More Joy Per Person: Representing Organization: Knowledge, Management, and the Information Age
Representing Organization: Knowledge, Management, and the Information Age
Book Reviews
Transforming Knowledge and Technology
Representing Organization: Knowledge, Management, and the Information
Age. Simon Lilley, Geoffrey Lightfoot, and Paulo Amaral M. N.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 218 pp., ?55, ISBN 0198775415
(hbk), ?19.99, ISBN 0198775423 (pbk)
?Knowledge?, ?technology?, and ?information system? are among the top
concerns of contemporary organization studies scholars. Too often, however,
each term is unquestioningly de-socialized, reified, and commodified so that
agency (managerial and scholarly) may be exercised through it in ways that
render both the process and the entity unproblematic. Lilley, Lightfoot, and
Amaral write in direct opposition to such a simplification and, in so doing,
produce a treatment of organizing that holds the potential to influence a good
deal of scholarship touching upon these themes. Although there is a price to
be paid for problematizing these concepts (more on this below), their book
provides a nuanced treatment of theory that should be widely read.
In suggesting that this work can influence scholarship, I point up a concern
regarding its projected audience. According to the back cover, the book is
designed as a course book for ?theoretically-informed Information and Technology
courses at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels?; its
inclusion of Key Themes (what one should be able to explain or do after
reading) and Key Concepts at each chapter?s beginning and Discussion
Questions and Suggestions for Further Reading at the end support this intent.
Caution would be wise when considering this as a course book for all but the
most advanced and theoretically well-read students, for two reasons.
First, the breadth of social theory and theoretical frames can be daunting, ranging
from systems theory to labor process theory to actor-network theory to
Baudrillard?s gigantic simulacrum to Foucault?s discipline, with relatively
little explanation of how these perspectives differ from the more conventional
theory that serves as standard fare in most curricula. More to the point,
the theoretical discussions, while relatively short, are frequently marked by
obscure passages without links to other topics in the book or currents in the
larger conceptual stream.
Second, the student-oriented elements of the text are less than helpful.
The Key Concepts sometimes do not figure prominently
in the chapters and the Discussion Questions are often abstruse and fail to
follow the chapter contents closely. Indeed, adequate considerations of some
Discussion Questions would require doctoral theses. Although these concerns
likely reflect my own biased conceptions of students? abilities, my
reading suggests that the text?s challenges will outweigh its benefits for most
students.
With this caveat out of the way, the value of this book emerges more
clearly. That value, it seems to me, lies in the authors? ability to reframe and
deepen scholars? understanding of knowledge, technologies, and information
systems by viewing them from several novel and related perspectives.
Research along these lines sorely needs the sort of conceptual augmentation
provided here. The lion?s share of this work draws on the resource-based
view of the firm in examining how knowledge, technologies, and information
systems provide distinctive competencies and competitive advantage, but
cannot explain much when it comes to organizational micropractices, the
constitution of authority, or extra-organizational influences on organizing.
Burgeoning critical work on these topics, especially in information systems,
more frequently problematizes processes of constitution, but too often ?tilts?
toward either social or technological determinism in explaining organizational
structuration or control processes (Jackson et al., 2002).
Lilley et al. speak to this theoretical poverty while avoiding epistemological
tilting as they advance the notion of the representation as a cornerstone
in building a new foundation for the study of organization. Heavily
influenced by Cooper?s (1992, 1993) work, Lilley et al. define representations
as abstract or concrete patterns, pictures, or models that purport to correspond
in some sense with characteristics of some other formation (MacKay,
1969). Representations, in other words, are symbolic constructions of elements
of our world; they are absolutely fundamental to communication
processes and, thus, to the coordination and control that comprise organizing.
Although it might seem banal to anyone but the members of the Vienna
Circle that organizing processes work on representations rather than on some
firm ?reality?, the authors show the importance of taking the notion seriously.
Following Cooper, they show that information operates fully on representations
(and require an agent to meditate the partition between object and its
representation), and that informating (Zuboff, 1988) is about translating
recalcitrant material into malleable symbolic form through displacement,
abbreviation, and remote control.
Although such claims about representation were explained well by Cooper,
the authors, to their credit, do not rest there. Rather, they devote sustained
attention to the connections between representation and control. These are
particularly compelling when Lilley et al. address how the abbreviations that
define representations are wrapped up in power struggles, how representational
technologies are central to the negotiation of accountability (and they
implicate managers and systems designers in this discussion), and how
representational systems engender a loss of pre-representational footing that
results in organizational simulacra. Information and communication technologies,
as well as knowledge management systems, are the instruments and
outcomes of these processes; they can initiate the organizational uncertainty
they ostensibly seek to address. This creates the sort of hyperreal world
Baudrillard envisioned, in which models replace the world and the simulation
becomes the criterion for the real. After reading Representing Organization,
one comes away convinced that examining representational practices
has not only been overlooked in much research, but that attending to it
presents a host of promising vistas on organizing. In addition to opening up
the study of knowledge, technology, and information systems to theories
gaining purchase in critical/postmodern organization studies, leading the
charge with the representation construct provides a much more complex
view of organizing itself.
