Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

involvement will be evaluated as being made or willing to be an accomplice of managerial
practices which preclude emancipation. CMS is a world of stark contrasts (Fleming
and Spicer, 2008): managers versus employees, the powerful versus the powerless,
the clever ones against the nitwits. It is as if within CMS existing hegemonial
structures are there and there forever. Also, organizational members are regarded
most and for all as a compliant species. From a CMS-perspective an organizational
reality is pictured as if organizational members passively adjust their mind-sets to
dominant organizational practices. Apparently fundamentally nothing changes; new
developments like HRM and participatory involvement lock people in instead of emancipating
them. To change their mind-sets towards their emancipation they are in need
of critical experts (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012).
Back to my project about dissent
If I look at my project from a CMS-perspective I easily could develop feelings of futility
and suspicion. First of all I would have to suppose that during the last one and a half
year I have been kept busy (including payment) by my principals with a subject they
already decided upon a long time before my project even started. Secondly I would
have to suppose that a lot of people invested time, thoughts and energy but are - including
myself – stupid enough not to see how we are locked into something which
from a CMS-perspective is against our objective, emancipatory interests. And if the
board-members would be the manipulators or the ingenious conspirators I even
would have to consider that my meetings with them and the meeting of them with
the members of the think-tank are brilliantly arranged performances of play.
If I would take this position of being manipulated I would have to doubt the intentions
of all involved or even have to imply that senior managers have unearthly competences
to manage other people. I seriously would have to fall back on a sovereignty-interpretation
of power, in which is suggested that power is some sort of natural and
exclusive possession of managers (Clegg et al., 2006; Homan, 2013). For the present I
restrict myself to conclude that CMS-scholars - despite their own intentions (Alvesson
and Willmott, 2012) – distrust managers rather deeply.
6.4 A paragrammatical perspective on the discussions
Is an organizational member a passive uncritical and compliant being? Are these
members only consumers instead of producers of an organizational reality? From a
CMS-perspective the consumer’s perspective is obvious. Actually CMS departs from a
classic essentialist perspective on power in which power belongs to someone and
which can be deployed. The managers (‘the bad guys’) have the power over employees
and employees need the power of the CMS-experts (‘the good guys’) to free themselves
(Homan, 2013).
6. A case of consent about dissent | 159