2011_responses to social constructionism and critical realism in organization studies

8/19/2019 2011_Responses to Social Constructionism and Critical Realism in Organization Studies

1/20

Organization Studies

32(1) 7 –26

© The Author(s) 2011Reprints and permission:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0170840610394289

www.egosnet.org/os

Responses to SocialConstructionism and CriticalRealism in Organization Studies

Tim NewtonIndependent author, UK

Stan DeetzUniversity of Colorado, USA

Mike ReedCardiff University, UK

AbstractIn this paper, we address debate about social constructionism and critical realism by examining current

concerns relating to the carbon economy, climate change and related ecological issues. At the same time,

we consider the implications of our discussion for processes of governance. Following an introduction,we present three varied sets of argument by ourselves as Editors. We then conclude the paper by briefly

introducing each of the papers included in this Themed Section.

Keywordssocial constructionism, critical realism, carbon economy, climate change, governance

Introduction to Themed Section

This Themed Section is concerned with the question of how we ‘know’ the organizational world in

terms of both its ontology, ‘what it is’, and its epistemology, ‘how we know what it is’. Any organi-zational research is guided by a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions, whether it is

the classic positivist assumption that organizational reality can be relatively straightforwardly

known through ‘reliable’ and ‘valid’ measurements, or the ‘strict’ constructionist position that

maintains that all representations of organizational life are necessarily fallible and subject to ongo-

ing contestation and dispute.

Corresponding author:

Tim NewtonEmail: [email protected]

at University of Bucharest on October 7, 2015oss.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://oss.sagepub.com/http://oss.sagepub.com/http://oss.sagepub.com/http://oss.sagepub.com/


2/20

8 Organization Studies 32(1)

One of us was originally trained in positivist argument (via degrees in psychology) and there-

fore had first-hand experience of the difficulties of believing in the ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’ of

positivist methods of measurements. As many quantitative researchers have experienced, slight

variations in the multivariate analyses of positivist research, or a questioning of its methodological

assumptions, can produce quite different ‘results’ (Newton and Keenan 1991). More positivisti-

cally oriented researchers may argue that this is part of the process of knowing organizational real-

ity whereby research produces ever more accurate approximations of it. Yet as Editors of this

Themed Section, none of us believe that the story is quite that simple.

In exploring this terrain, the Themed Section will examine the perspectives on organizational

life offered by social constructionism and critical realism. These approaches have the advantage of

making us think again about the extent to which we can ‘know’ the organizational world, and in

what ways we may, or may not, use organizational research to inform organizational practice and

public policy (Jarzabkowski et al. 2011). In particular, we contend that, in spite of the influence of

the ‘linguistic turn’ in organization studies (hereafter ‘OS’), debate and research still often pro-

ceeds as though most writers held positivist or naïve realist assumptions. On the one hand, OS

scholars have long acknowledged the difficulties of defending our studies as something more than

‘language games’ or ‘vehicles for public amusement’ (Gergen 1992: 216; cf. Parker 1992; Reed

1993; Newton 1996). On the other, in spite of years of influence by postmodern, Foucauldian and

poststructural contention, there remains a tendency to assume that it is relatively straightforward to

(1) gain reliable and valid knowledge of organizational life, and (2) use such knowledge to inform

management practice or public policy (Newton 1998, 2011). To do otherwise questions the legiti-

macy of our work, especially when many OS scholars operate within business schools that are

supposed to have something meaningful to say about organizational life.

As Editors, we believe that we still tend to ignore the issues raised by the linguistic turn and,

implicitly or explicitly, carry on with ‘business as usual’ programmes of organizational research that

exhibit insufficient questioning of their knowledge claims (Deetz 2003). It is of course the case that

many OS scholars remain sensitive to a range of epistemological issues. Nevertheless, a random

perusal of current management journals will reveal that many OS studies implicitly assume that

knowledge construction and application can proceed in a relatively unproblematic manner (so long as

the ‘correct’ research methodology is adopted and the ‘right’ research questions asked). In this sense,

it seems that we often ignore the lessons of the linguistic turn when it comes to the actual ‘doing’ of

organizational research (Deetz 2003; Newton 1998). Even though we know that research proceeds on

epistemologically precarious ground, there remains a marked tendency to put such knowledge ‘on

hold’ when it comes to actually collecting, analysing and reporting organizational data.

In this context, the advantage of debates within social constructionism and critical realism is

that they point once more to the question of how we are to ‘know’, and how we are to ‘act’. In

addition, given the increased pressures on researchers to justify their scholarship, or obtain ‘prac-

titioner-relevant’ research funding, such issues are more relevant than ever. In particular, there

remains a danger that researchers will feel pressured towards ‘machine-like’ research which con-

veniently overlooks argument that may question its validity. In our view, such pressures need to be

resisted through a refusal to ignore the ontological and epistemological issues that surround every-

day organizational life.

In what follows, these issues are illustrated by three separate pieces written by ourselves as

Editors. Tim Newton will firstly address the tensions between critical realists and constructionists

by examining an arena directly relevant to their contention, namely that of climate change and the

carbon economy. Mike Reed will then expand on this argument by illustrating the relevance ofcritical realism to our understanding of the governance processes that surround concerns such as


http://oss.sagepub.com/http://oss.sagepub.com/http://oss.sagepub.com/


3/20

Newton et al. 9

climate change, and related ecological, social and political issues. Lastly, Stan Deetz will explore

a similar terrain from the perspective of constructionist argument. Following these varying exposi-

tions, we will introduce the three papers included in this Themed Section. Each of these papers

either illustrates, or seeks to move beyond, constructionist and critical realist argument.

An Introductory Example: The Carbon Economy (Tim Newton)

In referring to ‘social constructionism’ and ‘critical realism’, we are of course in danger of doing

violence to both these sets of argument, especially in relation to the diverse conjecture which they

each contain. Nevertheless, there remains a need to illustrate the tensions between social construc-

tionism and critical realism (especially for the uninitiated), and the example of the carbon economy

is particularly suited to this task.

This example has two advantages for our present concerns. Firstly, it accentuates debates and

disputes between constructionists and critical realists because it asks us to consider something that

appears nominally beyond ‘talk and text’, namely the natural world. As a consequence, the ‘extra-

discursivity’ of ‘nature’ has proved a pivotal issue for debate between realists and constructionists,

especially in the UK (Soper 1995; Sutton 2004; Newton 2003, 2007).

