INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATION THEORY AND
BEHAVIOR, 8 (4), 466-494
WINTER 2005
THE CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN
ORGANIZATION THEORY AND BEHAVIOR: AN OVERVIEW
Adrian N. Carr*
ABSTRACT.
The article questions what is meant by the term critical theory and
discusses some common misconceptions that have arisen about the meaning of this
term. The dialectic logic that was championed by the group of scholars collectively
known as the Frankfurt School is outlined and a number of implications for the field
of organization and behaviour are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Readers of this journal, and those who seek to inhabit the fields of
organization theory and behavior, will be all too aware of the turbulence that
has been created by postmodernist theorising and the revival of the debate
over the incommensurability of paradigms. Some of the discourse seems to
be nothing more than cacophony of discordant voices and, at times, the field
seems more akin to a battleground. At other times it seems the refuge of
incommensurability provides a safe haven for those who wish to talk past
one another. Some within the fields are intent upon finding a path of rescue.
For some that path of rescue is about trying to find a synthesis from some
meta-theoretical Archimedean point that they believe is an indisputable
“fact” or position to “ground” the field(s). Others have sought a path of
rescue where what is championed seems to be a fairly infantile argument
that “my paradigm is better (bigger) than yours”. Some others in the fields
appear more relaxed, finding virtue in diversity and incommensurability as it
seems to put a brake on those seeking a hegemonic takeover of the fields
themselves.
-------------------* Adrian N. Carr, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow
in Organization Studies and Applied Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences,
University of Western Sydney, Australia. His research interests are in the
application of psychodynamic and critical theory to management and organization
studies.
Copyright © 2005 by PrAcademics Press
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This paper in no way seeks to rescue the fields with some new form
of synthesis or new Archimedean point from which we can move on
from these current debates. Instead, this paper seeks to address the
growing trend of people in the field to revisit, re-engage, or re-discover
critical theory. There has been a revival in interest in critical theory in
both the fields of organization theory and organization behavior (see
Carr, 2000).
Critical theory was seen as quite radical when it first appeared.
Indeed, I am sure my reader would be familiar with Burrell and
Morgan’s 1979 tome entitled Sociological paradigms and
organizational analysis. This work stimulated the start of a significant
discourse in organization studies, about paradigms, and it might be
recalled that in this work they put forward the four narratives that they
deemed were mutually exclusive, or incommensurate, views of the social
world, namely: radical humanist; radical structuralist; interpretive; and
functionalist. Critical theory was viewed as being “radical humanist”.
Interestingly, Burrell has subsequently become one of the pioneers of
postmodernism, in the field of organization studies, and in his volume
Pandemonium: Towards a retro-organization theory declares that he
wishes to leave the aforementioned four “equally sized rooms he has
been stalking" (Burrell, 1997; see also Carr, 1997). He has forsaken that
venture for a new journey, that of postmodernism.
The mantle of “radical” now appears to have been taken by
postmodernist theorising despite the fact that this theorising leads to a
very conservative political agenda (Carr, 1996; Zanetti & Carr, 1999).
The revival in interest in critical theory is one that certainly has
benefited from postmodernists raising some of the very same issues
raised by critical theorists, but the “solutions” are generally quite
different for the two groups of theorists. Indeed, the confluence is such,
we can note instances where even those who are revered as
postmodernists have discovered critical theory as holding some reflexive
significance that they subsequently “discover”. In this context, it is
worthy of note that, for example, Foucault cites the work of the critical
theorist Adorno (1973; 1984), such that one social commentator
observes that:
A decade and a half after Adorno’s death, Michel Foucault …
said: ‘If I had known about the Frankfurt School in time, I would
CARR
have been saved a great deal of work. I would not have said a
certain amount of nonsense and would not have taken so many
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false trails trying not to get lost, when the Frankfurt School had
already cleared the way’. Foucault described his programme as a
‘rational critique of rationality’. Adorno had used almost exactly
the same words in 1962 in a lecture on philosophical
terminology. Philosophy, Adorno had said, should conduct ‘a
sort of rational appeal hearing against rationality’ (Wiggershaus,
1994, p. 4)
The revival of interest in critical theory has been such that a number
of publishers have commissioned, or otherwise committed to, a series of
volumes that represent very recent translations of correspondence and
unpublished papers of the founders of critical theory.(1) In some of the
recent “euphoria” of writing in the genre of critical theory we have,
unfortunately, witnessed some interpretations and views about critical
theory that demand correction. This paper seeks to outline what critical
theory is and what it is not. The paper also endeavours to illustrate the
implications for organization theory and behavior if critical theory is to
be embraced. Our first task is to gain an appreciation of the fundamental
arguments that are championed by critical theory.
CRITICAL THEORY: WHAT IS IT?2
The term “critical theory” has a two-fold meaning. It is used to refer
to a “school of thought”. At the same time it refers to a self-conscious
critique that is aimed at emancipation through enlightenment and it is a
form of critique that does not cling dogmatically to its own doctrinal
assumptions (Giroux, 1983).
Critical Theory as a School of Thought
In regard to critical theory being associated with a “school of
thought”, the body of work being referred is that of a group of scholars
collectively known as “the Frankfurt School”. The Frankfurt School is so
called because of the association of a social research group with its
location, Frankfurt in Germany. This group of scholars worked at the
Institut für Sozialforschung — the Institute for Social Research. This
Institute was established in, but financially independent of, Frankfurt
University in February 1923. The key figures that were associated with
the Institute were Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), Erich Fromm (19001980), Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Otto Kirchheimer (1905-1965),
Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), Franz
Neumann (1900-1954), Friedrich Pollock (1894-1970), and somewhat
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outside of inner group, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Collectively this
group is often referred to as the “first generation” of the Frankfurt
School  the time period and the major themes they had as the focus of
their work, somewhat, separating them from those that were also to be
associated with the Frankfurt School such as Klaus Elder, Jürgen
Habermas, Oskar Negt, Claus Offe, Alfred Schmidt and Albert Wellmer.
The latter group are sometimes referred to as the “second generation”.
In 1933, under the Nazi regime, the Institute was closed for what
was described as “tendencies hostile to the state” (Jay, 1973/1996).
