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Pragmatism and Organization Studies Pragmatism and Organization Studies Philippe Lorino 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©PhilippeLorino2018 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2018 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017946414 ISBN 978–0–19–875321–6(hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–875351–3(pbk.) Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. ■ 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 manufacturing,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, organizational: 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 arguments, 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,collective 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 pragmatism. 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 pragmatism, 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 theories 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?