Deconstructing Organizations Author(s): Martin Kilduff Source: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan.

, 1993), pp. 13-31 Published by: Academy of Management Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/258821 Accessed: 10/03/2009 10:43
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C Academy

of Management 1993, Vol. 18, No. 1, 13-31.

Review

DECONSTRUCTING ORGANIZATIONS
MARTIN KILDUFF The Pennsylvania State University
This reading of March and Simon's (1958) Organizations illustrates the deconstructive approach to foundational texts. The article deconstructs the positivist agenda formulated in Organizations to show that the text (a) replicates the moves of predecessors it condemns and (b) asserts an ideology of programming that justifies the inevitability of fractionated work. Deconstruction is used not to prevent science, but to open debate to complexities and issues that have been ignored or suppressed.

In the field of organizational studies, few texts are as foundational as March and Simon's (1958) contribution simply titled Organizations. This text is listed in every major survey of the classics that have shaped the field (e.g., Lawrence, 1987). Far from fading away as a piece of outmoded science, Organizations continues to be frequently cited in the organizational studies journals. Yet interpretive commentaries about this book are strangely absent, despite occasional criticisms by Organizations' admirers concerning textual discrepancies and self-contradictions (e.g., Perrow, 1986: 125). Interpretive scholars have issued calls for the textual analysis of foundational texts across the social sciences (e.g., Van Maanen, 1988: 141), and such analyses have begun to appear in print (e.g., Calacs, 1987; Ditton, 1981; Edmondson, 1984; Green, 1988). Part of the reason why Organizations has escaped such fine-grained literary analysis is that the text conforms to positivist conventions and, therefore, gives the appearance of straightforward objectivity. The text is couched in terms of standard propositions, operationalized variables, and testable hypotheses. The power of Organizations appears to reside in its embodiment of logic, rationality, and truth, rather than in its literary qualities. The authors of Organizations, in fact, explicitly claim to sacrifice literary style for the sake of scientific format (1958: 7). The text has been praised for its self-proclaimed restriction on the use of metaphorical language (Keeley, 1980: 337; Pinder & Bourgeois, 1982: 647). March and SiI thank the following for their helpful comments on successive drafts of this article: Don Bergh, Jim Dean, Denny Gioia, Howard Kurtzman, Jay Russo, Linda Smircich, John Van Maanen, and Gary Weaver. My development of the article also benefited from a critical discussion by INSEAD faculty and doctoral students during a seminar presentation in June 1991. 13

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mon's (1958) readiness to devalue the importance of style and metaphor is quite consistent with the Western metaphysical tradition, which, from Plato to Heidegger, has regarded writing as merely "an unfortunate necessity" (Rorty, 1978: 145). From this logocentric perspective, scientific and philosophical texts are representations of ideas. Writing, as a medium of expression, cannot add anything of value to such representations and could possibly "infect the meaning it is supposed to represent" (Culler, 1982: 91). A dissenting perspective is provided by Jacques Derrida (1976; 1978; 1988) who, in a series of critiques of philosophical texts, has drawn attention to textual production itself. The power of the text for Derrida derives in large part from what he calls diff6rance: the play of meaning between textual levels. In exposing the metaphysical and metaphorical dependencies of philosophical texts, Derrida has opened up all writing to textual analysis. He has shown that philosophical writing depends upon the very techniques it condemns and that philosophy thereby fails to achieve the ideal of merely expressing the logic of ideas. In this article, Derrida's perspective is used to reevaluate the appearance of progress in organizational theory. A deconstructive analysis of an exemplary foundational text -Organizationsreveals a simultaneous rejection and acceptance of the tradition the authors sought to surpass. This double movement of rejection and replication is fully consistent with a hermeneutic approach to organizational studies, but it is discrepant with the positivist philosophy of scientific progress that Organizations itself embraces. A deconstruction of Organizations shows that it replicates the moves of the predecessors it condemns. But first, what is deconstruction?

DECONSTRUCTION
Jacques Derrida has emerged as perhaps the most influential poststructuralist philosopher (Agger, 1991: 112). He has succeeded in exposing the metaphysical and rhetorical dependencies of canonical texts and has thereby implicated all writing as inherently literary. Thus, Derrida has directly confronted positivist pretensions, which are characteristic, for example, of structuralism (see Dews, 1987), with evidence that rigorous objectivity in writing has never been possible. Derrida's own writing style often has become "extravagantly convoluted" (Agger, 1991: 106) as he has worked to change the reader's understanding of a text without himself indulging in the oversimplification and the declarations of certainty that characterize the metaphysical tradition under critique. For Derrida, there is literally "nothing outside the text" (1976: 158). Deconstruction offers a way of examining human behavior as a textual production, a kind of writing. For Derrida, writing includes not only language but "all that gives rise to inscription in general" (1976: 9), namely, all those rule-based aspects of people's lives that involve the reproduc-