Secondly, the carbon economy has the advantage of revealing how OS scholars are capable of

ignoring subjects that are of major policy and commercial concern. At the time of writing, barely a

day goes by without some media report concerning climate change, and the subject has moved

increasingly centre stage within mainstream political agendas (Newton 2002, 2009). Yet in a

review of ‘top’ US and European management and OS journals between 1995 and 2005, Bansal

and Gao found that, excepting two special issues, less than 1 per cent of journal space covered

issues relating to ‘organisations and the natural environment’ (2006: 462). Remarkably similar

findings have been reported in comparable reviews (Coopey 2003: 13; Jermier et al. 2006: 629,

642; cf. Kallio and Nordberg 2006). In addition, Coopey (2003) asserts that in the case of the UK,

the British Academy of Management (BAM) failed to respond to environmentalism initiatives,

such as the request by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council in 1999 to comment on its

proposed theme on ‘environmentalism and sustainability’.

Given the rapidly accelerating policy attention to climate change in the period reviewed, namely

1995 to 2005, the former BAM position and the 1 per cent publication figure is surprising. It is also

deeply ironic when there have been numerous articles published during the same period that have

bemoaned the failure of OS writers to influence management practice and public policy issues (e.g.

Abrahamson and Eisenman 2001; Ferraro et al. 2005; Hambrick 1994; Pfeffer and Fong 2002; Rynes

and Shapiro 2005; Newton 2010; Jarzabkowski et al. 2010). Such observations suggest that it is hardly

surprising that we do not influence practice and policy issues when we so signally fail to address them.

In sum, the carbon economy deserves attention because of its strong epistemological and prac-

tice/policy interest. For the present, however, I will focus chiefly on the former because it draws

attention to differences between constructionists and critical realist contention (for consideration

of the latter, see below, and Newton 2005, 2009). In particular, for a number of realists, the natural

world questions the ability of social constructionism to adequately account for human experience.

On the one hand, both constructionists and critical realists concur that our understanding of the

natural world is socially mediated. On the other, some realists argue that this recognition has led to

an over-socialized view of nature within constructionist contention (Soper 1995). In particular,

critical realists take exception to constructionist analyses in which ‘the social shapes the material

[aspects of nature] to a far greater degree than the material shapes the social’ (Williams andBendelow 1998: 128).




4/20


Realists further argue that although the natural world is strongly culturally influenced, it is not

an artefact of culture (Soper 1995). For instance, the natural landscape is shaped through its com-

position by elements such as carbon, oxygen and water which remain ‘beyond talk’. Similarly, we

cannot as yet talk our way out of the environmental constraints of nature. Recent events such as the

Iceland volcano, the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Haitian, Chinese/Tibetan and

Chilean earthquakes remind us that we cannot control nature’s ‘plagues’ such as flooding, earth-

quakes, eruptions, drought, cyclones, etc. In other words, we cannot ‘afford to suppose that the

exceptional characteristics of our species exempt us from ecological principles and from environ-

mental influences and constraints’ (Catton and Dunlap 1980: 25, original emphasis).

In consequence, realists and critical realists argue that the extra-discursivity of nature means

that we need to make some epistemological appeal beyond constructionism and cultural analysis if

we are to adequately account for our interaction with the natural world. At the same time, many

realists suggest that, for all the imperfections of natural science, we still need to take it seriously.

In this context, the problem they see with ‘strict/strong’ constructionism is its tendency to either

equivocate about, or ‘bracket out’, the findings of environmental science (Murphy 1994). It is of

course the case that, as Holt and Mueller (2011) note below, natural science ‘in action’ is socially

contested, negotiated and subject to rules and conventions (Barnes et al. 1996; Latour 1987). Yet a

number of realists argue that this still does not constitute grounds for rejecting, or refusing to adju-

dicate, the findings of natural science. They contend that although science presents partial accounts

of nature, they ‘are not just arbitrary social constructions’ (Murphy 1994: 196, added emphasis).

For example, they may suggest that in assessing the damage done to the environment by multina-

tional companies through oil spills or chemical contamination, we must draw (cautiously) on the

findings of natural science.

Constructionists have reacted against this critique by arguing that it is frequently misguided. In

particular, they accuse realists of using caricatured portrayals of constructionism that fail to distin-

guish between the diversity, complexity and conflictual nature of its contention. For example, real-

ist critique may not differentiate between ‘strict’ and ‘mild’ constructionism. Yet Burningham and

Cooper argue that in targeting criticism at strict constructionism, realist critics ignore the fact that

a ‘majority [of constructionist studies] employ a mild or contextual constructionism’ (1999: 303)

that accepts the critical realist claim that the ‘material shapes the social’ (Williams and Bendelow

1998: 128). Furthermore, other constructionists acknowledge the value of ‘conceptualising nature

… as an objective reality, a real materiality that exists prior to any social constructions that people

may put on it’ (Franklin 2002: 51, added emphasis). In consequence, Burningham and Cooper

argue that it is incorrect to claim that constructionists deny nature since ‘the vast majority of social

constructionist analyses of environmental issues … do not cast any doubt on the reality of environ-

mental problems’ (1999: 305). Constructionists merely emphasize that this ‘reality … is socially

constructed’ and is therefore not ‘fixed’ in its form (Burningham and Cooper 1999: 308). For

example, Laclau comments that ‘a stone exists independently of any system of social relations, but

it is, for instance, either a projectile or an object of aesthetic contemplation only within a specific

discursive configuration’ (1990: 101, cited in Burningham and Cooper 1999: 308).

Burningham and Cooper also maintain that, in any case, ‘strict’ constructionists are able to

‘bracket out’ the reality of nature and still engage ‘in political debate, or make political interven-

tions’ (1999: 310). They cite Spector and Kitsuse’s (1987) argument that researchers ‘should

remain agnostic about the existence and extent of the conditions [of nature] and simply consider

the claims made about them’ (Burningham and Cooper 1999: 308). They further imply that this

‘agnostic’ position advantages political engagement because it ‘will not justify itself in objectivistterms by … claiming knowledge of an assumed incontestable reality’ (1999: 210). They provide




5/20

Newton et al. 11

the example of genetically modified (GM) crops where they suggest that it would be ‘undesirable

for the social scientist to attempt to play the ontological trump card’ of adjudicating between the

‘conflicting scientific and moral claims being made by the biotechnology industry on one side and

environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth on the other’, especially

through some appeal to ‘accurate realist claims’ (1999: 311).

Yet a realist might again object that it is impossible to take any serious political position unless

one actively engages in the ‘independence’ and ‘reality’ of nature: otherwise, how do we evaluate

the competing claims of the biotech industry and environmental groups? In other words, realists

are likely to argue that unless we impute some measure of validity to the scientific claims of rival

groups, we cannot assess whether, say, GM crops are a good or a bad thing, or make any other

statement relating to the politics of nature? Similarly, they may argue that we cannot assess whether

‘green’ business activities are effective, such as those of waste minimization, reduction of carbon

emissions, use of renewable energy and biomass, etc. (Carolan, 2005).

