Perplexities

International Journal of Organizational Analysis

ISSN: 1934-8835

Article publication date: 31 December 2007

34

Citation

Lundberg, C. (2007), "Perplexities", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijoa.2007.34515bag.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Perplexities

In a world of increasing complexity and change there is much that puzzles, surprises, and bothers us (i.e. there are many events, experiences, and thoughts that perplex). In organizational studies, perplexities can be substantive, methodological, theoretical, and even paradigmatic. Noticing and articulating perplexities can sometimes stimulate the thinking, dialogue, and action that move us forward toward enhanced self-efficacy, as well as organizational and societal effectiveness. This is my hope as I again surface a sample of those things that perplex me and invite you to ponder them.

More and more, I notice idea words seemingly central to our discourses that are frequently used even when they gloss the phenomena of interest. This perplexes me – why do we continue to use such terms when they patently muddy our thinking, communication, and inquiry? An example is “problem”. It is used frequently by managers, educators, scholars, everyone and no one is likely to deny that problems are important and ubiquitous phenomena. The dictionary, unfortunately, is of little help for “problem” is defined vaguely as “something that is difficult to deal with or understand.” In the organizational studies literature, therefore, we find “problem” qualified or conditioned in a surprising number of ways, e.g. novel and familiar problems; ill- and well-structured problems; hard to define “fuzzy” problems; “embedded” problems, where they exit within another; “nested” problems, which are different versions of a problem defined at different levels of analysis; “intersected” problems, which are overlapping; “messy” problems so complex that their structure is unfathomable; “open-ended” problems, which require a succession of solutions; “wicked” problems, which are not definable until the solution is known, etc. The literature also refers to ideas associated with problems, or dilemmas, where coping is more appropriate than solving, predicaments where solutions only make things worse, paradoxes where every solution creates several more problems, and puzzles where outcomes discover rather than solve. So it seems likely that there is a set of related phenomena that get glossed over by just using the word problem.

Another glossed idea is analysis. There are just two common meanings, i.e. the detailed examination of something and the separation of something into its component parts. Managers tend to combine these, e.g. most analytical advice says, divide a problem into those smaller components that are likely to be amenable to solution by the application of a familiar procedure or technique. One wonders, however, how often component solutions can be combined, as well as the consequences of a small repertoire of techniques. Organizational scholars also seem overly preoccupied with reductionism but all too often breach its conceptual requirements, e.g. only analytically reduce from valid premises, only drill down analytically from one level to another when there is no loss of meaning or context, etc. Again. the perplexity is, why use glossed ideas when doing so makes us so error-prone?

Not long ago, near the end of a lively conversation about the pros and cons of engaging in basic or applied research, a colleague asked me what, in my opinion, was the most important un-researched phenomenon in organizational studies. Before reading further, what would you say? This seemed to be a trick question, for my colleague already knew that I believe that in organizational studies the phenomena of interest are complex and changeful, that this demands a complexity of our inquiry processes, and that it is the richness and multiplicity of meanings that can be superimposed on phenomena to which we must contribute. Nevertheless, the question does pose a useful challenge. To respond, however, I needed some time to think, so I just noted what “important” should mean, i.e. the phenomena should be ubiquitous, largely taken for granted, amenable to both variance and process theorizing, probably susceptible to multilevel work, and be potentially linkable to most managerial topics as well as most extant theories. Not a bad list off the top of my head, I thought – but I still needed time. So, I noted a couple of things that seemed to fit my important criteria but already had research momentum. Again, before reading further, what might you nominate? I quickly noted trust and justice. My colleague nodded in agreement, but pushed for my opinion. Beginning to get a bit flustered, I tried a different gambit – I would list a whole bunch of things that intrigued me personally and as yet do not understand very well, hoping that in a stream of glibness I’d be able to discern what I thought. As best as I can recall, this is my listing: organizational inertia, mindless rule following, the widespread avoidance of any real variety, people’s learned helplessness and self-induced dependencies, the continuing avoidance of mood and emotion, the stigmatization of whistleblowers, how the culture of contentment and consumerism leads to hubris, widespread norms against questioning authority or the surfacing of assumptions, and the bases of the belief that one should have beliefs and hold onto them fiercely. The best theme I could come up with from this list (don’t laugh) was obdurate obedience. All in all, the above would have been seriously embarrassing if it had not been perceived as a creative try. What is the perplexity in this? Why isn’t the question my colleague asked of me regularly posed in our professional conferences and journals?

The longer I have been engaged in management education, the more perplexed I have become. For example, there are the ongoing debates about management itself, e.g, that management is an emerging profession or a verging science or a performance art; that management and leadership are entwined, overlapping phenomena or are distinct from one another; that managers do or do not have much impact on the success or direction of their organizations; that management would benefit from more basic research or from more applied research, and so on. Thus, one perplexity is, if these are real concerns, why are we still debating them? Listen to business faculty and a flood of other concerns are heard, e.g. from pandering to students through grade inflation, cafeteria curricula and the acceptance of poor class preparation to excessive instruction about managerial fads and best practices; from the paucity of research on pedagogic effectiveness to the decoupling of business courses from their foundational disciplines; from how vocational training has replaced education to how little progress has been made in providing students with the skills and knowledge that surveyed executives say they desire in graduates; from unjustified claims for course content and design to the lack of rewards for teaching excellence or innovation; from the simplistic reliance on student evaluations for faculty teaching performance to doctoral programs that ignore learning theory and teacher preparation; and on and on.

Taken as a whole these faculty concerns seem to be saying that, from an educational perspective, we do not know what we are doing (and perhaps do not care). If so, this is beyond perplexing; it is frankly disturbing. Along this line consider the following. I recently asked an elective class of graduating seniors in a highly regarded business school to anonymously note the number of their class colleagues that they would hire to manage a business they had acquired. The results startled. One student would hire two others, three students would hire just one, and the remaining 24 students would hire none! Asked why, these seniors noted poor work ethic, dishonesty, low initiative, avoidance of responsibility, and a commitment to self over loyalty to a firm. It is perplexing that after four years these students have found so little to value in their professional education.

Craig LundbergCornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

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