configured.When the facts "speak for themselves" throughsimple co-presence, the values that might
have framed them historically,even in terms of a structural
model of genetic causation that contributedto their emergence as the phenomena that they are, seem of little
concern.
Inthe later 1970s and into the 1980s, in the periodwhen
populationecology and its focus on organizationaldynamics
bloomed (Hannanand Freeman, 1977, 1984), changes in
organizationswere seen to take place primarilythroughthe
change of organizations.Change was likelyto take the shape
of punctuatedequilibria,in which long periods of stabilityin
organizationalpopulationsand forms would be disruptedby
short bursts of innovationand creativity,as new forms were
innovatedand either selected in or out. While asking about
such matters seems to be a sociologicalquestion, the way in
which it was posed, appliedthroughthe much-trodpath of
adoptingbiologicalmodels, tended to screen out the possibility of humanagency. Once the capacityto make a difference
was marginalized,so was power, by definition.
Inany genealogy, it would have to be the economists who
have done most to uncoupleand abandonsociologicalquestions, especially those centered on power, the existence of
which some have even denied. If institutionaltheorists saw
the centralfact of organizationsas being their social embeddedness and saturationwith values, economists were somewhat in doubt that they even existed at all. The classic landmarkin this genre of work was Coase (1937), on whose
work, together with the concept of bounded rationality,
Williamson(1981) builtthe transactioncost approach.Perrow's (1986) trenchantcritiqueof economic theories of organizationsstrikes to the heart of what is so unsatisfactoryin
this approach:its sociologicaldisinterest, shown by its derivation of theory from marketauspices and its resolute blindness to empiricalmatters of power and politics in organizational structuring.
Organizationtheory has regionalcharacteristics:elsewhere
than NorthAmerica,when Child(1972) publishedhis influential articleon "strategicchoice," he drew deeply on debates
that Silverman(1970) had sparked in Britainamong organiza432/ASQ, September 2002
ASQ Forum/Clegg
tion sociologists, rekindlingan interpretiveaccount of organizations. Silverman(1970) counterpoised an "actionframe of
reference" to the open systems contingency perspective that
was by now dominantin organizationanalysis. His key point
was that organizationswere neither naturalnor rationalsystems per se but were socially constructed phenomena. They
were a result of the choices that their members made, particularlythose whom the institutionalist,Selznick (1957), had
referredto as the "dominantcoalitions"of interest within
them (see Colignon,1997). Hence, power, albeit somewhat
undertheorized,was a centralframe of reference in an early
form of neoinstitutionalismthat was largelyneglected in
NorthAmerica(Clegg, 1994).
When Meyer and Rowan (1977) and DiMaggioand Powell
(1983) initiatedthe renaissance of the institutionalapproach,
power, despite reference by the latterto the "ironcage,"
seemed to have been misplaced. DiMaggioand Powell
(1983) asked why is it that there are so few types of organizations, a varianton Hiningsand Greenwood's insistence on
addressing the consequences of the existence of organizations. Organizations,they suggested, are not as they are for
efficiency reasons (as contingency functionalisttheorists had
argued)but for culturalreasons. Strangely,given Weber's
preeminent role as both a culturaltheorist (Clegg, 1995) and
analyst of power and domination(Clegg, 1975), these latter
terms seemed somewhat underdone in the analysis. As
Mizruchiand Fein (1999) suggested in this journal,power
became absent from research programsthat were applying
DiMaggioand Powell, largelyby concentratingon mimetic
isomorphismwhilst downplayingthat which was coercive
and normative.Thatthis was especially the case was made
more evident throughthe work of other contributors,especiallythe EuropeanAix School (Maurice,Sorge, and Warner,
1980), who had arrivedat conclusions similarto those of the
NorthAmericaninstitutionalscholars but with a stronger
focus on power. They did so throughthe process of comparative cross-nationalresearch, in which they compared the
organizationstructures of differentcountries, seeing the differences not only in terms of contingency factors but also as
a "societal effect" (Sorge, 1991): different structures were
differentlyvalued in differentcountries (Whitley,1994).