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tion of behavior. The world is not a stage. According to Derrida, it is a text, and the dynamics of this text can be studied as a series of relationships between textual levels. Derrida's readings focus on literary and philosophical texts, but other authors have extended deconstruction to such differing contexts as bureaucracy (Frug, 1984), the language of organizations (Martin, 1990), and the practice of psychology (Parker & Shotter, 1990; Sampson, 1983). By questioning the organizing principles of canonical texts, Derrida aims to place these principles in a new relation to each other, suggesting the possibility that complications can be debated rather than suppressed. Thus, deconstruction is used, not to abolish truth, science, logic, and philosophy, but to question how these concepts are present in texts and how they are employed to systematically exclude certain categories of thought and communication. The implications of a deconstructive reading are, therefore, not limited to the language of the text itself but can be extended to the political and social context in which the text is placed. For example, Derrida's debate with Searle on the subject of speech act theory has implications for the practice and politics of academic discourse itself (Derrida, 1988: 111-154). One of the symptoms of an undeclared metaphysics is the dependence of the text on hierarchically ordered binary oppositions (e.g., mind/ body, mechanistic/organic, male/female). Derrida brings the reader's attention to the play of meaning between the two terms, one of which is often suppressed or marginalized. As a first step, Derrida focuses on that which is suppressed. As a second step, he displaces the binary system itself so that it no longer controls the reader's response to the text. By calling attention to the way in which the power of the text derives from the suppression of one half of a binary opposition, deconstruction works to leave a permanent "trace" in the text, that is, a shift in the way the reader responds to the language used. (See Martin, 1990, for an example of how of corporate language in terms of a masculine/ the deconstruction feminine opposition can permanently alter the received meaning of such language.) A deconstruction of a text also can reveal the dependence of the text on an idealism that seeks to exclude deviations, mistakes, marginalia, and trivia. The deconstructive gesture is used to explore precisely what the text has neglected and to show that what is excluded is necessarily implied in the categories the text includes. Thus, the concept "normal" must include the existence of the "abnormal," in order for the concept to make any sense. The claim that the abnormal is a later development, or is a parasite upon the normal, cannot, therefore, be supported by appeals to logic (Derrida, 1988). A deconstructive reading opens up the text to renewed debate concerning the limits of the text and the relationship between explicit and hidden textual levels. In investigating the limits of the text, the critic asks: Why are certain authors, topics, or schools excluded from the text? Why

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are certain themes never questioned, whereas other themes are condemned? Why, given a set of premises, are certain conclusions not reached? The aim of such questions is not to point out textual errors but to help the reader to understand the extent to which the text's objectivity and persuasiveness depend on a series of strategic exclusions. The characteristic deconstructive gesture of exposing a hidden textual level is used to show that the marginal, hidden text contradicts or undermines the explicit text, or that the authors replicate at one level what they condemn at another level. The relationship between textual levels, once revealed, serves to illuminate the tensions within the text and to demystify the power of the text to influence the reader. Thus, the reader gains a different understanding of the text in question and is able to draw conclusions that may be strikingly at variance with those typically imposed upon the text. The increasing popularity of Derrida's work has inspired a plethora of commentaries. Excellent general introductions exist (e.g., Agger, 1991; Dews, 1987; Norris, 1988), and an increasing number of researchers are drawing upon and explicating his approach (e.g., Calds & Smircich, 1991; Clifford, 1986; Cooper, 1989; Frug, 1984; Martin, 1990; Mumby & Putnam, 1992; Parker & Shotter, 1990; Sampson, 1983; for a critique of deconstruction, see Giddens, 1987). Despite the extensive commentaries on deconstruction, however, the reconstructive process itself is not reducible to a set of techniques. Deconstruction cannot be summarized as a mechanical series of operations to be applied to any piece of language. The deconstruction of a text involves a very close reading of the specific words of that text in the context of taken-for-granted assumptions. A deconstructive reading must follow the contours of the text itself; a reader cannot simply apply a group of preformulated ideas. The previous summary of deconstruction is offered, therefore, as an encouragement to further reading rather than as a list of deconstructive techniques. Derrida (1988: 141) himself cautioned against reducing deconstruction to a movement that can be abstracted from its specific applications: Deconstruction does not exist somewhere, pure, proper, selfidentical, outside of its inscriptions in conflictual and differentiated contexts; it "is" only what it does and what is done
with it, there where it takes place.

