Lisa A. Zanetti

Metatheorizing the Dialectic of Self and Other The Psychodynamics in Work Organizations

Western thought is imbued with thinking based on dichotomy and binary opposition. Embedded in this thinking, however, are not only oppositions but hierarchy. The existence of binaries suggests a struggle for predominance. One proposition must prevail, and the other must be vanquished. The fields of organization behavior and administrative theory reflect this form of rationality. The terms self and other have been cast as constituent elements of the human condition, but the presumption is that self must necessarily be privileged more than other. The authors disagree that such a privileging must occur. Instead, they contend that self and other are mutually constituted. The central focus of this article is an exploration of the self-other relationship that highlights its dialectic nature and, in so doing, provides a deeper appreciation of how these dynamics are manifested in work organizations as elements of trust, ethics, and mourning.

In Service of the Leviathan: Democracy, Ethics and the Potential for Administrative Evil in the New Public Management

Abstract In this paper, we argue that the practice of New Public Management (NPM) subverts democracy by undermining the social contract and substituting a market mentality with very different normative expectations. Like late modern Hobbesians, those who advocate NPM offer a vision of public service in which democratic politics and ethics become increasingly irrelevant. In this scenario, the market becomes the new leviathan, which we have no choice but to obey. The values of this sovereign-competition, exchange values, transaction costs, and survival of the fittest-have driven most remaining vestiges of democracy from the public square. Such an atmosphere leaves us disturbingly vulnerable to the practice of administrative evil.

Contemporary Pragmatism in Public Administration Exploring the Limitations of the “Third Productive Reply”

In this article, the authors present some of the limitations of contemporary pragmatism. Although the authors are sympathetic in many respects to the community-building aspirations of pragmatism, they also contend that in certain important respects—specifically with regard to process, experience, and imagination—contemporary pragmatism leaves some troubling gaps that limit or undermine its ability to address what they argue are important contemporary political problems.

Holding Contradictions: Marcuse and the Idea of Refusal

In this paper, the author considers the implications of refusal in the context of dialectic and depth psychology. What does it mean to refuse? What are the personal and psychological costs of refusal? Marcuse suggested that refusal could lead to greater possibilities for action. The author suggests that those in the field of public administration can participate in the “Great Refusal” by learning to think more dialectically, thus disabling the Western principle of non-contradiction and permitting the simultaneous acceptance of contradictions, in both theory and practice.

Exaggerating the Dialectic: Postmodernism’s “New Individualism” and the Detrimental Effects on Citizenship

AbstractThe notion of citizenship is an ancient concept of belonging to a particular community. In this paper we argue that postmodernism undermines the notion of citizenship in two primary ways. First, because postmodernism represents a social condition reflecting the crises of late capitalism, citizenship is undermined through reliance on market mechanisms. Citizenship is commodified; citizens become “consumers” and no longer feel any sense of obligation to, or reciprocity with, the polity. Second, because postmodernism also represents a particular philosophical position that denies the primacy of the subject, citizenship is undermined by the individual inability to form and sustain any kind of identity. Such a position effectively kills any meaningful concept of citizenship, since citizenship is fundamentally about one’s identification as a member of a chosen community. We conclude with. the observation that citizenship must be viewed with an understanding of the dialectical relationships between force...

Repositioning the Ethical Imperative: Critical Theory Recht, and Tempered Radicals in Public Service

This article explores the dimensions of an ethical framework for administrators based on the philosophical premises of critical theory. The goal of critical theory is to view the world dialectically and have a practical intent—to participate in revealing the socially constructed nature of the world, to help affirm that reified social constructs are not immutable, and then to work to transform society as the expression of an emancipatory vision. An important component of this view is the refusal to be bound by Recht, the system of law constructed by the status quo to serve dominant interests. The author examines the critical theories of Horkheimer, Habermas, Benhabib and the ethical theory of Margaret Urban Walker to begin construction of a critical-ethical guideline for administrators and introduces the idea of critical theory-based practitioners as “tempered radicals.”

Leaving our fathers’ house

What does it mean to leave one’s father’s house? Archetypally, the father’s house represents the dominant content of a culture’s collective consciousness, as well as dominance in the form of tyranny and fear. There is little question that contemporary organizations remain edifices constructed in the image of the father’s house. This article is about articulating barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts, drawing on psychoanalytic theory and personal experience to explore some of the social and psychological structures that contribute to the repression of feminine attributes.

Response to Stever and Garrison

In read ing Gar ri son’s (2000 [this issue]) response to our arti cle, it occurs to us that the core of his argu ment relates to a prag ma tist con cep tion of truth. In con struct ing our response, then, we refer back to Max Horkheimer’s (1935/1993) essay, “On the Prob lem of Truth,” a foun da tional explo ra tion of the crit i cal the o rist’s approach to truth. Both prag ma tists and crit i cal the o rists very likely agree that the thing called abso lute truth does not exist. In this sense, both take a posi tion of being rela tiv ists, con tend ing that a truth claim can not be exam ined inde pend ent and out side of itself. This said, nei ther group takes the extreme rel a tiv ist posi tion as claimed by some postmodernists, namely, that there is no such thing as truth. In tak ing this extreme view, one is left with a fun da men tal philo soph i cal conun drum: If there is no such thing as truth and objec tive knowl edge of real ity that is inde pend ent of the knower, then does not that state ment in itself con sti tute truth (see Carr, in press)? Thus, both prag ma tists and crit i cal the o rists need to pro vide an answer to the shadow that is cast by tak ing a rel a tiv ist stance. The answers that are given by both groups are very dif fer ent and have very dif fer ent con se quences.