Ultimately,the usefulness of theories is not decided just by
the cut and thrust of intellectualfencing but also by their
capacityto address and resolve empiricalpuzzles. Indirectly,
it was in answering one such puzzle that Fligstein(1985) suggested that, even withinthe limitsof the somewhat onedimensionalviews of power that were current,power
perspectives appearedto performbetter than their rivals.The
question was why did the multidivisional,or M-form,organization appearwhere and when it did in the U.S. duringthe
twentieth century? Fligsteinderived hypotheses from several
perspectives and appliedthese hypotheses to a substantial
database of the Fortune100 largest nonfinancialorganizations from 1919 to 1979. What he sought to explainwas why
a firm shifted from a hierarchicalbureaucraticstructureto
one that was divisional.He generated hypotheses from,
among other theories, the transactioncosts approach,Per433/ASQ, September 2002
row's power approach;populationecology, and institutionalism, and those that were more sociological,especially the
power approach,proved more serviceable.
Elsewhere, more multidimensionalapproacheswere being
developed, from which Ranson, Hinings,and Greenwood
(1980) drew the obvious conclusion:that those institutional
structuresthat were legitimatelyvalued and imitatedwere
power-fullarenas, if power was conceived as a multilayered
concept. It was the absence of such a conception that had
markedorganizationtheory in its mainstreamaccounts of
power and with which they sought to connect. Sophisticated
conceptions of power, those developing in the sociological
mainstream,had been largelyabsent from organizationtheory;instead, it had developed, just as Bauman(1989: xi) would
have predicted,its "peculiarlanguageand imagery"of strategic contingencies and resource dependencies that seemed to
have littleor no resonance "withthe mainareas of research"
in broadersocial theory.
Power in Social Theory
Elsewhere, largelyoutside the increasinglyautonomous discipline being defined by the ASQ and kindredjournals,the
broadsocial theory agenda was being shaped in its outer
coordinates by a continuingdebate with majornineteenthcenturytheorists. Lukes (1974) conducted debate with
Marx'slegacy and its more contemporaryreinterpretation
throughGramsci's(1971) lens of "hegemony,"while Nietzsche's (1967) influencecould be seen in the work of Michel
Foucault(1977), who introduceda new mode of analysis that
linkedpower with knowledge. ForFoucault,power operates
not only in a prohibitiveway, telling one what one cannot do,
but it also operates throughknowledge, througheveryday
ways of sensemaking that are more or less institutionalized
in disciplinaryknowledge, in a permissive, positive manner,
thus constructingthe normalcyof the normal.
Subsequently,the Foucauldianstress on surveillancebecame
influential,as theorists sought new cases of panopticism,
some of which were publishedin the ASQ (e.g., Barker,
1993; Sewell, 1998). Other new directions,such as a concern
with "circular"and "soft" power, were publishedin Organization Studies (Romme, 1999; Courpasson,2000) and Organization (Munro,1999). On the whole, however, few North
Americantheorists seemed to find Foucaultof interest. For
instance, when Usdikenand Pasadeos (1995) made a comparisonof co-citationnetworks in Europeanand NorthAmerican organizationstudies, they identifiedFoucaultas the seventh-most-citedresearcherin OrganizationStudies, just
behindWeber, who was fifth. NeitherWeber nor Foucault,
nor many others influentialin the Europeanlist, made the top
ten in the comparableASQ-based lists-Weber just snuck in
at the bottom of the "hot 100," while Foucaultdidn'trate a
mention. It would be too strong a statement to say that the
ASQ had ceased to publishthis material,but it would be true
to say that it did so largelythroughspecial issues, such as
the one edited by John Jermierand Stephen Barleyin 1998.
Althoughmajortheorists such as Foucaultremainedlargely
unacknowledgedin the ASQ, traces of their influencewere
434/ASQ, September 2002
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indeed evident in this arena.
