Deconstructing the Organizational Behavior Text

Abstract

Although the pedagogy of organizational behavior (OB) has made some progress in addressing gender, racial, and cultural diversity in the past decade, it remains essentially noncritical-politically, economically, socially, and ecologically. It continues to uphold positivist conventions, reinforce modernistic illusions of objectivity, and resist reflexivity. This article advocates that OB pedagogy in method and content, in particular teaching that involves the textbook as a basis of instruction, becomes more reflexive and self-critical, more aware of its presuppositions, interests, and limitations. This article demonstrates a postmodernistic strategy to counter the overly totalizing and positivist currents in OB teaching and texts—the deconstruction of taken-for-granted assumptions and principles. To this end, one of the top-selling textbooks in OB is subjected to deconstruction. The case for deconstruction as a potentially powerful classroom tool, an active and inclusive learning strategy that encourages readers to engage in dialogue with OB teachers and the authors of OB texts, is made.

Getting On With Field Research Using Participant Deconstruction

“…Our purpose is to provide organizational researchers whose projects “centrally involve collecting data in field sites” (Edmondson & McManus, 2007, p. 1155) with a new technique to add to their tool box. Our approach aligns with that of other researchers who have applied deconstruction as a “tool” (Peterson & Albrecht, 1999, p. 170; Summers, Boje, Dennehy, & Rosile, 1997, p. 344), a “process” (Boje, 1998, p. 462), “analytic strategies” (Martin, 1990, p. 355), and “research tactics” (Fougère & Moulettes, 2012, p. 10) for engaging with texts of and about organizations. Given this, the literature review that follows is selective rather than exhaustive.…”

Let’s Burn Them All

“…The similarity among virtually all introduction to management (and introduction to organizational behavior) textbooks (across time and across textbooks) has been noted often (e.g., Doughton, 2010; Pearce, 2012) including several times in this journal (e.g., Bilimoria, 1998; Cunha, Cunha, & Cabral-Cardoso, 2004; O’Conner & Yballe, 2007; Summers, Dennehy, & Rosile, 1997). Nonetheless, to provide some, admittedly weak, empirical evidence of this phenomenon, I reviewed 20 (10 management; 10 organizational behavior) textbooks and taxonimized the theories and theorists covered in three primary content areas: (a) history of management/OB, (b) motivation, and (c) leadership.…”

Responding to crisis: World War 2, COVID‐19, and the business school

“…We do not dispute the elements of this story, but when a story becomes common sense, its legitimacy and permanence are often taken for granted (Bottom, 2009 ), making it difficult to question the conclusions drawn from it. Rather, in what follows, we examine this history anew “in search of ways in which it makes points other than those it seems to make” (Summers et al, 1997 , p. 345).…”