Organization Theory: Genealogy and Neglected Themes

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Organization Theory  Genealogy and Neglected
Themes
STEWART R CLEGG
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OverviewTheories lost in action

• Reading Max Weber
• Translations from America
• Situating Weber
• Weber is not a classical management theorist
• Webers obscurity
• Webers theory
• Rationality
• The will to power
• Webers domination and Parsons authority
• Domination and organization
• The discipline of organization

• The absent Erving Goffman
• Situating Goffman
• Total institutions
• Authority at work
• The absent Zygmunt Bauman
• Total institutions and genocide
• Organizational efficiencies
• Gender and total institutions
• The Stolen Generation
• The German Democratic Republic
• Abu Ghraib

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Max Weber
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Reading Weber

• The importance of Talcott Parsons
• Defining terms
• Weber is not a classical management theorist
• Kantian Hegelian auspices, rather than
  Utilitarianism
• Webers obscurity
• Webers theories of rationality
• Webers domination Parsons authority
• Domination and organization
• Thomas a Beckett as an example
• Discipline organization

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Discussion issues

• What was Webers impact on the emerging
  organization theory in the 1950s and why and in
  what ways was it limited?
• Taylor, Follett, Mayo, Weber do we need to be
  bothered with these classical figures? If so,
  why?
• Why did Weber not figure in the emerging
  organization theory consensus about power from
  the 1950s onwards?

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Erving Goffman

• The neglected importance of Asylums
• Total institutions
• Identity management

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Goffman and Foucault similar themes?

• Psychological experiments
• Milgram
• Zimbardo

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Zygmunt Bauman
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The Holocaust
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Theorizing the Holocaust, organizationally

• The Holocaust as an example of bureaucratic
  rationality
• The roots of evil
• The Final Solution
• Identity and Power
• Expert knowledge
• Efficiencies
• An open system
• Resisting the Final Solution
• Organization overcoming humanity
• Barbarism and modern organization

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More total institutions

• Gendering the gaze
• Comparing Foucault and Goffman on surveillance
• The Magdalene Laundries

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Race and totalization

• The Rabbit-Proof Fence

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Totalizing a society The GDR

• The Berlin Wall

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An illegal and immoral war, betrayed by images
that reveal our racism
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Twenty ways to construct total institutional
power relations
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Discussion issues

• What, if any, are the sounds of silence that a
  society such as Mexico has to confront in
  relation to the organization of its nation
  building past?
• Are total institutions merely a part of an
  unenlightened history that we have progressively
  transcended?
• Why are the twenty rules important for all
  managers to be aware of?