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The Unmasking of the Other 68 ROUVEN ERNST HAGEMEIJER Do We Truly Understand the Nature of That, Which Is Foreign, Exclu

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The Unmasking of the Other 68 ROUVEN ERNST HAGEMEIJER Do We Truly Understand the Nature of That, Which Is Foreign, Exclu Erim - 05 omslag Hagemeijer 8/24/05 2:50 PM Pagina 1 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Erasmus University Digital Repository Design: B&T Ontwerp en advies www.b-en-t.nl Print: Haveka www.haveka.nl The Unmasking of the Other 68 ROUVEN ERNST HAGEMEIJER Do we truly understand the nature of that, which is foreign, exclu- ded and new? Do we truly understand the nature of the Other? Con- ROUVEN ERNST HAGEMEIJER temporary thinking in the field of Organisation Theory has spent a considerable amount of academic time and space on the issue of Otherness. It sees the Other as a victim of organisational exclusion or The Unmasking repression and therefore in need of liberation and emancipation. In addition, said liberation is seen as an ethically just act: it is, quite of the Other simply, the right thing to do. This book seeks to provide an answer to the following two questions: are we capable of conceptualising the Other as Other? Is it truly humane to pursue the emancipation of the Other? To this end, it provides an in-depth look at the work of The Unmasking of the Other French philosopher Michel Serres, who has written about these topics at length. However, to truly comprehend the notion of Otherness, one needs to undergo an epistemological transformation, for it is not a matter of vision but one of noise instead. The time has come to open our ears. Be careful, though: you may not like what you hear… ERIM The Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) is the Research School (Onderzoekschool) in the field of management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The founding participants of ERIM are RSM Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics. ERIM was founded in 1999 and is officially accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The research undertaken by ERIM is focussed on the management of the firm in its environment, its intra- and inter-firm relations, and its business processes in their interdependent connections. The objective of ERIM is to carry out first rate research in manage- ment, and to offer an advanced graduate program in Research in Management. Within ERIM, over two hundred senior researchers and Ph.D. candidates are active in the different research programs. From a variety of academic backgrounds and expertises, the ERIM commu- nity is united in striving for excellence and working at the forefront of creating new business knowledge. www.erim.eur.nl ISBN 90-5892-097-6 The Unmasking of the Other The Unmasking of the Other De ontmaskering van de ‘ander’ Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op gezag van de rector magnificus Prof.dr. S.W.J. Lamberts en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op donderdag 27 oktober 2005 om 13.30 uur door Rouven Ernst Hagemeijer geboren te ‘s-Gravenhage Promotiecommissie Promotoren: Prof.dr. S.J. Magala Prof.dr. H.K. Letiche Overige leden: Prof.dr. A. Klamer Dr. S.D. Brown Dr. A.J.J.A. Maas Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Erasmus University Rotterdam Internet: http://www.erim.eur.nl ERIM Ph.D. Series Research in Management 68 ISBN 90 – 5892 – 097 – 6 © 2005, Rouven E. Hagemeijer All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Preface The writer would like to thank the following people: - Slawomir Magala for giving me the opportunity to write a PhD-thesis of my own choosing; - Hugo Letiche for his input as well as support and trust, without which this thesis would not be what it is today; - Steve Brown and Alexander Maas for their commitment and feedback (I would also like to thank Steve Brown for being gracious enough to entertain a wholly different interpretation of Michel Serres’ work than his own) and - Frits van Engeldorp-Gastelaars for going to bat on my behalf when it really mattered. Naturally, there are others. However, what is understood need not be discussed (the interested reader should consult the Van Halen: Right Here, Right Now [live] two-disc box set for clues regarding the origin of the aforementioned phrase). v Table of contents 1. Preface v 2. Table of Contents vi 3. Signpost 1 4. Pandemonium 8 5. Method 24 6. Multiplicity 49 7. Space – Time 73 8. Order – Disorder 80 9. Dénouement 92 10. Literature 103 11. Summary / Samenvatting 106 12. Curriculum Vitae 110 vi Signpost You are here In our present day and age, it is not uncommon to encounter academics that consider their activities to be a part of the field of ‘Critical Management Studies’. Since its introduction by Alvesson and Willmott at the