Table Of ContentPragmatism and Organization Studies
Pragmatism and
Organization
Studies
Philippe Lorino
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■ PREFACE
A Winding Road to Pragmatism
The cover of this book is Kandinsky’s 1943 painting “The Arrow.” It shows
deep consonances between Kandinsky’s art and pragmatist thought. In both
cases,humanexperienceisviewedasongoingmovement,materializedinthe
picture by the arrow, and emergence of forms. Kandinsky, the father of
abstraction, and the pragmatists, severe critics of Cartesian representational-
ism,advocatenon-representationalsemioticmediationtoexploredisorienting
chaos and make “the consonance of ‘tomorrow’” emerge from “today’s dis-
sonance” (Kandinsky, 1911, p. 21). Signs inhabit pragmatist thought and
Kandinsky’spainting,somerecognizable(arrow,lyra),othersmoreenigmatic,
inseparablycombiningwhatpragmatistscall“habit”(familiarexperience)and
“inquiry”(exploringdisruptivesituations).
Whypragmatism?Whypragmatismtoday?Perhapsmyownlong,twisting,
andturningroadtopragmatismcanshedsomelightontoday’spragmatistturn.
A long time ago (in the 1980s), I was a senior civil servant in the admin-
istration of the French government with a background in mathematics and
engineering.Forseveralyears,Iwasinchargeofcoordinatingpublicpolicies
(e.g. research and development, education, work regulations) that dealt with
the technological transformation of manufacturing industries (e.g. the intro-
duction of robotics, computer-aided design, computer-integrated manufac-
turing,etc.).Duringthismandate,Ibecameconvincedthatthemainobstacle
toimplementingnewmanufacturingtechnologiesinbeneficialconditionswas
neither technical (all the required technologies were available on the market
andproductionengineershadtherequiredcompetences)norfinancial(firms
had satisfactory profit rates and investment capacity), but, rather, organiza-
tional: The Fordian forms of organization inherited from the past prevented
our taking full advantage of the fantastic potential of the flexibility and
reactivenessaffordedbynewtechnologies.
At that time, two contrasting tendencies predominated in the world
of manufacturing management—and probably still do today. First, new
computer-based technologies allowed the amplification and perfection of
Taylorian principles of organization by replacing human workers with auto-
matedequipment,consideredtobemoreskilledandreliable,asdeclaredbyan
advertisement published in a trade review in 1982: “Having trouble finding
skilledmachinists?Tryaskilledmachine!”(Shaiken,1984,p.53).Whensucha
substitutionprovedimpossible,these“newTaylorian”managersusedadvanced
vi PREFACE
informationtechnologiestodevelopsophisticatedworkmonitoringandcontrol
systems.Inanycase,thegeneralprojectwasclear:“Thefirstindustrialrevolu-
tion involved the transfer of skills from man to machine, and much has been
accomplished in this area. The second industrial revolution, which is in its
infancy, involves the transfer of intelligence from man to machine” (Chern,
citedinShaiken,1984,p.60).
Thesecondmanagerialtendency,inspiredbyJapaneseexamples(hencethe
label “Toyotism”) and by the managerial “quality movement,” aimed to
maximizethebenefitsofnewtechnologiesbyempoweringfieldteams,devel-
opinglocalinitiatives,andenhancingemployees’averageskilllevel,whichwas
already fairly higher than at the time of Frederick Taylor. The managers,
industrial leaders, and scholars defending such ideas used humanistic argu-
ments, such as the positive impact of Toyotism principles on the meaning of
work,thelevelofstress,andthequalityoflifeatwork.What’smore,theyalso
found cogent arguments in the failures of many ambitious, dogmatic, and
theory-guided computerization projects, which fell short of their financial
goalsandimpactedtheaveragerateofreturnoncapitalinthefirmsconcerned.
Thequestionthenbecame:Whydomanycorporateleadersholdsotightly
andsostubbornlytoorganizingprinciplesthatfail?Whydon’ttheylistento
expertssuchasDemingorJuran,whocriticizedTaylorianorganizationsand
claimed that advanced technologies when used by skilled, autonomous, and
motivated teams were much more powerful than good old variance-based,
meticulous control? Of course, cultural inertia and considerations of power
played some role in this (e.g. the illusionthat managers canhang on to their
traditional power by maintaining their exclusive decision-making preroga-
tive).ButIalsoobservedthatorganizationalchoicesweremostoftendictated
by a deep and sincere faith in supposedly accurate models, pre-determined
“optima,”andartificialsystems.Actually,thetraditional“controlling”viewof
managerial thoughtconstituted a practical implementation of rationalist and
idealist views of the world, in the philosophical sense of “rationalism” and
“idealism,”asillustratedbyPlatoandDescartes(andstronglycriticizedbythe
classicalpragmatistsPeirce,James,Dewey,andMead,asIwouldrealizelater).
