The Consequences of Pluralism According to Pfeffer's View - Essay Example

 The world may not yet be ready for Van Maanen and his colleague Weick. Pfeffer may not be ready either, but then the effort he has put forth in his paper is modest enough; hardly meant to be world shaking. I don't believe that Van Maanen is justified in his ironic attempt to blow Pfeffer, as from a cannon, out of the field of the science of organization. Van Maanen's paper seems to me to be, with its reference to the "Pfefferdigm," autocratic and condescending. It is not that Van Maanen hasn't a great deal that is important to say. He does, and it is in the spirit of the great critical theorists including Weber and Habermas, for Van Maanen after his own fashion replicates Habermas' distinction between lifeworld and system, wanting to bring back into the realm of organizational research the spontaneity of a less structured, more richly layered, eclectic and esoteric discourse than is practiced by organizational theorists and planners. But are the idealized, somewhat poetic approaches of Weick already possible in a world that is still less than the best of all possible worlds? It is not that what Van Maanen proposes, a more fluid paradigm at least, and no paradigm at all at most, is not already a possibility, but it is likely that making it the coin of the realm in organizational research will take some time and doing. Would Pfeffer object to developing a Weickian free-form dialogue in order to enhance, say, the research paradigm of organizational science? Does his outline, much more descriptive than it is prescriptive - serve to shield the methodology, the technical understanding of the science's first principles and its particular brand of cause and effect - from becoming more enlightened? Is he out to make sure that organizational science will never be a a universal cosmology? No. About such things his essay is circumspect and circumscribed: In particular, I explore the dual effects of the value placed on theoretical and methodological diversity and participation. As in other contexts, there are trade-offs involved; this is not to say that the trade-offs should be made in one way rather than another, but that researchers should be conscious of them and their long-run implications for the field (Pfeffer 600); And Their...(Burrell and Morgan's) prescription is, in fact, a strategy for achieving plurality and diversity in organizational analysis, a guard against "dominant orthodoxies swamping promising heterodoxies and stunting the growth of innovative theoretical development."...Proponents of functionalism, postmodernism, critical theory, realism and many other theoretical approaches today contend vigorously in the study of organizations. Whatever else one might think of this state of affairs (my italics), it is, by definition (my italics) a state that signifies a field that is fragmented and that does not share the consensus characterizing more paradigmatically developed disciplines. (Pfeffer 608) That is to say, in the scope of this particular essay of Pfeffer's, that "this state of affairs" is virtually tautological with a "field that is fragmented." It may be that elsewhere Pfeffer has written that paradigms should be limited and constricted, but has he? His present paper is more a survey of what happens in an already-given context where there is not adequately orthodox paradigm development. And so it is in this case, that yes, he rejects diffusion of established prototypical paradigm requirements (Van Maanen would say stereotypical), as he might reject an out of place metaphysics. Again, his aim is modest; he, in this essay, merely describes the desirability of consensus, of a gathering of strength afforded by a continuous and positive feedback loop, that will in fact give such of the softer disciplines as sociology and organizational science, not rigor mortis, but more freedom - more freedom within the accepted sciento-social sphere, and, one suspects, within 'civilized bounds,' more freedom beyond it. For organizational science, the kind of freedom to expand, reach out, realize itself as an aging upstart making its way down the path to renaissance even under a stodgily normative paradigm - if only that paradigm was a finished product. A science that has already and that will now or as quickly as possible make greater substantive contributions to the world and to the organizations and institutions it seeks to understand, and one that may soon even risk the kind of cross-cultural fertilization that any fully developed normative paradigmatics should seek. This is indeed a multi-edged sword. For example it is Van Maanen who more earnestly seeks the intellectual liberty that could be the ornament of a truly transcendent paradigmatic - or of no paradigmatic at all. He might also do well to point out directly that Pfeffer does not make clear that pluralism may not be as damaging to the sciences themselves as it is to their paradigms, which for Van Maanen are mere emblems and for Pfeffer, (Van Maanen claims), are the best and most substantive guarantors of authentic progress. On the other hand, Pfeffer was not writing for Van Maanen. He did not have the facile freedom to criticize a completed and therefore defenseless corpus, but was simply striking out on his own. Yes, he was declaring a manifesto, but it was not intended as a clericalism of new or received knowledge and wisdom on behalf of self-bestowing of personal and professional authority that Van Maanen claimed it was. It may be that Pfeffer was hoping for such an epiphenomenon, but the fact is that his essay began modestly as an acknowledgment that the issue of paradigms in science is an old issue, and that he was here to contribute to it in his own conservative way, that is, along guidelines and mileposts that had already been established. For his essay, this particular essay, it is simple. If such disciplines as sociology and organizational science are to take their places in the canon that is given, they must first, at least strategically, play by the rules, pay the dues, get their wings, recognize "the trade-offs and processes involved in scientific progress (which seem) to be a necessary first step for thinking (my italics) about the dilemmas that are implicit (my italics) in the sociology of science literature." Does he then really go on to make a fatuous claim that if these dues are paid, that organizational science will then become omniscient along with its newly polished normative paradigm? Does he pontificate in learned technical terms about, or even describe, especially in terms of their value, the actual, scientific first principles that are the foundations of the disciplines themselves, except to point out that some, and sometimes rightly so, have a long, distinguished, and scientifically established history? Is he out to remake organizational science and academe or simply to give them more power to establish their authority and go on from there? Is pluralism a danger in such more subjectively and particularistically oriented disciplines like sociology and organizational science and their teaching institutions? Well yes!, for Pfeffer, if the problem of focus is