[This isn’t going to make much sense to folks who haven’t done an MBA or studied organizational behavior/organizational theory in, say, a sociology PhD, but here goes.]
Background: I’m visiting Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the Original American Sustainability-oriented MBA Program, and observed a class today in “Organizational Systems.” Then it hit me: conventional organizational analysis has a deep flaw and it has to do with a concealed individualistic assumption in the “new thinking” that is supposedly radical, yet presents an obstacle to more enlightened, sustainable modes of management.
This flaw was introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s when critical thinkers and post-modernists started to make their liberating methods known in management circles. Their central point was that organizations are not fully knowable physical objects you can tamper with and manipulate, but intangible complexities that can be looked at from many equally valid standpoints. Out of this came Gareth Morgan’s eight metaphors (Images of Organization) and, later, Lee Bolman’s and Terrence Deal’s four organizational frames. The latter’s work, Reframing the Organization, is probably the world’s most commonly used textbook for organizational behavior courses in undergrad and MBA programs, and has been ascendant for at least a decade.
To be sure, the approach these books introduced was a big improvement over what came before: brutally boring, mechanistic neo-Taylorism that trudged through organizational management looking for the “right answer” to help “fix things” as if every organization were nothing more than a box-filled diagram with order-following people in “functions”.
So now we were enlightened! Of course, it has taken a long time for even this insight to percolate through the flaccid axons of conventional thinkers – many businesspersons would still consider this old stuff “revolutionary” and “far out leftist woo woo” – but it’s the norm now. Get used to it.
Wait! DON’T get used to it! It is flawed! It’s transitional thinking from the last century – a positive step, but very much NOT where we want to relax and stop our forward march toward Understanding.
Think about it.
Each frame is a perspective that we construct, and then we forget we constructed it. If we don’t watch it, the frame becomes the reality. “The culture is re-asserting itself!” “Oh, you know, office politics…” “I can’t get anything done in this oppressive structure!”
The map starts looking like the territory.
But that’s not the worst of it.
The worst is that each of Bolman’s & Deal’s frames is based in an individualistic, ego-centric apprehension of reality. This is the curse of reductionism compounded by the curse of ego-centrism.
Consider: We REIFY (construct into false concreteness) one of a number of perspectives, FORGET that we have, and are then limited (rationally and emotionally) by the fact that each of these perspectives is deeply planted in concepts that relate to our own personal, individual context: my needs, my interests, my power, the rules I follow, my values and beliefs, the stories I tell, the meaning I assign, my victories, my defeats…
Look in Bolman & Deal: where is the sustainability piece? There isn’t one. They were too early. Their logic admits no entry for sustainability.
I assert that sustainable organizational leadership by definition transcends the individual, and anchors reality in the “we,” the collective, the community. You won’t find an easily navigated road from B&D’s frames to the modes where truly sustainable organizations appear to operate – the servant leaders, authentic community, the gift economy, employee ownership and workplace democracy, coops, and traditional tribal organizations. Practitioners of these have leapt beyond the ego-centric frames, into a wholly different radical place of analysis and action.
The book has not yet been written that brings sustainability into organizational analysis in a fashion that’s as powerful and complete as B&D’s approach. Theirs is a book for LAST century. There’s no sustainability in it. It’s a transitional form. How do we keep what’s valuable about framing without remaining trapped in its forgetful reductionism and heedless egocentrism?
If I did not know any better, I would say you’ve appropriated some valuable knowledge over the past two weeks… but perhaps the knowledge was already there. I cannot say for sure, because I have not read you for long. But, I hope we have provided some ideas or at least impetus. sandy
And, by the way, the management and organization people in the business school at Lund University in Sweden, where I did my dissertation, were and still are pretty critical/post-structural/post-modern in their views – Mats Alvesson is there, for example, and Barbara Czarniawska and Pushkala Prasad were, with their connections back to the likes of Linda Smircich and Gibson Burrell – and my dissertation used Schütz’s phenomenology, social constructivism, and Weick’s sensemaking to understand the emergence of new corporate practices. kulturCritic has pushed me to re-visit some of these ideas in a new light (and been shocked at what I found!).
When I revisited my dissertation (published as Recollective Resolve: A Phenomenological Understanding of Time and Myth) with my old college professor 25 years later, after 20 years in management consulting, I was stunned, especially in light of my experiences in Siberia. That is when I started writing again (after 25 years), and a few years after I began blogging.
Great article, I think you are getting at the same point Mary Kay made in her final words to the class: that these frames are still just lenses, and the simplest way for us to see the truth is to recognize the multitude of frames that exist and seek to transcend them.
My response to your question “How do we keep what’s valuable about framing without remaining trapped in its forgetful reductionism and heedless egocentrism?” is that the answer is quite simple:
We are in a continual process of becoming aware of new lenses previously unknown to us. As we become aware of their existence, we cultivate the power, choice and obligation to acknowledge the frame and its’ imperfection, then gracefully step outside of it and closer to the clearest analysis possible.
“Then it hit me: conventional organizational analysis has a deep flaw and it has to do with a concealed individualistic assumption in the “new thinking” that is supposedly radical, yet presents an obstacle to more enlightened, sustainable modes of management.”
Brittney, your rather saccarin response really does not address the issue he raises above, whatsoever. Your “simple answer” is sophomoric, at best. He is suggesting a radical change in paradigms, and you drivel on about relativism, choice, and gracefulness. That is MHO. kC
So cutting! Brittney is a well-meaning student at an MBA program that really is about making a positive difference. I presume that you are taking your critic’s role seriously, and the stakes are certainly enormous enough to justify dispensing with the niceties when that can have a therapeutic effect…
Yes and no. The stakes are high; but I was a bit cruel, and I needn’t have been. But, I think if these MBA students want to make a difference they really need to get past the BS and dig deep to unearth the real problems with their profession, its values and its trajectory. I am sorry for whacking Brittney, but her remarks deserved it, IMHO. sandy
Hi Brittney
Thanks for the good words, and for the positive reception in your class.
I took note of Mary Kay’s point just before I spoke – that these alternative perceptual lenses needed to be approached with a kind of Buddhist organizational analysis characterized by non-attachment. Then she said something about the falcon’s wings that I forgot to write down.
I don’t think the answer to that question is simple, however. It’s not just about letting go and thoughts of transcendence, a sort of Zen contemplation of The Void. That may be personally satisfying. A lifetime of such mindfulness practices may be a necessary part of the radical change I have in mind (especially if a lot of people do this). But, just like using organizational frames within the currently dominant paradigm, Zen practices can also end in egocentric self-indulgence (i.e., New Age hobbies), and then our collective state is no better off than if we were all engaged in crass, materialistic narcissism. More than embracing new frames [openness, tolerance] and getting closer to clear analysis [rationality] are needed. I’m looking for clues to ways of approaching business, management, and organization that genuinely place community, solidarity, and the collective good ahead of the many individualistic traps we have surrounded ourselves with. Sandy’s “communitas” is evocative. Communism is scary. Maybe none of this is feasible beyond a tiny, local, face-to-face scale. Ironically, in contrast, maybe narcissistic individualism and ego-centric thinking are only “sustainable” in mass society, and energy descent is predicted to end this. We should all be training our minds to be ready!
It was a great visit! Thanks to you all.
OccupyMBA!