Organizational Theorizing: A Historical Contested Terrain

Michael Ivor Reed

Paper Critique

(by Aditya Kulashri (DP/12/20))

Summary

The paper reviews the history of organisation theory’s intellectual development. It saves itself from
committing to one of the two factions – conservatism and relativism – by traversing a path that
questions both. The author dissects seven interpretative frameworks and their socio-historical
context in which they were developed. He also connects them through common
theories/assumptions and/or the differences that made them stand out from each other. The paper
sticks to its search for the middle ground on the face of cul-de-sacs, and common tool was the
dialectical approach common to the frameworks.

In the later sections, the paper mentions certain debates that point out some significant issues that
were excluded from the seven narratives and what are the potential future developments that can
take place in the organisational studies.

Key Learnings

 The journey of organisational theorizing through socio-historic lens

 The intervention and contribution of different fields - political, social, economic, ethical,
ecological –on the development of organisational theory.
 Importance of reflexivity and criticality for the development of organisation, or of any field
for that matter.
 The answer usually lies now at the end of spectrums but somewhere in between, with a
conscious choice between the good, the bad, and the ugly. The extremes just give anchors to
the development of the theories.

Questions

 The paper talks about the fragmentation that the introduction of organisations carried with
it. Is it the social or the ideological fragmentation or both?
 It is mentioned that the institutional conventions have unreflectively accepted orthodoxies
that can’t be contained completely within the established cognitive frames and conceptual
parameters. Aren’t these orthodoxies a result of these cognitive frames and parameters?
How can they not contain those?
 In Rationalism Triumphant framework, they want to introduce meritocracy, but then talk
about the sustenance of oligarchical approach – long term plans of ruling classes and elites.
Is there a contradiction or confusion?
 In the rediscovery of community, the Pareto’s theory of equilibrating social systems is one of
the bases. How does the change take place if organisations come back to the normal state?
Does it have any relations with Lewin’s change theory?
 How is population ecology connected with organisational theory?
 Does Willmott’s reworking of Kuhn’s approach to the process of theoretical development
draw parallels with critical realism?

Critique
 The effects of global capital in shaping the discourse is missing. Thinkers and theorists are
faced with the imperative of sense-making whereas managerial class if faced with a profit
making imperative. With this in mind I feel the author could have mentioned the causative
role of global capital in the various metanarratives of organisation. In my view the early
journey of organisational studies started at the factory and ended at the university, and
while it may have changed directions now with the advent of B-Schools and management
education, the role of capital as the force which caused the genesis of these metanarratives
is unmentioned here.
 The brief of exploration of the solutions or the futures of such debates in allied disciplines is
missing.
 The text felt at times like an impenetrable wall. It felt esoteric and exclusive at times.