Paper Title: A Literary Perspective of the Meta-Theory Debate

Authors: John T. Luhman & David M. Boje

Affiliation: New Mexico State University

Address: Department of Management

Dept. 3DJ, Box 30001

Las Cruces, NM 88003

Phone: 505-646-1201

Fax: 505-646-1372

Email: jluhman@nmsu.edu; dboje@nmsu.edu

Abstract:

A LITERARY PERSPECTIVE OF THE META-THEORY DEBATE

Much has been written in organization theory and studies to debate the fundamental Ascientific@ premises of researching organizational life. Our paper attempts to contribute to this debate by providing a literary perspective of what we are calling the Ameta-theory debate.@ We follow from Connell=s and Nord=s (1996) position that this debate is a battle over values rather than ontological or epistemological philosophical differences. A battle of values, we believe, requires the use of analytical techniques more from the humanities than from the natural sciences. Zald (1996) asks us to follow the social sciences by expanding the connection between humanities and organizational life, specifically in the use of narrative, rhetorical, and historical methodologies, and more generally in the use of philosophy. There are many organization theory and study works already couched in the humanities. Some recent works from this decade are: Love=s (1992) study of organization communication practices; McAdams=s (1993) and Randels= (1998) use of fiction and narrative analysis to study business ethics; Gilbert=s (1997) and Cohen=s (1998) writings on management education; Kilduff=s (1993) promotion of post-structuralist techniques; and, Boje=s (1995) use of drama to analyze organizational stories. In particular, we advocate a Asemiological approach@ (White, 1987) to the study of organization theory and study texts.

Our contribution is not simply to make the value positions of organizational scholars salient, rather, to move toward a Asociology of knowledge@ (Mannheim, 1936, pp. 264-266) in the mapping of existing social orders that influence how people write academically. Mannheim=s work is based on the concepts of studying Autopias,@ ideas that transcend an existing order or status quo (that of a Atopia@) but also serve to Aburst the bonds@ of that existing order. A sociology of knowledge is an understanding of how groups utilize these utopian mentalities (wish images) to realize a new social order (ibid, pp. 192-210).

Before going into our perspective it might be useful to review some basic concepts. Of course, theory itself is the explanation of observed phenomena, a systematic or analytical view of why or how things work. And the basic aim of the study of organizations and organizational life is the development of theory. Specifically, we study capitalist organizations which have the characteristics of (a) ownership and control by a few persons, (b) production for profit with products offered in a competitive marketplace, and (c) with all productive tasks within the firm being carried out through an employment relation. Usually organization theory attempts to explain organization life through the interaction of culture, social structure, physical structure, technology, and/or the external environment. Or it attempts the explanation of organization functioning through the focus on specific issues such as strategy, market niches, information systems, structure and design, decision making, innovation and learning, or ethics and social responsibility.

But how do we study organization theory and the empirical research it engenders? Through the study of the schools of thought or world views shared by groups of theorists and their works. These world views are commonly referred to as paradigms. There are two basic components of a paradigm: its ontology and its epistemology. Ontology focuses on the essence of human nature C the belief that people must respond to their environment and have limited choices (determinism) versus the belief that people have free will and unlimited choices (voluntarism) C and on the nature of reality C the belief that there is a reality outside of human experiences (realism) versus the belief there is no reality outside of human experiences (idealism, nominalism, or solipsism). Epistemology focuses on the grounds which people judge the value of information; on the rules that validate evidence. There are many epistemological positions of which Table 1 provides a brief list.

Connell and Nord (1996) take the stance that the meta-theory debate is a battle over value positions in the study of organizational life, and that this battle has led to uncertainty in our academic field. Their article reviews the abundant literature on this debate which is beyond the scope of this paper. In brief, Connell and Nord examine two case studies: a paradigm war in the U.K., and a methodology debate in the U.S. The paradigm war involves writers critiquing Apositivist sociology@ (Silverman, 1968, 1970), proposing classification schemes for paradigms (Burrell & Morgan, 1979), focusing on the power/political aspect of organization life (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1977), and defending Apositivism@ (Donaldson, 1985, 1988). The methodology debate involves writers attacking traditional research methods such as hypothesis, testing, control, statistical analysis (Argyris, 1975; Mitroff, 1974), promoting qualitative research methods (ASQ December 1979 special issue; Morgan & Smircich, 1980), discussing the role of language analysis (Morgan, 1983; Astley, 1985), defining the term of Apositivism@ (Hunt, 1994; Bailey & Eastman, 1994; Eastman & Bailey, 1994), advocating new values for our field (Frost, 1980), and finally a paradigm consensus debate (AMR July 1992 special issue; Pfeffer, 1993; van Maanen, 1995). We recommend that readers review this paper in conjunction with reading our own piece.

