Theory and Method in Organization Studies: Paradigms and Choices, London, Sage, 2000 (original) (raw)

PREFACE 6 PART ONE 11 THEMES AND PROBLEMS 11 1 12 SOCIETY IN A NETWORK OF ORGANIZATIONS 12 “External society” and “internal society” 15 Subjectivity and social integration 16 Legal authority and modern organizations 18 Managing organizations: the principles of the classical school 21 An organization is modelled on a machine 26 The organization as an agent of civilization 26 Organizational networks and organizations without walls 28 Organizations meet other organizations 29 The notions of “loose coupling” and of the creation of the external environment 30 Networks of inter-organizational relations 32 The network of organizations 34 The organization as a stable form of transaction 35 The organization without walls 37 Organization is a continuous process 38 Further Reading 39 2 41 ORGANIZATIONS AS SOCIAL CONTEXTS 41 Theoretical paradigms and organizations as social contexts 42 Researching organizations and paradigmatic pluralism 45 The study of organizations as social contexts 47 The schools of organizational thought 48 The rational, interactionist, structural and compliance models 51 The perspective of the rational, natural and open system 53 The industrial, bureaucratic and organizational issues 58 The emerging strands of organizational analysis 62 The emerging organizational methodologies 63 Metaphors for organizations 66 Research programmes 69 Paradigms in the study of organizations as social contexts 73 Fragmentation, multiplicity and paradigmatic incommensurability 77 Further Reading 78 3 80 WEAVING THE ORGANIZATION TOGETHER 80 The metaphor of construction 80 The social construction of reality 81 Constructivism and constructionism 82 Organization as hypertext 85 The metaphor of the hypertext 86 Real organization and virtual organization 88 An organization is an artefact 90 The concept of texture of organizing 92 The contextualist world of organizing 93 Action and tacit knowledge 94 The use of the concept of texture of organizing 96 Further reading 99 4 101 THE ETHOS, LOGOS AND PATHOS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE 101 Organizational actors 102 Critical event and subjects 102 Competence and/or productivity 103 The community of practice and community memory 104 Organization and occupational and professional communities 106 The negotiation of rationality and organizational subjects 108 Courses of action and the negotiated order 112 Meaningful action and organizational interaction 113 The organizational order and the structure-in-process 114 Deontological, ontological and aesthetic dimensions 117 Emotions in organizations 118 Aesthetics in organizational life 119 The continuity of organizational phenomena 121 Further reading 122 5 123 THEMATIC CONTINUITIES AND NEW INSIGHTS 123 Thematic continuities 125 Power and the negotiation of the organizational order 125 Alienation and the governance of organizational structures 127 Participation in organizational life 128 Institution and organization 129 Organizational decisions 131 Emerging themes 135 Gendered organizations 135 Organizational space 137 Organizational time 144 The social construction of the study of organizations as social contexts 148 Understanding and/or managing organizations 148 The Anglo-Saxon dominance of organization theory 150 Further reading 152 PART TWO 154 RESEARCH AND METHODS 154 6 155 THE METHODS OF EMPIRICAL ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH 155 The research design 156 Observation of organizational phenomena 159 Structured observation in Mintzberg’s research 159 Immersion and detachment in participant observation 162 Interviews and conversations 165 The structured interview in Lawrence and Lorsch’s research study 167 The multiform character of the in-dept interview 169 The questionnaire 170 Information about organizations in Woodward’s study 171 The opinions of the subjects in Lawrence and Lorsch’s survey 172 The experience of working in organizations 173 The assessment of organizations in the research of Van de Ven and Ferry 175 Simulations of organizational life 176 Simulation and the garbage can decision-making model 177 Archive materials 182 Beliefs, labels and habits in methodological controversies 183 Further reading 186 7 188 THE PERVASIVENESS OF MEASUREMENT 188 The paradoxes of measurement 189 The measures of strong relations among organizational variables 193 Measuring the thoughts of organizational actors 198 The construction of causal maps 199 Aggregate measurement and global measurement 204 Further reading 208 8 210 QUALITATIVE METHODS AND THE COMPUTER 210 Analytical induction and grounded theory 211 Producing text 216 Ordering observations 218 Transcribing conversations 221 Choosing the text units 223 Interpretation as decision-making 227 Further reading 230 REFERENCES 231