Themanagerialdebateappearedtometobeafundamentallyintellectualone,
evenifitwasoftenconcealedbytechnicalpseudo-truths.
Forexample,economicevaluationsystems,whichclaimedtobe“scientific,”
were actually conveying and invisibly imposing Fordian organizational
models. Standard costing mirrored the functional organization of space and
power, that is, the grouping of homogeneous operations in the same room
underthesameauthority.Budgetandvariance-basedcontrolnaturalizedthe
ideathatthefutureisthecontinuationofpasttrends.Inassumingthatfuture
scenarioswouldatleastconformtoprobabilisticmodels,investmentplanning
based on profit optimization discarded the fundamental uncertainty of mar-
kets, technologies, and societies. Management accounting assumed that the
PREFACE vii
only significant cost driver was the volume of production and sales, and
ignoredthegrowingcostofcomplexity.
I became more and more interested in the link between management
techniques and organizational forms. I was particularly fascinated by the
systematicobliterationof realsituated activity, andmore specifically,collect-
ive activity, ignored or confused with formally described tasks in the main-
stream managerial culture, but also in a large part of organization and
management research. In 1989—I was by then working in a manufacturing
company—I published a book in which I tried to show that organizational
archetypes are deeply rooted in supposedly “scientific” management tools.
A key feature of these archetypes was the ignorance of collective practical
experience and the identification of so-called “organization,” as a social
structure and a specific area of knowledge, with the production of formal
and static models. I tried to convince managers and scholars that “perform-
ance” was not a “scientific measurement,” but a continual collective effort to
understand, through systems of signs, situated activity as a complex, value-
creatingprocess.Attheendofatalkinauniversity,aprofessorofeconomics
askedmeifIknewofCharlesSandersPeirce.Ihadneverheardthename.My
colleagueexplainedtomethatmyviewofmanagementtoolingandpractices,
inspiredbymyexperienceofmanufacturingautomationandbythe“quality”
movement in management, echoed Peirce’s theory of sign and signification.
Thatwasthebeginningofalong,sometimesdifficultbutincreasinglyexciting
explorationofthepragmatistuniverse...
WhythislastingcompanionshipwithPeirce,Dewey,James,Mead,Follett,
Lewis,andtheirmorerecentcontinuators?Actually,pragmatismbroughtme
themaincontributiononecanexpectfromtheory:Ithelpedmetounderstand
the situations I was experiencing—in particular, the complex ones—and to
engage this understanding in later experience. Over the years, I continually
went back and forth, from doing field research in such areas as evaluation
systemsornuclearsafetymanagementtodeepeningmystudyofthepragma-
tist framework. Strangely enough, it took me twenty years to realize that
therewasactuallyastronglinkbetweenthequalityandcontinuousimprove-
ment managerial circles and the pragmatist philosophers. Around 2012,
IdiscoveredthatShewhartandDeming,thepioneersofmanufacturingquality
andcontinuousimprovement,hadbeendisciplesofpragmatistphilosophers.
Thestrangeloopisthencompleted:Itravelledfrommanagementtopragma-
tist philosophythrough continuous improvement practices,while pragmatist
ideashadtravelledfromphilosophytoorganizationmanagementthroughthe
samecontinuousimprovementpractices...
I think that today the key pragmatist concepts and methods—such as
semiotic mediation, habit, inquiry, dialogical transaction, abduction, valu-
ation, and process—are more topical and necessary than ever. Pragmatist
theses have been neglected for some time in the world of organizations and
viii PREFACE
management. The illusion of predicting, planning, controlling, accurately
modelling, eliminating risk, and the triumph of cognitivism have lured
scholars and managers for too long into a certainty that is often misleading.
Therehasbeenahighpricetopayforsuchdeceptiveandmisplacedassurance:
ineffective efficiency (doing the wrong things the right way); meticulous
controlofmisunderstoodrisks;disdainofactors’invaluableexperience;stress,
despair,andlossofmeaningatwork;opacityandunethicalbehaviors.Today
thefantasticdevelopmentofinformationandcommunicationtechnologyhas
adarkside:Itmightverywellrenewsuchoverconfidenceintechnicalsystems
and the resulting underestimation of organizational and social complexity.
Longago,pragmatistauthorsfocusedtheirreflectionontheinherentmobility,
uncertainty, and complexity of social issues, and with an incredible lucidity.
IagreewithBernstein(2010,p.9)that“Peirce,James,DeweyandMeadwere
reallyaheadoftheirtime,”intheirradicalcritiqueoftheillusionsanddangers
of idealism and rationalism, which pave the way for dogmatism. This is why
Ibelievetheirstudyistobestronglyrecommendedtocontemporaryscholars
andmanagersinthekingdomoforganizations.
