Uncharted Territories of Organizational Research: The Case of Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies

Abstract

This paper argues that Karl Popper's notions in his work The Open Society and Its Enemies offer an approach to under-explored issues in organizational research, independent of Popper's epistemology. Popper's thoughts on the philosophy of science have largely been rejected in organization studies, and his socio-philosophical notions have hardly been considered. Yet they provide a frame of reference for viewing management trends, such as anti-bureaucratism and collectivist forms of work organization, in a different light. Popper's socio-philosophical notions suggest that `closed' patterns of thinking are detrimental to a liberal-democratic social order. The paper argues that an outline of the philosophy of openness and closedness and an application to managerial concepts allows for insights into whether certain types of managerial thinking stand in contrast to, or in accordance with, a liberal-democratic order. It is concluded that, through the Popperian lens, some supposedly liberationist movements of management (liberation from bureaucracy or from a lack of belonging and emotion at work) possess clear traits of closedness and thus resemble the intellectual underpinnings of totalitarianism.

Closing for the Benefit of Openness? The case of Wikimedia’s open strategy process

“…Thus, in the case at hand, openness in terms of access to sensitive information was high regarding content but limited regarding procedural information. This not only contradicts a Popperian (1966 [1944]; Armbrüster & Gebert, 2002) understanding of openness, which values procedure as much as content, but also undermines Wikimedia's self-imposed claim to enable a transparent and potentially even forkable strategy-making process.…”

“…Contrary to these mostly phenomenon-driven works, Armbrüster and Gebert (2002) utilize Popper's fundamental understanding of openness and closure (1966 [1944]) and apply it to the organizational context by distinguishing between substantial and procedural openness. We build on this distinction because it is compatible with our relational lens of inclusion and exclusion, recognizing the need for closure in any attempt to achieve greater openness.…”

“…In other words, previous research has not addressed the paradoxical need for certain aspects of closure in terms of procedures as a precondition to establishing or increasing openness in terms of content (Armbrüster & Gebert, 2002;critical however: De Cock & Böhm, 2007). According to Tkacz, the dichotomous framework of 'open as opposed to closed' in most of these works on open phenomena 'is flawed from the start' (Tkacz, 2015, p. 180) because the 'seeds of closure are always already present within the open, but the language of openness doesn't allow us to gain any traction on that closure' (p. 181).…”

“…From our perspective, this position may reflect how strategy processes labelled as 'open' are usually implemented. However, taking the roots of openness into account, democratic decision-making is one of its irreplaceable pillars (Armbrüster & Gebert, 2002;Popper, 1966Popper, [1944). Therefore, we identify decision-making as an essential criterion for evaluating the openness/closure of organizational strategy-making processes labelled as 'open' (see also Adler & Borys, 1996;Mor Barak & Cherin, 1998;Pelled et al, 1999).…”

Political leadership in democracies: some lessons for business?

“…Indeed, Armbruster and Gebert (2002) point to fundamental distinctions between organizations (of any constitution) and society. Organizations usually have stated goals; society does not.…”