More generally, realists suggest that there needs to be an ontological and epistemological

attempt to explain the reality of nature, such as the impact of business activities on carbon emis-

sions, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, etc. In other words, they maintain that it is

insufficient for mild constructionists to acknowledge the ‘reality’ of nature but not interrogate the

latter’s ontological significance (cf. Holt and Mueller 2011, below).

Once again, constructionists may take issue with this realist contention by stressing that there is

no single privileged voice that dictates our understanding of nature. In particular, ‘science’ is mul-

tiform and variable rather than a single enterprise that proclaims an uncontested ‘truth’. Scientific

analysis of the natural environment contains varying assumptions and claims which need to be

understood in terms of their construction and interaction with a host of social and technical issues,

whether this relates to the science of GM or the carbon economy. For example, the route from ‘sci-

ence’ to public policy needs to be analysed in relation to the perceptions, claims and counter-claims

of varied constituencies (Jasanoff 2004). In this context, the desire of some natural scientists for a

‘commanding’ voice may be counter-productive if it ignores the complex issues which shape pub-

lic opinion and policy. Constructionists contend that it is only through analysing this polyvocal

landscape that socially and politically sensitive accounts are likely to be produced.

In addition, the representation of natural science has come under increasing scrutiny if only

because science has appeared ‘double-edged’ in its outcomes. For instance, along with the ‘goods’

of remarkable 20th-century scientific progress came the ‘bads’ of, say, climate change, biological

warfare, the atomic bomb, and rapid environmental degradation, etc. (Beck 1992). At the same

time, lay publics became increasingly bombarded with supposed scientific information relating to

health, diet, child rearing, psychology, etc. (Rose 1990), and much of this information could appear

contradictory or confusing. In this context, it is not surprising that people have shown ambivalence

about the messages of climate change science, especially when people in the 1970s were being told

that the earth’s climate was becoming cooler rather than hotter. Environmentalists such as the

biologist E.O. Wilson may complain that, until recently, ‘environmental … science [was] still

regarded widely, all the way up to the White House, as just another worldview’ (Wilson 2008: BBC

podcast). Yet such complaints illustrate the need to see the climate change debate as a highly

mobile, contested and polyvalent terrain.

The differing perspectives of realism and constructionism can be further illustrated by the ‘cli-

mategate’ scandal that has recently attracted considerable media attention (14,600,000 Google hits

as of February 2010). This ‘scandal’ resulted from the leaking of emails from a major UK environ-

mental science research centre at the University of East Anglia (UEA), some of which have beenargued to question the validity of climate change science. In addition, the climategate saga has




6/20


been said to reveal ‘the real process of everyday science in lurid detail’ because it suggests that ‘the

everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships’ are as likely to occur through

scientific activity as elsewhere (Pearce 2010). At the same time, the saga constitutes part of an

ongoing conflict between advocates of anthropogenic climate change (i.e. caused by human activ-

ity) and their detractors, namely climate change ‘skeptics’ or ‘deniers’.

Realists are likely to argue that there is a need to adjudicate between advocates and detractors if

only because of a range of evidence suggesting that a number of climate change ‘skeptics’ and

‘deniers’ are linked to institutions which are partly funded by the petroleum and mining industry

(Goldenberg 2010; Hoggan and Littlemore 2009; Jermier et al. 2006; Newton 2009; Rowell 2007;

Union of Concerned Scientists 2007). In other words, they are likely to question the contention of

some constructionists that social science researchers should avoid taking the role of ‘environmen-

tal arbitrator or judge’ (Irwin 2001: 183). In the hotly contested political arena represented by cli-

mategate, realists may argue that it is vital to take environmental science ‘seriously’ in order to

judge the competing arguments, especially when some skeptics and deniers are funded by petro-

leum organizations that may have a vested interested in attacking climate change science. In this

context, realists may conclude that, although climate change represents a contested and polyvalent

debate, the overwhelming majority of environmental science continues to support the existence of

anthropogenic climate change (as reflected in recent ‘independent’ scientific assessments of ‘cli-

mategate’ that have been argued to vindicate the UEA work).

Yet constructionists are likely to contend that such ‘evidence’ still does not detract from the

need to interrogate the claims of advocates and detractors of anthropogenic climate change. As

Irwin argues, constructionist ‘approaches encourage the challenging of existing political and cog-

nitive framings of the environment rather than simply taking them at face value’ (2001: 171). This

applies just as much to the claims of environmental science detractors, and their possible links to

the petroleum and mining industries, as it does to the claims of its advocates. Through contestation

of both sets of arguments, it is argued that constructionism ‘brings more reality rather than less

reality to the issues’ (Irwin 2001: 167). In other words, strict constructionist agnosticism has the

advantage of furthering a ‘relatively detached perspective’ by laying ‘bare the claims-making pro-

cess’ (Sutton 2004: 64). For instance, many organizations have been accused of adopting a ‘green-

wash’ strategy by simultaneously projecting an image of being environmentally concerned players

whilst continuing to degrade the environment (Newton and Harte 1997). In this context, it is vital

that organizational researchers critically deconstruct the ‘green’ claims espoused by supposedly

environmentally concerned companies.

To sum up, these examples illustrate the continuing debate between constructionists and realists

over the interpretation of ‘nature and society’, and its implications for understanding the research,

practice and policy issues surrounding the carbon economy. As a consequence, it is difficult to

avoid for anyone concerned with the relationship between ‘organizations and the natural environ-

ment’ because it raises significant epistemological questions about how we relate to the natural

domain (Sutton 2004; Newton 2009). At the same time, it points toward other significant concerns

relating to nature. For example, the question still remains as to whether we are on exactly the same

ontological and epistemological terrain as we move from the ‘social’ to the ‘biological’ and ‘physi-

cal’ aspects of nature. Though we clearly need to challenge dualism, this does not mean that there

are no differences in our perception of the interwoven ‘zones’ of nature. To assume otherwise is to

argue, in effect, for a single and singular perspective, a totalizing theory to encompass the entirety

of ‘nature’ (Newton 2007).

These issues are significant because nearly of all our activities represent some kind of interac-tion with the natural world. To put this another way, carbon economy concerns merely dramatize




7/20

Newton et al. 13

our commonplace relationship to ‘nature’. For instance, the typing of this text relies on a personal

computer and electronic cables that require the mining of ‘natural’ elements such as silicon, lith-

ium, copper and oil, and the engagement of biological processes that use oxygen, blood, neurons,

etc. As Holt and Mueller (2011) note below, working at a PC is a social, biological and technologi-

cal activity because it involves ‘keyboards, synapses, vocal cords, scripts and the like’. If we pur-

sue this line of argument, we can see that the ‘natural’ world is central to much of what we call

organization studies. In consequence, there remains a need to account for our interaction with the

materiality and biology of nature if only because it constitutes such a routine and quotidian aspect

of everyday organizational life (Callon 1991; Latour 1991; Law 1994; Soper 1995).

