Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

dow Mantere and Vaara’s interpretations. Cloaked in concepts as ‘wisdom of the
crowd’ (Surowiecki, 2004) and ‘co-creation’ (Wierdsma, 2005) at that time I hoped
that a lot of colleagues would grab the opportunity to participate. I expected that
public engagement would promote the identification of all involved with a new strategy
and thus also would promote an easy realization. Things turned out otherwise:
distrust and aloofness regarding management issues partly explained the lack of
participation (Schutte et al., 2009). Contrary to Mantere and Vaara and based on my
experiences in that project I doubt if dissent can be easily traded in for participation
and engagement. Apparently another perspective is needed.
The research of Mantere and Vaara illustrates what Stacey (2010) calls the new jargon
of management writers as they suggest that by definition participation creatively
produces good outcomes. However, contrary to the in my view rather naïf conclusions
of Mantere and Vaara, I would say that power is unavoidably present, also when a
strategy is developed in a micro-oriented or emergent way (Groot, 2007; Groot and
Homan, 2012).
Power & soft constraining: a panoptical perspective on encouraging dissent
From a leading critical perspective on organization and management studies the
research of Mantere and Vaara expresses what Aardema (2010) sees as a recent trend
in public administration: realizing the importance of soft, organic and incremental
organizational development. Aardema wonders whether these soft approaches are
wolves in sheep’s clothes.
According to the perspective of Critical Management Studies (CMS) no wondering is
needed. Within CMS it is argued that soft controls and soft managerial practices and
policies have supplanted hierarchical and bureaucratic control, but still can be characterized
as affirming managerial hegemony and exclusion. These practices lock people
in (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012). Many organizations have become soft bureaucracies
(Courpasson, 2000) or claim to be post-bureaucratic (Alvesson, 2013). Soft bureaucracies
are organizations in which centralization of policy is sustained by the coercive
force of so called external threats and ineluctable decisions, and stimulating competition
between people (e.g. performance appraisals, growing number of temporarily
assignments, project-based organization). Post-bureaucratic organizations claim to be
decentralized, flexible and non-hierarchical, operating on the basis of networking,
mutual adjustments and shared values. Clearly noticeable and face-to-face power
mechanism are replaced by soft technologies and combined with increasing control
and pressure on performances (Clegg et al., 2006). Control and power differences are
made more or less invisible by hiding them in external inevitabilities, HR-instruments,
inspiring visions and corporate values, and by declaring these instruments applicable
to every high- or low-ranked organization member (Courpasson and Thoenig, 2008;
Steffy and Grimes, 1992; Townley, 2005). They are labelled as transparency technologies
(Levay and Waks, 2009), needed in the exotic, multifaceted bazaars organizations
often are nowadays (Courpasson and Thoenig, 2008). Modern soft bureaucracies have
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