Their philosophical and semantic rigor may have sometimes complicated
their styleand the accessibility of theirthought. Thisis whyIfound it useful
andtimelytowritethissynthesisofthepragmatistcontributiontoorganiza-
tion studies, with an extensive use of examples and cases, to make seemingly
difficult concepts easier to grasp and to highlight their practical significance.
To some extent, the method adopted in this book follows the pragmatist
methodological view, by continually moving between empirical cases and
concepts. Most cases are based on situations that I personally experienced.
Eveniftheyareusedinthebooktocommentonsomespecificthemeandthus
areanalyzedunderaparticularpointofview,mostofthemcouldequallyhave
beenusedtoillustrateotherconceptsandthemes.Reallifesituationsgenerally
donotfollowapurethematicline...
This book also follows the pragmatist methodological guidelines from
another point of view: It adopts an open and pluralist approach to pragma-
tism. In my practical-theoretical adventure, pragmatism was not my only
reference. I also became acquainted, for example, with activity theory (e.g.
Vygotsky,Leontiev),ethnomethodology(e.g.Garfinkel),developmentsabout
sociomateriality (Latour,Suchman), or Goffman’stheoryof frames. Pragma-
tism was neither an isolated nor a homogeneous stream of thought. It was
influencedbyotherintellectualmovements,suchasDarwinianevolutionism,
and it influenced other streams in social science, education science, psych-
ology,philosophy,logics,legalandpoliticalstudies.Therefore,inaccordwith
thepragmatistpluralistandtrans-actionalconceptionoflearningandsearch-
ing, this book gives a significant space to other theories, when they show
meaningful convergences or, conversely, meaningful oppositions with prag-
matism, without any claim to exhaustivity. This is the case, for example, of
PREFACE ix
“adjacent” theories which either explicitly referred to pragmatist authors or
showedstrikingsimilaritieswiththem,evenwhentherewasnoclearhistorical
recordthatauthorscrossedpathsorreadeachother’swork.
Pragmatist semiotics(e.g. UmbertoEco)explicitlyrefers toPeirce’stheory
ofthesignandthepragmatistconceptsofinquiryandabduction.Concerning
ethnomethodology, although its founder, Harold Garfinkel, sometimes criti-
cizedthepragmatistauthors,Ithinkitexploressomeofthepragmatisttheses,
such as the “call for a return to experience” or the “idea that obstacles in
experience give rise to efforts at creative problem-solving” (Emirbayer and
Maynard,2011,p.221).
Thecultural-historicaltheoryofactivitydevelopedbytheRussianpsycholo-
gistsVygotskyandLeontievatthebeginningoftwentiethcenturyisanexample
of striking convergences with pragmatism (in particular with G. H. Mead)
(Glock, 1986; Koczanowicz, 1994; Engeström etal., 1999), though there was
apparentlynocontact:“L.S.VygotskywaslikeMeadinviewingselfasacomplex
emergent phenomenon continually produced in and by individuals in their
interchanges with others and with the culturally transformed material world.
Thetwotheorists...weresimilarlyinterestedinthewaysinwhichsocialinter-
action,mediatedbysymbolicforms,providedcrucialresourcesandeverpresent
constraintsforself-making.Theyemphasizedactiveinternalization,internalized
self–otherdialogues,and,intheirrespectiveways,paidattentiontothesemiotics
ofbehavior”(HollandandLachicotte,2007,p.105).
Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism is another example of obvious resonance
with pragmatism, in particular with Dewey: “Dewey’s transactional theo-
ries are similar to Bakhtin’s dialogistic position” (Davidson, 1993, p. 13), but
also with James: “Bakhtin’s attempts to overcome the dualist separation
betweenthoughtandsingularandsituatedexperience(is)highlyreminiscent
of William James’ synthetic conception of pragmatism” (Eskin, 2000, p. 69).
ForMcCarthyandWright(2007),“apragmaticreadingof(Bakhtin’s)workis
warrantedbyhiscommitmenttoknowingasapracticalprocess,apluralityof
perspectives,andhistoricityinthinking”(p.55).
The book also establishes connections between pragmatism and Actor
Network Theory (ANT), in particular Bruno Latour, who started from a
different theoretical tradition, in particular Greimas’ structuralist semiotics
and French sociology, but gradually got closer to pragmatism and Dewey’s
conceptofinquiry.The verytitleofhis2013book:AnInquiryintoModesof
Existence—An Anthropology of the Moderns refers to the concept of inquiry
(Latour,2013b).InaninterviewhegavetothedailynewspaperLeMonde,he
asksformoreinnovativepoliticalpracticesandreferstoDewey:
(Latour) Today [political leaders] imagine they can produce the common good, the
generalwill,withoutthesocialsciencesandwithouttheinquiry!HowdoIexperiment
then...,withwhatinstruments?