Deconstruction, therefore, does not "stand" for anything. Indeed, the approach has been criticized by researchers who are impatient for radical change because its users have not been able "to ally [deconstruction] ... with any explicit political position" (Burman, 1990: 210). A deconstructive reading opens the text so that the reader can see the pattern of conflicting relationships. Next, this deconstructive process is illustrated with respect to March and Simon's Organizations.

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DECONSTRUCTING ORGANIZATIONS The Structure of Presence and Absence The text of Organizations is organized around a structure of presence and absence, in which the ideas of the authors are offered to fill the gap left by predecessors. This rhetorical strategy begins immediately on the first page where the claim that the subject matter of the book has been hitherto neglected is "cheerfully" acknowledged to be an opening move characteristic of authors in general. The theory of organizations, the reader is told, occupies "an insignificant space" (p. 1), "an unobtrusive part" (p. 2) in modern social science, with the absence of even "a short chapter" on the subject particularly noticeable in current psychology and sociology textbooks (pp. 1-2). (Hereafter either p. or pp. will be used regarding the page number(s) for Organizations.) March and Simon (MS) are careful to acknowledge that, in fact, "many books" have been written about organizations (p. 1), but they characterize these previous efforts as "pieces, bits, and snatches of organization theory and empirical data" (p. 5), that is, a "scattered and diverse body of writing" (p. 5). In contrast to the scattered distillations of "common sense" (p. 5) contained in previous work, MS offer "the rigorous scrutiny of scientific method" (p. 5). They emphasize a "systematic" treatment of organizations (p. 4) embodied in "a series of propositions" in standard mathematical format (p. 7). MS, therefore, propose to fill the absence of organizational theorizing with a substantial series of propositions. They intend to replace the "pieces, bits, and snatches" with coherent and scientific exposition. First, however, they review the literature on organizations, a literature that leaves them with the impression that "after all, not a great deal has been said about organizations, but it has been said over and over in a variety of languages" (p. 5). One of the repetitive aspects of previous work on organizations, according to MS, is the treatment of the "human organism as a simple machine" (p. 34). MS reiterate this accusation throughout the book as the major contrast to their model of the employee. This repeated accusation is used by March and Simon both to dismiss the importance of their predecessors' writings and to justify their own contribution. The scientific management school is taken to be particularly susceptible to the charge of modeling human behavior in terms of machines. Thus, in the beginning of the book the reader is told, "The scientific management group was concerned with describing the characteristics of the human organism as one might describe a relatively simple machine" (p. 13). This characterization is also extended to "classical" organization theorists, including such writers as Gulick, Urwick, and Fayol: Before we leave the classical theory, we wish to comment on the way in which organization members are viewed in that theory. First, in general, there is a tendency to view the em-

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ployee as an inert instrument performing the tasks assigned to him. (p. 29) A few pages later, MS describe both scientific management theory and the classical theorists as follows: "The traditional organization theory views the human organism as a simple machine" (p. 34). Having set up a contrast between the tradition, on the one hand, and their own work, on the other, MS are left with the problem of what to do with research and theory that cannot be easily classified as subscribing to a machinelike view of human beings. One possibility is simply to ignore the existence of such work. Thus, the massive experimental research effort mounted by Elton Mayo and his associates at the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company is simply omitted from MS's account of previous research. Organizations makes no mention of Roethlisberger and Dickson's (1939) definitive account of 12 years of experimental work. To acknowledge the existence of this text would be tantamount to admitting that the gap MS claim that they are hoping to fill has already been plugged. MS deal with the problem of Max Weber somewhat differently. Was he guilty of depicting human beings as "simple machines"? The duality of MS's rhetoric demands that the work of Weber, if it is to be acknowledged at all, be identified with that of Frederick Taylor and the scientific management school. In this way, MS can preserve an absence in the works of predecessors that their own contribution can fill. MS approach the difficult task of identifying the writings of Weber with those of the scientific management school by first associating Weber with the "classical" theorists: "Weber appears to have more in common with Urwick, Gulick, and others than he does with those who regard themselves as his successors" (p. 36) because "he is not exceptionally attentive to the character of the human organism" (p. 37). Having pried Weber away from Weberian sociology, as represented in the work of Merton, Selznick, Gouldner, and Blau, MS are free to identify themselves as heirs of the Weberian tradition, who are interested in "the unintended consequences of treating individuals as machines" (p. 37). In the rest of the book, discredited predecessors are simultaneously invoked and dismissed with references to the "machine" model of human behavior (e.g., p. 59). Having convicted the scientific management school of using the machine model, and having found both the administrative theorists and Weber guilty by association, MS are free to dismiss all of these predecessors with references to "classical treatments of human participants as 'machines' " (p. 81) and "the 'classical' theory of organization which regards the employee as an 'instrument' " (p. 136). At the end of the book, MS remind the reader once again that they have surveyed "those theories that viewed the employee as an instrument and physiological automaton" (p. 211), leaving it up to the readers to decide which authors they are specifically referencing.