Many members of the Institute were Jewish. Following a short time of
incorporation in Geneva, the Institute relocated to New York City in
1934 and became affiliated with Columbia University. Given the neoMarxist orientation of this group it might seem a little strange that their
“protective” haven was in the heartland of capitalism. Following the war
some of the members of the Institute (Horkheimer, 1976; Adorno, 1973;
1984) returned to Frankfurt and re-established the Institute in 1949,
while others (notably Marcuse and Fromm) remained in the States.
Jürgen Habermas became a professor of philosophy at the Frankfurt
University, before establishing his own research centre at the Max
Planck Institute in Starnbeg, West Germany, in 1971.
It is interesting to note that some theorists, at one level, no longer
regard Habermas as a critical theorist for, while much of his work was
initially undertaken at the Institute, his work has drawn its inspiration
from pragmatism and systems theory rather than the fundamental
dialectical orientation that is the infusion of critical theory (Zanetti &
Carr, 1997). Indeed, a recently translated series of letters between
Horkheimer (1976) and Adorno (1973; 1984) reveals that Horkheimer
was of the view that Habermas’ work in the area of philosophy was
“betraying philosophy and critical theory” and he would “bring shame to
the Institute” (Kellner, 2001, p. 23). Thus, Habermas is a good example
of where, even at this basic level of coming to terms with what is critical
theory, we have a small “exceptions” to the general summary that is
being argued in this section of paper. It is also the case that while the
work of the group of critical theorists identified in the previous
paragraphs displayed a very large degree of convergence, there were,
nonetheless, significant disagreements some of which were extremely
public.
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Critical Theory as a Process of Critique
The second meaning of the terminology “critical theory” — which
also simultaneously includes, as perhaps the major instance, the work of
those associated with the Frankfurt School — resonates with a particular
process of critique, the origins of which owe multiple allegiances.
Critical theory aims to produce a particular form of knowledge that seeks
to realize an emancipatory interest, specifically through a critique of
consciousness and ideology. It separates itself from both
functionalist/objective and interpretive/practical sciences through a
critical epistemology that rejects the self-evident nature of reality and
acknowledges the various ways in which reality is socially constructed
and distorted.
Although the theoretical orientation owes much to the work of Kant,
Hegel and Marx, it was Horkheimer who first applied the phrase “critical
theory” in a manner that was to become a shared meaning amongst the
Frankfurt School scholars. In 1937, in a paper entitled Traditional and
Critical Theory, Horkheimer (1976) attempted to distinguish between
traditional theory and that which he called critical theory.
Horkheimer viewed traditional theory as focused upon deriving
generalisations about aspects of the world. This he saw as true, whether
they were derived deductively (as with Cartesian theory), inductively (as
with John Stuart Mill), or phenomenologically (as with Husserlian
philosophy). Horkheimer argued the social sciences were different to the
natural sciences, in as much, as generalisations could not be easily made
from so-called experiences, because the understanding of experience
itself was being fashioned from ideas that were in the researcher
themselves. The researcher is both part of what they are researching, and
caught in a historical context in which ideologies shape the thinking.
Thus, theory would be conforming to the ideas in the mind of the
researcher rather than the experience itself.
The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed
in two ways: through the historical character of the object
perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving
organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human
activity, and yet the individual perceives himself (sic) as
receptive and passive in the act of perception (Horkheimer,
1976, p. 213).
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In the course of making this point, Horkheimer injected the Marxist,
and most specifically, the Lukács notion of reification into his argument
— specifically arguing that the development of theory “was absolutized,
as though it were grounded in the inner nature of knowledge as such or
justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus it became a reified,
ideological category” (Horkheimer, 1976, p. 212). This was later to
become the basis for another charge that traditional theory maintained a
strict separation between thought and action. In contrast, critical theory
was about insight leading to praxis and emancipation.
Horkheimer insisted that approaches to understanding in the social
sciences cannot simply imitate those in the natural sciences. Rasmussen
(1996, p.18) frames Horkheimer’s resolution to the dilemma well, when
he says:
Although various theoretical approaches would come close to
breaking out of the ideological constraints which restricted them,
such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism and
phenomenology, Horkheimer would argue that they failed.
Hence, all would be subject to the logico-mathematical prejudice
which separates theoretical activity from actual life. The
appropriate response to this dilemma is the development of a
critical theory.
What is required, Horkheimer (1976, p. 221) argues, is “a radical
reconsideration not of the scientist alone, but of the knowing individual
as such”. This solution to the problem through epistemology, is an
approach of such significance it can not be overestimated. It signified
how critical theory was not simply reflective of orthodox Marxism nor
purely Hegelian — notwithstanding the fact that the Horkheimer paper
can be seen as deeply influenced by the Hegelian-Marxist idea of the
individual alienated from society. Indeed, it was Marx’s Capital:
Critique of Political Economy (1906) that largely served as the
touchstone paradigm from which resonance and departures were made
by the Frankfurt School. However, the epistemological turn gave critical
theory a “critique” of a different kind. Contra Marxism that sought to
apply a specific template or straight-jacket to both critique and action,
which itself was historically contingent, and contra-Hegelian thought
that privileges consciousness, critical theory was about being self-critical
and rejects any pretensions to absolute truth. Critical theory defends the
primacy of neither matter (materialism) nor consciousness (idealism),
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arguing that both epistemologies distort reality to the benefit, eventually,
of some group. In this approach, what critical theory attempts to do is to
place itself outside of philosophical strictures and the confines of
existing structures. As a way of thinking and “recovering” humanity’s
self knowledge, critical theory often looks to Marxism for its methods
and tools.
Whilst critical theory must at all times be self-critical, Horkheimer
insists a theory is only critical if it is explanatory, practical and
normative all at the same time — or, as Bohman, in summarising
Horkheimer’s criteria, states: “it must explain what is wrong with
current social reality, identify actors to change it, and provide clear
norms for criticism and practical goals for the future” (Bohman, 1996, p.
