Business as usual or why bureaucracy is beneficial for social production of knowledge

Citation

Magala, S.J. (2015), "Business as usual or why bureaucracy is beneficial for social production of knowledge", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-03-2015-0037

Business as usual or why bureaucracy is beneficial for social production of knowledge

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 28, Issue 3

A mid-year editorial for JOCM - March 2015.

Judging from the numbers and quality of papers submitted for publication via increasingly automated robots moved by increasingly sophisticated computers, the online harvests of growing knowledge products yield more of better knowledge deliverables every month or – as the case may be – every two months. The present – third – issue of JOCM in 2015 is no exception. First, it is very robust, since we are dealing with ten papers, all of them linked to organizational change, but some in a very unexpected way (have you ever contemplated a quantitative approach to a research in organizational spirituality?). Second, the authors’ home addresses cover a fair number of very distant locations (Brazil, Canada, Spain, China, Iran, to mention but a few). Third, some interesting patterns emerge, which let me claim that we are, indeed, witnessing a certain transformation in a socially acceptable and continuously negotiable production of knowledge, perhaps even an actionable one.

Let me begin with a brief overview of what is being offered in mid-2015. First, two Italian researchers from Rome, Luigi de Bernardis and Luca Giustiniano, present the results of their study of “The evolution of multiple organisational identities after an M&A event. A case study from Europe”. They offer a view of sense-making processes which go on during and after an M&A event, trying to find out how identities can be shaped, defended and used in an ongoing negotiation of a plurality of identities emerging from changes, power struggles and other transformations within the processes of organizing and making sense. The fact that this is a case study does not mean that they shy away from theoretical considerations – as a matter of fact cases are staging a grand come-back on the stage of social sciences. If you want to follow this come-back, read one of the latest publications by Harry Becker – “what about Mozart? what about murder?”, which is an elegant defense of case method in face of a persistent blindness of academic establishments to some quite obvious but not very comfortable aspects of social realities. Rui-Ting Huang from Taiwan tackles the problem of “Overcoming invisible obstacles in organizational learning: the moderating effect of employee resistance to change”, showing that resistance produces not only effects in interaction processes, in behavioural performances, but also in cognitive functioning, in thinking and use of cultural artefacts, for instance in the rate and accuracy of organizational learning. Fernando F. Fachin from Canada and Eduardo Davel from Brazil also follow identity analysis in organizational settings, namely by studying “Reconciling contradictory paths: identity play and work in a career transition”. They focus on a reconstruction of a career of an individual who as a film maker and film director started as a politically committed author of socially involved documentary films, but ended up as a commercially successful creator of slick advertisements. Creativity is also a focus of another study, presented by researchers from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University, namely Jiang Wan and Gu Quinxua “A moderated mediation examination of proactive personality on employee creativity: a person-environment fit perspective”. Well, emotions and creativity are the latest province, which is being conquered by organizational scientists keen on producing toolkits of managerial skills for future leaders. Nevertheless, some attempts to study processes of change and their intricate links to creativity and emotional climates merit objective attention, no matter what ideological banners are flying around. Marta Dominguez, C.C., Jose Luís Gallán-González and Carmen Barroso (all three form Seville) talk to us on “Patterns of strategic change” and claim that if we manage to identify sequences of change processes, we might be able to actually help managers, consultants and employees in making sense of changes they are both objects and subjects of. Norbert Steigenberger from Cologne presents his research on “Emotions in sense-making: a change management perspective” (one has to become acquainted with a social psychology jargon to a certain extent, domesticating such terms as dual processing theory or somatic marker hypothesis). Chien-Nan Chen and Chenghi Tien (both from Taiwan) discuss “The power of momentum influencing firm performance: a myth or a reality?” and their contribution is based on a very interesting use of recently accessible large databases. They have accessed the US databases – Compustat and Yahoo Finance – and the Taiwanese database called Taiwan Economic Journal database in order to produce their conclusions. A Polish researcher, Jan Falkowski, analysed “Economic effect of re-organizing on agro-food supply: some evidence from Poland” – and his empirical research is also based on larger databases. Iranian researcher, Mohammad Reza Taghizadek Yazdi comes up with a paper entitled “Qualitative assessment of spiritual capital in changing organizations by principal component analysis and fuzzy clustering” – certainly one of the most original pieces of research on spirituality in organizations readers may come across. Last not least, Chinese researchers from Xi’an consider “Processes, characteristics and effectiveness: an integrative framework for successful knowledge transfer within organizations”.

This sequence of empirical research reports and theoretical reflections offers a fairly decent view of what is going on in a very dynamic field of organizational change analysis. Trying to squeeze these reports into a common denominator, into a shared label, into a grid of bureaucratically designed slots and checkpoints does offer some difficulties. But we are not dependent on Max Weber or Michel Foucault in order to understand what is going on: we do have also Magali Sarfatti Larsen (on professional bureaucracies, with special stress on the making of the profession of architect) and Michelle Lamont (with special stress on an empirical analysis of cases in which we, as academic professionals, function as smooth bureaucrats making decisions as members of tenure committees). Moreover, we also begin to have critical cultural anthropologists, who try to understand why the utopia of the perfectly rational rules implemented by decent bureaucrats in the interest of us all finally begins to provoke more critical, though not yet radically critical, academic response. As David Graeber had written in his latest treatise, in which he bemoans lack of a left critique of bureaucracy:

It is hard to avoid suspicion that Weber’s and Foucault’ s popularity owed much to the fact that the American university system during this period had itself increasingly become an institution dedicated to producing functionaries for an imperial administrative apparatus operating on a global scale (Graeber, 2015).

By the same token, all academic bureaucracies, in all countries, also display some common characteristics, which, as teaching bureaucracies, they share with and disseminate among the ever-growing numbers of students. Who will undertake a more ambitious research attempt trying to see what makes us such unusual carriers and transformers of knowledge? All of us – readers of journals like JOCM, authors of papers published in it, editors like the undersigned and publishers like the Emerald individuals and teams. Another critic of contemporary teaching and ruling establishments, Benjamin Kunkel, wrote a book entitled Utopia or Bust offering it as a guide to the present crisis. His more radical counterpart, David Graeber mentioned above, gave his book a more radical subtitle: “On technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy”. Well, it seems to me that these latter joys are not so secret anymore. Not when Wikipedias and social media are around. Other knowledges are possible, other teach-ins, other actionable knowledge networks. Reluctantly, but clearly, most of us, academic professional bureaucrats, accept the old 1968 slogan from Parisian Sorbonne: “Imagination au pouvoir”/“Power to Imagination”. Sounds OK, but what does it mean? I suspect we shall know before the last editorial in 2015 reaches you.

Slawomir Jan Magala

Reference

Graeber, D. (2015), The Utopia of Rules, Melville House, Brooklyn, NY.