Sociologies of Organizations outside the Organization
Theory Mainstream
Fromthe 1970s onward, organizationtheory became increasingly its own series of language games. It favored economic,
biological,or engineering models ratherthan a conception of
social relationsas the core of organizationallife. Consequently, sociological models, in which organizationmembers are
viewed as essentially discursive (i.e., speaking) subjectssuch that much management and organizationmay be seen
as discursive work-provided insights that were rarely
referredto in the literature(Garfinkel,1967; Lynch,1982;
Molotch and Boden, 1985). Consequently,the tendency to
see power at work discursively,throughthe rationalitiesthat
are availablefor legitimate use, the actors and interests they
privilege,and the circuitsthey configure (Clegg, 1975, 1989),
althoughcentralto social science in general, remained marginal to NorthAmericanorganizationaltheory in the 1990s
and beyond.
It is not necessarily the most robust research programsthat
flourishbut, more probably,those best located, resourced,
and publicized,which are taken to be the most robust. Being
consecrated by the most powerful patrons,they benefit from
broadercircuitsof symbolic capital.Armed with these
resources, the powerfulcan playthe incommensurabilitycard
by constitutingthose who do not agree with their "paradigm" as, at best, marginal-not people like us-or, at worst,
belonging to a dangerouslyseparate or even lunaticfringe.
Since the reception of Kuhn's(1962) work, paradigmshave
been viewed as ways of seeing and orderingimpressions, of
makingsense systematically.Burrelland Morgan's(1979)
3
work
sparkeda shift in appreciationof organizationstudies as
MarcTyrellremindedme that in many
ways, the concept of scientificinquiryhas a multi-paradigm
enterprise and created both more spaces
been abandonedin favorof theological
a
and
sense
of what was core and what was periphstronger
purity,apparentin the hardeningof disciery (Pfeffer,1995). One positive outcome of the "paradigm
plinaryboundariesand the increasing
resistanceof disciplinesto engaging in
wars" is that, today, apartfrom a few fundamentalists,there
debate with other disciplines.Thereis a
is no longer any pretense to epistemological orthodoxy
further,crucialdifferencebetween the
operationof "naturalscience" and "social arounda functionalist,correspondence model of realityand
science" that lies in the realmof intercon- its
representationin science.3 Hence, to work as if that were
nectionand levels of inquiry.Inthe naturthe case, in ignoranceof contemporaryphilosophies of social
al sciences, there are specific cores to
each of the disciplines,usuallyrelatedto
science, or only within a narrowambit of them, is a particular
the level of organizationof the material
type of power in itself. It is one that seems to have become
worldunderconsideration.These "levels
of reality"are broadlysubsumed under
widespread in contemporaryorganizationtheory committed
three meta-disciplines:philosophyof scito correspondence models of knowledge, with a privileged
ence, cosmology, and mathematics.
view of organizationcontingencies as constituted aroundthe
Whilethere is a philosophyof social science, it has a tendency to be selfcentral structuralpatterns selected in contingency theory.
absorbedand self-referential.Actually,the
Fromsuch a perspective, in which a correspondence fixed at
empiricalsociology of science is often of
some time past must predicateall things future, one has
more value in determiningthe natureof
what it is that scientists do when they do
problems in seeing novelty ratherthan recurrence,even in
science than the stipulativetexts of the
phenomena sighted elsewhere as "new organizational
philosophyof social science.
forms."4
Paradigmswreak their own power.
4
Heydebrand(1989)was one of the firstto
recordthem: sociologically,we seem to
be speeding up, as it was only in the latter partof the twentieth centurythat
organizationtheorydevelopedto address
what had emerged, definitively,as new
nineteenth-centuryforms.
Power Matters
Sociologically,the human conditionis a narrativecondition. It
is a story of unfoldingorigins, sometimes charted, but more
often, it is the unknowndestinations and ways of telling the
435/ASQ, September 2002
stories that matter. These ways of telling are what we can
refer to as narrative techniques. There is an ethical dimension
to this contextual, pragmatic conception. Being a part of the
social scenes that he or she investigates, the organization
analyst has a responsibility toward the subjects of that science. When we investigate organizations, we are messing
with people. We are not just observing rats in a laboratory or
iron filings around a magnet.5 We address the impact of
major structures of society on the lives of ordinary people.
