of ghettos and language
Should org theorists just make peace with life in the ghetto, or should we work and write in ways that engage the world of ideas outside our hood, so to speak? (I hear there is one.)
Tim raised a related question (see post): should neo-institutionalists focus on developing their own language and perspective, or acquiesce to using terms that make institutional theory more accessible to outsiders? In answer, he wrote,
“[s]ociologists are trending toward playing their own game–that is, carving out a unique space for organizational neo-institutionalism. I think it’s a good move, so long as we don’t wall ourselves off or return to oversocialized conceptions of action or byzantine Parsonian exercises.”
In the spirit of using orgtheory to create good exchange, I’m going to take a somewhat contrary position on this question in the hopes it will spawn debate that will teach me something new. In my view, elaborating a distinctive language system is only desirable if it permits important conversations that wouldn’t occur otherwise. When the uniqueness of a language does little besides serve the purpose of protecting a community identity, it is easy for everyone else to conclude that community can be safely ignored.
But if you’re like me, you don’t want to be ignored. (OK, office hours after midterms might be an exception.) Instead, my ambition for org theorists is that we would be increasingly invited out of our ghetto to talk about the cool things we’re doing in it, and for that to happen, we’re going to have to care about letting people know that those things are. While developing a unique language system is generally good for clarity and community solidarity, becoming unintelligible to the outside world undermines the possibility of being understood in ways that increase the odds of making connections that help our ideas travel beyond the ghetto a bit more.
How you think about Tim’s question has a lot to do with whether you believe there is anything more than a pretend-conversation to be had. I share Tim’s sense that the historical conversation between org theorists and institutional economists has been less than satisfying, but my colleagues who do TCE feel exactly the same way about what they regard as sociologists’ frosty reception to their attempts to use the language of neoinstitutional theory. With apologies in advance, we can be a bit like the caricature of the French–never sufficiently appalled at the way people butcher our language when they try to speak it.
Rather than drag this post out with a long argument for the rather simple point I’m making, I’ll pick up the details in whatever conversation ensues, and for now, leave it at this simple conclusion: whether we develop a new and distinctive language or not, let’s at least encourage and reward some of our number to become bilingual and, dare I say it, represent us well to those who can’t quite get our language right.
Thanks for picking this up, Mark. I’m not sure we need a super-specialized language, and I’m all for bilingualism (even a little bit of bilingual education, as my grad students wondering why they had to read Coase can attest to). And good translators will always be needed too. But engagement with institutional economics isn’t necessarily only or best way to connect to larger audiences. There are other options for theoretical bridging (in comparative politics, science and tech studies, law & society) and topics where I suspect organizational sociology could make a big splash if it went there more often (labor, international work (beyond Europe and China). It seems like the conversation with institutional economics was forged 25 years ago as each approach was gaining prominence. (Re-reading Granovetter 1985 really reinforced this for me.) Maybe it’s time for a new conversation to be forged. I would guess that some kind readers could even fill us in to places where that’s already happening.
timbartley
February 13, 2010 at 7:46 pm
I’m all for productive interdisciplinary conversations. The reason though many interdisciplinary conversations are less than productive is because scholars from one camp want the scholars of the other camp to couch their findings in their particular language. I’ve had this reaction from TCE folks, and I’m sure the TCE folks get it from us. Even when one tries his best to identify clear theoretical mechanisms, it seems that scholars from the other camp are quick to point out how the finding could be reinterpreted in the other theory’s terms. What’s the point of interdisciplinary conversation if all it leads to is a war of words?
I can think of a few ways we might improve in having these kinds of conversations. The first is just to develop more mutual respect for our differences and allow for theoretical diversity. This tolerance is common in sociology departments where the faculty are usually more different than they are similar to one another. This approach is more multidisciplinary than interdisciplinary though. The upside of multidisciplinarity is that good ideas tend to diffuse across fields. You see this happen all the time in sociology departments, and I think you’d see the same in strong multidisciplinary management departments (e.g., Maryland).
Another approach is to find allies in the other field who are willing to engage with the favored theoretical mechanisms of your field. So, economists have to find their Fabios and org theorists need to find their Akerlofs. Finally, I think we can make real in-roads when engaging with effects-only papers where theory is less central or important. So, for example, analysis of the latest financial crisis might lead to some cross-over because both camps share a mutual interest in discovering the sources of the crisis and in preventing something like it from happening again. If an org theorist can show a nice effect, economists will be interested. Some of the places in academia where you see the most vibrant interdisciplinary discussion are areas of research where theory is less central (e.g., workplace inequality; labor markets). Demographers, because of their lack of interest in theory, end up being really good at making friends with economists.
brayden
February 14, 2010 at 12:25 am
Tim and Brayden both make great points. I agree very much with Tim that we need to bring fresh eyes to looking for potentially rewarding conversations rather than obsessing on previous ones that have failed to gain traction. In particular, I’m exploring the intersection of sociologists’ interest in social movements and meaning construction and economists’ interest in information cascades and its effect on the role that collective awareness plays in demand broadly speaking, as in case of the perceived risk of various dangers and public policy decisions to insure society against them or, conversely, the perceived appeal of various products and individual decisions to adopt them. Unlike more conventional perspectives in economics, this view acknowledges that societies sometimes focus on things that aren’t justified by the logic of cost-benefit analyses, which is very much in the spirit of the phenomena that frequently interest sociologists. I should add, however, that there are a number of TCE-friendly scholars working in business school who are at least open to whether there is anything interesting about ‘economic sociology.’
Wherever the most promising conversations arise, I also very much agree with Brayden that flexibility and mutual respect are crucial to tending emerging conversations so that they grow to their full potential. Also, I agree that interesting findings are the key to finding fertile common ground for encouraging fruitful cross-disciplinary conversations. At least year’s Academy of Management meetings, Teppo helped co-organized a professional development workshop on the possibilities for conversation between economists and sociologists, and Todd Zenger made a really clear point there that stuck with me. In essence, he said that neither economists nor sociologists are likely to use each other’s ideas unless and until someone can show that combining them provides a better explanation of an important phenomenon that what you get by using one, but not the other. I agree.
To labor and demography, I’d add the growing literature on organizations and markets as a place where cross-disciplinary conversation is possible.
Other nominations?
mtkennedy
February 15, 2010 at 4:36 am
[...] Just a scattered thought, which maybe has implications for Mark’s earlier post about org theory and institutional economics. [...]
economics and deconstruction « orgtheory.net
February 26, 2010 at 12:18 am