For those seeking lessons for research, this vision demands a fine-grained
analysis of organizing practices, but such analyses are largely missing among
the book?s illustrative cases. The examples?which, to be fair, are intended as
illustrations, not extended empirical investigations?range from consumers
at a grocery chain, financial markets, users of a computer conferencing
system, and a story from a novel imagining a chess match between Kublai
Khan and Marco Polo. The authors? desire to extend examples beyond the
artificial boundaries of ?the? organization is refreshing, but the bulk of
theoretical discussion points toward intra-organizational processes, often
making the examples appear as odd mismatches. This is true, too, of the text?s
running illustration: a study of an ?oil management system? at a refinery
called ?Mexaco?, drawn from Lilley?s PhD thesis. Stretching across several
chapters, the case is sometimes quite useful (e.g. chapter five?s discussion of
the manufacture of uncertainty), but more often gets bogged down in attempting
to explain details of practices, using site-specific acronyms, and providing
extended quotes (many of which are formatted the same as the
surrounding text). There are relatively few endeavors into the institutional
realm when illustrating concepts (a shortcoming Washam [1997] levies at
actor-network theory generally), and there are equally few attempts to extend
the ideas to explicitly knowledge-based or professional service work, a
natural case for a book about representation and simulation (especially for
one that includes a chapter on the ?virtual organization?). Therefore, I fear
that few readers will exert the effort to work through the Mexaco case and
will be disappointed in the illumination offered by the others.
One representation not examined systematically in the book is the organization
itself (dealt with only briefly in the last chapter). Many readers of this
journal, and I assume the authors as well, would agree that organizations are
textualized, symbolic constructions that have little or no materiality to them.
In this sense, work may involve tangible matter, but the organization itself is
a fictional entity that depends on legal codes, mental models, practices,
discourses, and other representations. As suggested above, actors always deal
with a material world through representation, but that world ?remains always
and inevitably beyond our reach? (p. 143); hence, engagement with (including
attempts to control) the simulated, symbolic organizational ?world? is
likely to prove additionally complex and confusing for actors given its utter
lack of a material basis.
The authors proffer an account of representational
systems taking on a life of their own, in which representations abound
without recourse to Archimedean points; as a description of organizational
?reality?, this tells readers little about how organizations are constituted, how
situated authorities control the representational system, or how resistance to
representational positioning might proceed. Without delving in greater depth
into the ontology of the organization and its distributed sites of discursive
practice, however, the book can say little about these traditional concerns of
critical/postmodern scholarship.
I suggested above that a significant contribution of this book is its heuristic
value, since it frames issues conceptually and suggests novel avenues for
research. This is most clear in the book?s final chapter, an exploration of
knowledge management. It contains a fairly straightforward discussion of
visions (i.e. representations) of knowledge and learning found in both mainstream
literature and philosophical traditions. It also suggests, somewhat
more provocatively, that our representations (e.g. metaphors) of organizations
matter, and that altering representations of organizations bears implications
for knowledge management and organizational learning.
The authors conclude that knowledge management, and the technologies to support it,
provide the possibility for organizational transformation if representations
can be productively mobilized. Although this possibility is explained in
rather vague terms and there is no indication of how we could adjudicate
desirable and undesirable transformation, it is undoubtedly a crucial issue
for critical scholars. Understanding how such transformative potentials are
mobilized, however, requires an analysis of the micro-practices that implicate
and produce representations actors take to be ?practical? in dealing with
undecidability (a notion they borrow from Derrida) in situated organizing. In
other words, investigating technology and knowledge management requires a
detailed consideration of how we accomplish contextualized knowing
through representations; such a study would substantially strengthen existing
work on knowledge and technology while representing another benefit of
this rich theoretical perspective.
Representing Organization presents a challenge to those who study knowledge,
technology, and information systems. It challenges its readers to
examine the ways technological representations (as well as their own representations
of organizations) constitute organizational practices and selfpropagate;
it likewise challenges its readers to develop the sort of theoretical
sophistication to embark on meaningful examinations of technological development
and identity regulation. For these reasons, given the reservations
expressed above, I believe this book should receive extensive attention in the
organization studies field.
References
Cooper, R. (1992) ?Formal Organization as Representation: Remote Control, Displacement,
and Abbreviation?, in M. Reed and M. Hughes (eds) Rethinking Organization:
New Directions in Organizational Theory and Analysis, pp. 254?72. London: Sage.
Cooper, R. (1993) ?Technologies of Representation?, in P. Ahonen (ed.) Tracing the
Semiotic Boundaries of Politics, pp. 279?312). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Jackson, M. H., Poole, M. S. and Kuhn, T. (2002) ?The Social Construction of
Technology in Studies of the Workplace?, in L. A. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (eds)
Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, pp. 236?53.
London: Sage.
MacKay, D. M. (1969) Information, Mechanism, and Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Walsham, G. (1997) ?Actor-Network Theory and IS Research: Current Status and
Future Prospects?, in A. S. Lee, J. Liebenau and J. I. DeGross (eds) Information
Systems and Qualitative Research, pp. 466?80). London: Chapman & Hall.
Zuboff, S. (1988) In The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power.
New York: Basic Books.
Timothy Kuhn
University of Colorado at Boulder
More Joy Per Person: Representing Organization: Knowledge, Management, and the Information Age
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