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A Design Envelope for A Design Envelope for Styles of Organizing? Styles of Organizing?

Gibson Burrell

EGOS, Helsinki, 2012

In the Preface to the English edition of ‘The Order of Things’ Foucault argues that he was “attempting to uncover the deepest strata of Western culture”.

What was common to the naturalists, the economists, the grammarians?

His answer was they employed the same rules to define their objects of study, to build their theories and to form their concepts. They were subject to the same rules of formation which he attempted to uncover

That was an ambitious project

An awfully big adventure

Where are the big adventures in Organization Studies?

Flirt more with Danger than with Safety

A five year stuttering project

-Where are the origins of Organization Theory?

Mesopotamian creation myths of a-voiding the void

In Bible:-

“Now the earth was formless and empty” Genesis 1:2

Form and content go hand in hand in a laminated way

Chaos is subdued by the creation of form (e.g. night and day; water and sky)

And by the creation of content (e.g. vegetation, animals)

A materialist paradise of matter in the right place- the Garden of Eden as God’s ‘rule of formation’

In the Germanic axis of Rhine-Danube the notion of Man’s rather than God’s role gathers momentum

‘the will to…..’ develops

Schopenhauer’s ‘the will to live’

Nietzsche’s ‘the will to power’

Freud’s ‘the will to pleasure’

Frankl’s ‘the will to meaning’

These are the supposed ideational forces which drive human beings. There is little Edenic utopianism hereamongst these survivalist wills, set deep in the human wilderness.

The ‘will to form’

Another ‘will’

In the face of the wilderness, there is the material and ideational ordering of things-in creating shelter, containment, security, boundedness and protection

Edifices of various kinds (including the Garden of Eden) represent stabilising practices in the organizing of organization

Our human constructions provide ‘safe houses’ from the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather

For Marx, (Capital ,Volume 1 1974: 174)

the imaginative act of pre-designing the object to be worked upon is crucial in distinguishing the architect from the bee

-Imaginization of the object

-The meeting place of materiality and the ideational ( the search for a dialectical synthesis)

- A parable of the meeting of politics, economics, arts, crafts and science

- It is this pre-design of the architecture of systems that I have in mind as a key exemplar of the will to form

Politico- Economic Systems

Architecture

Organization

Design

They share a base definition concerning ‘rules of formation’: a deliberate plan and purpose that deals practically and functionally with the coordination of elements into an orderly structure that is in working order.

This means hybridization is so easy e.g. as in ‘organizational design’; ‘system architecture ’ and so on.

Tautologies.

Emphasis then on ‘intra-actions’ rather than interactions

Other sheltering edifices in the ‘will to form’ :-

Di-visionsGridsRecordsMapsRecipesPatterns‘Intizam al-manzar’

Geometries

Elementary Forms of the Organized Life- the staple of texts on organizational design

Geometry in the style of organizing

Deleuze and Guattari dichotomise between royal and nomadic geometry. The former emphasises the stopping of worlds in a plan using planes on paper in an office. The latter refers to the cutting of stone by hand on a building site using the method of squaring.

The classic separation of conception from execution

This presentation is more derivative of a royal science

But use your hands if you want to

‘Significant forms’ and ‘structures of meaning’ arise, says Ching (1996) from the familiar notions in geometry of the point, line, plane and void

He uses two dimensional drawings to suggest 3D shapes

This is the classic problem, dealt with by cubism, of the hidden face of the ‘other’ and the valorisation of the point of the viewer. Finlandia Hall reflects this problem

Following Max Boisot, I intend to develop a 3D perspective to styles of organizing as best as I can, using a cuboid conceptual space

But first to ‘style’….

Styling in the West

For Eco, style is a literary issue about forming an argument

For Czarniawska, style is a way of executing a task, a technique of making a thing.

But style may not be about adornment but is concerned with incision, a wounding, a cutting- with the stylus as nothing but a weapon. Thus, the pen is a sword de-forming via an ‘execution’ of a specific kind.