190) The focus of critical theory is simply not to mirror “reality” as it is,
which is what traditional theory seeks to do, but to change it — in
Horkheimer’s (1976, p. 219) words, the goal of critical theory is “the
emancipation of human beings from the circumstances that enslave
them”. This, of course, required the Frankfurt School scholars to
address their attention to issues that arise in a variety of domains, such
as cultural, political, economic, intellectual (including epistemological)
and psychological. Raymond Guess (1981, pp. 1-2), in his book The Idea
of Critical Theory, suggests the following fundamental theses
underpinned the Frankfurt School notion of critical theory:
- Critical theories have special standing as guides for human action in
that:
(a) They are aimed at producing enlightenment in the agents who
hold them, i.e. at enabling those agents to determine what their
true interests are;
(b) They are inherently emancipatory; i.e., they free agents from a
kind of coercion which is at least partly self-imposed, from
self-frustration of conscious human action.
- Critical theories have cognitive content; i.e., they are forms of
knowledge.
- Critical theories differ epistemologically in essential ways from
theories in the natural sciences. Theories in natural science are
“objectifying”; critical theories are “reflective”.
The above ingredients were not only seen by the Frankfurt School
scholars as an epistemic structure characterising their own work, but also
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the work of Freud.(3) The appreciation of this similarity was to become
important for particularly one of their number, namely Herbert Marcuse.
He was to explore the manner in which psychodynamic processes could
be manipulated to facilitate forms of self-repression and consent to
systems of collective representation that are not in the individuals’ own
best interests, but instead served to legitimate the interests of others. We
will note this matter in some greater detail presently, but while we are
endeavouring to understand the Frankfurt School scholars’ notion of
critical theory we need to round out such a discussion with an
appreciation of dialectics. The critique and action of critical theory
presupposed, and was infused with, a dialectic vision (see Carr, 1989).
DIALECTICS: A KEY INGREDIENT
One of the standard references to the history of the Frankfurt School
is Martin Jay’s book The Dialectical Imagination (1973/1996). This title
captures a crucial feature of the Frankfurt School vision. Critical theory
was theory that presupposed and was imbued with dialectics for it was
the form of connection that relates consciousness about “truth”, “falsity”
and domination with the issues of history, origin and purpose in society.
One could say that the Frankfurt School scholars firmly shared Marx’s
view that: “Dialectic is unquestionably the last word in philosophy”
(Kellner, 2001, p. 6). The dialectic “logic” used by members of the
Frankfurt School is evident throughout their work, perhaps no more so
than in their critique of positivism and pragmatism.
One of the major assumptions of positivism that critical theory
challenged was that Nature, or an external reality, is the author of truth
or “fact”. The concept of valid knowledge being detached (and therefore
neutral) from particular knowing subjects is rejected. Instead, the
Frankfurt School championed a dialectical logic. Marcuse (1993, p. 445)
expressed this view succinctly when he argued:
Dialectical thought invalidates the a priori opposition of value
and fact by understanding all facts as stages of a single process
— a process in which subject and object are so joined that truth
can be determined only within the subject-object totality. All
facts embody the knower as well as the doer; they continuously
translate the past into the present. The objects thus “contain”
subjectivity in their very structure.
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Thought itself is a product of discourses and social experiences in
which we are an agent. Interestingly, both critical theory and
postmodernist theorising emphasize the manner in which object and
subject, thought and being are mediated by each other and “thus reject
the principle reductive idealist or materialist thought” (Best & Kellner,
1991, p. 224). Adorno, similarly, argued that “facts are not in society ...
the resting point on which knowledge is founded because they
themselves are mediated through society” (cited in Spinner, 1975, p. 78,
italics is added emphasis). Adorno is denying the finality on which all
knowledge is presumed to rest. Instead, like others in the Frankfurt
School, Adorno put the view that there was a constant interplay of
particular and universal, of moment and totality.
Thus, for critical theory, the relationship between totality and its
moments are to be seen as reciprocal. All cultural phenomena are to be
viewed as mediated through the social totality. This form of
argumentation by Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse is one that
comprehends events and engages in a form of reflection that is dialectic
logic. This dialectical thinking owes much to the work of Hegel and
Marx.
Hegel’s notion of dialectics fundamentally involved recognition that
the particular and the universal were interdependent. It might be recalled
that Hegel developed three fundamental “laws” of dialectical thought.
These were:
- The law of the transformation of quantity into quality, and viceversa;
- The law of the unity (interpenetration, identity) of opposites;
- The law of the negation of negation (Guest, 1939, p. 45).
It was the second of these laws that was viewed as the crucial idea in
dialectics as a method. Indeed, Lenin in his Notes on Hegel’s Logic,
wrote: “Dialectics may be briefly defined as the theory of the unity of
opposites” (cited in Guest, 1939, p. 51). “Opposites” are viewed not as
existing as being in stark contrast to each other, but existing in unity.
Hegel (cited in Wallace, 1975, p. 222, italics is original emphasis)
expresses this relationship, arguing:
Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute difference.
The two however are at bottom the same; the name of either might
be transformed to the other. … The North Pole of the magnet cannot
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be without the South Pole and vice versa. … In opposition the
difference is not confronted by any other, but by its other.
The co-existence of opposites was viewed as the essential
contradictory character of reality. It was this contradictory character that
provided the evidence of the manner in which things developed. Lenin
was to describe contradiction as “the salt of dialectics” and argued that
“the division of the one and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the
essence of dialectics” (cited in Guest, 1939, p. 48, italics is original
emphasis). Hegel viewed dialectical thought as akin to “dialogue” in
which the conflict of opinion results in the emergence of a “new”
viewpoint. The dialectic, as such, was conceived as a “motion” involving
three “moments”: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. McTaggart (1896, pp.
9-10) captures this dynamic when he notes:
The relation of the thesis and the antithesis derives its whole
meaning from the synthesis, which follows them, and in which
the contradiction ceases to exist as such ... An unreconciled
predication of two contrary categories, for instance Being and
not-Being, of the same thing, would lead in the dialectic ... to
scepticism if it was not for the reconciliation in Becoming ...
[Thus] the really fundamental aspect of the dialectic is not the
tendency of the finite category to negate itself but to complete
itself.
