Papers on the Art of Anti‐administration

Citation

Simrell King, C. (1999), "Papers on the Art of Anti‐administration", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 562-578. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.1999.12.6.562.3

Public administration often catches a great deal of flack for not having a disciplinary, scholarly, or theoretical identity. Indeed, one does not even know what to call the theory and practice of public administration. Is it a “field”, a “discipline”, a “tradition”, a “theory base?” Is it a sub‐field of some greater discipline with a long intellectual tradition such as political science, organizational studies, or business administration? Does it stand on its own – does it generate its own theory and practices – or is it simply the additive result of many different theories and practices stolen from other disciplines and cobbled together in something that resembles a legitimate scholarship and practice?

Like other arenas of scholarly study that are firmly rooted in a practice of some kind (e.g. social work, education), public administration suffers an identity crisis. Throughout its short history as an American intellectual tradition (since the late nineteenth century), public administration has struggled with finding its place and convincing others in the scholarly community of its legitimacy. Indeed, it seems as if any field of inquiry that has at its core the practice of something has a difficult time asserting its intellectual muscle.

I would like to suggest here, however, that it is this very identity crisis, and the paradoxes of theory and practice within, that positions the field of inquiry of public administration to make significant contributions in contemporary times. I would like to posit that some of the best thinking in the postpositivistic/postmodern literature (e.g. postmodernism, critical theory, liberation theory, feminist theories) is happening in the applied fields of inquiry like public administration. One important issue in postpositivistic/postmodern theorizing is that it is often difficult to see how the theories would look/work in practice. It is only in a field where theory and practice are inextricably intertwined that we can see how and what this literature has to contribute to the practice of living in a civilized community: it is here that we transmute these theories into the alchemical gold of practice.

Who better to organize this venture than the grand alchemist of contemporary public administration, David John Farmer? Farmer (1995), along with his contemporaries Fox and Miller (1995), played a significant role in introducing the ideas of postmodernism to public administration. Farmer, however, goes beyond simply being a pioneering theorist/philosopher. He practices what he preaches. He is the Socratic gadfly of our field, buzzing about, constantly reminding us (across many venues) that we can no longer operate under the assumptions that have shaped the field of inquiry from its inception. He is Dionysus to the modernistic Apollo, reminding us that humankind is much more than that which can be described by rationality and order – inciting us to deconstruct the ideas around efficiency and effectiveness and to embrace the Dionysian side in all of us. Furthermore, being particularly sensitive to the fact that administration is about doing something, Farmer (along with Lyotard, 1991) advocates “rewriting modernity” as the significant postmodern project. In seeing postmodernity about reworking or working through the limitations of modernity, both the modern and the postmodern moments can be seen as coexisting (Eco, 1983). As a result, Farmer is a “practical” kind of postmodernist (if he would even consent to being called a postmodernist or that a postmodernist would ever consent to being spoken of as being practical) in that he believes that the postmodern movement allows us to open ourselves up to the possibilities that exist outside of the modernist boundaries without throwing away all that modernism has given us. In postmodernity, modernism is no longer privileged. It is simply just one of many discourses.

Farmer has brought together a series of essays in the edited volume Papers on the Art of Anti‐Administration that all address, in one way or another, the application of postpositivistic/postmodern literature and theory to the practice of public administration. Or, perhaps the essays all address the application of the practice of public administration to postmodernist theory? The direction is irrelevant. Theory and practice are interwoven within all of these essays (most of which are reprinted).

As Farmer poetically indicates (his Dionysian side revealing itself), the essays all present antitheses of the basic arguments of one of the central organizing works in public administration, Gulick and Urlick’s Papers on the Science of Administration (1937). Traditional public administration, that which is still theorized about and practiced today, has at its core the positivistic/modernist beliefs in science, rationalism, expertise, hierarchy, span of control, and the king of all administrative dogma – efficiency. What Farmer calls postmodern (but actually includes a number of contemporary intellectual traditions that would adamantly resist being characterized as postmodern) are the antitheses of these modernist/positivistic principles. One could say that these postmodern ideas are theoretical or philosophical or one could say that these ideas reflect the way life “really” works. As any public administrator and citizen will tell you (especially those squirming in our classes as we try to “shove theory down their throats”), the practice of administering programs and working with citizens often looks nothing like what the theories say it is supposed to look. Administrators rarely administer, at least in the way we define administration from scientific perspectives. Administrators are more likely to not administer, or to practice what these essayists would call the art of anti‐administration.