Style then is driven by a sense of aesthetics BUT also by excavating a deep materiality

A concern for ‘Styles of Organizing’ involves three interrelated problems

•Wounding, cutting, incising the material e.g. the set designs for ‘Moulin Rouge’

•The nature of what is meant by a body of ‘organizing’

1.Suturing the disparately separate together

So what then is my suturology….

‘commensuration’ (Espeland)

The problematic nature of“a process of transforming disparate forms of value into homogenous units”

thereby leading to “information reduction, uncertainty absorption, and simplification of decision making”

e.g. ‘comparethemarket.com’

and Borges’ ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ that Foucault begins with in ‘The Order of Things’

The parameters of a ‘design envelope’

3 Lines

6 Faces

8 Points of Extremity

A void to fill with content

The design cube (presented hereafter) concerns:

An awfully big adventure-‘a grid of intelligibility’

a hurtful wounding of the material, making it groan

uncertainty reduction through the use of common metrics, assuming commensuration

a ‘Saming of the Other’ ( e.g. Economics into Organization Theory)

what is common to the naturalists, the economists, the grammarians

Aims of the Design Envelope

•Demonstrate the importance of the ‘will to form’ to Organization Theory

•Show that the ‘will to form’ a safe material and ideational house may well be expressed differentially in distinct ‘styles of organizing’

•These styles operate across the human sciences and erupt from particular solutions to particular problems

2.They are connected rhizomatically- through their intra-actions, not least of which is their tautological definitional base

Having looked back, let us now move on

How one stands in relation to three issues, in turn affecting the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, governs location within the design envelope

Lines

SENSIBILITY RATIONALITY

SEDIMENTISM RUPTURISM

A PART OF NATURE APART FROM NATURE

Three lines, consisting of a myriad of points of possibility, produce a 3 dimensional space if placed at right angles to each other.

Sensibility is a belief in the importance of ‘undescribable emotions’ and the soul to understandings of selfhood

Rationality is the use of rations, ratios, ratiocination and the rationinbus to deduce objective truth

Sedimentism is the idea that social structures are laid down in the sands of time and that future social processes will be governed by these self same processes of accretion

Rupturism is the notion that social structures break suddenly and dramatically and are replaced by innovative, distinctive forms

A part of Nature assumes humanity is fully integrated into a Natural world

Apart from nature articulates the fundamental separation of humanity from the confines of a natural world

a e

gd

c

f

b h

sensibilityrationality

A part of Nature

Apart from nature

rupturism

sedimentism

Six planes

Every positioning provides for a way of organizing- and a way of not organizing

You might imagine all organizations are to be found on or around the plane of rationality. They are not.

Many inhabit the plane of sensibility- “the mass of unargued, unexamined and largely unconscious assumptions” which represent the fantasies of a period. Hierarchalism would be one such sensibility.

Only time for one other example here-

The centrally placed organizational forms of

Face 1: The plane of a part of Nature

Greenpeace

Face 6: The plane of apart from nature

Blackwater Inc.

Greenpeace questioning server cooling costs

Blackwater Inc- now Xe

Eight Points of Opposition

A Sensibility, Sedimentism, NaturalB Sensibility, Sedimentism, A-naturalC Sensibility, Rupturism, A-naturalD Sensibility, Rupturism, NaturalE Rationalism, Rupturism, NaturalF Rationalism, Rupturism, A-naturalG Rationalism, Sedimentism, NaturalH Rationalism, Sedimentism, A-natural  

sensibility

A part of nature

sedimentism

a

rationalism

Apart from nature

rupturism

f

f

c

d

b

a

ge

h

Eight labelled extremities

These are the clearest loci of rhizomatic outgrowth from stylistic ‘intra-actions’

ELEMENTS OF ‘STYLE’

POLITICO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM

PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK

ARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE

BUILDINGS

EMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL

DESCRIPTOR

ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLARS

Presentationally

For each point, there will be a taster of what one might find there on all of these elements

This is followed by a very brief focus on an image for each extremity after each pairing.

Sometimes this image is of an organisation, sometimes a building, sometimes a design item. For each element, images are readily available - but time presses.