While the Frankfurt School scholars did not accept the notion of
“dialectical laws of nature”, their concept of dialectic owes much to this
Hegelian formulation. Most philosophers have supposed that a
philosophical system must have some foundation, some starting point
upon which knowledge is built. Descartes, for example, supposed that if
the point of departure can be shown to be true, and if the reasoning away
from this point is absolutely rigorous, then the result must also be true. If
truth is present at the departure point, it is preserved and reappears at the
end of the process. Hegel, however, rejected the validity of such a
Cartesian foundation with its linear logic. The danger of establishing a
foundation is that knowledge is completely derailed when the foundation
crumbles or must be abandoned.
Wishing to develop a logic that would capture the ebb and flow of
life itself, Hegel reached back to the Platonic dialogues for inspiration.
The dialectical process begins with a “thesis”, any definable reality that
is the starting point from which all further development proceeds. As is
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noted above, reflection progresses and this thesis is seen to encompass
its opposite, or “antithesis”, as part of its very definition. One “moment”
of the dialectic process gives rise to its own negation. The process is
comparable to tragedy in which the protagonist is brought down as a
result of the dynamics inherent in his/her own character. What emerges
from the dialectic of affirmation and negation is a transcendent moment
that at once negates, affirms, and incorporates all the previous moments.
Thus, the thesis should be understood to have possessed the seeds of its
antithesis all along. If thought focuses appropriately on the reciprocal
relationship between the thesis and antithesis, a synthesis emerges. The
synthesis is the understanding of the unity that holds between the two
apparent opposites, and which permits their simultaneous existence.
The familiar triadic structure of Hegelian thought is, thus, not simply
a series of building blocks. Each triad represents a process wherein the
synthesis absorbs and completes the two prior terms, following which
the entire triad is absorbed into the next higher process. Hegel himself
preferred to refer to the dialectic as a system of negations, rather than
triads. His purpose was to overcome the static nature of traditional
philosophy and capture the dynamics of reflective thought. The essence
of the dialectic is this ability to see wholes and the conflict of parts
simultaneously. As Adorno (1984, p. 38) expressed it, “Dialectics is the
quest to see the new in the old instead of just the old in the new. As it
mediates the new, so it also preserves the old as the mediated”. Rather
than viewing matters in linear cause-and-effect terms dialectical thinking
calls attention to the ongoing reciprocal effects of our social world.
Marx viewed the Hegelian dialectic as somewhat idealist and
reworked the notion by turning it on its head, arguing the theoretical
abstractions are formed from the lived experience of historically-based
and evolved social relations — not in the reverse pattern as envisaged by
Hegel. Marx’s “historical materialism” was a dialectic of the “real
world”, as Marx (1906, p. 25) himself argues:
My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is
its direct opposite. To Hegel ... the process of thinking, which, under
the name of ‘the Idea’, he transforms into an independent subject, is
the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the
external phenomenal form of the ‘Idea’. With me, on the contrary,
the idea is nothing else than the material world reflected by the
human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
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Marx retained the concept of contradiction being at the root of
transformative processes and saw contradiction was an effect that is
implicit in the social structure, or institutional form, itself — the
opposition is inherent in the totality, in the same way death is implicit in
birth. For Marx, structure did not arise from or act independently of the
thoughts, desires and actions of human agents but from the critical and
transformational aspects of dialectics. Watkins (1985, p. 7) notes that the
implications of this when he says “it is from this view, with human
agents as active and praxis-inclined, that the transformation of
institutions through the transcendence of the existing contradictions
occurs”.
The Frankfurt School rejected the class interest analysis that came
with a Marxist orientation and placed its emphasis in understanding
cultural phenomenon as mediated through the social totality. Contra the
orthodox Marxist view, the economic system could not be extracted and
analysed other than in its broader context. While the founding members
of the Frankfurt School embraced the Hegelian foundation of dialectics,
they did, however, rejected his claims to absolute truth, preferring a
historical contextual interpretation. For the Frankfurt School scholars,
truth was a mediated truth, and part of that mediation was the historical
period. Part of that “truth” also came from the ideologies that were
distributed through a “culture industry” and yet another part was to be
“found in the material reality of those needs, desires and wants that bear
the inscription of history. That is, history is to be found as “second
nature” in those concepts and views of the world that make the most
dominating aspects of the social order appear to be immune from
historical socio-political development” (Giroux, 1983, p. 32). This
“second nature”, Jacoby (1975) was to remark, is history hardened into a
form of “social amnesia”, that is a mode of consciousness that forgets its
own ontology. This suppression of history “is not an academic but a
political affair” (Marcuse, 1964, p. 97). This became a crucial issue for
the Frankfurt School, particularly Marcuse in his critique of psychology
as being too cognitive and ahistorical in its recognition of where needs,
want and desires become fashioned. For the Frankfurt School, critical
theory and a dialectic optic was needed to unmask these forms of
psychological and social domination and simultaneously engender
liberation.
Thus, for the Frankfurt School, to embrace the critical theory’s
attention to the issue of dialectics is to embrace a perspective that draws
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attention to the social totality and our mediated existence. No aspect of
our life world can be understood in isolation. For the “philosophically
supple” (Carr, 1997) this tenet for enquiry, as Bauman (1976) and Ritzer
(1996) point out, has both a synchronic and diachronic aspect. The
synchronic aspect is that we are drawn to consider the interrelationship
of “components” of a society within a totality. The diachronic aspect is
that we are drawn to consider a historical dimension of society. Geuss
(1981, p. 22) in similar vein, notes that “one of the senses in which the
Critical Theory is said by its proponents to be ‘dialectical’ (and hence
superior to its rivals) is just in that it explicitly connects questions about
the ‘inherent’ truth or falsity of a form of consciousness with questions
about history, origin and function in society”.
