Good order: On the administration of goodness

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2003 by Hopfl, Heather

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that conventional patriarchal representations of the organisation reduce the notion of "organisation" to abstract relationships, rational actions and purposive behaviour which always and relentlessly presents itself as a quest for the good. In this context, regulation and control is achieved primarily via definition and location. Administration then functions in a very specific sense to establish a notion of "good" order, to establish what is "ordinary" in administrative and managerial practice. In contrast, this paper seeks to explore ways in which it is possible to restore the (m)other to the text of organisation, to restore the body. Consequently, the paper considers the possibility of a discourse of maternity and moves from this position to examine conceptions of matrix reproduction and conditions of exile. The paper concludes with a challenge to conventional notions of "good" management and a consideration of the implications of this for the political in organisational life.

EASTERN ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT, SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA 2001

There were several practitioner speakers but the most impressive was the young man from a large well-known multi-national. He was very good. He looked good. His talk was persuasive and his overhead transparencies colour co-ordinated with his tie. He was well groomed with a Kurt Russell haircut and an all-American smile. He demonstrated by reference to slide after slide that his company was doing well in Costa Rica. He showed us targets and how the company had exceeded them. He told us his corporation was good for Costa Rica and then showed us slide after slide to demonstrate how and why. His company was making things better for the local people. He was an emissary for good. He brought a commitment to corporate values.

He was very good at all this and he exuded charm, enthusiasm and professionalism. He was a real star. He wasn't only good, he was exemplary and outshone his fellow speakers. It was all so good, so wholesome, so well co-ordinated. It made you wonder where they produced such superb corporate models or perhaps I should say were they reproduced such accomplished missionaries.

A GOOD SET OF RESULTS

In organisational terms, the strategic direction of the organisation involves the construction of the organisation as a purposive entity with a trajectory towards a desired future. Consequently, organisational strategy as an indicator of movement towards this future is about the way in which such a desired state can be reached, targets set, achievements measured. In such movement towards better and better performance, it is inevitable that the purposive nature of the action takes precedence over the individual in the service of (Latin, ad-ministrare, to serve) desired results. The organisation constructs itself in textual and representational terms in relation to such desires. These representations range from the explicit use of rhetoric in marketing its products and images to the more subtle construction of the organisation as a fictive entity in the construction of statements, strategies and structures, and functions to regulate the organisation through definition (Latin, de-finire, to finish, to finalise). The fundamental characteristic of the organisation as a purposive entity is its directedness and, clearly, there is a relationship between the direction (as orientation) and direction (as command) of the organisation and the rhetorical trajectory. In a specific sense, the organisation as a rhetorical entity wants something of the employee, of the customer, the competitor, the supplier, the general public and, therefore, what is not the organisation is always defined as deficient in relation to it: not as good. Therefore, representations of the organisation - images and texts - need to be received as convincing by its various audiences. For example, recent years have seen the elaboration of the rhetoric directed towards employees in the pursuit of greater commitment, improved performance, invocations to quality and in the construction of ornate narratives of organisational performances, in exhortations towards greater goodness. However, in such representations, the organisation is an abstract entity removed from the activities of the physical bodies of which it is made up. Without a body, the pain of labour itself becomes an abstraction so that embodied pain is exiled from the organisation as a site of production. Such an elaborate vision of goodness, truth and beauty cannot admit the possibility of what counter definition must construe as ugliness and dissent. Consequently, it is the abstract "good" which is venerated and administered and not the labouring bodies which are in need of ministry.

ADMINISTRATION AND MINISTRATION

The notion of a discourse of maternity subverts the dominant social discourse to challenge order, rationality and patriarchal regulation. What this contributes to organisational theory is the capacity to make transparent the effects of the production of meaning, to render explicit the patriarchal quest of the organisation, to make problematic the notion of trajectory, strategy and purpose, to question "ordinary" notions of the good. Therefore, by presenting the organisation as maternal, this paper seeks to offend conventional definitions of the goods of organisation in order to allow the mother/ motherhood/ maternal body to enter. Thus, whereas the text of the organisation is about regulation and representation, of rational argument, perfect and perfectible relationships and rhetorical trajectory, the embodied subject speaks of division, separation, rupture, tearing, blood and the pain of labour. So good becomes defined in terms of a recursive seduction to the notion of order and what is not good, the physical, becomes the province of hysteria. Consequently, despite management desires to demonstrate success and achievement by recourse to metrics, comparatives, benchmarks and results organisations are more of metaphysics than of matter.