The authors, Connell and Nord, claim that any debate on ontology cannot be resolved, that one=s position can only be stated. How is one to Aprove@ that reality is external or internal to human experiences? This position is also taken by Karl Popper (1956). In fact, organization theory and studies literature is rarely explicit about ontological positions, nor is the literature explicit about epistemological positions. Especially since the positions listed in Table 1 can be further divided into even more precise schools of thought. Baert (1998) describes at least three different positions within Positivism. And no one claims to know what is the exact epistemological position of writers calling themselves APostmodernists.@ Connell and Nord (1996) focus instead on the values of scholars. From their two case studies of the paradigm and methodology debates, they determined that there are four value interests that scholars argue from: (1) precision C the drive toward making descriptive and predictive patterns as exact as possible, and claiming observations of reality and representations of reality; (2) expansive C the attempt to change, or add to existing patterns, or to create new ones; (3) social C the focus on emancipation to allow greater individual outcomes and/or destinies; and, (4) power C the focus on how individuals gain and maintain influence and/or resources over others. Our own interest is to understand how the privileging of meaning are utilized to promote the wish images of organizational scholars in their attempt to create new social orders (i.e. the semiological search for utopian mentalities). The next section presents our proposed literary perspective in the analysis of the verbal representations of organizational life.

Table 1: Some Epistemological Positions

We propose to move from Connell and Nord=s determination to declare that knowing one=s ontology or epistemology is not as important as how one verbally represents their value oriented picture of reality. These verbal representations can be better understood through the literary analysis proposed by Hayden White (1973) with our own Ameans/ends@ refinement of his work. Our perspective relies on White=s argument that all historical and sociological facts are formulated into verbal structures by the social scientist with the goal of explaining through representation. As such, these verbal structures require a judgement of Awhat all this knowledge adds up to?@ The social scientist, according to White, in writing down their theoretical or empirical works makes this judgement through the use of three literary techniques: (1) explanation by emplotment C one=s aesthetic perception; (2) explanation by formal argument C one=s cognitive operation; and, (3) explanation by ideological implications C one=s meta-political position (ibid, p. 1-42).

White=s types of emplotment, or aesthetic perceptions, is based on Northrop Frye=s essays on literary criticism. Frye=s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) gives us a taxonomy of ways writers plot their stories. There are four basic types of emplotment: Romance, Satire, Comedy, and Tragedy. Romance is a drama of self-identification symbolized by a heroine=s victory over the world of experience. The hero is redeemed or liberated. AThe essential element of plot in romance is adventure, which means that romance is naturally a sequential and processional form. . . .At its most naive it is an endless form in which a central character who never develops or ages goes through one adventure after another@ (Frye, 1957, p. 186) leading to a climacteric adventure known as the essential quest. Satire is the opposite of Romance. It is a drama of apprehension symbolized by the heroine=s captivity in the world. He is never able to overcome the darkness, to get out of the abyss. There are two essential components to satire: humor or wit, and an object of attack. AAttack without humor, or pure denunciation, forms one of the boundaries of satire. . . .It is an established datum of literature that we like hearing people cursed and are bored with hearing them praised, and almost any denunciation, if vigorous enough, is followed by a reader with the kind of pleasure that soon breaks into a smile. To attack anything, writer and audience must agree on its undesirability. . .@ (ibid, p. 224).

Comedy and Tragedy are dramas of partial liberation. In Comedy, there is hope for the heroine in a temporary triumph over darkness. Reconciliations are symbolized by a festive occasion and harmony can be achieved between conflicting parties. AAt the beginning of the play [or story] the obstructing characters are in charge of the play=s society, and the audience recognizes that they are usurpers. At the end of the play the device in the plot that brings [the conflicting parties] together causes a new society to crystallize around the hero, and the moment when this crystallization occurs is the point of resolution in the action, the comic discovery. . .@ (addition ours, ibid, p. 163). In Tragedy, the hero is defeated by the experiences of the world, yet, hope exists for those left behind by their understanding of the limits of overcoming the abyss.

AThe tragic hero is very great as compared with us, but there is something else, something on the side of him opposite the audience, compared to which he is small. This something else may be God, gods, fate, accident, fortune, necessity, circumstance, or any combination of these, but whatever it is the tragic hero is our mediator with it.@ Yet, like great trees they are Amore likely to be struck down by lightning than a clump of grass@ (ibid, p. 207).

Stephen Pepper=s (1942) concept of a world hypothesis of scientific theorizing is used by White to present the different types of formal arguments. A world hypothesis is the structural refinement of knowledge, or commonly held facts, which then converge to form a coherent argument. It is a belief about the relationship of facts and the evidence of facts. In time, a root metaphor is induced from its world hypothesis, a metaphor that links all the evidence together. According to Pepper, there have been adequate and inadequate world hypotheses since philosophy began to organize knowledge. Adequate requires cognitive responsibility; being willing to argue all facts through a rational discourse while never submitting to a dogmatic or an irrational statement. An adequate world hypothesis has two characteristics: precision C the ability to deal with individual facts that are presented; and, scope C the ability to offer interpretations of many fields of facts that are presented. All world hypotheses have a theory of truth, described by Pepper as the presence of structurally corroborated facts that ought to appear if the world hypothesis is true.