We have a responsibility to these people-as human communities-just as much as to the professional communities of
methods and theories that sustain us. Indeed, if we cannot
effect a dialogue between the two, then it is not clear what
we are doing that is useful, although it may be very clear
what privilegeswe are abusing by doing so. Hence, it mat-
ters not only how we study what we study, but also how we
choose to study such phenomena in the first place.
We can address issues that are arcane and i'nconsequential
for all but an elite community of scholars, perhaps no more
than two or three people. Of course, if they are powerful
people, editors of and reviewers for prestigious journals, then
their number may seem inconsequential.6 Or we might claim
relevance through writing on behalf of the corporation as
legal fiction made tangible through notions developed in
response to the decomposition of ownership, such as shareholder value. Irrespective of the theoretical spin put on the
material, typically our value proposition is that we speak in
the name of the organizationaldesign of efficient and effecdiffitive solutions. Withoutthis promise, it is extraordinarily
cult to gain access and funding, as all researchers know,
especially those active in industry partnerships. We defer not
only to science but also to corporate or state ownership of
the means of production. Serving the state or business owners offers no guarantee of moral responsibility.
5
AnimalLiberationists,such as Singer
(1976)would questionthe ethicalityof
interferingin an experimentalmanner
with anythingwith a centralnervous
system.
6
At the recent OMTDistinguishedScholars address at the 2002 Academyof Management in Denver,KathyEisenhardt,
lookingat the worldfrom SiliconValley,
reckonedthat the numberof key population ecology scholars,for instance, was
about nine people, who readand cited
the others' workto great effect.
What is the alternative? Organization studies, one might suggest, should address those things that matter to many, not
just a few people in their everyday lives, both as they are
lived organizationally and are framed and shaped organizationally by what these organizations do and do not do. It should
not just address issues that matter to those who control the
levers of state or business power, usually seen in terms of
efficiency and effectiveness. One is not optimistic that, in the
intellectual community in question, this alternative stands
much chance of being widely embraced, despite the fact that
Hinings and Greenwood conclude their argument by saying
that "organization theory has more purchase and importance
than merely as a contemporary tool for senior managers."
They confound the insight, however, because "both its disciplinary roots in sociology and its 'grand themes' are in danger
of disappearance." Without the right tools, it will not be able
to exercise sufficient torque or purchase. One grand narrative
theme-the shift of the discourse from sociology departments to business schools-drives Hinings and Greenwood's
argument of "disappearance." But the mechanisms of disappearance remain obscure. Rather than being a conspiracy of
interest against either sociology or the organization theory
436/ASQ, September 2002
ASQ Forum/Clegg
influenced by it per se, perhaps the mechanisms are more
insidious?
Somewhat paradoxically,in NorthAmericanorganization
studies, rationalizedrationalityhas become the moralpath, a
path on which the social practiceof science as something
that involves politics becomes minimizedby a singularfocus
on efficiency and effectiveness. And ratherthan this being
the intended consequence of some grandstrategy, it is far
more feasible to see this as an unanticipatedoutcome of the
normalizationof organizationtheory within the disciplinaryrituals of those institutionsthat host it.
Considerthe context in which the knowledge in question is
generated. Two aspects, in particular,are important.One is
the discursive center of gravity.In professional business
schools, discourses of profitand efficiency, ratherthan
power and performativity,are centralto many of the theories
used, even while the necessity of power and performativity
to the realizationof profitand efficiency may be apparent
experientially.Yet the necessity, ratherlike the ThirdReich's
need for trainsto carryits cargo eastward across Europeon
schedule if the will to power was to be accomplished, may
perhaps be taken for granted:after all, so much of power
involves efficient drillingof routines into a level of subconsciousness where issues of responsibilitywill not intrude
(see Arendt, 1963, for the classic statement).