Detecting “truth” and “falsity”, the suppression of history and the
issue of “social amnesia” were matters that led Adorno and Marcuse, in
particular, to further refinements of “dialectics”. The awareness of the
dynamics of the current social order, and the manner in which that social
order institutionalised forms of social repression, was very dependent
upon the extent to which the “negative” and contradictions could be
brought to a conscious awareness. Our sobriety in this regard is not
easily achieved, both in the sense of having the “tools” to assist
awareness of contradiction and thus penetrate false images and “false
consciousness;” as well as, dealing with the emotional turmoil and
discomfort that such an awareness may bring. Marcuse, in a slightly
different context (see Carr & Zanetti, 2000) referred to the
estrangement-effect in relation to the clash of the conflicting “realities”
and he likened it to the way in which the surrealists elicited such feelings
and discomfort when they, for example, juxtaposed objects in unfamiliar
association and elicited unforeseen affinities between objects and,
perhaps, unexpected emotion and sensations in the observer. It was in
this discomfort that the conditions for seeing the world anew arose.
In the tradition of Hegel, Fredric Jameson (1971, p. 308, italics is
added emphasis) points out, correctly in my view, that:
But precisely because dialectical thinking depends so closely on
the habitual everyday mode of thought which it is called on to
transcend, it can take a number of different and apparently
contradictory forms. So it is that when common sense
predominates and characterizes our normal everyday mental
atmosphere, dialectical thinking presents itself as the perversely
hairsplitting, as the overelaborate and the oversubtle, reminding
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us that the simple is in reality only a simplification, and that the
self-evident draws its force from hosts of buried presuppositions.
Marcuse was all to acutely aware that these moments of revelation
were all too easily muted or disarmed by assimilating mechanisms of the
prevailing order. The estrangement-effect can only be maintained to the
extent that it continues to reveal the prevailing order in its opposition
and (simultaneously) the opposition in the prevailing order — that is, to
the extent that it maintains a dialectical tension. The opposition between
antagonistic spheres is a dynamic conceived as the mediation of one
through the other (see Marcuse, circa unknown/1993). This concern was
also shared by Adorno who went in a different direction to posit a postHegelian dialectic approach that postponed indefinitely the “closure”
represented in “synthesis” and also freed dialectics from the affirmative
qualities in Hegel’s three laws of dialectic thought, particularly that
related to negation of the negation. In his work Negative Dialectics
(1966/1973), Adorno championed a modification of dialectical thinking
in which, as its most basic example, he suggests that freedom can only
be defined in negative terms for it corresponds only to specific forms of
un-freedom — again, social and historical contexts were crucial in
understanding. Adorno (1973, p. 299) expressed his formulation as
follows:
The subjects are free, after the Kantian model, in so far as they
are aware of and identical with themselves; and then again, they
are unfree in such identity in so far as they are subjected to, and
will perpetuate, its compulsion. They are unfree as diffuse, nonidentical nature; and yet, as that nature they are free because
their overpowering impulse — the subject’s non-identity with
itself is nothing else — will also rid them of identity’s coercive
character.
The form of reflective openness, contained in Adorno’s Negative
Dialectics, does not affirm any specific “synthesis” and acts against
what he saw as the predilection of humans to seek closure as an act of
mastery and control. We will gain a firmer understanding of this in the
next section of this paper in which this author seeks to round out the
discussion of critical theory and dialectics by identifying some common
misconceptions carried in social science discourses.
CRITICAL THEORY: WHAT IT IS NOT
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CARR
The revival in interest in critical theory has also been witness to a
revival in a number of misconceptions that have appeared in numerous
discourses, not least of which being organization theory discourse. The
original understanding has, to some extent, been contaminated and these
misconceptions need addressing not only to correct the “record” for
those who wish to adopt critical theory in their own work, but also in the
interests of further clarifying what critical theory is.
The first, and perhaps most common, misconception is that every
framework presenting two sides of a question or situation is dialectical.
This is not the case. Adorno notes: “Dialectical thought is the attempt to
break through the coercive character of logic with the means of logic
itself” (Adorno, cited in Arato and Gebhardt, 1982/1993, p. 396). In
other words, dialectical thought steps within the framework of an
argument to offer its critique. Juxtaposition, static opposition, and
simple divisions certainly exist, but these are, by definition, undialectical
and simple dualisms, since dialectic thinking requires that the conditions
and circumstances of the whole be taken into consideration as well. As
we will elaborate presently, dialectic incorporates a "substantive"
contradiction, rather than simply a formal-quantitative one.
A second misconception relates to a simplistic reduction of the
familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis relationship. A perception seems to
have arisen that the synthesis is analogous to compromise, a kind of
middle ground halfway between the two original starting points. This
misinterpretation quite possibly stems from the words Hegel used to
describe this new thought process — Vermittlung (mediation) and
Versöhnung (reconciliation) — as well as, one suspects, from the
insistence of textbook editors on offering two-dimensional graphic
representations of such a holistic process. Horkheimer speaks
contemptuously of the tendency to represent dialectic as a "lifeless
diagram” (1935/1993, p. 414). What is often overlooked in these
simplistic formulations is that mediation takes place in and through the
extremes (the thesis and antithesis); it is not a simple give-and-take
along a continuum. Dialectic is a more supple form of thought than
mathematical inference. It always makes higher-order comments on the
relationship under scrutiny, stating connections that carry beyond the
obvious content. The synthesis becomes a new “working reality”— a
“new working constellation of the thesis and antithesis” (Arato &
Gebhardt, 1982/1993, p. 398) — and may, in turn, become a thesis
(which then engenders its own antithesis). The contradiction is not
“resolved”, but instead absorbed: the frame of reference which made the
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
481
poles opposites in the first case is transcended. Thus, what might appear
to be opposites in one context (force and consent, for example) might no
longer be opposites in a different context.
A third common misconception, very much intertwined with the
misconception just outlined, refers to the nature of contradiction
represented by the dialectic and the binary oppositional thinking that
appears in much Western thought. We talk about right or wrong; rational
or emotional; nature or nurture; public or private; heart or head; quality
or quantity, etc. These are very familiar oppositions. Embedded in this
fundamental style of traditional thinking (or formal logic), however, are
not only oppositions but also hierarchy, in that the existence of such
binaries suggests a struggle for predominance. If one position is right,
then the other must be wrong. Hélène Cixous (1986, p. 2) observes that
the oppositional terms are locked into a relationship of conflict and,
moreover, this relationship is one in which one term must be repressed at
the expense of the other. Nature without nurture seems meaningless, for
example, but often nurture struggles to negate the influence of nature.