Such observations suggest that we should consider our relation to ‘nature’ in most areas of orga-

nization studies. At the same time, the differences between constructionism and realism illustrate

how there is no easy answer to the question of how we can understand our interrelation with nature.

Yet, equally, we cannot sidestep ontological and epistemological issues just because they represent

a difficult terrain. As noted above, it remains insufficient to exhibit sensitivity to such issues but

then sidestep them when actually ‘doing’ organizational research.

Environmental Policy and Organizational Governance (Mike Reed)

As the previous discussion has indicated, ongoing debates about the politics of the carbon economy

and climate change raise fundamental philosophical questions relating to the nature of our knowl-

edge about the organizational world. These debates also surface complex theoretical questions

about the changing nature of power relations and the governance mechanisms through which they

become, however contingently and temporarily, stabilized and ordered within societies struggling

to make the tortuous transition to a ‘post-carbon economy’. The deep-seated and complex intercon-

nections between philosophy, power and policy within the domain of ‘organizations and the naturalenvironment’ are reflected in Giddens’ recent book on the politics of climate change where he

concludes that:

Organized interest groups of one kind or another play a role in shaping public opinion and limiting or

opening out space for governmental action. …. Public enthusiasm for a given policy agenda rarely lasts

long, even when an issue is of continuing and manifest importance. …The implications for climate change

policy are clear and significant. Public support for such a policy is not likely to be constant and can only

form a general backdrop to effective policy action. (Giddens 2009: 112)

Insofar as Giddens’ analysis suggests that any kind of significant progress relating to the global,

national and regional transition to post-carbon economies and sustainable societies will only berealized through the ‘hard-slog’, indeed ‘grind’, of institutionalized politics, then it places the

‘dynamics of domination’ at the core of the agenda for ‘governance’ in 21st-century political econ-

omies (Levy and Newell 2005; Ezzamel and Reed 2008). In this respect, underlying shifts in the

governance processes and mechanisms through which various groups - ranging from well-organ-

ized and institutionally powerful ‘corporate agents’ (Archer 2003), such as petroleum and mining

interests, to much more disparate and fluid social movements and activist groupings (Crossley

2003) - gain access to the political arenas within which the power struggles to control the agenda

for climate change will be fought out will have a critical impact on both the trajectories that the

latter follow and the outcomes which they generate. Thus, understanding the highly complex

‘dynamics of domination’ in 21st-century political economies emerges as a fundamental theoreti-cal and empirical task for contemporary social scientists as they/we struggle to identify and analyse




8/20


the new, often ‘non-state’ and ‘recombinant’ (Crouch 2005), modes of governance that are taking

shape within an organizational environment increasingly populated, even dominated, by hybrid

forms (Clegg et al. 2006; Reed 2008, 2009).

The underlying philosophical tensions between social constructionism and critical realism dis-

cussed in the previous section of this article are echoed in the contrasting analytical frameworks

through which each perspective conceptualizes power relations and the governance mechanisms

through which they are stabilized and regulated. Social constructionism emphasizes the cultural

logics and discursive materials through which governance practices and programs are mobilized

and legitimated as specific instruments and interventions focused on the generation of political

power and its translation into effective collective action. Building on the work of actor-network

theorists and other research groups in the ‘social construction of science and technology studies’

(Law and Hassard 1999; Munro 2009; Collins and Evans 2009), social constructionist governance

studies have focused on ‘calculative practices, [exploring] how these shape the ways in which we

frame the choices open to individuals, businesses and other organizations, which in turn influences

the ways in which we administer the lives of others and ourselves’ (Miller and Rose 2008: 11).

In addition, the work of the ‘governmentalists’ (Dean 1999; Rose and Miller 1992; Miller and

Rose 2008) has drawn extensively on Foucault’s analysis of the socio-historical development of

‘government’ as a complex of multiform political strategies and tactics in which the disciplining of

human populations emerges as the dominant problem from the 18th century onwards (Foucault

1991, 2003). Insofar as this form of analysis emphasizes the central role that power plays in con-

structing people as ‘subjects’ who have the capacity to bear the ‘regulated freedoms’ that modern

state formations and capitalist enterprises increasingly make available from the 18th century

onwards, then it stresses the overriding analytical importance of ‘governance’ as a creative, rather

than constraining, organizational phenomenon (Ezzamel and Reed 2008). Consequently, ‘ gover-

nance’ is defined and analysed primarily as a process that renders certain things or activities or

objects as problematic and a focus for various forms of rationalized sets of instruments or tech-

niques that allow these ‘problems’ to be acted upon and potentially transformed through the appli-

cation of various programs or ‘technologies’ of government (Miller and Rose 2008).

Critical realism, on the other hand, takes a much more structural view of governance in which

the constraining impact of extant domination systems and organizational control regimes is

assigned much greater ontological and epistemological – and hence theoretical – priority. Here,

overriding analytical and explanatory significance is attached to the institutionalized frameworks

of power relations that constitute the ‘structures of dominancy’ within which specific governance

mechanisms, programs and practices emerge and are, eventually, legitimated as stabilized regula-

tive orders that take on an obduracy and resilience which make them very difficult to modify, much

less transform (Reed 2009, 2011 forthcoming). In turn, elite groups occupying strategic positions

within the domination structures and organizational control regimes through which their domi-

nance is reproduced and protected are assigned a central explanatory role in determining the insti-

tutional trajectories and outcomes that ongoing power struggles follow and produce over extended

temporal and spatial domains. These elite groups are identified and analysed as relatively socially

cohesive and well-organized ‘corporate agents’ (Archer 2003) who occupy the commanding power

positions within extant domination structures enabling them to mount offensive and defensive

political strategies which effectively protect and enhance their socio-material interests in the face

of actual or potential threats to their dominancy (Scott 2008).

Of course, this is not to claim that such ‘ruling minorities’ are incapable of making, sometimes

fatal, collective mistakes and errors that can and have radically undermined their dominancy or todeny that a great deal of ‘intra-elite’ and ‘inter-elite’ political and normative work has to be done in




9/20

Newton et al. 15

order to hold such ruling minorities together and to sustain their organizational capacity to main-

tain and/or transform the domination structures through which their dominancy is sustained.

