Towards a Political Philosophy of Management: Performativity & Visibility in Management Practices

Abstract

Phenomenological, process-based and post-Marxist approaches have stressed the immanent nature of the ontogenesis of our world. The concept of performativity epitomizes these temporal, spatial and material views. Reality is always in movement itself: it is constantly materially and socially 'performed'. Other views lead to a pre-defined world that would be mostly revealed through sensations (i.e. 'representational perspectives'). These transcendental stances assume that a subject, although pre-existing experience, is the absolute condition of possibility of it. In this paper, we develop another view of performativity (either complementary or interrelated to an immanent stance), one that re-introduces transcendence in the analysis but sees in it something dialogical to the process itself. We draw from the notions of visibility-invisibility and continuity-discontinuity (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 1964 in order to show how everyday activity both performs and makes visible the world.From that perspective, modes of visibility appear as emergent conditions of possibility of performativity itself. We draw some implications for the conceptualization of management practices.

Nothing happened, something happened: Silence in a makerspace

“…coworking spaces, makerspaces, fab labs and hackerspaces). These spaces, which have been blossoming since the early 2000s (De Vaujany et al, 2018a; Hatch, 2014; Lallement, 2015), are expected to favour both horizontal (i.e. between those working in that place) and open collaborations (i.e.…”

Legitimation Process in Organizations and Organizing: An Ontological Discussion

“…Cognition; discourses; social judgements; practices Practices; common worlds; materiality; justification; space Practices; Emotions and emotional energy; affects; embodiment; space; time; narration Philosophical underpinnings Weber (1978); DiMaggio and Powell (1983) Alford and Friedland (1991); Boltanski and Thévenot (1991); Lefebvre (1991) Merleau-Ponty (1945,1961,2003); Heiddeger (1962); Ricoeur (1983) Examples in the MOS literature Zimmerman and Zeitz (2002); Bitektine (2011) Proffitt and Zahn (2006);De Vaujany and Vaast (2014) Voronov and Vince (2012); Dale and Latham (2015); Granqvist and Gustafsson (2016); Pittz et al (2017);Friedland (2018)…”

“…How organizations acquire and maintain their legitimacy in complex and changing institutional contexts has been a significant topic in institutional theory (e.g. Meyer and Rowan 1977;DiMaggio and Powell 1983;Elsbach 1994;Scott 1995;Lounsbury and Glynn 2001;Suddaby and Greenwood 2005). Organizational legitimacy thus corresponds to 'a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions' (Suchman, 1995: 574).…”

“…Legitimacy (in particular normative legitimacy) is grounded in a context in which individual behaviours, patterns of collective behaviours and artefacts involved in behaviours are meaningful in a particular way. This context is the broader institutional or organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). A field is a set of codes, rules and actors defining capital, reputation and prestige.…”

“…Some behaviours, if adopted by legitimate people (in view of the rules of the field) and in a legitimate manner, will be judged as legitimate by external stakeholders observing them (competitors, customers, etc.). In addition, the field itself will exert normative, mimetic and coercive pressures favouring isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In order to be part of the field and to be potentially identified as 'good', 'dominant', 'innovative' or 'prestigious', individuals and collective entities will have to look somewhat similar and, for instance, adopt partly identical structures and technologies.…”