Irigaray (see Whitford, 1991) has similarly observed that one of the
principles of Western rationality is that of non-contradiction, where we
strive to reduce ambivalence and ambiguity to an absolute minimum. In
such a logical system, two propositions cannot be true simultaneously
(Popper, 1963). This is so because traditional logic focuses on empirical
(mostly quantitative) representations of reality, necessarily builds on
arbitrarily constructed foundations. At some point, the logic is abstracted
from reality (formalized). Thus, in this “system” of logic one proposition
must prevail, and the other must accordingly be vanquished. In critical
theory, however, form cannot be separated from content. It must
continually reflect the whole of reality, not just a simplification of it. But
because of the pervasiveness of binary oppositional thinking, the term
dialectic sometimes gets mistakenly used to denote a simple binary of
opposites where the dialectical contradiction (the thesis-antithesis) is in
some fashion conceived as an absolute.
Dialectical relationships do not express simply existence and nonexistence; they also recognize the other possibilities available in the
whole. For example, “the dialectical contradiction of ‘a’ is not simply
‘non-a’ but ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, and so on — which, in their attempt at selfassertion and self-realization, are all fighting for the same historical
space” (Arato & Gebhardt, 1982/1993, p. 398). Horkheimer gives other
examples of such dialectic logic and suggests we need to think in terms
482
CARR
of substantive opposites rather than formal/logical positivist/logical
empiricist ones to help in understanding our assumptions. He gives an
example of the contradiction to “straight” which formal logic might
seem to suggest is “non-straight”, but Horkheimer (1935/1993) offers
other negations: “curved”, “interrupted”, and “zigzag”. Another example
might be to recognize that there are multiple negations to power:
resistance, powerlessness, and quiescence, all of which have different
relationships to power and consequently different dialectical resolutions.
Thus, “true logic, as well as true rationalism, must go beyond form to
include substantive elements as well” (Jay, 1996, p. 55).
A fourth misconception arises from a misunderstanding that critical
theory is merely critique and therefore only capable of being a negative
discourse. Marcuse (1993) succinctly puts the counter-argument when he
says:
The liberating function of negation in philosophical thought
depends upon the recognition that the negation is a positive act;
that-which-is repels that-which is-not and, in doing so, repels its
own real possibilities. Consequently, to express and define thatwhich-is on its own terms is to distort and falsify reality. Reality
is other and more than that codified in the logic and language of
facts (p. 447).
… Dialectical logic is critical logic: it reveals modes and
contents of thought which transcend the codified pattern of use
and validation. Dialectical thought does not invent these
contents; they have accrued to the notions in the long tradition
of thought and action. Dialectical analysis merely assembles and
reactivates them; it recovers tabooed meaning and thus appears
almost as a return, or rather a conscious liberation, of the
repressed! Since the established universe of discourse is that of
an unfree world, dialectical thought is necessarily destructive,
and whatever liberation it may bring is s liberation in thought, in
theory. However, the divorce of thought from action, of theory
from practice, is itself part of the unfree world. No thought and
no theory can undo it; but theory may help to prepare the ground
for their possible reunion, and the ability of thought to develop a
logic and language of contradiction is a prerequisite for this task
(p. 449).
Marcuse uses a different view of “negative” and negation to that
used by Adorno in his negative dialectics. The life-world for Marcuse is
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
483
one grounded in social change. The “negativity” in dialectics is in its
non-affirmation and in this critical trajectory the destruction of what
passes as common sense is a disrobing act to reveal buried
presuppositions. Thus, as Marcuse argues, negation provides an
important reflective function through the modality of estrangement — it
is destructive, but the destruction re-emerges in a positive act.
CRITICAL THEORY: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOUR
The embrace of critical theory with its dialectic optic of the world
has a number of implications for those who toil in the field for
organization theory and behaviour. Gathered under three minor
headings, this author wishes to briefly highlight inter-related issues that
demonstrate the contemporary relevance of critical theory.
In Relation to Researcher-Subject Connection and Theory
Development
The Frankfurt School scholars were concerned with the fetish with
facts and the belief in value neutrality. This, in their view, was more than
an epistemological error: it was a form of ideological hegemony infused
with positivism and political conservatism. Researchers in the field of
organization theory and behaviour need to be reflective about the “tools”
that they seek to use, as well as become more sceptical as to empiricist
claims. Much of the field has embraced a natural science paradigm and,
in large measure, held structural functionalist and behaviourist visions of
the world (see Carr, 1989). Critical theory rejects such a paradigm and
optic of the world and the absolutizing of facts. Our world is a mediated
world and, as we noted earlier in a citation to Horkheimer’s work, the
researcher is part of that mediated world. The researcher is both part of
what he/she is researching and caught up in the pervading ideologies that
shape our thinking. The logic of his argument is to view organisations
(and organisation theory), as with all “social facts”, as taking their
specific form from the interpretive framework of the viewer. In the
social sciences, facts cannot be separated from values as the two are
intertwined. As one critical theorist argues: "If our theories create the
facts that are relevant to them, we can only explore truth within a
framework that defines what it is” (Greenfield, 1993, p. 94).
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If knowledge is mediated by cultural, social and linguistic
“structures” and practices, then, as such, its “truth” claims (facts) would
seem to be inevitably relational — an orientation that postmodernists
share with critical theorists. Thus it is worth reminding ourselves that, at
best, the natural sciences can only ever observe and infer, yet the social
sciences can actually ask its “subjects” and thus “discover” meaning and
intentionality. As if to underline the point being made here, one writer
recently in chastising the field of psychology for adopting a natural
science paradigm, argues:
But the adoption of a ‘paradigm’ that calls for pooled data and
statistical manipulations more or less forecloses any realistic
chance of explaining the understanding the individual case. Billy
cuts a worm in half because Billy has a sadistic streak. Jimmy
cuts a worm in half so that, with two, the worm will no longer be
lonely. A ‘paradigm’ that features the outcome and ignores the
rationale must miss everything that is of real importance, even as
it painstakingly strives for accuracy in measurement and merely
statistical significance (Robinson, 2000, p. 42).