Neither is it to ignore the complex patterns of resistance to the external and internal constraints that

dominant groups and ideologies impose on subordinate groups as they strive to thwart and even

reverse the material, social and symbolic appropriations that ruling minorities impose and institu-

tionalize (Scott 1990; Lukes 2005; Courpasson and Danny 2009). But it is to insist that if ‘the black

box of domination through incorporation’ (Lukes 2005: 142) is to be opened, then it must be

opened with an analytical key that forces us to investigate and understand ‘the capacity to secure

compliance to domination through the shaping of beliefs and desires, by imposing internal con-

straints under historically changing circumstances’ (Lukes 2005:143-4).

Indeed, this emerging analytical focus on the complex combinations of ‘external’ and ‘internal’

constraints embedded within more complex, hybridized governance forms and mechanisms, par-

ticularly as they become even more prevalent and potent within the policy arenas within which the

‘politics of climate change’ are likely to conducted, presents a potential opportunity for a more

fruitful dialogue between constructionist and realist theories of governance. Critical realism’s

focus on the external/direct structural constraints that are necessarily entailed in the wider domina-

tion relations within which governance regimes are institutionally embedded can be complemented

by social constructionism’s concern with the internalized/indirect normative constraints embodied

in the discursive technologies through which subjectivities and identities are fashioned and refash-

ioned in the light of changing expectations about ‘the conduct of persons’ (Miller and Rose 2008).

In both cases, more organizationally and technologically advanced forms of governance are

treated as the emergent outcomes of a complex socio-historical interaction between pre-existing

domination structures and ongoing power struggles within and between elite ruling minorities and

subordinate groups as they engage in various political strategies and tactics aimed at promoting

their relative position within the reward systems that such structures and regimes legitimate and

operate. While the exact combinations and re-combinations of external/direct and internal/indirect

constraints embodied in particular governance regimes and its supporting organizational infrastruc-

ture will vary considerably in relation to historical trajectories and situational contingencies, recent

analysis indicates an underlying move away from uniform to multiform political and administrative

configurations in which the integration, if not synthesis, of contradictory logics and practices is the

overriding managerial concern (Thompson 2003; Clegg et al. 2006; Courpasson 2006; Reed 2010).

This growing concern with political hybrids and the neo-bureaucratic administrative systems

(Farrell and Morris 2003) on which they depend can be most clearly seen in the debates that have

crystallized around the emergence and significance of ‘polyarchical’ governance regimes which

combine selected elements of oligarchic and democratic modes of ruling. Clegg, Courpasson and

Phillips (2006) maintain that ‘polyarchy’ is an intermediate governance hybrid that combines for-

mal political inclusivity, participation and contestation with substantive administrative exclusivity,

restriction and consensus that is particularly suited to the ideological and organizational needs of

an emergent constellation of business, political and cultural elites forming a relatively porous and

sometimes fragmented oligarchy.

This polyarchical form of governance, they continue, can be explained as an organizational

response to the collective need for political hybrids on the part of dominant elite groups who have to

find some way of absorbing the pressure and clamor for enhanced participation and equality (or at

least equity) within strategic decision-making arenas from which intermediate and subordinate

groups are usually excluded or afforded largely token involvement. By selectively combining limited

formal participation for these intermediate and subordinate groups with effective concentrated stra-tegic control remaining under the tutelage of an inner circle of business, political and administrative




10/20


elites, polyarchy provides a loosely integrated and functionally flexible set of governance mecha-

nisms that deftly synthesizes ‘external’ and ‘internal’ constraints on resistance to domination.

As Clegg, Courpasson and Phillips (2006: 338) conclude, ‘in a polyarchic structure, oligarchs

strive to build a democratic plurality of actors while reinforcing unobtrusively the power of the

inner circle’. But this, highly complex, combination of ‘soft and partly decentralized structures of

governance’ and strict oligarchic control over strategic decision-making power, supplemented by

subtle and not-so-subtle ‘divide and rule’ tactics in relation to intermediate and subordinate groups,

means that the polyarchic model and practice of governance has a range of structural contradic-

tions and ideological tensions built into its very institutional foundations and cultural core that

leave dominant elites and administrative managers with a legacy of fundamental political and

organizational problems.

Polyarchic Governance and the Tennessee Valley Authority

The relevance of this hybridized polyarchic model and practice of governance to the understanding

of environmental policy and its long-term impact on organizational forms and cultures is illustrated

by Selznick’s (1966 [1949]) classic study of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Roosevelt’s

New Deal program in the 1930s. Following Selznick, the TVA can be seen as a classic organiza-

tional hybrid in that it was set up by Congress in 1933 as ‘a corporation clothed with the power of

central government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of private enterprise’ (Selznick

1966: 5). Its primary strategic mission was to plan for the sustainable use, conservation, and devel-

opment of the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage area and its adjoining territory.

The agricultural program developed within the ideological and political parameters established by

this ‘ecological sustainability ethos’ was potentially far-reaching and radical insofar as it empow-

ered small-scale farmers, ethnic minorities, and conservation groups within local communities

with its commitment to ‘grass roots’ involvement in key decision-making arenas. It was also

intended, under the auspices of the New Deal movement, to facilitate forms of integrated planning

and environmental management of local and regional areas that were suffering from the ravages of

long-term rural neglect and decay.

However, these, potentially radical, environmental policies and agricultural practices were

never enacted because the TVA became colonized and eventually captured by a flexible coalition

of intra-organizational and inter-organizational elites who were determined to neuter the agency’s

‘left wing’ or ‘socialist’ ideological proclivities and the progressive environmental initiatives

which they legitimated (Colignon 1997). This elite coalition developed a loosely integrated set of

political strategies and organizational tactics that mirror the key ideological and structural features

of the polyarchic governance – that is, concentrated political power held at the centre by an oligar-

chic coalition of administrative, political and business elites combined with limited and controlled

participation on the part of ‘grass roots’ interest groups who were effectively excluded from key

decision-making arenas.

Under the legislation setting up the TVA, internal administrative elites were allocated consider-

able discretionary powers - if not complete freedom from interference by central government - to

design and deliver a wide range of environmental policies and programs that came to reflect the

interests of large-scale landowners and farmers rather than those of low-income small farmers

barely surviving at subsistence levels. Thus, the ‘structures of dominancy’ within which the TVA

was embedded and operated established a set of ‘external’ constraints that encouraged, if not

‘forced’, its bureaucratic elites to form complex political alliances with powerful elite groupswithin the wider community – disguised as extending ‘grass roots’ engagement with the agency’s




11/20

Newton et al. 17

policy-making processes - in order to placate and eventually absorb any significant ideological

opposition to the agency’s existence and role. These political alliances ineradicably diluted the

TVA’s programs to make them more palatable and supportable to dominant elite groups in its wider

organizational field.