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Programming the Body and Programming the Mind The work of predecessors as different as Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber are thus equated. Absent from the work of these writers is any consideration, it is claimed, of the cognitions of the employee. MS are particularly effective in critiquing the Taylorist school for its obsession with a physiological grammatology of control. Under scientific management, each task could be broken into the syllables of movement, the Therbligs, that form the elements of a management-controlled performance. The employee's labor is inscribed by management in written sequences of instructions that become the script to which the worker must adhere. MS quote a series of such inscriptions such as:
1. The two hands should begin as well as complete their motions at the same time. 2. The two hands should not be idle at the same time except during rest periods. (p. 20)

It is this kind of inscription, this writing about the body, that MS denounce. Certain "pathological" processes, the reader is told, "stem from, and are aggravated by, the use of the machine model" (p. 36). These pathologies of response are unanticipated by the written inscriptions of management and, therefore, "restrict the adaptiveness of the organization to the goals of the administrative hierarchy" (p. 36). Thus, the problem with scientific management is that the behavior of employees as machines deviates in unanticipated ways from managerial inscription. The solution to this impasse, according to MS, is to model the employee, not as a laboring machine, but as a computing machine. Thus, the difference between MS and their predecessors involves an updating of the machine metaphor. How did they achieve this? First, consider how MS describe the machine model of their predecessors. For MS, the scientific management group specified "a detailed program of behavior (a "method," or set of methods) that could transform a general-purpose mechanism, such as a person, into a more efficient special-purpose mechanism" (p. 13). The activities performed by workers trained under scientific management are "highly programmed with respect to the specific steps needed to accomplish the task" (p. 14). Taylorism, then, is characterized by programs specifying the steps necessary to complete tasks. Traditional organization theorists, according to MS, conceive of the organization as consisting of repertoires of such programs. According to the traditional theory, "there exists in any organization a repertoire of response programs" that are stimulated by environmental cues (p. 34). March and Simon's perspective seems remarkably similar to this programmable employee model. According to MS, the employee is a subjectively rational information processor (Chapters 6 and 7). From this perspective, "Most behavior, and particularly most behavior in organizations, is governed by performance programs" (p. 142). These performance programs are activated as follows: "an environmental stimulus may evoke immediately from the organiza-

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tion a highly complex and organized set of responses" (p. 141). Human beings, according to MS, can be programmed in much the same way that computing machines are programmed. The following quotation is one of many that makes explicit the assumption that humans and machines are functional equivalents. The extent to which many human activities, both manual and clerical, can be programmed is shown by the continuing spread of automation to encompass a wider and wider range of tasks. In order to substitute automatic processes for human operatives, it is necessary to describe the task in minute detail, and to provide for the performance of each step of it. The decomposition of tasks into their elementary program steps is most spectacularly illustrated in modern computing machines which may carry out programs involving thousands of such steps. (p. 144) Particularly striking in this quotation is the apparent assumption that the same programs for controlling behavior can be written for human or computing machines. From March and Simon's perspective, therefore, humans and machines are identical in their ability to be programmed. This idea is made even more explicit in the following passage, which compares programming a person with programming a machine: To develop in a person the capacity to carry out a particular
program requires an investment in training. In automatic operations, there is an analogous capital investment in machinery capable of carrying out the program. In the case of a computing machine, a substantial part of this investment actually consists of the cost of programming the machine for the particular operations in question. (p. 158)

Programs, then, can either be "built into machines or acquired by humans" (p. 158). The allocation of the programmed task to the human or the machine is a matter to be decided by the economics of the situation, and as MS stated: "There are economies to be derived, ceteris paribus, from assigning the work so as to minimize this investment cost per unit of program execution" (p. 158). The organization as a whole, from this perspective, "has available a repertory of programs, so that once the event has been classified the appropriate program can be executed without further ado" (p. 163). This description echoes, of course, the description of the Tayloristic organization, which consisted of "a repertoire of response programs" (p. 34). From scientific management to management science appears to be a rather small step. Therefore, MS were not so much the heirs of Weber as they were the children of Taylor. Just as Taylor was interested in breaking tasks into their elementary steps, MS were interested in the programming of humans to perform tasks like computing machines. The programming of