the "sociology of science literature." No!, for Van Maanen, who is more concerned in promoting a liberalizing activism, on behalf of the progress, of organizational science itself. Surely the challenge Van Maanen poses to Pfeffer can go round and round forever, but only if given leave to sprout branches that will allow the question of whether or not it is the case that if pluralism scares away the journals, the money, and the cooperativeness within the enterprise, that the goals of the science as it is now constituted will be retarded. And that is what Pfeffer is more concerned about than Van Maanen. Surely if the Soviet Union's command economy had had a more organized, objective paradigm, been less particularistically affected by the quarreling men at the top who did not even have a design for interpretation of data from subordinates in the field, the experiment, for better or worse, might have been more successful. Pfeffer shows this kind of concern when he decries the plurality that results in disjointedness. For Van Maanen the problem of academic chutzpah in the universities of the science of organization is attributable to the hubris of an infernal political-scientific paradigm and its complacent, jaded practitioners. Pfeffer is not - here - overly concerned with whether or not anyone or anything is too self-important, but only whether the particular soil of a particular academic organism that already exists, can accommodate and enrich it. Both Pfeffer and Van Maanen are correct in their own ways, but Pfeffer makes the greater contemporaraneous point, while Van Maanen seeks to correct, to remedy, a present he doesn't like. While he appreciates diversity, and by extension, it seems to me, plurality itself, Pfeffer insists that it can only be useful within consensus, and that there is an inherent tension, an only-to-be-expected conflict between the accepted and the new, between the elite and the upstart, the technocrat and the visionary, that makes the paradigm of organizational science insecure and off-putting. And so Pfeffer embarks on a modest project: to test the current paradigm against a sub-set of reality to see how it is doing. He sets the paradigm, the model of the paradigm he has devised along already recognized lines and a host of similar, though perhaps less comprehensive, inquiries, to find out how effective it is. He justly finds that the answer to the question 'What are the causes of the 'fragmentation' of the business and management discipline?' is - pluralism! A pluralism of ideas, a plethora of personalities, promissory notes due, too many opinions, more diversity than unity, unresponsive journals, uneven course offerings, disagreement on the meanings of basic terms and even epistemological quarrels. It could not otherwise be than that, for "if the fundamental nature of the subject" (Pfeffer 599) is not something like mathematics, physics, biology, or even economics, it will be correspondingly difficult to establish at least a few of its first principles, and the struggle to make it a science must at first lead to a debate on fundamentals. And when this is resolved, in a discipline such as organizational science, (a term, I think, which in any case must raise doubt among the laity because it doesn't sound like a science), a great deal of intellectual negotiating must follow in order to come to a consensus over the many things about which consensus must be achieved. There will be representativeness and a lack of the kind of 'technological certainty' that is needed to ensure that there is a wide agreement on the connnections between actions and their consequences..or in this case, agreement that certain methods, certain sequences and programs of study, and certain research questions will advance training and knowledge in the given field. (Pfeffer ). To repeat, what are the causes of the 'fragmentation' of the business and management disciplines? Further, is Pfeffer right that the consequences of pluralism are negative? If there is pluralism there will be fragmentation and if there is fragmentation, i.e fragmentation of unity, of technological certainty, of methodology and program; un-replicable results, disagreement on the design of experiments, it is reasonable to assume there is pluralism. It is a reciprocal causation, a meddlesome circle. Indeed it might be said that pluralism and fragmentation are correlates of one another. And thus I will also agree with Pfeffer's view that the consequences of pluralism are negative. With regard to organizational studies departments they impact negatively on confidence, certainty and reputation in all the areas where confidence, certainty and reputation are - at least today - necessary conditions for acceptance as, if not a hard science, at least a soft one with a defined shape, a certain amount of attitude, clear evidence of scope and intention, a developing intuitionism, the occasional crusty professor, and an exclusive piece of the parking lot at the university. That said, I am not here to bury Van Maanen, but to praise him. It is a shame that he used his fine piece not to simply espouse his views, but to express them within the frame of a criticism of another writer. For Van Maanen it may well turn out someday that there will be more of a Joycean 'Ulysses' context in which differance, or meditation, or existentialism, will be among the reigning hermeneutics, even in the science of organization. Marx similarly wanted to do away with theological universalism and Sartre makes existence prior to essence. There is a whole literature that is dismissive of the universal in favor of the particular. Van Maanen discusses what he calls the allegorical breach in language and writing practiced by Weick. Van Maanen shows well how Weick is able to practice this with authenticity and authentic results, He shows Weick's restraint, power, and intellectual conclusiveness, through being autobiographical and essayist, by intuiting counter-intuitive proposals and ideas that hit below and prior to the kind of stilted prose and outlook that Van Maanen thinks constitutes much of paradigm-bound academic writing and achievement. There is need for this now, in Pfeffer's universe, in courts of law; in corporations; in halls of government, and in business and management. Where goeth the muse humanity must follow. Freud fought for decades to achieve respectability. Jung had to explain that his ideas, seemingly strange at first, were destined to be a prioris of psychoanalysis. Joyce had to remonstrate in court to have 'Ulysses' published in America. Academic popeism, contrary to Van Maanen but ultimately in his favor, may help to provide a golden chain by which new - entirely new - paradigms, may be reached, without sacrificing the linking gradualism that is needed to avoid lacunae that might later weaken them. They may even leap the last link. They may even be so free as to not even be called - paradigms. References Pfeffer, J., 1993 'Barriers to the Advance of Organizational Science: Paradigm Development as a Dependent Variable, Academy of Management Review, vol 18, No. 4, 599-620 Van Maanen, J., 'Style as Theory,' Organizational Science, vol. 6, No. 1, 133-143. Read More