Knowledge would seem to be grounded in the subjective
experiences of the individual. In this context, the issue for our
organization theory discourse is not one of objective truth, but one of
some transparency over how we come to hold the conclusions that we
do. What logic, reason and other mediated pathways did we use
(unconsciously guided), in coming to “believe” this was the truth. The
challenge for the field is to make transparent such logic.
In an effort to try to distance ourselves as researchers and theorists,
from the mediated situation in which we find ourselves, critical theory
would suggest we need to be aware of the dialectic tension in our
theorising and be sensitive to the contradictions in our “texts”. Critical
theorists would insist upon acknowledging that the field in which we
toil, organizations are full of paradox, contradictions and irony.
Detecting contradictions, and other such ruptures, is not an easy task
when we ourselves are part of what we are researching. In short we need
to be able to see ourselves in spite of ourselves. To do this requires we
develop “tools” that help to create the estrangement that we discussed
earlier. Certainly, critical theorists have a processual perspective that
recognises the on-going dialectic tension of various theories, which in
itself affords an opportunity to see afresh aspects of the lifeworld in
organisations. Unlike those who view facts and treat them in their
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
485
immediate form as truth (and exclude knowledge of everything that is
not yet fact), these theorists take the view that the form in which
something immediate appears is not yet its true form. Dialectics requires
that we take a given term, situation, etc and examine its negation. In
analysing both the original term and its negation, we may become aware
of new possibilities. Postmodernism with its “techniques” of
deconstruction, playfulness, the clash-of-opposites, intertwining of form
and content, metaphoricality and the like, unsettle us from our
“conventional wisdom” and afford us an opportunity to penetrate and
reflect, perhaps anew, on what we have taken for granted. Some in
critical theory, while rejecting the so called “truth claims” made by
postmodernists, have employed such techniques,(4) but always with a
mind-set of gaining a clearer picture of the value-laden interests and the
dialectic tensions at play.
The optic of critical theory has led some to formulate research
questions in a quite different manner to those of non-critically orientated
approaches. For example, Colleen Capper (1998, p. 356) in her
examination of administrative leadership in organizations suggests the
following research questions are pertinent to a critical perspective:
- Are the experiences, attitudes, values, and behaviours of persons
from different social groups considered? How is what is happening
in the situation perpetuating unequal relations among people?
- How is the situation encouraging conformity and the abandonment
of critical consciousness?
- Who is benefiting from the situation? Whose interests are (and are
not) being served by the situation? Whose knowledge/point of view
is privileged?
- To what extent is the situation a dodge or crisis point that serves to
distract the people in the setting from working on issues of equity
and justice?
- How would people with social perspectives different from your own
view the situation (in terms of gender/race, etc.)?
Clearly the optics of critical theory put the research and the researcher in
a very different place to that traditionally evident in mainstream
discourse of organization theory and behaviour.(5)
In Relation to Public Interest and the Body Politic
486
CARR
It was noted earlier in this paper that critical theory must at all times
be self-critical. Horkheimer also, however in the tradition of critical
theory, insists a theory is only critical if it is explanatory, practical and
normative all at the same time — or, as Bohman (1996) states in
summarizing Horkheimer’s criteria: “it must explain what is wrong with
current social reality, identify actors to change it, and provide clear
norms for criticism and practical goals for the future” (p. 190, italics is
added emphasis). The focus of critical theory is not to describe “reality”,
but to change it. In Horkheimer’s (1976, p. 219) words, cited earlier in
this paper, the goal of critical theory is “the emancipation of human
beings from the circumstances that enslave them”.
Clearly the embrace of a critical theory optic will require us to
reflect upon the social totality and our mediated existence. No aspect of
our lifeworld can be understood in isolation. Thus our theorising must
recognise its own political import as well as be self-conscious as to the
political context in which it relates to practice. As Ben Agger (1991)
suggests: “There is something profoundly unreflexive about a theory that
forgets its own connection to the body politic” (p. 187). It is the
connection of theory to the “body politic” where critical theory poses a
challenge to that of the field of organization theory and behaviour.
Academics and other social researchers cannot embrace critical theory
and at the same time act as though they do their work from a
disinterested position. Such work is itself a political action. The
positivist pretensions that facts and values can be kept separate, in
research and analysis, is firmly rejected by critical theorists. To
reflexively consider values and the context of the body politic, is part of
analysis; it is not, in itself, to be confused with advocacy — an
intellectual glide so often employed as a form of defence where any
discussion of values is seen as undermining the “science” in research. To
reflexively consider values is not to abandon “objectivity” or to
compromise “distance”. Critical theory is all about making the
distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and what is and what
should be. In its broader context that Agger (1998, p. 179) rightfully
notes:
Critical social theorists understand that objectivity in the social
sciences is molten, not frozen, thus precluding lawful
representations of society. They further see that objective
analysis of society’s crises and contradictions is a form of
political action designed to raise consciousness and produce
radical change. As a narrative representing change or stasis,
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
487
social science either contributes to the change or stasis that it
discloses. For example, when positivists suggest there are
certain ‘laws’ governing gender relations, they contribute to that
representation of gender by depressing people’s attempts to do
gender differently.
The manner in which we develop a critical distance from what we study
and analyse and at the same time reflexively make the connections to
values and a body politic, represents a challenge for the field.
In Relation to the Notion of Administration/Management and
Assumptions about Employment Relations
The assumptions that we make about the relationship of structures,
organization processes and the “nature” of actors in organizations can
frame the way in which we not only conceive what are appropriate
research questions for the field, but also cumulatively help frame what
we are to regard as the proper tasks of administrators and managers in
organizations. Much of our discourse carries a positivism that embraces
behavourist assumptions about human beings and structural-functionalist
assumptions about agency. Critical theory with its dialectic optic on the
world has a very different view — a view well captured some years ago
by Kenneth Benson (1977) in the journal Administrative Science
Quarterly.
