Organization Science as Social Construction: Postmodern Potentials

1 December 1996

journal article
research article
Published by SAGE Publications in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Vol. 32 (4) , 356-377
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886396324002

Abstract

We critically examine three major assumptions of modernist organization science: rational agency, empirical knowledge, and language as representation. With these assumptions problematized, we are positioned for a postmodern turn in the discipline. From a postmodern standpoint, we are moved to replace rational agency with communal rationality, empirical knowledge with social construction, and language as representation with language as action. Outcomes for an organization science place special emphasis on reconstructing and enriching the aims and methods of research and on critical reflection, generative theorizing, and scholarly action within organizations.

Keywords

This publication has 42 references indexed in Scilit:

Postmodern Management and Organization Theory
Published by SAGE Publications ,1996
STORIES OF THE STORYTELLING ORGANIZATION: A POSTMODERN ANALYSIS OF DISNEY AS "TAMARA-LAND".
The Academy of Management Journal, 1995
Organization Science, Managers, and Language Games
Organization Science, 1992
On the Idea of Emancipation in Management and Organization Studies
Academy of Management Review, 1992
Management and Theories of Organizations in the 1990s: Toward a Critical Radical Humanism?
Academy of Management Review, 1992
Voicing Seduction to Silence Leadership
Organization Studies, 1991
The Parochial Dinosaur: Organizational Science in a Global Context
Academy of Management Review, 1991
Postmodernism, Post-Fordism, and Critical Social Theory
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1988
Administrative Science as Socially Constructed Truth
Administrative Science Quarterly, 1985
Ideology and Political Economy in Inquiry: Action Research and Participatory Research
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 1983