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human behavior follows from the explicit assumption that humans think like computers. The following passage from Organizations is typical in expressing the identity between human and machine decision making: [Decision] processes themselves are made up by aggregating [a] very large number of elements, each element, taken by itself, being exceedingly simple. In an age of electronic computers this fact-if it is a fact-should not surprise us, for this is exactly the way in which a computer operates: it performs intricate and elaborate mathematical computations, but it performs them by executing sequences of enormous length of elementary steps, where each such step is no more complicated than adding 1 and 1 to get 2. (p. 178) MS do not make the mistake of claiming that the human brain-the grey matter inside the skull-is built like a computer (p. 178). Their basic assumption is that the human mind functions like a computing machine, just as Taylor's assumption was that the human body functions like a laboring machine. The tortured question of whether, in fact, the mind functions like a computer will not be considered here. This issue continues to be one of the most controversial topics in the areas of artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind. (See Searle, 1980, 1984; Simon, 1990; Winograd & Flores, 1986, for treatments of these topics.) What is important to the present discussion is the tension in Organizations between the denunciation and the celebration of the machine model of the employee. MS both accuse their predecessors of treating the employee as a machine and fill the absence they claim to have found in the literature with an updated machine model. MS propose a programming that will be inscribed, not in the physical movements of the workers, but in the workers' cognitions, a programming directed not to the body but to the mind. Such programming will control not the physiological response, but the decision-making process. By simultaneously denouncing and glorifying the employee as machine, MS succeed in building on the works of the predecessors they repeatedly condemn. Their own distinctive contribution, the emphasis they give to programmed cognition, is presented not as the direct application of scientific management to decision making, but as the arrival of scientific method to an area dominated by engineering techniques (p. 21). The Organization as Writing Machine However, MS carry over from scientific management more than just a concern with the programming of employee behavior. A model of the employee as a physical or cognitive machine suggests that the employee is readily programmed to obey the instructions of management. The employee, in such a model, is above all an instrument of management. For MS, then, the programming of employees helps control and coordinate employee behavior (p. 145). March and Simon's model is explicitly re-

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ferred to as a description of "organizational man" (p. 135), a reference that connotes Whyte's (1956) influential study of the danger of overconformity to managerial control. There is no hint of irony, however, in MS's apparent endorsement of an ethic of machinelike obedience to organizational demands. Illustrative of their treatment of the issue of conformity in organizations is the following passage concerning the tendency of groups to limit production to a rate less than that specified by management: One problem in organizing control systems in complex organizations is to neutralize or eliminate the dysfunctional consequences of subgroup organization without destroying its ability to perform necessary functions. For example, organizations sometimes have difficulty in forcing lower-echelon leaders to conform to the demands of the hierarchy because some of the methods by which conformity can be most effectively enforced seriously undermine the leadership position of the supervisor. (p. 78) March and Simon's solution to this problem of gaining employee compliance with management goals is to embed such goals in behavior programs in such a way that employees automatically enact management's wishes: Whatever will motivate individuals and groups to accept the tasks assigned them through the legitimate (formal and informal) processes of the organization will provide motivation for subgoals. For the subgoals are implicit or explicit in the definition of the situation as it is incorporated in the task assignment. (p. 152) From this perspective, the whole organization resembles an efficiently operating computer with each departmental unit controlled by its repertoire of programs. The organization becomes a writing machine that coordinates "a complicated mosaic of program executions, each initiated by its appropriate program-evoking steps" (p. 149). Top managers write programs for lower managers, who write programs for subordinates, and so on down the line: "The program of members of higher levels of the organization have as their main output the modification or initiation of programs for individuals at lower levels" (p. 150). In this world of programmed docility, the arrival of an unexpected problem triggers a process of fabricating new programs from old, involving the shuffling of paper from one department to another: Where an organization becomes aware of a problem, and a proposed solution does not accompany the communication of the problem awareness, repertoires of problem solutions "stored"in the memories of organization members will be the principal source of solution proposals. As awareness of the problem is communicated through the organization, solutions
will be evoked from these repertoires and will become at-

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tached to it....

As a proposed solution is circulated through

the organization, particular consequences will be checked by individuals and organization units in whose specialized province they lie. (pp. 189-190) In this programmed universe, novelty like a computer, can only recycle its Indeed, nonprogrammed decision to consist of breaking down problems ing programs: is paralyzing, and the organization, routines. making is explicitly defined by MS until they can be handled by exist-

In the present context we are discussing nonprogrammed decision-making, specifically, the process whereby new programs of action are discovered, elaborated, and instituted. Hence, we are concerned primarily with search activities and with processes for evaluating proposals. In the elaboration of new programs, the principal technique of successive approximations is means-ends analysis.... It proceeds until it

reaches a level of concreteness where known, existing programs ... can be employed to carry out the remaining detail.
(pp. 190-191)