beginning of the 1990s (1992, to be precise), the term has come to denote a particular stream or specialisation within the broader field of management studies / organisation theory and analysis. But what exactly is this thing called Critical Management Studies or ‘CMS’? In order to provide an answer to this question, I will make use of a text by Fournier and Grey (2000) that is intended to present the reader with a short background of the aforementioned discipline. Let us first spend some time on the conditions that made possible the emergence of a ‘critical’ approach to the study of management. Fournier and Grey (2000) identify three main issues: • The privileging of management (pp. 10 – 11): in Britain, the advent of the 1980s was marked by a move towards the removal of both societal and legal barriers to the absolute power of management over corporations in the private as well as public sector. Interestingly enough, this move was supported / initiated by both the ‘New Right’ and ‘New Labour’ alike. In the eyes of the former, management was the main instrument to introduce the ‘law of the market’ to the public sector, which would result in the delivery of public services in terms of efficiency and accountability. For the latter, the privileging of management was to result in technical solutions for political problems. Both the Left and the Right saw management as the sole possessors of the knowledge that was needed to bring about these changes. In the academic world, this transition resulted in an increase of interest in the 1 Signpost activity of ‘managing’; it was motivated by the fact that management attained total control of organisations everywhere and therefore became the single most important factor in their day-to-day operations. • The internal crisis of management (pp. 12): the international success of Japanese corporations and the corresponding management techniques from the 1970s onwards lead to a reappraisal of the ‘art’ of management as it was defined in Western societies. It disrupted the status quo in thinking about organisations; up until that moment, management was seen as an essentially bureaucratic and administrative activity. The success of the Japanese lead to a realisation that management science was by no means the well-established and mature discipline people thought it to be. As such, it was no longer impervious to critique, which provided an opportunity for the development of alternative approaches. • The assault on the functionalist position in the social sciences (pp. 13): here, we are dealing with a two-fold development. To begin with, the idea that the social sciences should simply copy the methodology and methods of the natural sciences was questioned from the 1950s onward. Social scientists started to ask the question whether such a transplant was actually possible, thus paving the way for alternative approaches. In addition, the assault on the functionalist position was aided by developments in the philosophy of science in (most notably) the 1960si. Here, it was the questioning of the objectivity of the natural sciences themselves that created room for different approaches to the study of social phenomena. 2 Signpost The above seems to depict Critical Management Studies as a predominantly British affair. It certainly is true with respect to the embeddedness of the discipline within the academic community: although there are ‘critical’ scholars outside the UK, their numbers are small and their resources are limitedii. We now know a little more about the ‘how’ of CMS; therefore, the time has come to turn our attention to the ‘what’. What is the aim of a ‘critical study of management’? At first, the possibility of actually providing an answer to this question might seem impossible. After all, even a brief survey of the discipline creates the impression that CMS is some sort of intellectual as well as theoretical refugee camp. Here, one finds post-structuralism right next to phenomenology or gender studies; here, Actor Network Theory can be seen to mingle with critical realism. All with respect to the study of management and / or organisation(s), of courseiii. Notwithstanding this amalgamation of ideas, there is a central theme or concern that can be used to characterise the discipline as a whole. The aim of a critical approach to organisations and management in general is to emancipate those who are being excluded, repressed or neglected in theory as well as in practice (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992)iv. It is about the Other. Or is it? I will explain myself. The Other is a concept that has become a topic of interest in broader social inquiry as wellv. It is meant to encompass that, which is foreign to a particular arrangement of individuals, whereby the latter is usually referred to as the Same.
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