This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Clegg, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Weber and Foucault: Social Theory for the Study of Organizations

University of Western Sydney, Macarthur (UWSM)

Weber, credited with having founded organization theory, did so inadvertently, as the study of the ideal type of bureaucracy. A contrary interpretation suggests organization analysis would be a branch of cultural studies with the analysis of values at its core.

The contemporary theorist who has come nearest to carrying out a Weberian project with respect to the analysis of organizations, without acknowledging that this was so, was Foucault. Foucault's imputed foundations for the analysis of organizations bring into effect two liberations from the Weberian legacy. The first liberation is from analysis of organizations principally as structure, the predominant interpretation of Weber in the literature. The second liberation is not to lapse into the obverse of the structuralist view, a perspective that seeks to interpret individuals through the practice of verstehende. Structural analysis has no truck with individuals and their subjectivity, unless these become privileged by being embedded in strategically powerful representations in the organization. By contrast, analyses that function principally at the level of interpreting the putative motives, intentions and other attributes of subjectivity that, supposedly, are recoverable from an interpretative understanding of the individuals that compose organizations, rarely grasps the means and forms whereby some subjective representations become strategically sovereign. While the former offers an overstructuralized account of organizations, the latter offers-one that is understructuralized. In the former, individuals are regarded as bearers of a structural rationality worked out by impersonal forces of size or efficiency, while in the latter individuals are conceived of as subjectivities abstracted from structure.

More appropriately, analysis should focus on how it is possible that certain structures of subjectivity and modes of what passes for rationality get constituted. At the core of this analysis are a post-Foucauldian, post- interpretative and post-structuralist account of power. Central to this are the analytically paradoxical interconnections of values, power, rules and discretion. Certain forms of organization structure seek to fix these in specific fields of force through contractualizing and otherwise freezing specific relations of meaning. Structure, in this sense, does not concern the scalar and other properties of bureaucracy that Weber identified so much as the forms of organization design that creative and dominant imagination envisages and concretizes.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				M. Kornberger and A. D. Brown `Ethics' as a discursive resource for identity work Human Relations, March 1, 2007; 60(3): 497 - 518. [Abstract] [PDF]

				D. K. Mumby "Nomadic Theorizing with a Power Compass": Clegg, Interstitiality, and Critical Organizational Communication Studies Management Communication Quarterly, August 1, 2004; 18(1): 115 - 128. [PDF]

				J. Kallinikos The Social Foundations of the Bureaucratic Order Organization, January 1, 2004; 11(1): 13 - 36. [Abstract] [PDF]

				E. Bell and S. Taylor The Elevation of Work: Pastoral Power and the New Age Work Ethic Organization, May 1, 2003; 10(2): 329 - 349. [Abstract] [PDF]

				C. Carter, A. McKinlay, and M. Rowlinson Introduction: Foucault, Management and History Organization, November 1, 2002; 9(4): 515 - 526. [PDF]

				D. Knights and D. McCabe `A Different World': Shifting Masculinities in the Transition to Call Centres Organization, November 1, 2001; 8(4): 619 - 645. [Abstract] [PDF]

				T. May From Banana Time to Just-in-Time: Power and Resistance at Work Sociology, November 1, 1999; 33(4): 767 - 783. [Abstract] [PDF]

				A. Kieser From Freemasons to Industrious Patriots. Organizing and Disciplining in 18th Century Germany Organization Studies, January 1, 1998; 19(1): 47 - 71. [Abstract]

				P. Simpson The Place of Faith in Management Learning Management Learning, December 1, 1997; 28(4): 409 - 422. [Abstract]

				H. Willmott Rethinking Management and Managerial Work: Capitalism, Control, and Subjectivity Human Relations, November 1, 1997; 50(11): 1329 - 1359. [Abstract] [PDF]

				P. Hodgkinson The Sociology of Corruption - Some Themes and Issues Sociology, February 1, 1997; 31(1): 17 - 35. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. I. Reed In Praise of Duality and Dualism: Rethinking Agency and Structure in Organizational Analysis Organization Studies, January 1, 1997; 18(1): 21 - 42. [Abstract] [PDF]

				R. ten Bos Essai: Business Ethics and Bauman Ethics Organization Studies, January 1, 1997; 18(6): 997 - 1014. [Abstract] [PDF]

				X. Leflaive Organizations as Structures of Domination Organization Studies, January 1, 1996; 17(1): 23 - 47. [Abstract] [PDF]