Excluded from consideration in the text, therefore, is any possibility of innovative, immediate decision making that doesn't invoke an existing program of action. The universe of decision making, according to the text, is confined to programmed behavior. The organization as writing machine, within which employees behave as though programmed, is the major point of similarity between Taylor and MS. This similarity is implicitly recognized in Organizations through the parallel descriptions of Taylor's model of the organization as "a repertoire of response programs" (p. 34) and MS's own model of the organization as possessing a "repertory of programs" (p. 150). The privileging of mind over body that MS claim as their original contribution to management science is already explicit in Taylor's privileging of the work of planning over the work of laboring. The traces of Taylorism in Organizations, then, are as ubiquitous as the references to programming itself. The Unanticipated Consequences of Programmed Organization

Therefore, the dysfunctions that MS clearly perceive will result from the application of the employee-as-machine model will also develop from any application of their own programmed response model. The unanticipated consequences of the machine model of bureaucracy were first analyzed by Merton (1940) and are summarized in Organizations (pp. 36-40). According to Merton, the top hierarchy of the bureaucratic organization demands control, which results in an emphasis on the reliability of behavior. This reliability is ensured through the increased use of standard operating procedures and the monitoring of behavior.

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According to MS's (p. 38) summary of Merton, three severe consequences follow from the emphasis on reliability and control. First, there is a reduction in the number of personalized relationships. Clearly, if employees are regarded as programmed automatons, who can be easily replaced by more efficient computers, personal relationships are likely to suffer. Second, rules devised to achieve organizational goals become ends in themselves. Again, MS's emphasis on the programming of work suggests an automatization of response, a decision making that runs its course irrespective of whether it makes sense in terms of context or organizational goals. Third, the decisions that are made will conform to preselected categories. From the MS perspective, little in the way of innovative, discretionary behavior can be expected from programmed employees because they are limited to choosing among the alternatives arranged for them. The behavior of members of the bureaucratic organization becomes "highly predictable" and increasingly rigid as a result of management's use of the machine model (p. 39). This predictability is a taken-for-granted aspect of the kind of organizations to which the authors perceive applying their model (cf. p. 142). The routinization of activity through performance programs is the trademark of the organization in which the programmed employee finds a home. As a technology of control, the writing of the mind, like the writing of the body, inscribes behavior in enduring routines that free the employees from the existentialist obligation to justify action. The Ideology of Programming The MS model of the programmed employee is presented as a scientific, neutral explanation of employee behavior. The repetition of activity day after day in organizations is so self-evident that it can be compared, in its predictability, to the repetition of lines "uttered by a Hamlet on the stage" (p. 143). But from where does this programmed behavior come? Programmed behavior, the reader is told, is inevitable in organizations because human beings have limited intellectual capacity and must therefore rely on repertories of programs to deal with the multitude of situations that arise. Thus, the structure of the modern bureaucratic organization is derived directly from inherent aspects of human decision making. This is not an oversimplification; consider a direct quote from Organizations:
It has been the central theme of this chapter that the basic features of organization structure and function derive from the characteristics of human problem-solving processes and rational human choice. Because of the limits of human intellective capacities in comparison with the complexities of the problems that individuals and organizations face, rational behavior calls for simplified models that capture the main features of a problem without capturing all its complexities. (p. 169)

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MS also summarize these ideas: "The 'boundaries of rationality' that have been the source of our propositions have consisted primarily of the properties of human beings as organisms capable of evoking and executing relatively well-defined programs but able to handle programs only of limited complexity" (p. 171). The employee, then, is described in this model as a relatively simple computing device who must, because of cognitive limits, rely on prewritten programs to complete organizational work. The employee performs routinized, repetitive work because he or she is literally incapable of doing anything else. This model is the source and the center of MS's contribution, but it remains outside the positivist philosophy to which the text so strongly adheres. The assertion that a certain type of bureaucratic structure is an inevitable consequence of the inherent features of human decision making is neither operationalized nor subjected to empirical testing. Such an assertion must be accepted, if it is accepted at all, on faith, as ideology rather than science. According to this ideology, repetitive, programmed work is an inevitable, not-to-be-questioned feature of organizational life because it derives from cognitive limits over which organizational designers have no control. If there are such cognitive limits, tasks must be broken down into easily programmable units because human beings are not able to understand a complete task. This aspect of the ideology is most clearly expressed in MS's discussion of unprogrammed decision making: We appeal again to the principle of bounded rationality-to the limits of human cognitive powers-to assert that in the discovery and elaboration of new programs, the decisionmaking process will proceed in stages, and at no time will it
be concerned with the "whole" problem in all its complexity, but always with parts of the problem. (p. 190, emphasis added)

