on stories (signing off)

Saku 

Dear co-conspirators, the time for me has come to sign off and leave the stage. I wish to thank you all for having me here and most of all, for your brilliant criticism and insight. As a closing remark, I’d like to share a little experience I have had reading A.-J. Greimas, a french structuralist semiotician and a well-known theorist on stories.

One of the great things about organization studies is their multidisciplinary nature. I am a former engineering and philosophy major, yet did my PhD on a topic which was largely sociological. Since those days, I have found myself reading stuff related to domains possessed by different sciences: antropology, psychology, linguistics, political science. most recently, I have looked into literature studies as I have been studying narratives. For some strange reason, this form of scientific discourse all of a sudden seems almost impenetrable. Sociology seemed like a natural, empirically oriented branch of philosophy. But man, try reading Bakhtin or Greimas! The whole argument structure seems to be encoded into some alien form.

What I have found interesting in Greimas is his theory of actants in narratives. I interpret them to be (note the cautious use of voice) kinds of structural role positions which are played by characters. They are not reducible to characters, however, as they are fundamental building blocks of the narrative structure, and sometimes one character may play many of them, change from one to another, and so on. Structural Semantics, Greimas’s locus classicus, contains what I regard one relatively lucid passage, Chapter X where he reflects upon actantial models. He builds his own actantial model based on a number of previous theories on archetypal characters in stories (for instance the Russian formalist Propp, whose work has been used by, for instance Lamberg et al to analyze decline and turnaround in Finnish paper companies, see here). He is even kind enough to draw a Figure (p. 207, image copied from http://www.hum.aau.dk/~scharfe/narratology/images/actant.gif).

is constructivism dangerous?

Saku 

Have been reading Paul Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge, a compelling and intelligent refutation of Social Constructivism. I regard myself as a social constructivist within my own domain of work, as many of the micro-organizational phenomena which I am interested in would seem to be epistemologically relative. Who would have the guts to argue that he/she knows what the culture of Organization X is, for instance. Joanna Martin, in her classic text Cultures in Organizations, shows how you can give multiple readings of the culture of a single firm, none of which is non-contestable. Boghossian, originally physics major, who used to sit in Rorty’s seminar, makes a powerful argument which is a pleasure to read (by the way, Boghossian has also written an illuminative essay on the Sokal controversy in the Times Literary Supplement, which can be accessed here).

Boghossian builds his general examination on what he calls the “principle of equal validity” (p. 2):

“[…] the idea that there are “many equally valid ways of knowing the world,” with science being just one of them, has taken very deep root […] I shall call it (as neutrally as possible) the doctrine of

Equal Validity:

There are many radically different, yet “equally valid” ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them”

Furthermore, epistemological constructivism has three (interrelated) forms (p. 22):

“Constructivism about Knowledge:

Constructivism about Facts: The world which we seek to understand and know about is not what it is independently of us and our social context; rather, all facts are socially constructed in a way that reflects our contingent needs and interests.

Constructivism about Justification:
Facts of the form – information E justifies belief B – are not what they are independently of us and our social context; rather, all such facts are constructed in a way that reflects our contingent needs and interests.

Constructivism about Rational Explanation: It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe solely on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence; our contingent needs and interests must also be invoked.”

Boghossian carefully builds arguments to refute all forms of constructivism. At the end of the book, he argues that while constructivism has been regarded as a source of social progression, as it allows voice for alternative, marginalized voices. He refutes this view by essentially claiming that “the truth shall set you free” (p. 130): if the powerful can’t criticize the oppressed, because the central epistemological categories are inexorably tied to particular perspectives, it also allows that the oppressed can’t criticize the powerful.”

In the final argument, I am reminded by Alvesson & Willmott’s (1992) paper in AMR, where they defend the possibility of emancipation in organization studies against poststructuralist critique. Indeed, it would appear that to be able to really defend the weak or the oppressed, the project for which many constructivists no doubt have sympathy for, we are in need of some (non-political) ontological bedrock.

