Post Modernism and Management: Volume 21

Postmodernism has had a widespread influence on intellectuals throughout the world. It all started, as the chapter on Ghate will show, with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who was the first philosopher to sever reason (consciousness) from reality. We have been paying the price ever since. Postmodernism has now spread from philosophy into many other fields, including literature, history, sociology, psychology and business.

The paper reviews some basic themes in postmodernism and argues for a moderate incorporation of these themes in organization studies and methodology. This approach, named interpretive unpacking, takes issues of multiple and fluid meanings, ambiguities and fragmentation seriously without the a priori privileging of these qualities over assumptions of stable meanings and coherence in social phenomena. The suggested position is illustrated in the fields of identity and image in organization studies through a critical reading of a key text. Assumptions around identities, identification, beliefs, perceptions and images are here problematized and seen as themes for critical exploration and careful interpretive inquiry rather than as robust starting points for the formulation of hypothesis for testing.

In a paper written for a theory development forum (Calás & Smircich, 1999) we insisted that the postmodern moment, in its association with poststructuralist analyses, brought much of value to organization and management studies. At the time we observed that although such a moment may have already passed, its traces continued to be seen and expressed in several important intellectual developments. In particular, we identified poststructuralist feminist theories, postcolonial theory, actor-network theory, and narrative approaches to theory as productive heirs of the postmodern moment in organization and management studies.

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements that literally have historical specificity. From this perspective what is modern and what is postmodern is always shifting, such that their nature is problematic, essentially contested and shifting. Rather than use contemporary examples to make these points, we prefer to refer to quite historical examples, because the modalities become much sharper and can be seen in clearer focus. Hence, we discuss Machiavelli and Caravaggio as precursors of the postmodern and Hobbes and Boyle as precursors of the modern. Obviously, there is an irony in our intent: given the claims to currency of the debates with which we frame the paper then reference to some classical sources serves to hose down debate and fix it in a sharper, cleaner form. While it will become evident that our sympathies are not with “modernism”, it should become equally clear that we hold much of the representation of “postmodernism” to be as much at error as we do the fixing of the modern in the frame of the empiricist, the positivist, and the scientific. For us, all these terms are equally problematic, and have been so ever since we began to first think we might be modern – whether in art, social science or science. We conclude by addressing why, in the present, these classical debates should have migrated to the study of organizations.

This chapter presents an affirmative and emancipatory postmodernism characterized by epistemological and methodological pluralism. Many narratives are to be preferred to just one, many styles of research are available and useful, and local, limited and fragmented research initiatives have contributions to make to our common enterprise. The chapter outlines postmodern ideas such as fluidity, deconstruction and pluralism; debunks misconceptions concerning postmodernism’s relationship to science, modernity and theorizing; and offers a four-step guide to those interested in postmodernizing a research area. The chapter ends with a call for transparency in theory and method, pursuit of nonobvious research ideas and pragmatic engagement with the world of practice.

Organizational researchers live in two worlds. The first demands and rewards speculations about how to improve performance. The second demands and rewards adherence to rigorous standards of scholarship (March & Sutton, 1997, p. 698).Those of us who study organizations and are professors of management work on the front lines, so to speak, where the beliefs we have about how to improve managerial performance get passed directly on to practitioners. The question is, What right do we have to put our beliefs in a privileged position? Beliefs, by definition, are supposed to be true. According to Webster’s (1996) a belief is a conviction about the truth of some statement and/or reality of some phenomenon, especially when based on examination of evidence. Are all of our lectures based on consensually agreed upon evidentiary standards? What are these standards and who should maintain them?

Postmodernism presently enjoys some following in organizational studies. However, a close examination of some of the main postmodernist contributions to organizational studies shows that they suffer from many damaging problems. Accordingly, organizational studies should not utilize the postmodernist approach.

During the last 10 years, there have been several calls for a postmodern epistemology in organization studies (e.g. Hassard, 1994; Kilduff & Mehra, 1997). While most organization studies researchers would probably not think of themselves as postmodernists, one response to these calls is that the callers are preaching to the already converted. That is, the implicit norms that govern what are considered desirable scholarly contributions in organization studies today already bear the stamp of a postmodern epistemology. It is an epistemology that has not been consciously adopted by most organization studies scholars, but nevertheless has left its imprint on their work. The purpose of this chapter is to develop that argument, focusing first on three scholarly norms that are prominent in contemporary organization studies. These three scholarly norms are: (1) the positive valuation of the attribute “insight”; (2) the use and positive valuation of broad-scope theoretical constructs; and (3) the positive valuation of multiple schools of thought. I will discuss each of these norms in turn and argue that each is consistent with, and supported by, underlying currents of thought in postmodernist epistemology. I will identify the elements of postmodernist epistemology that I believe support each norm and then critically appraise the norm in light of reservations I have about postmodernist thought. While the three norms identified above certainly do not cover the entire range of scholarly “best practices” in organization studies today, I believe they are sufficient to illustrate the link between everyday scholarly practice in the discipline and postmodernist views of knowledge.

Postmodernism is often held to be a novel viewpoint of the 20th (and 21st) century. In certain minor respects, it is. But in this chapter I will show that, fundamentally, it is a logical derivative of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s revolutionary views in epistemology. As such, postmodernism rises or falls with the cogency of Kant’s basic epistemological approach.

You must attach clear, specific meanings to words, i.e. be able to identify their referents in reality…. All philosophical con games count on your using words as vague approximations. You must not take a catch phrase – or any abstract statement – as if it were approximate. Take it literally. Don’t translate it, don’t glamorize it, don’t make the mistake of thinking, as many people do: “Oh, nobody could possibly mean this!” and then proceed to endow it with some whitewashed meaning of your own. Take it straight, for what it does say and mean. Instead of dismissing the catch phrase, accept it – for a few brief moments. Tell yourself, in effect: “If I were to accept it as true, what would follow?” This is the best way of unmasking any philosophical fraud…. To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true. Philosophy provides man with a comprehensive view of life. In order to evaluate it properly, ask yourself what a given theory, if accepted, would do to a human life, starting with your own (Rand, 1982, p. 16).We begin this chapter by taking Ayn Rand’s advice. We project – by means of a fictional story – what it would be like for a businessman to accept and live by the philosophy of postmodernism.