Benson’s work was an early call to view organizations through an
optic of dialectics. For Benson (1997, p. 3), dialectics “because it is
essentially a processual perspective, focuses on the dimension currently
missing in much organizational thought”. It was seen as a way to open
up analysis to the processes through which people in organizations
“carve out and stabilize a sphere of rationality and those through which
such rationalized spheres dissolve” (p. 3). Benson suggested that such
dialectical analysis proceeds on the basis of four fundamental premises,
or principles. These are that: (1) people are continually in a process of
constructing and reconstructing the social context; (2) social
phenomenon need to be studied rationally as part of a totality or larger
whole that has multiple connections; (3) social arrangements are exactly
that, social constructions with latent possibilities of transformation that
become conscious through inherent contradictions in those social orders;
and, (4) there is a commitment to praxis, while recognizing the limits
and potentials of present social arrangements (see Benson, 1977).
488
CARR
This call to view organizations through the optic of dialectics
requires managers and administrators to adopt a different orientation to
their work. No longer focussed upon control, and rejecting the idea of
the organization as a “thing”, managers/administrators needed to
perceive their role (as with others in the organisation) as being an active
one in a broader process of transformation in which they act and are
acted upon. This transformation is such, that the manager/administrator
should not simply become aware of dialectical relationships between
structures and actors, but become more critical in the appraisal of the
options in carrying through their tasks. Part of the role is to de-reify
established social patterns and to expect contradiction to arise that will
require a working through of the strains and tensions that arise. Wilson
(1985, p. 139) argues: “Management … is a dialectical interplay of
persons whose roles change from one part of the system to another, and
who remain open to dialogue and discussion in their continuing concern
for the care of public things”.
The dimensions of how this dialectic optic effects the orientation of
a manager and administrator, this author has detailed elsewhere (see
Carr, 1989) but also in an Appendix to this paper he summarises and
contrasts this dialectic orientation to that of what might be termed a
technical orientation or notion of administration and management. The
author makes the contrast, again, to highlight the connection of theory
with practice. In the growing cult of MBAism that views management
and administration as simply series of technical problems that have
straightforward technical answers that can be summarised in handbooks
and decision trees, dialectic approaches to our field have a very different
set of implications and challenges.
NOTES
1. See, for example, the Routledge series on the Collected papers of
Herbert Marcuse a six volume publication edited by Douglas
Kellner of which only three have, thus far, been published. See also
the series published by Belknap of Harvard University Press of the
Selected writings of Walter Benjamin edited by Marcus Bullock and
Michael Jennings, a series that commenced in 1997 and Lonitz, H.
Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin: The complete
correspondence 1928-1940 (N. Walker, Trans). Cambridge, MA:
Polity.
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
489
2. Some material contained in this and the following section of the
paper represents an elaboration and refinement from some earlier
work that the reader may also wish to consult (see Carr, 1989, Carr,
2000; Zanetti & Carr, 1997)
3. Interestingly in this context, the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute
was originally established in 1929 as a “guest Institute” within the
Institute for Social Research and housed in the same building. This
occurred at a time when psychoanalysis was not well regarded. The
Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute was headed by Karl Landauer and
Heinrich Meng until closed by the Nazis in 1933.
4. The issue of using postmodern techniques as tools within a critical
theory framework has led to the founding of new journal in 2001
that is entitled: TAMARA: Journal of Critical Postmodern
Organization Science. David Boje is the founding editor.
5. In what some might see as an extreme view, there are those within
critical theory, who are organization theorists, who have wondered
aloud that the field is not simply about researching and assembling
“facts”, but more appropriately should be considered from the
perspective of presenting a “moral vision of the world”. This view
stems from the argument that as conventional epistemology cannot
be appealed to as an adequate source of judgement for managers and
administrators, we need a discourse not anchored in rationality, as it
has been in the past, but anchored in values and a morally concerned
scepticism. This would take the field and the focus of research in a
different direction. Those wishing to know more about such a
viewpoint, should read Greenfield & Ribbins (1993) and Carr
(1997).
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APPENDIX 1
494
CARR
A Technical and Dialectic Notion of Administration and
Management
Technical notion
Dialectic notion
1. People are passive, optimistic 1. People are active and social, and can have
and cipher-like, with little autonomy in determining their actions. The
autonomy. The organisation degree of autonomy is inversely
structure is a predetermined proportional to the extent of surplus
“thing”, acting independently repression. The organisational structure is
of the thoughts, desires and conceived as being in a process of
actions of human agents.
transformation - a process involving a
dialectical relationship with human agency.
2. Organisations are abstractions 2. Organisations are not abstractions but are
from their general environment representations of rationality (they may
with
the
administrator contain the specific reality principle) and
primarily
responsible
for the results of previous dialectic processes.
control, fine tuning and acting The generative force of change is
on personnel to achieve contradictions - contradictions that emerge
equilibrium. Changes that take from the totality of the social world.
place occur as a result of the Stability is not the norm but transient and
demands placed on the represents a state of obstructed change.
organisation by factors external Administrators should not be preoccupied
to it.
with control but with working out tensions
and strains arising from contradictions.
3. Social relations are conceived 3. Social relations have a time and place
of in a positivistic manner as dimension which recognises that human
being “technical problems”, agents shape organisational structures while
thus removing areas of social being themselves subject to their own
relations from political debate. historical
chain
of
experiences.
Part of the tool kit for “fixing” Administrators should therefore not only be
the technical problems is aware of the dialectic between structure and
conventional
organisational human agency but, as part of working out
theory
which
itself
is the tensions and strains arising from
embedded in a structural- contradictions, should open up analysis of
functionalist perspective of the the processes through which the current
social world.
structures, powers, etc. came into being and
how they might transform existing
negations.
APPENDIX 1 (Continued)
4. The end results of adminis- 4. Administrative action is part of an
trative action are assessed in ongoing process to detect contradictions
terms of technical efficiency. and work through existing and/or potential
The tenets of scientific mana- tensions and strains without a fundamental
gement provide an appropriate desire to preserve a status quo.
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL THEORY FOR THOSE IN ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
495
context in which to conceive
administrative action.
5. Facts are treated in their 5. The form in which something immeimmediate form as truth and diately appears is not yet its true form and
exclude knowledge of every- what one sees is a negative condition and
thing that is not yet fact.
not the real potential.
6. The technical notion draws 6. The conflict perspective of society is
from the structural functionalist drawn upon as the conceptual prism.
perspective of society as its
conceptual prism, embracing
positivism, scientific management, classical organisation
theory and behaviourism.