The ‘external/direct’ constraints imposed on the TVA’s bureaucratic leadership by its structural

location and positioning within pre-existing domination relations were complemented by various

forms of ‘internal/indirect’ constraints that further reinforced the transition to a much more conser-

vative’ or ‘right wing’ set of environmental policies and practices. Thus, the mechanism of ‘infor-

mal co-optation’ provided an organizational and discursive technology whereby dominant interests

could be absorbed into the inner decision-making circles of the agency without any formal recogni-

tion that such a transference of power and control was taking place and the disquiet, if not resis-

tance, that such a transference might have elicited from excluded interest groups.

Eventually, Selznick concludes, the TVA aligned itself with local business, political and

agricultural elites that effectively built a ‘right wing’ within the agency and legitimated such a

strategy by exploiting its founding ‘grass roots’ ideology and rationale. This polyarchic gover-

nance regime fundamentally transformed the TVA’s organizational culture and identity from a

conservation agency charged with utilizing publicly owned land and material resources for

ecologically sustainability and socio-economic progress into a business enterprise dominated

by commercial priorities and market competition. But this outcome was not inevitable or pre-

determined; it was the result of choices made and actions undertaken by elite groups located

and positioned within extant domination structures and the strategies in which they engaged to

pursue their corporate interests.

Selznick’s study is indicative of the pivotal role that organizational governance plays in shap-

ing the formation, implementation and impact of environmental policy as it’s refracted through

the prism of the ideological predispositions and political maneuverings through which the for-

mer is instantiated. Analytically, it highlights the key role that shifting inter-elite alliances play

in the ‘mobilization of bias’- not only through the manipulation of formal policy agendas but,

even more crucially, through the maintenance of the domination structures and ideological con-

texts in which these policy agendas are embedded (Lukes 2005). Polyarchy emerges as a gover-

nance regime combining elite rule with delegated autonomy to subordinate groups that are

afforded limited and controlled participation within the formal policy process. The analysis that

Selznick provides is also illustrative of the explanatory gains that can be achieved by engage-

ment within an ongoing theoretical dialogue between social constructivist and critical realist

analyses of governance and the vital theoretical resources which they make available for under-

standing the complex combinations of ‘external/direct’ and ‘internal/indirect’ constraints that

constitute the hybridized governance regimes likely to shape the dynamics of environmental

policy in the future.

Selznick’s classic case study of the TVA reminds us of the need to combine aspects of social

constructionist and critical realist modes of analysis in ways that will illuminate the complex dis-

cursive practices and organizational mechanisms through which environmental policy is articu-

lated, manipulated and legitimated. This is a particularly pressing analytical and methodological

requirement when the prevalence, relevance and impact of complex governance hybrids are likely

to become even more pronounced across a range of policy domains in general and environmental

policy. Indeed, there is growing evidence that, within the domain of environmental policy, coali-

tions of powerful elite corporate agents are actively promoting an anti-regulationist agenda through

the secretive mobilization of legal, political and media resources intended to block US governmentinitiatives on climate change (Goldenberg 2010; see above).




12/20


Constructionism and Governance (Stan Deetz)

Situating the tension between social constructionism and critical realism within the consideration

of governance highlights significant issues. Human decision-making in specific contexts is where

intellectual debates either show that they matter or that they do not. The governance focus keeps

organizations as political bodies and processes at the forefront. Miller and Rose (2008) have donean incredible job plotting the course from a contemporary constructionist perspective. It need not

be repeated. Three questions will be posed here: Are the current conceptions of social construction-

ism and critical realism useful and does their contrast lead to helpful tensions? What motivates and

drives the endurance of these tensions? Can we usefully reclaim from this discussion conceptions

that are useful in generating insights into organizations and governance?

Useful Conceptions?

Academic debates have a tendency to produce a lot of less than useful polarization. In polarization,

divergent people/position/writings are often clumped together as if they were meaningfully thesame and opposing positions are often interpreted and shifted in ways that allows one’s own posi-

tion to answer what it expected or wanted the other to say. Both of these processes lead conflicting

authors to write past each other. And each can rightfully claim that the other just doesn’t get it and

that the other’s argument was nice but misses the point. The ‘presumed other’ often replaces the

‘other’ as ‘both’ (as if only two ever existed) positions over time get reduced to caricatures.

Revisiting who did this when doesn’t get us very far.

Since critical realism was largely a response to constructionism, revisiting what construction-

ism was trying to do rather than was, may get us further. Constructionism in its modern form did

not begin with Berger and Luckmann (though they made important additions that tend to get lost

by those who tend to cite their work more than read it). They explicitly worked out of phenomenol-ogy. And like the particular phenomenological tradition out of which they worked, they did not

intend to get back into the subjective/objective debates, to proclaim constructionism as a one-way

street from the subject to the world but rather to show how particular already created subject/object

relational configurations become institutionalized and treated as naturally occurring.

Like the phenomenologists, the concern with the external world was not undermined and disre-

garded but rather strengthened by describing the social processes of knowledge formation and

deformation in relation to it. Science was not challenged as an enterprise, but asked to be mindful

of the way its instruments, conceptions and processes entered into the production of objects, thus

enabling objects to more completely ob-ject. Alternatives and indeterminacy could thus continue to

challenge any particular determination rather than becoming foreclosed by claims of naturalism.The application of the adjective ‘social’ to all constructionists arguably confused the concern

with institutionalization and naturalization processes with the knowledge formation process as a

pre-subjective/pre-objective aspect of all of life. Hosking (2011) usefully notes relational construc-

tionism as a better conception, but ‘relational’ has to be understood not as simply human relations,

but the endless relational aspect of all creatures encountering the world. From a relational construc-

tionist perspective, any creature’s experience is the product of a particular way of encountering the

world with particular sense equipment and a world that is encountered in this way. Dualism’s two

world idea requires an abstraction from this co-constitutive relationship. The abstraction stops the

ongoing development of experience to take it apart and ask what is objective and subjective and the

battles begin anew. But this abstraction and the arguments of priority and preference are not neces-sary. The relational quality of living experience can be detailed without this.




13/20

Newton et al. 19

From a relational constructionist orientation, both the way of encountering and the encountered

are treated as fluid and indetermined, becoming determined only in the interaction. The exterior

‘elements’ become articulated as ‘objects’ only in particular moments of encounter (Laclau and

Mouffe 1985). Some critical realists’ writings confuse ‘elements’ and ‘objects’. Elements are open

to multiple object constructions. This does not make them unreal - they are powerful in open rela-

tional encounters but that power does not make ‘objects’ real rather than relational. The external

world is filled with elements waiting to be made into objects, rather than filled with fixed objects;

fixing them requires activity (Deetz 2000; Collins and Evans 2009).