Pepper (1942) defines four world hypotheses as adequate for organizing scientific knowledge: Formism, Mechanism, Organicism, and Contextualism. The root metaphor for formism is similarity. Formists search for a given set of objects or events, and identify them by their special attributes. The root metaphor for Mechanism is a machine. Mechanists are reductive. They search for causal laws between parts, and laws that govern social interactions. The root metaphor of Organicism is integration. Organicists search for a synthetic process of parts into wholes, a crystallization of higher abstract principles and ideas. Finally, the root metaphor of Contextualism is the historic event in the present. Events are to be explained within the context of their occurrence. Organizational life is complex, with interconnected events and continuously changing patterns. More than the other three, Contextualism focuses upon change and novelty.

Ideology, according to White (1973, p. 22), is Aa set of prescriptions for taking a position in the present world of social praxis and acting upon it (either to change the world or to maintain it in its current state). . . .@ White postulates ideological implications from the writings of Karl Mannheim (1946) on Ameta-political@ positions. These positions represent value systems that are cognitively responsible, meaning they utilize rational arguments founded in data with logical consistency and coherence. Meta-political positions do not represent political parties, rather they represent different notions on the study of society (and the desirability of doing so), different conceptions of the desirability of changes in the status quo and the directions these changes should go, and different orientations toward ideal times (past, present or future).

The four meta-political positions of Mannheim (1936, pp. 211-247) are Anarchism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and Radicalism. All four view the inevitability of social change, but have different views on its desirability and pace. AConservatives tend to view social change through the analogy of plantlike gradualizations, while Liberals. . .are inclined to view it through the analogy of adjustments, or >fine tunings,= of a mechanism@ (White, 1973, p. 24). For both, the foundation of society is good and change is in terms of parts of the structural whole. In contrast, Radicals and Anarchists believe in changing the structural whole, Athe former in the interest of reconstituting society on new bases, the latter in the interest of abolishing >society= and substituting for it a >community= of individuals held together by a shared sense of their common >humanity=@ (ibid, p. 24). All four also have different time orientations for their wish-images of social order, their utopias. Conservatives view the best form of society as the one which presently prevails. This is the best that humans can hope for or aspire to. Liberals imagine a time in the future when things will improve but it is the remote future and radical change is discouraged. Radicals= view their utopian order as imminent which inspires efforts toward revolutionary change to bring about a new social order. Finally, Anarchists idealize the remote past of a time of human innocence before the fall into any social order. AThey, in turn, project this utopia onto what is effectively a non-temporal plane, viewing it as a possibility of human achievement at any time, if men will only seize control of their essential humanity, either by an act of will or by an act of consciousness which destroys the socially provided belief in the legitimacy of the current social establishment@ (italics original, ibid, p. 25).

Presented above are the three literary techniques in which White uses to explore the narratives of historians. We propose to utilize White=s methodology to explore the narrative of organization scholars. The next section describes our proposed methodology and our intentions toward the analysis of the writing on organizational life.

White provides three levels to study how social scientists Again an explanatory affect in their narratives@ (1973, p. 29) the purpose of which is to understand the how a distinctive literary style gives the scholar=s work coherence and consistency. These three literary techniques C emplotment, formal argument, and meta-political positions C used by White to analyze the verbal representations of theory can be better understood as a Ameans/ends@ perspective. Frye=s emplotment along with Pepper=s formal argument are the two literary Ameans@ that allow a writer to reach the meta-political Aends@ as described by Mannheim. In other words, one=s emplotment and formal argument of social scientific material helps one to verbally represent their ideological explanation of the same material. To demonstrate our argument we propose to select three items upon which we will conduct this literary analysis. One can agree that the organization researcher has three distinct audiences: (a) the audience of fellow researchers (the academic community); (b) the audience of business practitioners (especially in executive positions); and, (c) the audience of business students.

As representative of writing for the academic community in the field of organization theory and studies, we propose the journal of Administrative Science Quarterly. We will randomly select one article to analyze from the calender year of 1998. As representative of writing for the executive audience of practitioners, we propose the journal of the Executive. Again, we will randomly select one article to analyze from the calender year of 1998. Finally, as representative of writing for the student audience, we propose the first chapter of the best selling organization theory textbook, Organization Theory (19??) by Richard Daft.

Each of these three items will be analyzed for their emplotment, their formal argument, and their ideological explanation. The paper will end with a discussion of our analysis. Our analytical intent is not to eliminate value positions in the construction of organizational knowledge, rather to allow organizational scholars to voice their positions and reveal its implications. As Mannheim points out,

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