Theories of profitand efficiency are centralto many students'
7
experiences, both as priorMaster's of Business AdministraInAustralia,the average lengthof a Ph.D.
tion
students (MBAs)and as doctoralcandidate instructorsof
thesis is about 100,000-120,000 words,
for example,as it is in most European
MBAs. Other areas of the curriculumthat might, in principle,
and LatinAmericansystems. It is expectconcentrate on the effects of power and performativitypale
ed to be a bold,creative,and innovative
piece, a personalstatement, and an intel- into insignificance.MBAstudents requirebarelyany disciplinlectuallyself-constitutedpiece of work. It
ing in this regard-on the whole, they enter academe already
is not expected that it will be about
fullyformed in moraldispositions that take them to business,
40,000 words (oraround100 pages) long
or that it would use the supervisor'sdata
ratherthan, say, philosophy.The pretensions and ambitions
set or classroomsurveys of captiveMBA of Ph.D. students are different.
They want to win another
students, who get class creditfor fillingin
race, the one that strips them of the "ABD"(allbut dissertaan instructor'squestionnaire.Itwould be
expected to be a theoretically,not just
tion) stigma that characterizesstudents who have completed
methodologically,drivenpiece of work.
their extensive doctoralcourse work but have not yet comThe externalexaminersystem, when it is
not corruptedby cronyism,ensures that
pleted their thesis. Thus, an instrumentaldesire for recognithis is the case. A new twist on an old
tion
of that thesis as the last small step in a rite of passage is
data set would not suffice;conversations
with participantsin the Academyof Man- a vitalfactor.And it is a small step. They have alreadybeen
agement New DoctoralStudents Consor- exposed to much largersteps, whereby the knowledge
tium suggest, however,that these pracpassed on to the student is drilledin by the disciplinethat
tices are prevalent.
the committee system of supervisionand extensive formal
8
examinationimposes. One effect of this system of superviInits defense, a notableU.S. sociology
sion and drillis to limitcreativityin the thesis in most cases
professor,ErikOlinWright,once said to
me that the U.S. Ph.D.system, likeso
a relativelylimitedpiece of work, at least compared with
to
was
in
much else U.S. manufacturing,
Ph.D. in many other systems.7 The extensive course
the
rather
than
to
designed mass-produce
craft-produce.He used the metaphorof
work becomes a mode of serving time in a relatively
producing"Ford"ratherthan "Rolls
standardizedway.8
Royce"outcomes, based on the argument that those postgraduatestudents
Ph.D. students enable professors, formed in the same syswho could producea RollsRoyce outcome would probablysucceed anyway.
tem, to buildtheir own intellectualcapitaland credit by getWhatwas more importantwas to have a
new recruitsto invest in the theories and methods assosystem that would mass-producerelative- ting
ciated with their names. Consequently,calls for building
ly standardizedbut extremelywelldesigned and serviced outputs-Ford
research programson a normalscience model, while they
ratherthan RollsRoyce models-and in
might buildnormalscience, also buildresearch careers for
this, the U.S. system undoubtedlyexcels.
437/ASQ, September 2002
those whose intellectualcapitalis loaned to and invested in
the new generation.And they are not necessarily responsive
to the moralrollercoaster of relevance so much as the centralvalues of rationalizedrationalitythat govern their disciplinarypractices. Add to this the extensive boot-campexperience associated with gainingtenure. As we know, this is
heavilydependent on publicationoutcomes in the "right"
places, access to which is controlledby elite professors, who
are the gatekeepers. Those efforts most rewardedby journal
evaluationproceduresare rated by coded signifiersthat
increase path dependence on established norms, which have
increasinglybeen formed withinthe peculiarand limitedset
of NorthAmericanassumptions that frame both the signifiers
that count and the data attended to. Overwhelmingly,these
focus on work done in the disciplinarily
drilledmode, where
the majorfee-paying clients for the knowledge producedin
the journalsare MBAsand the organizationsthat employ
them. And it is rarethat the moralvalues of corporateNorth
Americameet the type of comeuppance in the curriculum
that TomWolfe (1987) described as "a bonfireof the
vanities."