What I wonder about Boghossian’s formulation, however, is whether he is actually setting up a straw man in his portrayal of constructivism. More precisely, how many of us who regard themselves to be constructivists, actually adopt the principle of “equal validity?” I would personally go for a sceptical solution (as in Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language) and argue that there is no non-social way of deciding between ways of knowing the world. This is not to say that the views are equally valid. I am willing to say in a positive sense that epistemic justification is socially conditioned (those of you who wish to find counterarguments for this, refer to Boghossian’s chapters 5-6). As I have not seen any non-social way of justifying beliefs, this is what I have to take for granted. However, to move from this (descriptive) belief into a normative belief about all ways of knowing being equally valid seems to me to ignore Hume’s guilliotine.

In our field, where managerial and scholarly language games are intrically intertwined (see Mauws & Phillips in Org Science, 1995), we constantly encounter striking examples of our conceptual schemas being driven by political interests. Nietzsche managed to sum up this relation between language and politics in a compelling manner:

“The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.” (Nietzsche, 1878/1996: 16.)

does CSR pay?

Saku 

Greetings from the land of Santa Claus again. Today, I’d like to return to my previous topic of reputation management and critically examine a dogmatic belief that underlies many academic and popular texts about corporate ethics. It goes something like this:

“It makes economic sense to pursue ethical goals because consumers reward ethical behavior over the long term.”

It would be comforting to believe this. However, I have found little evidence that this would be the case in any generic sense. I do believe that

1. Expressly non-ethical behavior can pose a severe reputation risk.

What I find problematic is the argument that it always pays to be perceived as more ethical or virtuous than your rivals. Would it not make sense to stay close to the ground, avoid misbehaving but not be the model student either? I do believe, however, that

2. There are contexts in which ethical leadership over competititors.

Some companies invest enormous sums of money in good deeds, as well as in good presentations to promote the public image of being a responsible company. Many pharmaceuticals companies, for instance, have invested large sums in various kinds of virtuous projects. A well-known example is provided by Merck & Company, which has played a major role in treating so-called “river blindness” caused by parasites in sub-Saharan Africa. River blindness is a painful ailment that often leads to permanent loss of vision. Merck & Company has distributed free of charge over 250 million treatments, each of which costs more than one euro (BBC News article “River blindness drug revives village life” 15 September 2002, here). The treatment was discovered by Dr. William Campbell, a veterinary researcher at Merck & Company who was studying parasite-inflicted illnesses in animals. The company developed the treatment in cooperation with the World Health Organization. Sub-Saharan Africa was and still is a poor region. After failing to receive funding from the US government and several other bodies, Merck & Company decided to donate the treatment to everyone in need of it for as long as the disease prevailed. The company has maintained its commitment for over 20 years. (www.merck.com) 

strategy and philosophical action theory, part IV. strategic plans and three gaps in rationality

Saku 

Strategies are often spoken of as if they were master intentions or objectives of large magnitude. At the intuitive level, strategies strike us like master plans, which guide the pattern of our most important decisions. A person’s goal of becoming a Ph.D. constitutes a large enough project to be called his or her strategy for becoming a Ph.D. In the context of rational agency, this person’s strategy should break down into a subset of intentional actions, one of them being, e.g.,  the writing of a chapter or finishing a Table.

Intentions, goals and the sort are associated with the general discussion on rationality in action theory. The discussion dates back to Socrates and his students, and involves the problematic relation between forming, having and carrying out intention in action – one of the key issues in this classic discussion is the question of akrasia, the weakness of will.

Interestingly enough, Searle argues in his book Rationality in Action (2001) that there is a fundamental gap in rational decision-making. Searle argues that the gap manifests itself in three distinct contexts. The first context is between the deliberative process and the decision itself, i.e. the thinking of goals and needs and the sort, and coming to a decision. The second manifestation is between the intention to carry out the decision and the action that takes place. The third and final manifestation of the gap is between individual intentions and their causes and is extended to carrying out patterns of action, such as writing a Ph.D. thesis (Table 1).

Table 1. Searle’s (2001) gap in rational agency

Context	Manifestation of the gap
The making of an individual decision	Between deliberation and decision
Once a decision has been made	Between intention and action
In the midst of a larger project	Between individual intention and action; and the pattern of action

 

Searle argues that the gap reflects a

“Feature of consciousness, that feature whereby our conscious experiences of making up our minds and our conscious experiences of acting (the exercise of the will, the conscious feeling of effort – these are all names for the same thing) are not experienced as having psychologically sufficient causal conditions that make them happen (ibid. 63).”

