Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

zations became large and bureaucratic and started to be organized according to the
rational principles of division and mechanization of labour (Pieterson et al., 1987). To
assist in the development of these organizations became a profession on its own, in
due course discursively guided by quite some different theories of change.
Up till the 1960s rationalization and efficiency were dominating the discourse of the
advisers, but from the 1950s the human side of enterprise started to penetrate their
discourse. Theories of scientific management were superseded by theories of planned
change and group dynamics (Cozijnsen and Vrakking, 1995; Hellema and Marsman,
1997). In the aftermath of World War II up till the 1990s different approaches evolved
on how to develop organizational strategy and how to change the organization according
to the strategy. These approaches are a sample sheet for the perspectives with
which consultants set foot in organizations.
Roughly a difference is to be made between prescriptive and descriptive approaches
(Mintzberg et al., 1998). Prescriptive approaches are those which work in the belief
that an organization and its environment are to be analysed (for instance by SWOT’s
and scenarios) and are predictable. Change is supposed to be manageable or controllable
by a change agent (for instance CEO’s, professional managers, consultants).
These approaches were developed up till the 1980s. These approaches are, as illustrated
by the way the performance agreements are to be dealt with, still very influential
in the political and managerial discourse. Prescriptive approaches are rather formal
and technical approaches of organizations, management and change. Planned change
still has strong adherents (Cozijnsen, 2013).
Descriptive approaches started to enter the managerial discourse from the 1980s.
Within the descriptive approaches the concept of development in its many dimensions
is emphasized. Whether entrepreneurial, mental, conflictive, emergent, collective or
cyclic, common notion within these approaches is that strategy or change are not
consequences of planned interventions. Changes are presumed to be the outcome of
efforts of visionary leaders, processes of organizational learning and transformation,
power games or assimilation of environmental influences. A visit to any website for
selling management books immediately clarifies that the descriptive approaches still
are developing their full potential.
Currently a whole range of new practices are developed which encourage
breakthroughs in dominating paradigms in organizations. Whether for instance by
trying to deregulate the dominant language games (Feltman et al., 2010), to make a
provocative appeal to return to working-relations inspired by a Rhineland workingculture
(Weggeman, 2003), to plead for free space in organizations to take a chance to
deliberate mutually about relations and objectives (Kessels et al., 2007) or to plead for
free space through developing an idea for distributed (Kessels, 2012) or shared (Dijkstra
and Feld, 2012) leadership.
5. Drafting performance agreements: gestures of a contemporary jester | 129