This does not deny climate change, for example, but recognizes that much is required to ‘see’

this in the world, and that these processes are potentially contestable. It doesn’t make all statements

made about the world equally true - lots of false things can be said - but that determination requires

certain co-orientations in encounterings and agreements. Determining whether or not a statement

is true is important but is not the only question. We must also ask whether we are attending to the

appropriate things in an appropriate way. The claim of objectivity is a powerful move that often

protects claims from examination in light of the second question. Opening claims of objectivity to

examination only makes clear the choice aspects of knowledge construction but does not deny the

claims as meaningful or even demonstrably true.

Governance draws our attention to these deep political processes, not just the dissemination and

effects of particular claims, the surface power game. The choice of grounding claims in particular

ways of world observation may be a wise choice based on what we value, but it remains an impor-

tant social historical choice. It remains to be seen why claiming that the knowledge is true to the

world is more powerful than ‘we have produced a process of constructing knowledge and adjudica-

tion of differences that reliably helps us meet widely agreed upon human goals and needs’. Nor

why a thesis of complementarity - that science is necessary to validate claims so we do not just give

in to narrative appeal but life narratives are important to decide what our science should be about

- is not widely accepted (Apel 1979; Deetz 2000). We need both generative and generalizable theo-

ries. They address different human questions. Clearly a very useful dialogue or set of complemen-

tary activities is possible between good science and critical constructionism. One need not deny the

other. Governance is as much about deciding human goals as it is about applying the appropriate

science to achieve these. So why hasn’t this happened?

So What Is This Fight About?

Some version of constructionism is widely accepted in the natural sciences without much loss. So

why the ‘warnings’ that characterize some of the critical realism literature? A fundamental misun-

derstand of much of the mainstream constructionist project is partly responsible for the fear. But

the greater concern seems to be that scientific claims have become somewhat equal rather than

privileged players in public disputes and constructionists may have contributed to that.

The blame for the loss of authority and the poor quality of public deliberation is often passed to a

distorted form of constructionism bypassing questioning the scientific enterprise itself in its relation

to the larger society. The question can be posed: Can functioning democratic governance processes

exist when no independent grounding exists for adjudicating differences? Constructionists suggested

that it can, in fact must. Critical realists often appear to doubt this. This happens in two ways.

First, realists of different types often directly or indirectly suggest that the larger public is largely

misinformed, can easily be misled by people who present propaganda as knowledge, and cannot be

trusted. The climate issue provides good evidence of this. In an early 2010 poll only 37 per cent(down from over 50% a year before) of people in the US thought that climate change was real and




14/20


caused by human activity, while scientists fairly uniformly held a contrary position. The science

logic seems to follow - this is a massive problem that we must act on quickly, the public is misin-

formed, we must inform them, and anything that distracts from our authority (like constructionism)

is a threat to human safety. Constructionism is thus very scary and dangerous, not just wrong. To

overcome this, science must show people that climate change is REAL.

But is this at all the case? Is the lack of proper information and constructionism to blame? And,

has constructionism done more damage to science than it has to all the competing positions based in

different claims of fixed external groundings? These questions take us out of the intellectual debate

into the consequences of the answer and make it more difficult to get beyond the polarity of the criti-

cal realism/social constructionism debate. Complementarity and pre-subject/object constructionism

may be rejected by realists along with more stereotyped subjective versions because their conse-

quences are seen as the same. Looking at governance highlights the consequentiality concerns.

Focusing on consequentiality raises all sorts of questions that social scientists have investigated

for some time. What are the conditions of trust and legitimacy? In governance processes, how are

these formed and lost? Realists may be surprised. Arrogance and ‘stealth advocacy’ - two charac-

teristics often attributed to climate science in their claims of privilege - may lead to conditions

where more massive evidence has the opposite impact from that intended. A healthy dose of con-

structionism and acceptance of public involvement may actually aid legitimacy. As Fischer (2000,

2009) argued, expertise has to be rethought in its relation to different forms of local knowledge in

the contemporary context. As discussed later, the focus on claims about the world may lead us to

overlook the full set of claimants in the lives of real people and their experience of systematically

distorted governance. If the polyarchical forms of governance can succeed, expertise has to be

considered in a more complicated way including something more than knowledge claims and insti-

tutional power. More directly participatory forms have advantages in accepting ‘otherness’ and

‘difference’ and adjudicating across rather than within realms of human experience.

Second, is the climate debate fundamentally about the science and its claims at all? Certainly on

the surface distracters have gone after the science, but distracters have always gone after the sci-

ence. Why the traction on this issue? Is this explicit argument anything more than a distraction

from the more fundamental issues that feed the conflict? In other words, has critical realism in

responding to its preferred conflict missed what is going on?

Twenty-five years ago Beck (1992 [1986]) initiated a conversation on the relation of science to

a newly developing type of society and decision-making process called the ‘risk’ society. People

may not be misinformed but have complicated ways to determine ‘risk’ and may respond more to

immediate risks than those further out, a logic that may be disastrous in light of climate change but

not necessarily based in being misinformed. Risk involves a host of ‘identity’ threats, concepts of

the good life and the general difficulty of predicting consequences for themselves and engaging in

intervention. Even getting people to wear helmets while bicycling is difficult. This probably does

not arise from distrust of safety science nor denying the concrete conditions of pavement and cars.

Climate science does not stand alone but mixed in a complex set of concerns. People may see

‘risk’ as arising from anything ‘big’ - big science, big government, big corporations, big banks, big

deficits - all of which produce different types of being at risk, and none of them may seem very

attuned to their personal situation nor gives them much agency over things that matter. The prob-

lem may not be climate as they see it but bigness and trying to find a way to deal with that.

Governmental deficit spending may be perceived as a greater of risk to future generations than

climate change. This is not about one being more real. Both are about how one will live in a

changed world. Climate science may not respond to ordinary people’s sense of being at risk, andmore importantly may be seen as a cause of other more pressing risks. Will, for example, more




15/20

Newton et al. 21

people believe the climate science as the general economy improves and they feel less financially

at risk? And, what does it mean if they do?

If this is true, or any number of other possibilities, critical realism can foster an environment that

leads us away from giving legitimacy to local knowledge and public concerns, away from investi-

gating these relations and having important but difficult discussions. The distrust of the public by

scientists can beget mistrust of the science. The real world is more complex to everyday people in

everyday life than knowledge claims. Can different types of elites incorporate the complexity of

everyday human experiences and choices? The fervor of critical realism and the continued warn-

ings about constructionism may arise with concern for survival in the face of a doubt machine. But

the response may be counter-productive. Improving the community in knowledge may be lost to

the attempt to take the community out of knowledge production (Deetz 2000).