The link to strategy should be obvious here. The last manifestation of the gap illustrates in essence what strategy is all about – the forming of coherent patterns of individual actions, guided by meta-intentions. For me, this “gap” seems quite reassuring, actually. We, the scholars of organizations, may fret about not having a convincing account about causality in strategy work, that is, how we could show that specific sets of decisions or actions could be characterized as strategies in representing an intention of a specific kind. But, indeed, when you look closely enough, we cannot even show that causality in the context of a single individual, trying to get by and finish his or her PhD.

strategy and philosophical action theory, part III. responsibility and strategy implementation

Saku 

After many scholars of strategy have grown suspicious of the Chandlerian “structure follows strategy” -maxim, the question arises: how do we conceptualize a model of strategy implementation where implementers are not treated as mindless automatons or “resources” to be “allocated”. One promising concept, where such a model could be built is responsibility, which has been studied by philosophers of action as well as moral philosophers. The former are interested in the role of responsibility as a social glue, whereas the latter ones have built models of “responsibility ethics” to act alongside “rights ethics”.

So, let’s play for a while with the notion that the collective acceptance of responsibility might be a kind of a “performance variable” for successful strategy implementation. Say that we accept this. What would, then, be a definition of responsibility? I’m glad you asked.

Accountability, committed, capability

Responsibility is one of the social glues that enables social action through the creation of shared plans (Bratman, 1999). When we act together, we need to rely on others to succeed. For instance, a police officer requires her partners to ‘cover her back’ in covering dangerous distances. If an agreement exists between the two officers, either through explication or through convention, the police officer has to be able to regard her partner as capable (1) of responsible action for such an agreement to be meaningful. If the partner fails to cover the active officer’s back because of an attention lapse or something else, she is held responsible for failing to act as planned. Thet is, if her partner is in a dangerous situation, the covering policeman is accountable (2) through that responsibility. Furthermore, by agreeing, she has committed (3) herself to carrying out that activity. (Bratman, 1999).

Bovens (1999) has suggested that there are two types of responsibility. Passive responsibility is responsibility based on accountability and the potential for being blamed. Active responsibility is an internalized sense of duty towards some valued object. These two correspond to propertied (2) and (3) of the previous example.

It seems indeed, that the meaning of responsibility is not exhausted by Bovens’s dual account. To account for responsibility solely with external obligation and internal motivation, we would be disregarding situations in which agents were willing and obligated yet unable to carry out their responsibility as agreed. Again building on the case of two police officers, if the partner is overcome by a group of thugs and thus unable to protect her partner, she cannot be held accountable (responsible), nor can we question her commitment through her inaction.

References:

Bovens M., 1999, The quest for responsibility – accountability and citizenship in complex organizations, De Gruyter, Amsterdam.

Bratman M.E., 1999, Faces of intention: selected essays on intention and agency, Harvard University Press, Boston MA.

strategy and philosophical action theory, part II. on what kinds of actions there are

Saku 

What kinds of actions are there? This seems like a weird enough question, doesn’t it? Yet, G.H. von Wright, a student of Wittgenstein, as well as his successor in Cambridge, produced a surprisingly robust-looking typology of action in his Norm and Action. A logical enquiry (1963). The typology of action is built upon the notion that actions involve a tranformation in some state of affairs (p). My opening a window, for instance can be expressed as a transformation A(Saku opening the window): not-p(window not open) T p (window open). That is, my action is the transforming of a state of affairs from non-existence to existence.

Thus,  there are four kinds of actions:

not-p T p :Creating

p T  not-p: Destroying

p T p: Maintaining

not-p T not-p: Inhibiting.

