Is there Reality Outside the Classroom

Is there Reality outside the classroom?

Critical Postmodern Turns in Management/OB Pedagogy

PID 156 Panel with Best, Boje, Garcia & Pruyn

David Boje's Presentation:

"Postmodern OB in Three Dimensions"

OBTC Session Abstract

Figure One: Escher's Black Swans & fish - Woodcut, October 1941

Question One: What are the postmodern OB turns?

In the Figure One M.C. Escher woodcut, mod OB is like seeing only the black swans, but postmod OB sees the double logic of swans and fish. This move makes OB two-dimensional, the time and place of the world beyond the classroom. IN the second dimension is the relationship of OB to the ecology, the 3 billion peasantariat living beyond or fuel for the spectacle of production and consumption of the 1^st world.

TIME -OB is part of the political economy of late capitalism. It is postmodern fragmentation and standardization (simultaneous).
PLACE -OB is part of the colonizing of the life world with technocratic discourse training (Fairclough, 1992), Americanization-for-export.

Figure Two: Escher Woodcut, November 1937 "Development I"

In Figure Two the "Development I" Escher woodcut OB is a part of history, of popular culture of fad and fashion, and other intertextuality. There is a tension between the light and dark contrasting images and the context.

TIME -Postmod OB resituates OB into history, into fad & fashion.
PLACE -Postmod OB resituates OB into the violent spectacles of Columbine, sweatshop labor, street life, predatory capitalism, ethnic cleansing, bombing, Monica-gate, and the destruction of planet-ecosystems.

Question Two: How do these turns present alternatives to each management critical and postmodern-awareness of late capitalism?

Figure Three: Escher Wood Engraving, October 1949 "Double Planetoid"

Escher was able to see double logics (Figures 1 to 3). Postmodern OB puts OB into contact with several western dualities. Each duality privileges one logic, rather than seeing in double logic. In Figure Three, I see the double logic of capitalism and ecology. I put two workbooks on deconstruction Three Types of Deconstruction; or Critical Theory approaches of Horkheimer, Ordorno & Marcuse (See Boje 1998a to f; 1999a for examples).

Capitalism : Ecology
Male : Female
Manager : Worker
Managerialism : Unionism
Careerism : Service Learning
Performativity : Beyond Work
Capital : Labor
Organization : Environment
Corporate Predators : Ecocentric
OB Science : OB Narrative

The non-steps in deconstruction involve identifying dualities, exploring the hierarchy to dualized terms, reversal, and resituation in order to see the kinds of double logics in these Escher engravings (See Three Types of Deconstruction).

Can we move OB from One-dimensional to Two-dimensional and perhaps Three-dimensional logic?

First Logic - OB as corporate building, not seeing the ecology (e.g. Figure Three). This means seeing OB as the left terms of the dualities listed above.

Second Logic - OB as Black Swans and seeing beneath the sea (e. g. Figure One). This is seeing OB as an interpenetration of both perspectives in the dualities listed above. I have tried in a series of articles and presentations deconstructing Nike (Boje 1998a-g, 1999) to see the double logic of activism and Nike by Juxtaposing Images.

My 1998 work is polemical, but in 1999, I think I succeeded in doing more that finding dualities between Nike's espoused codes of conduct and its action. In 1998 I did the reversals, making the activist claims more salient than Nike's. but, in 1999, I was able to hold both logics together. For me the breakthrough was to see in Herbert Marcuse's second dimension, to see how Nike might live up to its own self-character, and embody its stories.

Figure Four: Escher "Metamorphosis 5"

Third Logic - In the above Escher piece, there is a third image, one between the other two. Between the birds and fish, we see, a third logic, horses. The point is that if I and we can get beyond just doing duality reversals, and even resituation beyond hierarchy, there is hope for seeing a third image.

The Third Image of OB Can OB develop a way of seeing its own third image? I see this as OB in coevolution in popular culture, technologies of control, ecology, political economy, and the spectacle of production and consumption.

Conclusions

I call for teaching postmodern turns that challenge and uproot entrenched Management and OB practices. We have to do more than teach the blue sky of OB, we have to look beneath the surface of the sea, to see the fish. This is a call for more deconstructions of OB texts (Summers, Boje, Dennehy, & Rosile, 1997: Boje, Rosile, Dennehy, Summers, 1998). But, it is recognition that I and we must do more than reverse the field, we must find the double logics, and even third logics. There are already teaching turns in addressing inequities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation at work. We have resituated the dualities in each one. Yet, there are others such as ecology, political economy, and biotech (Boje, 1998c, d) that OB holds in silence, treating them as if they were invisible. We are at a crossroads with many more OB turns that need to be made. Moving from one-dimensional to two- and three-dimensional OB is overdue.

A third dimension logic for writing and teaching OB would expose students to multiple perspectives, but ask them as well, to make a difference in the world outside the classroom walls.

Resources

Boje, D. M. 1998a Amos Tuck's Post-Sweat Nike Spin Pp 618-623. In Business Research Yearbook: Global Business Perspectives, Vol. V. Biberman, J. & Alkafarji, A (Eds.). This is a reanalysis of Amos Tuck Business Schools' Wage Study statistics. Nike uses the Tuck study to justify not paying a living wage.

Boje, D. M. 1998b Wile Coyote Meets the Road Runner Paper presentation to the Sun Break Conference, Chaos and Complexity, chaired by Janice Black, Las Cruces, NM, February at New Mexico State University.

Boje, D. M. 1998c What Postmodern Philosophers Have to Contribute to Knowledge Researchers Paper presented to INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences) conference, Seattle, WA, October 1998.

Boje, D. M. 1998d A Wicked Introduction to the Unbroken Circle Conference: International Business & Ecology

Boje, D. M. 1998e P. v-xiii. In International Business and Ecology Research Yearbook. Boje, D. M. 1998 How Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy can Unmask Nike's Labor Practices presented to the Critical Theory pre-conference of the Academy of Management meetings, San Diego, CA, August 8.

Boje, D. M. 1998e Nike, Greek Goddess of Victory or Cruelty? Women's Stories of Asian Factory Life Published (October) in Journal of Organizational Change Management. Also a book chapter for Usha C.V. Haley (ed.) in Perspectives on Asian Management.

Boje, D. M. 1998f. The Swoosh Goddess is a Vampire: Nike's Environmental Accounting StorytellingPp. 23-32. In International Business and Ecology Research Yearbook. IABD Publication.

Boje, D. M. 1999a New Is Nike Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote? A Postmodern Organization Analysis of Double Logic, published in Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship. This is an analysis of the relationship between Nike activists and Nike.

Boje, D. M. 1999b"Chapter 14: University and Festival" In Spectacles and Festivals of Organization: Managing Ahimsa Production and Consumption - Under Review Harwood Academic Publishers.

Boje, David and Robert Dennehy1993 Postmodern Management: America's revolution against exploitation. Dubuque, IO: Kendall-Hunt Press. 2nd Edition, 1994.

Boje, David M., Robert P. Gephart, Jr., Tojo Joseph Thatchenkery 1996 Postmodern Management and Organization Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Boje, D. M., Rosile, G., Dennehy, R. & Summers, D. J. 1997 "Restorying reengineering: Some deconstructions and postmodern alternatives." Communication Research. 24(6): 631-668.

Summers, Debra J., D. M. Boje, Robert F. Dennehy, & Rosile, Grace Ann. 1997 "Deconstructing the organizational behavior text." Journal of Management Education. 21(3): 343-360.

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