The collection of essays in this text offers a view of administration that is postmodern and post‐positivistic, but is also one of the most real and grounded views of administration I have seen. This “realness” comes from the essayists all embracing, in one form or another, the following premises of postmodern/postpositivism:

• •

  Skepticism versus realism – a postmodern reading embraces skepticism, that is, that the capacity for humans to know what is “ultimately and totally real is significantly limited” (p. 2). This perspective is contrasted with the modernist or enlightenment perspective that human reason can understand reality. Farmer is quick to point out that being a skeptic does not mean that one cannot know truth, but that one rejects the notion that unaided human reason can know transcendental truth (or what Rorty calls “big ‘T’ truth”).

• •

  Emancipation versus rationalizing intentions – the enlightenment rationalizing intentions (ever‐increasing rationality will lead to greater human happiness and morality) is rejected in a postmodern reading. Reason is not privileged. Instead, the goal is “ecstatic emancipation that is the result of working though the normative and other results of its philosophical skepticism” (p. 2) – emancipation of those voices suppressed by privileging reason.

• •

  Macro versus micro politics/culture – the modernist tendency to see and understand the world in macro political/cultural ways (metanarratives like economics, progress, long‐term planning) loses its privileged position in the postmodern reading as the importance of the micro political/cultural (spirituality, body, play, relationships) is recognized.

Anti‐administration is the application of these post‐positivistic/postmodern premises. According to Farmer:

The image of anti‐administration is borrowed from physics – anti‐matter. Anti‐administration is administration which is directed at negating administrative‐bureaucratic power. Anti‐administration is a form of managing that negates the hierarchical‐rational “Weberian” outlook that privileges anarchism. Rejecting the hierarchical bent of the modernist view even to the extent of rejecting cultural hierarchy, it is radically multi‐cultural. It seeks the liberation of marginalized voices. Administering anti‐administratively is radically skeptical about its own competence (p. 5).

Farmer’s perspective, as well as all the essays within this volume, reflect four basic core elements of anti‐administration:

Imaginization reflects that the role of imagination in postmodernity will parallel that described for rationalization in modernity... In modernity, imagination plays a secondary roles in the context of justification (if not of discovery); in postmodernity, rationalization will still play a role, but there will be shift to the poetic. Postmodern anti‐administration will see managers striving to “manage” with (for one thing) imagination taking the leading role (p. 5).

Deconstruction is “good reading” not only of documents but also of situations, events and lives – all being grouped under the heading of “texts”. This good reading (or interpretation) is an understanding that recognizes the limitations of all texts and languages and that appreciates the value of dismantling the narratives that typically underlie texts (pp. 5‐6).

Deterritorialization denotes the change in postmodernity in the character and organization of knowledge.... This change will be the abandonment of the privileged epistemological status for “scientific” propositions; science will be understood, as it always should have been, as a discourse among a variety of discourses... The primary focus of public administration can be expected to shift from discovery to construction... the break‐down in the barriers between disciplines – and less defined and even more open to sources like literature and art (p. 6).

Alterity, the stance toward the moral other, is intended to reflect the ethical impulse of postmodernism... an openness to the “other”, a preference for diversity, an opposition to meta‐narratives, and an opposition to the established order (p. 6).

It is in the combination of these four elements – imaginization, deconstruction, deterritorialization and alterity – that the theories of post‐positivism/postmodernism are transmuted into the alchemical “gold” of anti‐administration.