This can be expressed as a four-cell matrix, which I am sure that all management scholars will just adore. I have added some examples from  strategy literature to enliven the model (Table 1).

strategy and philosophical action theory, part I. action, behavior, activity, practice

Saku 

Another snowy morning in Finland. I am afraid that Teppo’s encouraging comment about collective intentionality being an underutilized concept in org studies is about to open the floodgates for me. This is one area of scholarship which I regard as most interesting, yet it is very hard to build it into publishable form. As this forum seems to be one where I can meet people with good ideas and an interest in similar matters, I thought that I’d bounce a few reflections on the matters which I most love myself.

Instead of one long post, I’ll break the text into a series of individual reflections. In the the first of these reflections, I’ll take a look at the concepts: “action”, “activity”, “behavior” and “practice”.

Behavior: an objectivist view

In the behaviorist paradigm, popular in psychology in the first half of the 20^th century, behavior was regarded as observable and neutral to interpretive schemes. We may see a man walking down the street with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. We may videotape him doing so. As a group of independent observers watch the tape, they will confirm that there is a man walking down the street with a bouquet of flowers – at least within a general cultural context possessing the concepts of “street” and “bouquet of flowers”.In terms of individuals in organizations, we may observe a group of workers in assembling work increase or decrease the speed of the bodily movements as the illumination level in their work area is lowered or raised (as was the initial approach in the classical Hawthorne experiments). We may speak of the effect of illumination to the behavior of the individuals.

How about behavior in the organizational level of analysis? We may, for instance, observe the types of acquisitions an organization makes during a period of time. I think it would be suitable to say that we can only account for the behavior of an organization if we do not make interpretations about the intent guiding those actions. Indeed, this is what is often meant by strategic action: organizations behaving with a calculated intent of doing something. Yet, as Mintzberg (1978) has reminded us, the strategy (i.e. intent) is often discovered after engaging certain type of behavior (emergent strategy).

on how you can spot a positivist in a crowd

Saku 

I am happy report that we have seen a stable cover of snow in Helsinki, which is a big improvement on the gloomy November landscape. I have been working on a couple projects focusing on the philosophy of science of organization studies. This afternoon, I would like to share a reflection with you about positivism.

I used to be a positivist, you know.

As a master’s student majoring in theoretical philosophy, logical positivism and the Vienna Circle constituted a major love affair. Indeed, Rudolf Carnap’s Logische Aufbau der Welt is still one of my favorite classics. The discussion that took place within and on the borders of the Vienna Circle, the birthplace of logical positism and logical empiricism in between the two world wars may have been one of the most intense, and intellectually satisfying discourses that science has wittnessed.

There was also a sense of true nobility in the development of the Vienna Circle, as the discpline and logical rigor practiced by these scholars resulted them deconstructing and disbanding most of their philosophical program through intellectual critique. Many key notions such as verificationism, and phenomenalism were disbanded by the same group of people who created them. How many of us are able to say the same as scholars, that is, after gaining considerable success in building a theory or a model, to find flaws in our own argument or those of our closest collaborators, and go about disbanding what we have created on the basis of that critique?

So, while it may be surprising to hear this sentiment out of the mouth of the “capuccino-constructivist” that I am these days, I must admit the Vienna Circle still is one of my key intellectual idols. I even tried to find the Vienna University steps where Moritz Schlick, the founder of the circle was assasinated during last summer’s EGOS-conference (I did manage to see the functionalist building that Wittgenstein designed during a brief stint as an architect, though).

Is it OK to be a positivist these days?

As a teacher of philosophy of science for doctoral students, I am often asked if it’s OK for one to be a positivist these days, i.e., “I’m going to have a hypothesis-testing kind of a research design in my PhD and wonder if I should call myself a positivist or not.” While there of course is no clear-cut answer to this, there are some ways to go about to finding an answer.

One of the most outspoken proponent of the position that positivism indeed is a relevant and defendable position in Org Studies is Lex Donaldson. For instance, in a position paper published in Tsoukas & Knudsen’s The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory he writes a defense of positivism, naming his headings as ” 1.4.2 Functionalism is Valid”, “1.4.3 No Problematic Ontological Assumptions” and 1.4.4 Strong Hermenetics Not Required”. “1.4.1 Positivism is not Logical Positivism”, where he advocates a view that “sociological positivism” should be differentiated from the “logical positivism” practiced by the Vienna Circle. Frankly, I am not paid enough here to formulate an intellectual critique of the positions made in the paper – go read it yourselves. However, one thing I do find a valid argument is that, yes, indeed a line may be drawn between “sociological” and “logical” positivism.

