Novel Thought: Towards a Literary Study of Organization

Abstract

Novels espouse an epistemological freedom that is beyond even experimental forms of scholarly research and writing. Precisely this freedom makes novels so conducive to thought. Their enduring presence in organization studies demonstrates literary fiction’s power of conveying how things are, might be, or can be thought of; of inventing new ways of seeing; of enabling different vocabularies as well as staging and transmitting specific affects. In this paper, we trace the mutual ‘contamination’ between the novel and organization studies as well as discuss different modes of engaging prose fiction, drawing on Rancière’s ethical, representative and aesthetic regimes of art. With a special nod to Kafka’s novels and stories and also McCarthy’s Satin Island, we outline the contours of a literary study of organization and introduce the special themed section on ‘The Novel and Organization Studies’.

Counter-Clock World: How Planning Backwards Helps in Moving Forward in Collapsing Environments

“…In organizational studies, SF themes have attracted much and growing attention since the turn of the millennium (Aroles, Clegg, & Granter, 2019;Beyes, Costas, & Ortmann, 2019;Czarniawska and Gustavsson, 2008;Higgins, Lightfoot, Parker, & Smith, 2001;Parker, Higgins, Lightfoot, & Smith, 1999). We leverage this attention by applying an 'analogical reasoning' approach to SF.…”

The limits of literature as liberation: Colonialism, governmentality, and the humanist subject

“…Already 20 years ago, De Cock (2000) noted that it was no longer necessary to make an argument for the value of literature in management and organisation studies as it once had been (see e.g., Grey, 1996), because it is understood that literary texts do something to our understanding of organizations that other kinds of knowledge cannot. There have been arguments for the value of literature as an intervention into case studies and fieldwork (Czarniawska, 2006, 2009; Holt and Zundel, 2014, 2018); management pedagogy (Czarniawska-Joerges and Guillet de Monthoux 1994; Knights and Willmott, 1999; Śliwa et al, 2015); and organizational theory (Beverungen and Dunne, 2007; Beyes et al, 2019; De Cock and Land, 2006; Land and Śliwa, 2009), where literature is understood as unsettling the paradigms of social science, and the aspirations of management and organization studies to be positivist science. At its furthest reach it is understood that “literature and organization studies are interdependent not exclusive forms of discourse” (Beyes et al, 2019:1788.…”

“…There have been arguments for the value of literature as an intervention into case studies and fieldwork (Czarniawska, 2006, 2009; Holt and Zundel, 2014, 2018); management pedagogy (Czarniawska-Joerges and Guillet de Monthoux 1994; Knights and Willmott, 1999; Śliwa et al, 2015); and organizational theory (Beverungen and Dunne, 2007; Beyes et al, 2019; De Cock and Land, 2006; Land and Śliwa, 2009), where literature is understood as unsettling the paradigms of social science, and the aspirations of management and organization studies to be positivist science. At its furthest reach it is understood that “literature and organization studies are interdependent not exclusive forms of discourse” (Beyes et al, 2019:1788. See also De Cock and Land, 2006; Savage et al, 2018).…”

“…In management and organisation studies, the question of how much literature should be allowed to shape the interdisciplinary encounter with management is a matter of discussion. On the one hand, Beyes et al (2019) have argued that literary management and organization studies must stay focused on those questions and objectives that are most relevant for its research objects rather than becoming entangled in questions of literary theory or indeed challenging the epistemology of management and organization. From one point of view, this is eminently sensible considering that in disciplines such as anthropology and history the consequences of allowing literature’s freedom to spread into methods and foundational elements of the discipline has been at least a partial reckoning with the discipline’s epistemic exclusions.…”

“…The ground for a management and organization intervention has already been cultivated by literary management studies, which, especially in its more recent iterations, understands literature as inextricably connected with organization and organizational realities (Beyes et al, 2019; De Cock and Land, 2006; Savage et al, 2018). The obstacle to further development, however, is that literary management studies has also remained curiously uninterested in the matter of literature’s own organizational and governmental effects because it too remains attached to the belief in literature’s potential to enact certain kinds of liberation (for a notable exception, see De Cock et al, 2020).…”