The association between programmed work and cognitive limits has, of course, been noticed by other commentators. Indeed, this association has been a prominent theme in the social sciences since the beginning of the industrial era and the introduction of the division of labor. For example, in the following passage, Adam Smith (1776/1976: 302-303) declared his abhorrence of the debilitating effects of routinized work on cognitive abilities: The man whose whole life is spent performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

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For Adam Smith, the causal arrow was clear: Programmed work led to cognitive limitations. In other words, it led to the degradation of intellectual ability. The degrading effects of fractionated, repetitive work has also been a major concern of Karl Marx (e.g., Marx, 1867/1977, Chapter 15) and, more recently, of organizational scholars concerned with job enlargement (e.g., Walker & Guest, 1952). None of this ideologically incompatible work is cited in Organizations, despite its relevance to issues (e.g., the division of labor) discussed at length in the text. For MS, then, there is no debate: Programmed, routinized work is an inevitable feature of organizations because of the limitations of the human mind. The ideology of programming is powerful because it provides a justification for the extension of fractionated work from the factory to the office, from physical labor to cognitive labor. From this perspective, scientific management techniques are inevitably extended to all organizational work because human cognitive limits leave no alternative. The principle of bounded rationality legitimates the programmed organization. Within this organization, the programming itself, which is required by the inherent limitations of human cognition, is nevertheless controlled by upper management (p. 150). This management-by-writing is, of course, a characteristic of scientific management, with its emphasis on written inscriptions for each type of task. Just as Taylor (e.g., 1947: 40, 48, 59) justified managerial inscriptions for physical labor by assertions concerning the stupidity of workers, so too do MS justify managerial programming of cognitive labor by reference to the bounded rationality of humans. In extending written control from bodily labor to cognitive labor, from routine programmed work to unprogrammed work, MS inevitably reassert an ideology of hierarchical power. On this idea Derrida has commented: "It has long been known that the power of writing in the -hands of a small number, caste, or class, is always contemporaneous with hierarchization" (1976: 130). Additionally, Levi-Strauss (cited in Derrida, 1976: 130) has stated the matter more bluntly: "If my hypothesis is correct, the primary function of writing, as a means of communication, is to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings." A Confessional Tale

What is my own stake in this debate? Can I continue to play the role of the neutral analyst while insisting on the pervasiveness of ideology in organizational writing? Why, in fact, am I conducting this deconstruction? Perhaps I can borrow from the conventions of the confessional tale (Van Maanen, 1988: 73-100) to reveal my own motives. As an academic researcher I already have a stake in the outcome of the debate initiated by the deconstruction of Organizations. Previously, I have tried to undermine the claims of the information-processing model as applied to job design (Kilduff & Regan, 1988). In that earlier piece, the argument in the present article was prefigured: My coauthor and I tried to

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show empirically that the model of the employee as a passive, easily programmed automaton was a fiction sustained only within the bounds of an experimental paradigm that ignored the behavior of the subjects being studied. By first replicating the information processing attitudinal results, and then extending the experiment so that freely chosen behavior reversed the established results, we sought to deconstruct the taken-forgranted claims of the information-processing model. Rebutting empirical work, however, leaves untouched the ideology of programming as it is expressed in foundational texts. Therefore, my motive for this deconstruction is not only to expose textual limitations, but also to permanently change the way the text is used in management education and research. To the extent that the ideology of programming as embedded in Organizations continues to legitimate fractionation of work and restriction of innovation, I believe the text must bear some responsibility for the prevalence of these problems in industry. The deconstruction of the text, then, focuses attention on an ideology that extends from the text-to the Academy-to the world of work. Anyone who criticizes the notion that organizations must consist of programmed work must offer some explanation for the evident repetitiveness of organizational life, even in those organizations not designed according to the MS model. In this deconstruction of Organizations, I have avoided criticizing the authors for not anticipating later developments in theory and research. Is there an alternative explanation, contemporary with Organizations, for the prevalence of performance routines in organizations? One alternative, developed during the 1950s by Erving Goffman (1956a,b,c), focuses on human behavior as strategic play. From this perspective, routinized performance requires the active cooperation of thinking individuals who seek to promote their interests within the structure of well-understood games. Breaking the rules is also possible if this will advance the individual's strategic plan. Thus, the performance of organizational routines, from Goffman's perspective, is the front-stage conscious enactment of conventional behavior, rather than the inevitable consequence of cognitive limits. (See Kilduff, 1992, for an extended commentary on the performance of routines in organizations from a Goffmanesque perspective.) At this point, I should caution the reader about the epistemological status of this deconstruction of Organizations: Is it the only one possible? Can I claim that the analysis performed here is simply the application of a method to a problem that is independent of my own agenda? Clearly, such a claim cannot be sustained. Different readers can potentially unlock different narratives from the same text. All of these narratives may be present in the text, especially if the text is complex. A deconstruction of a text involves a close reading of one such narrative that has been absent from scrutiny, absent because the narrative contradicts or undermines the apparent message the text is thought to

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impart. Bringing together absence and presence in this way, deconstruction exposes the play of meaning between textual levels. It is from this difference that the text derives its rhetorical power, a power often hidden behind claims of scientific objectivity and disavowals of literary tricks.

