Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

To contribute to emancipatory transformation the research programme of CMS
emphasizes a critical analysis of management practices. A research agenda is
conceived to develop a non-objective view of management techniques and organizational
processes, to expose asymmetrical power relations, to counteract
discursive closure, revealing the partiality of shared interests and to appreciate the
centrality of language and communicative action (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992).
Three main subjects catch the eye: the central importance of language and communication,
the role of power and ideology, and an emancipatory intention towards
those whose lives are directly affected by the activities and ideologies of management.
CMS connects itself to scientific practices which aim at disruption of existing
social practices and providing impulses for liberation from or resistance to
constraints in decision making (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000). Three distinguishing
characteristics of CMS become acknowledged: de-naturalization, anti-performativity
and reflexivity (Alvesson et al., 2009a; Grey and Willmott, 2005; Parker,
2005). ‘De-naturalization’ implies a critical stance against what is presented and/
or taken for granted as being the natural order of things. Criticizing the difference
in payment of managers and employees as if this difference is an unavoidable
outcome of a difference in the burden of responsibilities, clarifies what is meant
by de-naturalization. ‘Anti-performativity’ is connected to a criticism of the
dominance of instrumental reasoning, as if human actions should and could be
managed from a means-ends perspective. Ethical and political issues are at
stake, although often embezzled in a functionalist approach of for instance
corporate identity programmes (Thomas, 2009). ‘Reflexivity’ or reflexive CMS is
to recognize that no organizational or managerial practice is neutral or universal
but that always values are implied which guide so called facts and representations.
Interrogating assumptions and routines is mandatory.
Given the wide range of CMS research from a critical analysis of Human Resource
Management-techniques like self-management (Barker, 2005) and performance
appraisal (Townley, 2005), to accounting and operational research (Alvesson
and Willmott, 2012; Mingers, 1992; Power and Laughlin, 1992) one can speak
of a critical turn within OMS.
Textbox 5: A complexity turn?
At the risk of a self-referential legitimating of a complex responsive process-approach
- a complexity turn to legitimate an approach which relies on complexity
sciences - I sketch some of the backgrounds of why the interest within social
sciences or OMS for a complexity perspective is growing. Given the rather recent
character of this growing interest to introduce complexity in social sciences
(KNAW, 2011) it remains to be seen if one can speak of a complexity turn. For
instance it took Zuijderhoudt (2007) twenty years to develop the concept of
synergy, through which as a consultant he was able to understand and stimulate
a surplus of efficiency, which emerges out of organizational bifurcations.
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