What has been happening in organization theory and does it matter?
| Pages | 33-53 |
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489510099550 |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Author | Hugh Willmott |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Organization
theory
33
What has been happening in
organization theory and does
it matter?
Hugh Willmott
Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK
Introduction
Organization theory can seem somewhat distant from the territory of personnel
specialists, especially when their work is represented in terms of administering or
developing systems of recruitment, training, appraisal, etc. Yet, on reflection, the
design and operation of such “human resourcing” systems is dependent on ideas
about organizing and organization; and their operation has consequences for the
maintenance and transformation of how work and employment are organized.
Developments and debates in organizational theory are, arguably, of
considerable relevance for personnel specialists whose raison d’être, it has been
suggested,
is one of keeping the organization as a whole going on a long-term basis through maintaining
the staffing resource and coping with the conflicts and contradictions which arise wherever
and whenever people are employed[1, p. 154].
Personnel specialists routinely invoke and apply common sense as well as
textbook understandings of organizing and organization[2]. Personnel
professionals aspire to acquire and apply knowledge of how human resources are
organized, including current developments and debates in organization theory. It
is by developing this knowledge, as Marchington[3] has observed, that
practitioners can better appreciate what is taken for granted, yet is problematical
about the theory and practice of organizing and organizations – including the
advocacy of new employment practices associated with TQM, JIT, MRP, BPR and
a plethora of other buzzwords[3-5]. Gaining recognition of “professionalizing”
claims is not simply a matter of acquiring and applying discrete chunks of
knowledge about organizing and organizations. Rather, it involves an appreciation
of the construction of this knowledge that makes it possible to analyse situations,
exercise informed judgement and act in the light of a critical awareness of the
assumptions and limits of available ways of knowing organizing and
organizations.
Before proceeding further, a word of caution is in order. Commonsense
continues to encourage the belief that theories of organization are necessarily or
Personnel Review, Vol. 24 No. 8,
1995, pp. 33-53. © MCB
University Press, 0048-3486
The author would like to thank Chris Grey and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments
on an earlier version of this article. Thanks are due also to David Collinson for alerting the author
to relevant source material.
Personnel
Review
24,8
34
properly concerned with developing more adequate or rigorous ways of
conceptualizing the “actual” structure and functioning of organizations; and
that these theories can or should yield some practical insights into how they
might be “better” organized. It is important to note the quotation marks around
these terms because recent developments in organization theory have been less
inclined to take their commonsense meanings for granted. While much
organization theory remains wedded to established ways of framing its purpose
and contribution, there have been a number of theoretical developments within
the field of organization theory during the past 25 years or so (many of them
pioneered by UK academics) which depart from what may be loosely termed an
“objectivist” framing of the purpose of organization theory[6]. Ber nstein[7, p. 9]
has summarized the modern conception of objectivism as:
An acceptance of a basic metaphysical or epistemological distinction between the subject and
the object. What is “out there” (objective) is presumed to be independent of us (subjects), and
knowledge is achieved when a subject correctly mirrors or represents objective reality.
Instead of striving to correct the distortions of commonsense beliefs by
providing factual information about the (contingent) design of organizations
and its effect on performance, etc. the “new” organization theorizing seeks to
problematize and enrich our (commonsense and scientific) ways of making
sense of the practice and theory of organizing without claiming to be more
accurate or objective. Instead of claiming, or aspiring to discover and report
what the structures and processes of organization (definitively) are, there is now
a more modest, and some would say postmodern, concern to appreciate the
diverse ways in which organizational practices are practically accomplished
and represented. This does not imply that there can be no debate about what
organizing “is” or what organizations “are”. Rather, it means that accounts of
structure or goals, for example, are acknowledged to be claims that are based
on, or follow from, specific sets of assumptions about (how we know) the world.
These accounts are understood to be contingent rather than more or less factual
ways of accounting for, and shaping, organizing activity.
In case it should be thought that these postmodern departures take
organization theory away from contemporary management issues, it is worth
noting that they have stronger resonances with Tom Peters, a leading
management guru, than they have with, say, Taylor, Mayo or Simon. As Peters
has declared:
There’s little doubt that the times are crazy and getting crazier - whether you’re a banker,
software producer, restaurateur, or public official...our principal organizational problem today
is lack of craziness. In short, we’re trying to use sane organizations to cope with an insane
business world[8] (emphasis added).
The contemporary business world seems to be increasingly insane because it is
sensed that it no longer corresponds with old, classical views of this world.
Management gurus have dubbed the new world “postbureaucratic”, and have
commended avowedly innovative ways of organizing which, for example, demand
that an axe or a machine gun be taken to the established ways of organizing[9] (for
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