OF LIMITS THETEXT
Organizations is limited by its exclusion and distortion of previous texts. This limitation is neither arbitrary nor accidental: It is necessary to the insights that MS offer. These authors suppose an absence in previous texts that Organizations can fill. The absence that Organizations fills, however, is not the one it claims to have found. Previous research was neither as unscientific nor as simplistic as MS claimed. Neither Weber nor the Hawthorne researchers can be accused of Taylorism. Yet because MS adhere to a positivist philosophy of science, they must find a gap so that the process of writing can begin. Positivism requires the appearance of a scientific advance. In Organizations, this advance takes the form of disthe text surcrediting the very tradition-scientific management-that reptitiously seeks to renew and extend. The explicit text of Organizations appears to offer a stark contrast between a model of the employee as machine and a model of the employee as decision maker. The subtext, however, undermines this dichotomy. The new model of the employee is as mechanical as the old. The machine analogy has been updated from a laboring machine to a computing machine. Both types of human machines can be programmed to perform precise iterations. Further, the work of both the programmed laborer and the programmed decision maker is readily replaceable by actual machinery. Thus, the new model suffers from the same drawbacks that MS have identified in the mechanical model they seek to replace. The deconstructive approach is useful, therefore, in radically altering the received wisdom concerning the interpretation of classic texts. Deconstruction alerts the reader to the existence of a subtext that may undermine adherence to the agenda the explicit text asserts. In the case of Organizations, a deconstructive reading reveals a model of the organization as a writing machine within which individuals choose freely to inscribe paths that are, in fact, already written. This model has an affinity with structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) in its ironic implication that individual decision makers tend to enact the structures that limit their achievements and cognitions. Deconstruction, as an approach to texts, also has its limits. Derrida's difficult language serves as the first limiting factor: Many social scientists are impatient with an elusive, parenthetical style that avoids the simplification of ideas. Derrida's refusal to offer a clear definition of the deconstructive process and its implications, for example, is consistent with his overall suspicion of abstraction and generalization. Those who dare to deconstruct a text must rely on their own understanding of the

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gestures of deconstruction as practiced by Derrida: There is no programmatic summary of the techniques of a deconstructive reading. The challenge, as Fischer (1986: 229) pointed out, is to use Derrida's deconstructions as examples while moving toward more accessible analyses. A second limiting factor concerns the difficulty of relating textual analysis to institutions. Derrida has limited himself to canonical texts and has largely avoided extensive commentary on the structures of society. If the "potentially enormous" (Agger, 1991: 114) relevance of Derrida's work for social science is to be realized, deconstruction must be extended to the analysis of social, political, and organizational contexts. (See Dorst, 1989; Martin, 1990, for very different examples of extending deconstruction.) Deconstruction, in other words, must go beyond the limits practiced by Derrida.

CONCLUSION
Deconstruction involves tracing the limitations and self-contradictions that characterize complex texts. March and Simon's (1958) Organizations is a good example of a classic text that can be deconstructed to reveal a surprisingly contemporary contribution to organization studies. In focusing on the language of the classics, the practitioners of deconstruction take issue with the emphasis within the philosophy of science on the neutrality of writing. From a deconstructive perspective, writing is never neutral; it always requires interpretation. Deconstruction may be particularly useful in undermining such standard textual claims as the objectivity of the argument, the progress of science, and the necessary exclusion of certain categories of debate. The aim of deconstruction is not to prevent science but to open debate to complexities and issues that have been ignored or suppressed. In the field of organization studies, this deconstruction of Organizations raises the question of whether other exemplary texts are constrained to replicate self-contradictions within an ideological framework that asserts the necessity of managerial control. The process of deconstruction creates texts that can themselves be deconstructed to reveal limitations and self-contradictions. From a deconstruction perspective, authors have no privileged access to the meaning of the texts they inscribe. The language itself carries a burden of meaning that escapes the control of the writer. Writers are likely to replicate the distinctions and assumptions that they criticize. Every deconstruction, then, is an ambiguous document that both celebrates and condemns its own text even as it points to other texts. The analysis offered in this article should open debate on the ideological underpinnings of organization theory. As social scientists, we write within the system of differences articulated by our predecessors. To trace the metaphysical spacing that gives writing its power is to free the reader from the claims of unexamined philosophy.

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