A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations

Citation

Beech, N. (2006), "A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations", Critical Perspectives on International Business, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 354-355. https://doi.org/10.1108/17422040610706668

Explaining the distinction between positivism (perceiving objective facts) and social constructionism (perceiving social facts) by invoking cricket's Leg‐before‐Wicket rule is just right for me. It may not be right for everyone, but most will be able to find a few gems in this book that are evocative and which capture the sense of grand theory in an accessible way.

The book is an introduction to the critical study of organisations and it is a deliberate alternative to the big heavy textbooks with many cases, bullet point summaries and overviews of Weber, which can be interpreted such that Weber was a Eurocrat Bureaucrat who loved red‐tape. In other words, books where the stylistic elements of book production aimed at enabling learning sometimes outweigh the thoughtfulness with which theory is expounded. Grey writes in an accessible style and is quite open about his own beliefs and the problems of representing organization studies as a coherent subject. Rather, we are presented with a perspective of a contested field that Grey is passionate about, and in which debate and critical thought, rather than conformity and learning by rote to pass OB exams, is the way forward. The accessibility here is not provided by easy to grasp heroic tales presented as case studies. Instead there is more of a direct relationship (or at least a movement in that direction) between author and reader. In explaining Foucault, for example, Grey uses Orwell's 1984 as a way in. When he discusses the differences between Taylor and Mayo he scripts out two imagined conversations between a parent and a child in which the parent is explaining what he/she does at work. The scripts are fairly biased against Taylor, but the point is made and is immediately understandable, whether you associate more with the parent or with the child. In a sense, what is being done here is to show that the big textbooks are heavy, but in the wrong way. We should be “heavy” in the issues and debates we are concerned with, but light in these debates. We should also risk taking it personally.

The book is structured to engage with many of the topic areas that one would expect: bureaucracy and scientific management, human relations theory, culture, post‐bureaucracy and change, and lastly the ways that organization are studied. The classics, such as Weber and Taylor are introduced and these are entwined with “classic” commentaries and related research, such as Braverman, Blau and Giddens. Key ideas are put forward in a discursive style and debates, such as structure‐agency are introduced. Similarly, in dealing with Culture and self‐management, Grey introduces the managerialist popularisation of culture as a manageable “thing”, the critical reaction of the 1980s and 1990s and progresses to a critique, based on Rose and Foucault, of culture as a way of engendering the self‐managing subject. Grey, though obviously critical, adopts a degree of balance when he also concludes that people being self‐driven is also advantageous, both for them and for the organisations that they work for. In exploring post‐bureaucratic approaches Grey takes the book solidly into critical studies. He explored the idea of “change as a treadmill” and scepticism. He closes with an examination of management (and organisation) education. He is critical of processes of replication of elites, for example through the MBA market place and of the pressures on business schools to replicate the “can do” culture of entrepreneurialism that pervades modern society.

Although the book is about the studying of organisations it is not a methods book in any sense. There is some initial set‐up that takes in some epistemological points, but other than this, methodology is not on the agenda. There are always difficult choices in writing books such as this and in order to maintain brevity various important topics have to be edited out. In this case, the methodological differentiations between realists and poststructuralists, between functionalists and labour process are not made in detail. As a result, the reader new to the subject may be left thinking that the different positions are “looking at the same thing”, and they will remain unaware of the different “ways of looking”. However, such issues are also frequently missing from the heavy text books Grey is reacting to and it would be churlish to be over‐critical in this regard.

One area that could be more balanced is Grey's critique of MBAs and business schools. They are represented as purveyors of capitalist inequity. No doubt there is a fair amount of that going on, but it is also worth noting that there is a fair amount of critical thinking going on too. Many MBAs might attempt to “brainwash” the learners, but not all do so. The problem with Grey's argument is that this sort of writing appears to be a totalising form of discourse, and that is something Grey himself would be critical of in other settings. In addition, there is the question of how best to encourage new learners and old lecturers to adopt alternative perspectives. Grey addresses this in rejecting the view that it would be preferable for business schools to “work themselves out of a job”, but he could go further in explicating his ideas for an alternative way of being.

This is a book that many will enjoy. Its great strength is that it successfully introduces a critical and pluralistic perspective on organisations to an audience who might otherwise be consuming managerialist pseudo‐functional texts. The book is also a challenge to the way that academics consume textbooks, and that is to be applauded.