Abstract
This is a book that we would enthusiastically recommend to those who unconditionally believe in the epistemologically or politically unproblematic character of organisational research. Carl Rhodes, once an employee of the Boston Consulting Group, now researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney, has written a small yet important book about academic writing on organisation. It has appeared in a small but interesting collection called Advances in Organization Studies that is edited by Stewart Clegg and Alfred Kieser and published by John Benjamins.
Rhodes’ book resonates well with developed traditions in narrative and storytelling approaches to management and organisation studies. Such traditions have approached organisational knowledge from a narrative perspective1 and used narrative and literary methods to understand organisations.2 More specifically, Rhodes both draws on and contributes to an understanding of the relationship between narrative and power3 and to using multiple interpretations and representations in research.4
However, although we would argue that it is possible to identify Rhodes’ position in the field, ‘summing up’ in his own terms what he has to say is not easy. His central point seems to be that conclusively singular representations, perhaps including the one that we give here, are problematical from both an ethical and political perspective. One may be tempted to discard this as yet another postmodernist frivolity, but we would suggest that what writers and researchers in organisation studies, and the social sciences more generally, might get from this work is an increased sensitivity to the ethics of their writing practices.
We intend in this review essay not so much to provide the reader with a neat survey of Rhodes’ book as to build further on some of its ideas. And in doing so, we will highlight its philosophical underpinnings not only because we think that these are especially interesting for the readers of this journal but also because we think that some of them are problematical. We have tried to provide a fairly neutral reconstruction of Rhodes’ argument in the first three sections below, and from the fourth section onwards — ‘authorless writing’ — we question some of Rhodes’ assumptions and ideas. While we are enthused by the questions raised in this book and indeed by the way the overall argument is presented, we will also claim that in places he seems to succumb to an anti-realist and anti-authoritarian position that we regard as unnecessarily radical.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barbara Czarniawska Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity Chicago University Press, Chicago 1997; Barbara Czarniawska A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies Sage, Thousand Oaks 1998; Barbara Czarniawska Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre Oxford University Press 1998; Mary-Jo Hatch ‘The role of the researcher: An analysis of narrative position in organization theory’ Journal of Management Studies Vol 5 No 8 (1997) pp 359-374; Brian Pentland ‘Building process theory with narrative: from description to explanation’ Academy of Management Review Vol 24 (1999) pp 711-724
Mary Brown and Gary Kreps ‘Narrative Analysis and Organizational Development’ In: Sandra Herndon and Gary Kreps (ed) Qualitative Research: Applications in Organizational Communication pp 47–62 Hampton Press, Creskill (NJ) 1993; Michael Pacanowsky ‘Creating and Narrating Organizational Realities’ In: Bruce Dervin, Lawrence Grossberg, Barbara O'Keefe and Ellen Wartella (ed) Rethinking Communication: Volume 2 Paradigm Exemplars pp 250-258 Sage, Newbury Park (NJ) 1995; Michael Pacanowsky ‘Creating and Narrating Organizational Realities’ In: Bruce Dervin, Lawrence Grossberg, Barbara O'Keefe and Ellen Wartella (ed) Rethinking Communication: Volume 2 Paradigm Exemplars pp 250-258 Sage, Newbury Park (NJ) 1995; Barbara Czarniawska Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre Oxford University Press 1999; Tony Watson ‘Ethnographic Fiction Science: Making Sense of Managerial Work and Organization Research Processes with Caroline and Terry’ Organization Vol 7 No 3 (2002) pp 489-510; Robert Westwood and Stephen Linstead (ed) The Language of Organization Sage, London 2001; Kaj Skoldberg The Poetic Logic of Administration Routledge, London 2002
Marsha Witten ‘Narrative and the Culture of Obedience at the Workplace’ In: Dennis Mumby (ed) Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives pp 97–118 Newbury Park: Sage 1993; David Boje 'Organizational Storytelling: The Struggles of Pre-Modern, Modern and Postmodern Organizational Learning Discourses’ Management Learning Vol 25 No 3 (1994) pp 433-461; David Boje ‘Stories of the Storytelling Organization: a Postmodern Analysis of Disney as Tamara-Land’ Academy of Management Journal Vol 38 No 4 (1995) pp 997-1035
Jon Hassard Sociology and Organization Theory: Positivism, Paradigms and Postmodernity Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993; Mats Alvesson Communication, Power and Organization De Gruyter, Berlin 1996
p 5
Michel Serres Les cinq sens. Philosophie des corps mêlés Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, Paris 1985
Martin Parker ‘Fucking management: Queer, theory and reflexivity’ ephemera Vol 1 No 1 (2000) pp 36–53 (available at: www.ephemeraweb.org)
Gary Genosko Undisciplined Theory Sage, London 1998
Peter Sloterdijk Kopernikanische Mobilmachung und Ptolemäische Abrüstung Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1986
Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Manchester, Manchester University Press 1984 p 81 (quoted in Rhodes p 32)
p 104
Kenneth Gergen ‘Organization Theory in the Postmodern Era’ In: Michael Reed and Mark Hughes (ed) Rethinking Organization: New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis pp 207–226 Sage, London 1992
For example p 101 and p 102
Manual de Landa ‘Homes: Meshwork or Hierarchy’ Pli Vol 7 No 1 (1998) p 18, pp 15-25 (also available at: www.warwick.ac.uk/~pyrez/pli/index_2.html)
Roland Barthes Mythologies Seuil, Paris 1957
André Breton Manifestes du Surréalisme Gallimard, Paris 1971 (originally published in 1924)
Roland Barthes Leçon/Lektion Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1980 p 16 (originally published as Leçon/ Lection Paris, Seuil 1978)
Julio Cortázar Rayuela een hinkelspel Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1973 p 80 (originally published as Rayuela Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1963)
Roland Barthes De nulgraad van het schrijven Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1970 p 72 (originally published as Le degré zéro de l'écriture Seuil, Paris 1953)
Barthes op cit p 12
Ihab Hassan Literature of Silence: Henry Miller & Samuel Beckett Random House, New York 1967; Ihab Hassan The Dismemberment of Orpheus Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971
Cortázar op cit p 373
Fredric Jameson Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Verso, New York 1991
Jameson op cit p 137
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
ten Bos, R., Kaulingfreks, R. Organisational Writing and the Lust for Combination. Philos. of Manag. 3, 43–53 (2003). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom2003335
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom2003335