Gergen, Kenneth J. "Organizational Theory in the Post-Modern Era" in Michael Reed and Michael Hughes, ed., Rethinking Organizations: new directions in organization theory and analysis" Sage Publications, 1992 p 207-226.
Our theories of organizations are forms of language. Theories do not exist apart from culture. Theories must obey the culture's rules of intelligibility. The author believes that the romantic view of the 19th centure and the modernist view of the 20th are becoming inadequate to advance organizational theory.
The romantic view emphasized the existence of a deep interior of capacities or characteristics in humans. This includes the soul, love, friendship, grief, inspiration, creativity, genius, will, and moral responsibility. The interior was also in touch with nature. These capacities were gifts within the natural order. Now it is supported by the arts, literature, religion, and mass media.
In organization theory romantic viewpoints arise in Tavistock, Japanese management, personal leadership,
"Theory gains its importance from the activities in which it enables, .. byt the way in which it figures in ongoing patterns of relationship.
The modernist view has:
* a revival of beliefs of power of reason and observation, and of Darwinistic survival
* a search for fundamentals or essentials
* a faith in progress and universal design
* absorption in the machine metaphor
These views have strengthened the hold of academia and convinced people that one can understand organizations with the scientific method. These include scientfic management, contingency theory, exchange theories, etc.
Postmodern Transformation
Postmoderists reverse the modernist view of language as picturing the essentials of reality. Knowledge is governed, influenced by social processes and by the rules of language itself. Postmodernist theory begins with assumptions and generates evidence to be interpreted withing this restrictive domain. Data is merely supportive of the prior assumptions.
Postmodernism rejects using psychlogical explanations of reality as a representation. It is critical of one's own suppostitions. "We are engaging in public pastimes, rituals, or lifeforms and for such enterprises there are no vindicating foundations". Theorists merely set aloft balloons for public amusement.
Postmodern Theories of Organizations
Culture studies, self-reflexive processes are parts of post-modernist theory. Yet if we can't base theories on rationality, motivation, and emotion, what do we base them on? Postmodernism states there is no objective truth. The function of theories is not derived from their truth value but their pragmatic implications. The primary ingredient of theory is not its years of supporting data but its intelligibility.
One should view theorie on their challenge to "taken-for-granted"
Power
From the romantic perspective, power is a personal characteristic derived from drive, determination, intelligence, inspiration, etc. Modernist view sees power as dependent on a structure.
Words and sayings have indeterminate realities -- you can read anything into anything. The words a manager says have no meaning except in the interpretations of his/her subordinates. Rationality is a product of social collaboration.
In this concept, power is only expressed by the actions of others. In organizations functional groups will develop their own set of languages which alienate themselves from other groups. As each group becomes more powerful, the organization itself becomes depowered. Efficiency requires a dynamic tension between empowerment and disempowerment. Differences are good in an organization.
In this postmodern view, organizations will survive better if they share organizational realities across sub-units, export realities to the outside culture, and allow external realities to enter organizational life. If everything is running smoothly the organization is in trouble.
In the pure sense a post modern organization will form a more symbiotic relationship with the outside environment and culture. The organization's outcomes will become inseparable from the outside community. Ultimately it will be a demise of the free-market and the zero-sum game. The world will become a total system.