Planning and Playing: A Little Narrative on Modern and Postmodern Management

Citation

Ramsey, C. (2003), "Planning and Playing: A Little Narrative on Modern and Postmodern Management", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 22 No. 6, pp. 552-555. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710310478512

Postmodern ideas have been influencing academic approaches to management and organisation, certainly for the last 15 to 20 years and possibly longer. There has, however, been an ongoing problem with postmodernist contributions to management theory. While postmodern academics have been strong on critique, we have been weaker on practical advice on what to do next. Mario Weiss has sought, in his attractive little book, to fill this gap.

To attempt the reduction of postmodernism into a coherent and easily accessible set of practices (or techniques) is an immense task. In one sense it is a contradictory task, for postmodernism defies the kind of all embracing definition and description required for the process of pre‐digestion and simplification needed to synthesise a series of complex ideas into a “coffee‐table” type book. Yet this is what Weiss attempts to do and whether he succeeds in doing so depends on where the reader is coming from as they read the book.

Additionally, this refusal of postmodernism to fit tidily into a definition provides a reviewer with a problem as well. For even though I would narrate myself as a postmodern scholar of management; I cannot speak on behalf of postmodernism. I am only able to speak from one “corner”, one perspective, of postmodern communities. Another problem in reviewing this book is that its informal format does not allow for any referencing of Weiss’ intellectual sources. So, while from my own relational perspective (Gergen, 1999) I may have much to say about Weiss's approach; I am uncertain that I will be evaluating Weiss’ book according to the particular postmodern premises that he would reference. I will, therefore, attempt two projects. First, I will discuss what Weiss succeeds in doing with this book and second, I will outline why I find the book unsatisfying and ultimately not postmodern at all!

So what does Weiss attempt and succeed in doing? First, and foremost, he has succeeded in putting together a very attractive book. I enjoyed the mixture of text and pictures. The pictures are always intriguing and often very helpful, for example, the pictures that illustrate ideas of modernist manufacture (Gergen, 1999, p. 3, 4). His second achievement is in taking one element of postmodernism, an appreciation of multiple truths, and using it to generate a plausible managerial practice. Additionally, I applaud the way that he was able to take this idea and demonstrate benefits of a refocusing of managerial attention on possibilities, rather than the pursuit for a “best practice”.

One of Weiss’ key points is that postmodernism values what he calls a “diversity of knowledge”. Yet it is at this point that there is a significant inconsistency in Weiss’ argument. Weiss acknowledges that postmodernism questions universal theories that explain the world, yet in significant areas he demonstrates that he assumes an ability to pronounce universal truths with authority. A couple of examples include this description of problems in the market place:

The “new economy” has shown that games played in self‐made realities are often of short duration and the return to reality is painful (Gergen, 1999, p. 46).

and this theory of people:

Players expect a challenge.., learning experiences … stardom or the respect of others and, last but not least, players also want emotional experiences…

These “grand narratives”, to use Weiss’ own choice of terms allow him to develop a coherent theory and recommended practice for what he terms postmodern knowledge management. And it is as this practice is developed that my dissatisfaction with Weiss’ ideas grows. I can best illustrate this by raising two questions and then proposing an answer to them.

Weiss uses the language tool of a game, suggesting that organisations should shift their attention from “master plans” to “serious games”. By games he means to highlight the interplay of different perspectives as “think‐players” interact and network. The consequence of such a shift, argues Weiss, will be increased “flexibility and creativity” with which to generate many “possibilities” and “the scope for an infinite number of options” demanded by frequently changing environments. Within this concept of knowledge management, the managers’ role shifts from designing the master plan to laying out the rules for the serious game. What Weiss does not challenge is management's right and ability to design the serious games. Which game is to be played? With what aim and what rules? These questions are not available for discussion in terms of the multiple knowledges; they are for the management alone. Why is diversity only allowed so far in an organisation until a unitary perspective is restored?

The second question emerges from Weiss’ treatment of games. They are “serious games” with winners and losers. Indeed the professionals who populate these games are described as winners and the games are played to win. Such games are contrasted with childlike games where children play “for the sake of playing” and in so doing “create their own realities”. As the above quotation about “the new economy” illustrates Weiss considers this a dangerous and foolish scenario. Other games are available. For example Torbet (2001) writes of the game “palette” where the purpose of the game is for participants “enter a mutual rhythm”. The skilled player does not seek to win, but rather seeks to stretch but never overtax their fellow players. Newman and Holzman (1997) develop the Russian psychologist Vygotsky's ideas of children “playing a head taller” than themselves to illustrate a playing that is developmental. A problem with Weiss’ limited concept of games is that he leaves unquestioned the power mechanisms by which winners will be acclaimed. The postmodern question about what assumptions and pre‐judgements, or discourses, go to render some strategies as winners remains unasked: “Why is the process of adjudicating winners of games unattended to?”

The answer this reviewer gives to both the above questions is that Weiss has remained entirely within a modernist managerial perspective. The manager is still conceptualised as separate to the entity (organisation, team or game) that he manages. The performance of that entity is still the outcome of the manager's actions. The relationship between the manager and the entity is still one that has been called subject/object relations (Hosking, 1999). The manager is still treated as knowing of organisational aims and team potentials (hence he – and it always is a he in the book – is justifiably able to design, referee and support the game) whilst the entity is treated as knowable. Rather than offer us a “little narrative” on postmodern management Weiss has used insights from postmodern theory to re‐invigorate a very modernist treatment of managing.

I find this is a shame. For I share with Weiss an aspiration to offer practical outworkings of the possibilities of postmodern thinking to the management of organisations. Mario Weiss’ book however is not where it can be found. During the last five or so years postmodern, particularly social constructionist, thinkers have started to develop practices that are immediately relevant to the day to day lives of managers. Just three examples include developing ideas centred on improvising (Barrett, 1998a, 1998b), conversation (Ramsey, 1998) or narrative (Barry, 1997). Each of these approaches have sought to tackle the conundrum of organisational processes that pit the diversity suggested by postmodernism against the monolith of managerial control that is the modernist management project. This is something that Weiss has singularly failed to do and why, despite my enjoyment of the book, I ultimately found it unsatisfying.