The Problem of Experience in the Study of Organizations

This paper deals with the fact that we cannot experience large organizations directly, in the same way as we can experience individuals or small groups, and that this non-experientiability has certain implications for our scientific theories of organizations. Whereas a science is animated by a constructive interplay of theory concepts and experience concepts, the study of organizations has been confined to theory concepts alone. Implications of this analysis for developing a science of organizations are considered.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68303/2/10.1177_017084069301400102.pd

A Chemistry of Organization: Combinatory Structural Analysis and Design

This paper is a response to the call for models of organization design as a science revealing the inner composition of organization and specifying the laws to be respected when crafting it. It maintains that the needed science is a chemistry of organization, addressing the combination of 'organizational elements' playing a role analogous to that of chemical elements in composing a variety of substances. Drawing both on classic organization design theory and on configurational and complementarity-based approaches, the paper specifies a set of basic organizational elements and a set of combinatory laws regulating their effective combinations. Testable propositions are derived on the necessary and sufficient conditions that the composition of organizations should have respect for achieving high levels of efficiency and innovation. These propositions are tested empirically on a sample of firms, using an innovative application of Boolean algebra

Ageing, Temporality and Performance: Joan Rivers’ Body of Work

Joan Rivers’ performance in the public sphere revolved around the visibility and cultural inscription of an ageing and older woman. Linking aesthetic, professional and physiological processes, her body, work and performance merged as and in an extended and finite professional practice. A pioneer of stand-up comedy as a genre, and one of its most significant and visible female practitioners, Rivers is known for her aggressive and often outrageous wit, which was directed at both herself and other celebrities, as well as her extensive plastic surgeries. When she died in 2014, at the age of 81, she was still fully engaged in a relentless schedule of live performances and televised appearances. By then, Rivers was well established as an ubiquitously present elder who refused to conform to long-standing stereotypes of asexuality, able to thrive in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape of surgically enhanced bodies, surveillance as entertainment and public confession. At the heart of the discussion in this article is the spatio-temporality of the performing body, borrowing from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the body as a “nexus of living meanings” and Jacques Derrida’s development of Merleau-Ponty’s use of the term “invagination” to embrace generic textual strategy. In stand-up as a genre, both originality and continuity are paradoxically valued by audiences in equal measure. Success – that is, laughter – is largely determined by the extent to which these align coherently with the comedian’s bodily presence and her onstage social, cultural and/or political positioning. Focusing primarily on the expression of Rivers’ persona via a variety of mutually reinforcing cultural texts in the final three years of her life, this article analyses how her performing body in every medium was importantly always made present through its sexual difference and attendant gendered ageing processes