“us” and “them” in strategic management

Saku 

Throughout my academic career, I have been a member of a community of scholars, who label themselves “Strategy-as-Practice” (it has also been called “activity perspective”, “micro-strategizing” and other things but this label seems to have stuck.) It all started when I stumbled into the EGOS conference as a fresh PhD student and noticed that among this group of people, I could pursue my interest in micro-sociological issues and philosophy and still do research on strategy (those interested in what strategy-as-practice, see www.strategy-as-practice.org, as well as here, here, here and here).

The S-as-P group meets at various conferences and meetings during the academic year. There is a PDW at the Academy next summer, a working group within the Strategic Management Society, and many other occasions. For me, a special event each year is the Annual EGOS conference, and its subtheme on S-as-P. Not only is EGOS a great conference – for me it is always the event where our org studies community celebrates the privileged position we are in, doing science for a living. The sub-theme is where my career as a scholar began.

This evening, I am faced with the daunting challenge and priviledge to start drafting the proposal for a the S-as-P theme for the year of 2009. I thought that maybe it would be fun to share some of my early ideas with you.

Individuals in strategic management

For me, the really fascinating thing about strategy work in organizations have been people: people at all levels of the organization. How they find roles in strategy processes (this was the topic of my PhD), how they formulate collective intent, or how they get included or excluded from strategy work (our forthcoming Org Sci paper). Organizations do not make or implement strategies, people do.

can you outsource reputation management?

Saku 

I’d like to thank Teppo for inviting me and the other owners of this arena for having me. I have been lurking around this blog every once in a while for some time now and am impressed with what you are doing.

When Teppo asked me to visit, my first reaction was: please, let me prepare. I am working on a million things right now and need to gather my wits to rise to the occasion. My second reaction was: wait a minute, I can use this exalted arena to vent out whatever ideas I am currently working with, maybe get some feedback or at least get the engine running each morning. Incidently, this morning is a rather solemn occasion: Columbine High School -type shooting took place yesterday in a Finnish high school (http://www.yle.fi/news/id74371.html) and everybody’s pretty shaken up, as this is extremely rare in our context. I wish I had something profound to say about this but maybe it’s best to leave this open to interpretation.

The topic I would like to discuss today reputation management, a topic which has been studied stateside for instance by such people as Charles Fombrun and Violina Rindova, and in Europe by Majken Schultz and others. I’d like to introduce a phenomenon which Pekka Aula, my co-author and I have been looking at lately, the outsourcing of reputation management by some firms.

Reputation building: doing good stuff

At the intuitive level, you create a good reputation by

1. Doing good stuff

2. Doing it to parties who are in a good network position to spread the word

3. Being communicative about the good that you do.

Charles J. Fombrun begins his book Reputation, which many consider the rallying call to managers regarding the importance of reputation:

“Do you recall the last time you hired a contractor to make improvements to your house or apartment? Or the last time you called on a travel agent for assistance in planning a trip? […] If you are like most people, you didn’t just pick their names out of a phone book. You probably went to them because they were recommended to you by a family member, friend or someone else you trust. If so, you hired them based on their reputation.” (Fombrun, 1996, p. 1)

Choosing hairdressers, dentists, carpenters, real estate agents and so on in our personal lives is a tangible example of, not just how reputation can be an asset to a business, also how it is built in a network. Herein lies one of the key messages of reputation management (I think): when building your reputation, do not try to communicate promises that you will not keep, either now or in the future. In a recent paper in Strategic Organization (5/1, 2007) Rindova, Petkova and Kotha build an inductive account of how new businesses build reputations in the media. They argue that firms build reputation on three kinds of action patterns:

• Symbolic actions
• Innovative actions
• Action level and composition

Read the Rindova et al. paper if you want to know these mean, and how the process or reputation building is mediated by stakeholder cognitions. My point is just that reputations are built fundamentally on actions, not in PR or marketing. Indeed, my coauthor Pekka Aula once noted that: “marketing increases reputation risk.”

Can you outsource the good stuff?