Conclusion
Is it surprisingthat research that challenges power in knowledge and practiceis scarcer than we-a trioof aging, migrant
Brits,schooled in the sociologicalclassics and a very different, more craft-orientedand individualisticsystem-might
desire and sometimes practice?Yet nostalgiafor the world
we have lost may hardlybe sufficient to counteractthe
effects of a gap that is now so artfullyand decisively constructed into the fabricof everyday NorthAmericandoctoral
life. While one reactionto the currentstatus quo is to call for
a nostalgic returnto some mythicalheyday of sociology, such
a returnis not likelyto happen:the process of institutionalization has been runningfor too long.
I take Hiningsand Greenwood'scontribution,as well as my
own, to be a response to the opportunityoffered for business school organizationstudies knowledge to be reconstructed and reorientedby the evident moraland business
failureof those dominantmodels that neglect power. And
what sociology, and social theory more generally,has to offer
are resources that enable one to theorize power more adequately (Clegg, 1989; Flyvbjerg,1998; also see Haugaard,
2002, for a recent overview). Perversely,from the perspective of late 2002, blindness to this dimension is the majorfactor reducingthe scope of theoreticalapplicationin the troubled world in which we move, a world in which a lackof
attentionto the ways of power, in our own practices as well
as those on which we report,has made it difficultto be wise.
It is not so much our distance from science as the distance
from power that handicapsanalysis. And were our analyses
more honest about power, they might have a greater role to
play in the realworld of organizationsratherthan being tolerated as, at best, abstractedscience or, at worst, science fictions. We could do worse than to be Machiavellian(Clegg,
1989) and focus more realisticallyon power and its practice,
with less emphasis on the rationalizedways of avoidingthat
"whose name one dare not speak" as the lackof analysis
438/ASQ, September 2002
ASQ Forum/Clegg
that has become institutionalizedas organizationtheory
(Hardyand Clegg, 1996). Perhapsthere is an ethics of organizingthat is less about abidingby the law of a moralcode
and more about transgressingthe law of an amoralcode, a
practicethat applies reflexivelyto analysis as well.9
Journalssuch as the ASQ have not wholly neglected power
in the past, and there is no a priorireason why they should
do so in the future, althoughthere may be many contingent
ones, as I have suggested above. The times may be especially fortuitousfor such a change of tack. The prevailingwinds
of intellectualfashion are changing,the set of the jib becoming more relaxed, as past paradigmshave been blown away
intellectuallyas a result of the 21 years of ferment following
Burrelland Morgan(1979), who first opened up the Pandora's paradigmboxes. There is the additionalfact that the reality of power's effects have been decisively signaled in the
business failuresand malfeasance of 2002, in which the reality of self-interested action (and non-action)is all too evidently
a clear and present danger to the overalllegitimacyof the
corporatesystem and the types of capitalismit sustains. The
times, maybe, are a-changin'once more.
Perhaps members of the present generationwill be radicalized by a system that squanders their jobs (as well as those
of others) and threatens their future careers in present gambles. When "realinterests" are threatened, Lukes (1974)
suggested, power will become more evident. Should that be
the case, organizationstudies may come to contributesomewhat more to an analysis of power and responsibilitythan at
present, whether it be in the sphere of contemporarycorporate or state actions, but that is not likely.To the extent that
organizationstudies lacks a subjective, interpretativefocus
on what is rightin favor only of what is efficient and effective
instrumentally,it may be able to tell us what its theory suggests is contingent to do, but not what the moralimplications
are of doing so. Forthis, we need a new genealogy of
morals, a different practiceof power, as well as a degree of
optimism that seems somewhat misplaced, given present
disciplinarypractices. Still,optimism of the individualpolitical
spirithas to co-exist with pessimism about the institutionalizationof the collective intellectualwill. Otherwise, one
would cease to try to make a difference, with the obvious
consequences: "thereof one must be silent" (Wittgenstein,
1924). Thatway leads to the analyticformaldehyde.
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