POINT A

Sensibility, Sedimentism, Naturalism POLITICO-ECONOMICS green environmentalismPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK RomanticismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE GaudiBUILDING Barcelona apartment blockEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL sinuous intertwined leavesDESCRIPTOR ‘excessively imaginative adornment’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR The National Trust

POINT F

Rationalism, Rupturism, A-natural

POLITICO-ECONOMICS Neo-liberalismPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK libertarian pragmatismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE ModernismBUILDING Wittgenstein’s HouseEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL perfectly machined window handlesDESCRIPTOR ‘autistic decorationless perfection’- or Badham’s ‘zero architecture’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Ford’s Motor Company

f. Wittgenstein a. Gaudi Private Home Apartment block Unadorned privacy Adorned communitarianism

POINT B

Sensibility, Rupturism, A-natural

POLITICO-ECONOMICS Schumpeterian Creative DestructionPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK PostmodernismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE DeconstructionismBUILDING Gehry’s Strati MIT buildingEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL Computer generated gravitational impossibilitiesDESCRIPTOR ‘explosive alteration’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Virgin Galactic

POINT E Rationalism, Sedimentism, Natural POLITICO-ECONOMICS National ProtectionismPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK ConservatismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE Neo-PalladianBUILDING University of VirginiaEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL The white painted picket fenceDESCRIPTOR ‘new world order of heritage sites’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Tilting Fishing Village, Newfoundland

Virgin Galactic, New Mexico

Tilting, Newfoundland

POINT C Sensibility, Sedimentism, A-natural

POLITICO-ECONOMICS Potlatch EconomicsPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK Surrealism/ Magic RealismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE GothicBUILDING Beauvais CathedralEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL The Collapsing Tower Tarot CardDESCRIPTOR bonfire of the vanitiesORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Freedom Tower, NY  

POINT G

Rationalism, Rupturism, Natural

POLITICO-ECONOMICS Bright Green EnvironmentalismPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK Techno-pragmatismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE Buckminster Fuller’s workBUILDING DymaxionEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL geodesic domesDESCRIPTOR ‘Doing more with less’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Enval, Cambridge Science Park

POINT DSensibility, Rupturism, Natural

POLITICO-ECONOMICS Maoism/ WobbliesPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK Anarcho-CommunismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE Victor Horta’s Art NouveauBUILDING House of the People, BrusselsEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL Blood red poppy flowers and tendrils of ivyDESCRIPTOR ‘the rise of the whiplash’ORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Zapatistas 

POINT H

Rationalism, Sedimentism, A-natural

POLITICO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM KeynesianismPHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK AbsolutismARCHITECTURAL/DESIGN STYLE BaroqueBUILDING Palace of VersaillesEMBELLISHMENT/SYMBOL the grottoDESCRIPTOR trompes d’oeilORGANIZATIONAL EXEMPLAR Enron

Zapatista art

The Enron dealer room as a trompe d’oeil

The Design Cube

-A conceptual void, conceivable as an envelope, constrained by the answers given to specific questions, containing points, lines, faces.

-This envelope constrains politico-economic systems, design, organising, and architecture

-It suggests that distinctive ‘pattern books’ exist for different parts of the cube. Choice exists but is not large

-It points to the existence of ‘style wars’ between differing assumptive positions

-So we might not like the style of our containment – but there is a choice…….

DESIGN METAPHORS FOR ORGANIZATION THEORISTS(pace Morgan 1986)

A: SINOUS INTERTWINED LEAVESF. DECORATIONLESS PERFECTION

B. EXPLOSIVE ALTERATIONE. WHITE PAINTED PICKET FENCE

C. THE COLLAPSING TOWERG. GEODESIC DOMES

D. SUNLIT POPPIESH. THE HIDDEN GROTTO

Your choice speaks of your preferred ‘style of organizing’

Of course, whilst design can be seen as contested, multiple, and ongoing,- as a matter of choice- it has but one true function:-

The organizing of organization is derivative of a will to form which produces a shelter in which we hide from Chaos.

The will to form stops us – whether organization theorists or not - from peering into the fathomless abyss

THE END