Beyond Authenticity? Humanism, Posthumanism and New Organization Development
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12005 |
| Date | 01 October 2014 |
| Author | Melanie Bryant,Julie Wolfram Cox |
| Published date | 01 October 2014 |
Beyond Authenticity? Humanism,
Posthumanism and New Organization
Development
Melanie Bryant and Julie Wolfram Cox1
School of Management and Marketing, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW
2678, Australia, and 1Department of Management, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield
East, VIC 3145, Australia
Corresponding author email: mebryant@csu.edu.au
In recent debates, the relevance of traditional objectivist organization development (OD)
approaches has been questioned in terms of their appropriateness for contemporary
organizations. A new OD has emerged wherein change is viewed as a socially constructed
process and where there are multiple rather than singular authentic possibilities. We
explore these possibilities by drawing on employees’ discussions of how they manage
conflicting interpretations of organizational change. Using the example of emotional
labour, we compare traditional and new OD approaches in terms of how they view
authenticity and then discuss posthumanist analysis, in which authenticity (or lack
thereof) is no longer of focal concern. In particular, under traditional OD, where
authenticity can be ‘discovered’, the need to negotiate multiplicity and to downplay
‘negative’ responses is a problem to be addressed. Under new OD such multiplicity
becomes data for dialogue and discussion of future potentials. In contrast, a posthuman-
ist analysis, while relational, neither reframes nor tempers authenticity but decentres the
very notion of autonomy on which authenticity is based. The social constructionism of
new OD is recast and implications for theory and intervention are discussed.
In this paper we review and recast the association
of organization development (OD) practices with
humanistic values and with the promotion of
emotional authenticity, trust and collaboration
between management and staff (Wooten, 2008;
Yaeger and Sorensen, 2008). Although the term
humanism has been discussed and defined from a
variety of perspectives, it generally includes values
such as dignity and worth (Wolfe, 2010), ethical
treatment regardless of background (Pirson and
Lawrence, 2010), a shared or universal human
nature (Delanty, 2005) and ‘the potential for
improvement in the human condition’ (Rosenau,
1992, p. 47). For example, Linstead (1994, p.
1137) wrote that humanism ‘seeks to synthesize
positive science, social ethics, and individual expe-
rience’ and to allow for the achievement of both
collective human potential and individual authen-
ticity. Accordingly, OD has concentrated not only
on the development of individual capacity within
organizations (French and Bell, 1999) but also on
the empowerment and participation of employees
in OD processes (Bennis, 1966) and on a human-
relations-informed recognition that focus on pro-
ductivity ‘alone’ risks overlooking employee
wellbeing (Beckhard, 1969; cf. Alvesson and
Willmott, 1992; Bruce and Nyland, 2011).
Over the past decade the future of OD has been
the subject of much debate. In relation to tradi-
tional, ‘classic’ or ‘diagnostic’ OD, which empha-
sizes data-based change (Bushe and Marshak,
2009; Marshak and Grant, 2008), questions have
been raised about both the appropriateness of OD
approaches for contemporary organizations and
the place of OD in relation to other approaches to
change management (Hornstein, 2001; Palmer
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 706–723 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12005
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
and Dunford, 2008; Worren, Ruddle and Moore,
1999). As part of these discussions, debate has
been concentrated on whether and to what extent
humanistic values are ‘still’ relevant alongside
business interests (Brown, 2006; Grieves, 2000).
In contrast, there are suggestions that a new
OD has emerged in which the emphasis of change
practice is on engaging with multiple realities and
responses to change to develop more effective
change interventions. New OD draws primarily
from a social constructionist stance, contrasting
with objectivist approaches to organizational
analysis and intervention that are often associated
with traditional, expert-informed OD. New OD
includes approaches such as appreciative inquiry,
conducted within both small and whole systems,
and large group methodologies such as Future
Search, World Café and Open Space (e.g. Bushe
and Marshak, 2009; Marshak and Grant, 2008).
It emphasizes change as a socially constructed
process in which multiple interpretations and dia-
logue for both understanding and intervening in
organizations must be recognized (Bushe and
Marshak, 2009; Marshak and Grant, 2008;
Wooten, 2008). Accordingly, new OD scholarship
and practice has been focused on the changing
nature of client–consultant relationships and on
the consequent development and refinement of
dialogic approaches to intervention in which
organizational participants are given ‘as much
equal footing in the co-construction of
new relational and organizational realities as
possible’ (Bushe and Marshak, 2009, p. 358; see
also Hutton and Liefooghe, 2011). Such co-
constructions can be seen as new conversations,
conversations forming both the process and the
product of reality construction and ‘allowing new
possibilities for action’ (Ford, 1999, p. 492).
Although traditional and new OD differ onto-
logically, a common feature is that they maintain
humanistic assumptions, which, to date, have
remained relatively uncontested (Wolfram Cox,
2009; Woodman, 2008). In contrast, the posthu-
manist perspective is informed by a variety of
writers who have led to the questioning of the
notion of an authentic or ‘real self’ (Turnbull,
1999) as a ‘unified subject, defined by its
autonomy in thought’ (Baack and Prasch, 1997,
p. 131) and by ‘an unproblematic universalism
which is often associated with the Enlightenment
idea of “a core humanity” ’ (Calás and Smircich,
2003, p. 44). For example, ‘humanist conceptions
of the subject tend to assume a substantive person
who is the bearer of various essential and nones-
sential attributes’ rather than ‘a shifting and con-
textual phenomenon’ (Butler, 2006, p. 14). Under
the latter, the subject is shifting in the sense that it
is fragmented and ‘constantly in a process of for-
mation’ (Alsop, Fitzsimmons and Lennon, 2002),
contextual in that it is defined positionally and
relationally, especially over time (Baack and
Prasch, 1997), and multiple in that it is constituted
by both the material and the social world, oppos-
ing ‘fantasies of disembodiment and autonomy’
(Wolfe, 2010, p. vx). While such notions are now
well established within the wider field of organi-
zation studies, they have received little attention
within OD.
The purpose of this paper is therefore to expand
upon discussions of traditional and new OD by
highlighting the possibilities for a posthumanist
OD. We illustrate the differing emphases of each
of these three perspectives by reading and
re-reading interview data in which employees
interpreted and constructed their experiences
through narratives of organizational change. As
discussed below, the sample was chosen because
of the emergence of authenticity (one of the core
humanist values) as a major theme and because
employees across several different organizations
within a common region made many references to
the ways in which authenticity may be compro-
mised by emotional labour (EL) requirements.
Throughout the paper we refer to EL as the
organizational requirement to express or display
emotions that are considered to be organization-
ally appropriate, while managing or suppressing
those that do not comply with organizational
expectations (see for example Ashforth and
Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983). Although
such organizational expectations undoubtedly
vary, we argue that the fundamental premise of
EL – the requirement to manage emotions – can
be interpreted in different ways from the perspec-
tives of traditional OD, new OD and posthuman-
ism. In doing so, we address the following
research questions. (1) How can traditional and
new OD approaches be compared in their treat-
ment of both authenticity and its obverse in the
form of EL? (2) What might authenticity and EL
look like from a posthumanist approach, i.e. if a
humanist agenda were decentred?
In the next sections we review and then summa-
rize interrelationships between humanism, OD,
Humanism, Posthumanism and New Organization Development 707
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
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