Carl Rhodes

Narrative, organizations and research

Given the rapid expansion of narrative approaches in management and organization theory in recent years, this paper investigates the contribution of this literature to the understanding of organizations and processes of organizing. The paper tells the story of the development of narrative approaches in organizational theory. Narratives contribution to substantive areas of organization theory is evaluated. These developments are then reviewed in relation to an ongoing tension between story and science. We conclude by contemplating some of the criticisms, and the future, of narrative research.

Learning/Becoming/Organizing

In this paper we rethink and reframe organizational learning in terms of organizational becoming. We see these concepts as two mutually implicating ways of exploring and simultaneously constituting the phenomena of organization. Bearing in mind that the understanding of organization is simultaneously a question of the organization of understanding, we reflect on the complex interrelation between thinking and organizing. In order to connect the processes of learning and becoming, we consider the concept of organization as space in between order and chaos. We propose a perspective that sees learning not as something that is done to organizations, or as something that an organization does; rather, learning and organizing are seen as mutually constitutive and unstable, yet pragmatic, constructs that might enable a dynamic appreciation of organizational life. Further, we argue that the becoming that is in organizing implies a permanent non-rational movement such that organization can never be rationally defined.

Business ethics as practice

In this article we develop a conceptualization of business ethics as practice. Starting from the view that the ethics that organizations display in practice will have been forged through an ongoing process of debate and contestation over moral choices, we examine ethics in relation to the ambiguous, unpredictable, and subjective contexts of managerial action. Furthermore, we examine how discursively constituted practice relates to managerial subjectivity and the possibilities of managers being moral agents. The article concludes by discussing how the ‘ethics as practice’ approach that we expound provides theoretical resources for studying the different ways that ethics manifest themselves in organizations as well as providing a practical application of ethics in organizations that goes beyond moralistic and legalistic approaches.

Reconstructing the lifelong learner: Pedagogy and identity in individual, organisational and social change

This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate that personal change is bound to broadenorganisational and social change. The authors investigate the implications of theorising education as a means of self-change for educational practice. Case studies focus on self-help books, work-based learning, corporate culture training, HIV/AIDS education, gender education, and sex offender education. The authors conclude with a study of how the experience of writing an academic text has contributed to their own identities.

Desperately Seeking Legitimacy: Organizational Identity and Emerging Industries

In this article we examine the process of organizational identity formation in emerging industries. We argue that organizational identity is best understood in terms of the relationship between temporal difference (i.e. the performance of a stable identity over time) and spatial difference (i.e. by locating organizational identity in relation to other firms, both similar and different). It is the relationship between these two forms of difference that enables the construction of a legitimate sense of organizational identity. Our discussion is illustrated using empirical material from a study of the emerging industry of business coaching in Australia.

Writing Responsibly: Narrative Fiction and Organization Studies:

In this paper, we reflect on the use of fictional source material and fictional formats in organization studies in order to explore issues of responsibility in the writing of research. We start by examining how research using fictional narrative methods has worked to radically destabilize distinctions between what is real and what is fictional. In relation to this, we ask the question: if a research account can be regarded as fiction, what are the implications of this insight for the responsibilities of authors? Opposing the view that using fiction necessarily leads to an ‘anything goes’ relativism, we argue that a recognition of the fictionality of research texts implies a heightened sense of researcher-author responsibility. We see our main contribution as extending existing discussions of reflexivity in research into a consideration of issues of ethics and responsibility as it relates to the textuality of research writing. To do so, we draw on Derrida’s theorization of responsibility and undecidability as a way of problematizing and discussing the ethics of research in relation to its textuality. We argue that the explicit borrowing from fictional genres evinces the essentially ‘written’ and fictional status of research papers, and highlights the ethical dimensions associated with decisions related to representational strategies and authorial subjectivity.

Noise, Parasites and Translation

Conventional representations of consulting stress the need to predict possible organizational realities associated with improved economic performance. It is conceptualized as a useful tool from which practice might profit if applied properly. In this article we explore theory as a means by which practice may not so much be honed by wellcrafted advice as interrupted and transformed. Further, we propose a parasitical role for the management consultant as a source of ‘noise’ that disrupts established ways of doing and being by introducing interruptive action into the space between organizational order and chaos. What consulting can do is open up these spaces and create concepts that encourage new possible realities and real possibilities. The relation posited between organization theory and practice has the potential to create new forms of situated organization/organizing through disrupting established practice rather than by creating order. Consultants willing to take the risk of working in the productive space between organization and disorganization have a potential that questions the usual auspices of the enterprise.

Writing organization : (Re)presentation and control in narratives at work

Carl Rhodes examines the implicit power of writing and authorship that is at play when people and organisations are (re)presented in research. To explore this, the book reports a research project in the area of organisational storytelling that investigates how people in one organisation used stories to (re)present their own learning experiences from the implementation of a quality management program. This research is written in three principal genres: autobiography, ethnography and a fictional short story. These (re)presentational strategies are reviewed to examine how different genres effect authority in different ways. Drawing extensively on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on writers associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism, the book offers a challenging discussion of what organisational research might be when the notion of the equivalence of reality and representation is radically questioned.

Writing Organization as Gendered Practice: Interrupting the Libidinal Economy:

While gender very much holds a place in organization studies, this is primarily in relation to being an object of study. Still largely silent and inexplicit is the gendered nature of what organization studies researchers themselves do when they research and write. Our overarching project in this essai is to render the gendered character of organization studies writing open for discussion, to disturb the taken-for-granted gender neutrality of the ways that organization studies is written, as well as to outline how it might be otherwise. The specific contribution we are led to is the setting out of the possibilities for, following Hélène Cixous, a bisexual writing of organization studies. We suggest that organization studies has been dominated by a participation in what Cixous calls a ‘masculine libidinal economy’. This is a system of exchange where science, mastery and rigour are not so much an effort in inquiry, but more a form of (rough) trade through which to appease the fear of castration; the fear of not-knowing. In looking for alternatives we review recent developments in narrative methodology in organization studies and extend this through the idea of the feminine libidinal economy and towards a consideration of Cixous’s practice of bisexual writing – a writing that challenges masculine orthodoxy by confusing it rather than attempting to replace it with another (feminine) orthodoxy.

Corporeal ethics and the politics of resistance in organizations

This article offers an understanding of organizational ethics as embodied and pre-reflective in origin and socio-political in practice. We explore ethics as being founded in openness and generosity towards the other, and consider the organizational implications of a ‘corporeal ethics’ grounded in the body before the mind. Shifting focus away from how managers might rationally pursue organizational ethics, we elaborate on how corporeal ethics can manifest in practical and political acts that seek to defy the negation of alterity within organizations. This leads us to consider how people’s conduct in organizations might be ethically informed in the context of, and in resistance to, the dominating organizational power relations in which they find themselves. Such an ethics manifests in resisting those forms of organizing that close down difference and enact oppression; a practice we refer to as an ethico-politics of resistance.