The contributors to this volume are some of the best and sharpest thinkers in public administration. Cynthia McSwain and Orion White, writing under the nom de plume of O.C. McSwite, offer “stories from the ‘real’ world”. These stories remind us that organizations are by no means sites of rational action and that we are in denial about what is going on in organizations. They show us that an “an anti‐administrator, [is] one who acts administratively, but in a mode that is profoundly hesitant, a hesitancy that is framed by doubt about everything and that accepts the existential difficulty of holding such a position” (McSwite, p. 35).

David John Farmer provides several essays/offerings that are playful, scholarly perspectives of anti‐administration. Janet Hutchinson explicates feminisms and offers a view of feminism (Iris Marion Young’s adaptation of Sarte’s concept of seriality) that allows us to think about women as a social collective, without committing the modernist error of forcing common identities or attributes on women. Rosemary Farmer offers a wonderful postmodern read of the effects of the unconscious in organization and gives the reader a number of helpful and practical “pomo” organizational therapies to substitute for what she calls “modtherapies”. Camilla Stivers uses Frost’s poem, Mending Wall to compare and contrast modernist (the neighbor) and postmodernist (the narrator) perspectives.

Several very playful and creative offerings by Charles Fox, Hugh Miller and John Larkin illuminate postmodern analysis both in structure and form. They both show, through modeling, the intersections of the four elements (imaginization, deconstruction, deterritorialization, and alterity) of anti‐administration. Lisa Zanetti and Adrian Carr offer a fascinating elucidation of surrealism and show how this movement has permeated the field of administrative studies in what is being called “postmodernism”. They argue that the “estrangement effect” of surrealism or postmodernism is essential in contemporary times because it “affords us to see anew the comfortable, the traditional, and the taken‐for‐granted”, to “uncover new modes of thought and thereby advance thinking in the field” (p. 189). Zanetti’s book review essay of Farmer’s (1995) and Fox and Miller’s (1995) primary texts on postmodernism/postmodernity closes the text. She offers another view of postmodernism, that of a “postmodern agnostic” who is concerned that postmodernism “has the perverse effect of relinquishing the discourse to the position that is already the strongest, despite the good intentions of making space for the marginalized to speak.... without a normative foundation, there can be no impetus to change” (p. 204).

Why should the readers of the Journal of Organizational Change Management read this book? Because this text is, fundamentally, about organizational change. Yes, people have been talking about these concepts in the organizational theory/change literature for a while, but nowhere else have these four elements of postpositivism/postmodernism been brought together in such a refreshing and accessible form. No matter that this text is written, primarily, by public administrationists nor that it is intended for a public administration audience. Anyone who is interested in organizations and/or administration of any kind should read this book.

One will come away from reading this text with at least two things:

1. 1.

   (1) an understanding of post‐positivistic and postmodernist thought, especially as they apply to contemporary organizations; and

2. 2.

   (2) a sense of how these alternative theories can affect practice – e.g. in anti‐administration.

These are no small accomplishments, especially when much of the contemporary writing of this ilk tends to be inaccessible and rarely addresses practice.

Does this text have any limitations? Of course. Philosophical purists would take issue with postmodernism being used as a catch‐all term to signify any (or all) of the alternative contemporary theory streams. The text suffers slightly from a lack of balance in theoretical perspectives; most of the contributors write from a postmodern perspective – only Carr and Zanetti are critical theorists. Because the essays and offerings are mostly reprints from other sources, the text can feel choppy at times. No matter, though, these insignificant limitations do not subtract from the text’s accomplishments.

Is it ironic that some of the best work in applying “post‐ism” thought to administration and/or organizations is going on in identity‐less public administration? I think not. As I indicated at the beginning of this review, I think this work can only be done in what the pomo theorists would call the “in‐between” of scholarship and practice. These in‐betweens only exist in the applied fields of inquiry such as public administration. Perhaps it is time for public administration to shine. At the very least, it is time for the brightest minds in the arena of public administration to shine, and shine they do in this text.

Read this book; you won’t regret it.