Focusing on the Politics in Construction

The value of constructionism comes from the way it has kept the issue of the politics of construc-

tion - the need to have good discussions among all stakeholders - at the forefront. Knowledge can

be seen as political and contestable without power being the only determinant of right. The atten-

tion has been to better community discussions and governance processes rather than claimed exter-

nal grounding for what is right. The attention remains on the critical problem that is the undue

influence of corporate, dominant and exclusionary interest on social choices. This keeps people

and their institutional inventions rather than an external world responsible for correctives, adjudi-

cation, and co-creation. And, constructionism has broadened the attention to the many construction

processes beyond the making of claims about the world.

But if nothing else, the conflict between critical realist and constructionist has taught construc-

tionists to be much more careful in their conceptions and to guard more carefully against easy

misunderstandings. Obviously this is hard. When dualism is everywhere every non-dualist position

has to endlessly guard against being rewritten into its dualist counterpart. And, every construction-

ism runs the risk of a type of impotence in the face of public controversies like the character of and

response to climate change. Constructionism is not usefully announced without a commitment to

providing processes of dealing with human differences and the need to make decisions in an inter-

dependent world.

A politically attentive relational constructionism (PARC) may be a reasonable descriptive title

to draw attention to features of the constructionism that remain useful and viable. It does not deny

the brute quality and force of the external but focuses on the manner of engagement. PARC draws

attention to the non-dualistic relational character of life, the embedded social historical character

of these relations, and the need to reform discussion and decision processes in light of this rela-

tional grounding. Of immediate benefit in its contrast to some versions of critical realism, a PARC

conception helps focus on the complex human contestations and bases for choices beyond knowl-

edge claims about the external world and helps us attend to the fuller set of issues governance

reform must entail.

From a phenomenological conception, experience arises in a co-constituting relation a way of

encountering (an engaging subject position) and that which is engaged. Every human being takes

on distributed and institutionalized manners of engagement - subject positions - in relation to dif-

ferent aspects of life. With these, different relational claims exist. At the minimum, claims arise in

relation to (a) one’s interior, (b) specific others, (c) the rules and order of society, (d) the exterior

world, (e) values and narratives of connectedness, and (f) practices of distribution. Common lin-guistic distinctions distinguish these differences. In English, for example, people set in play




16/20


relational claims through explicit or implied announcements like: ‘I think, I feel’, ‘I am, you are’,

‘I ought, we should’, ‘I assert, I demonstrate’, ‘we wish to be, we hope to be’, and so forth. In this

sense the relation to the external world as objects and claims of truth are only part of the way a world

is constituted. Organization science makes and has consequences for identities, ordering principles

and ways of living - it does not just make knowledge claims about the external world. A socially and

economically useful organization science needs to take these multiple claims/claimants into account.

These relational configurations mark different ways human experiences differ and the politics

involved in governance. Six interconnected mobile politics/conflicts/contestations can arise: (a)

conflicts over the nature of interior states (the politics of sincerity or truthfulness), (b) conflicts

over identities, who we are, what our rights and obligations are (the politics of recognition), (c)

conflicts over rules and regulations (the politics of order), (d) conflicts over knowledge (the poli-

tics of truth), (e) conflicts over values and the good life (the politics of life narratives), and (f)

conflicts over resources (the politics of justice and distribution). The co-constitutive quality of each

relational configuration puts tension and conflict as core to experience. Emotions arise both from

a social historical way of encounter and unique situated physiological surprises in concrete

moments. One can’t take on a specific identity ‘x’ without someone being a ‘y’. And so forth for

each politics. Experience is deeply dialectic and dialogic. PARC conceptions keep these dialectics

alive, especially in relation to the exterior.

Strong institutional practices can suppress these conflicts by the disregard of half of the relation-

ship and hence push specific constitutions over the exterior, but structured forms of interaction can

also reclaim conflicts and open experience to continued formation. Governance is often conceptu-

alized as taking formed feelings, identities, knowledge, etc., and trying to reach agreements, but

governance can be about forming interaction processes that activate active co-constitutive forma-

tion processes. PARC orientations aid the later.

The response to climate change is in this sense not only about the veracity of knowledge about

the world and its consequences for policy. It is also about feelings, identities, and concepts of jus-

tice. Frequently the conflict appears to be over knowledge, but in watching conflicts it appears more

that this is what people think they should be fighting about or what they know how to fight about,

but the disagreement that fosters the conflict is different and remains unarticulated (see the exten-

sive literature on intractable conflict, www.beyondintractability.org). Risk of identity loss, concepts

of fairness, or acceptance of a narrative of human dominion over nature rather than stewardship can

lead to a very different orientation to knowledge production and the climate change risks.

The trick is to keep these conflicts and contestation productive, aiding more creative and cus-

tomized responses that gain more commitment and compliance. The question is how well do dif-

ferent versions of critical realism and constructionism play out in this? Constructionists fear that

critical realism falls too quickly to elitism and claims of naturalism, hence stopping and/or distort-

ing important conversations, hiding processes of knowledge formation, and reducing the complex-

ity of human choice. Critical realists fear constructionism can be used to equalize forms of knowing,

disregard real consequences of human activity, and ultimately reduce knowledge to a power game.

But if the fears and polarizations can be set aside, could each correct the excesses of the other and

aid governance practices?

Themed Section: Overview of Papers

The papers included in this Themed Section present a variety of novel perspectives that signifi-cantly extend our understanding of debate between critical realists and social constructionists.

Al-Amoudi and Willmott (2011) note that there are differing interpretations of critical realist




17/20

Newton et al. 23

concepts, such as the ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ dimensions of reality. They then move on to

their central argument which asserts that critical realist writers within organization studies have

been insufficiently attentive to the epistemological relativism associated with writers such as

Bhaskar. Extending this argument, they suggest that there are two possible readings of critical real-

ism, one that is more skeptical, the other more optimistic. They argue that the difference between

these readings depends on the extent to which epistemological relativism can be incorporated into

critical realism. If we adopt the more optimistic reading which suggests that epistemological rela-

tivism can be incorporated into critical realism, it follows that critical realism is not in opposition

to poststructural and Foucauldian contention. According to this optimistic scenario, critical realist

and constructionist stances might be seen as mutually informing rather than antagonistic.

Hosking’s (2011) account reasserts the argument of contemporary constructionism through an

emphasis on relational processes. In so doing, she problematizes conventional accounts of the

ontological. She points out that ‘what is’ can never be ‘nailed down’ and ‘fixed’ since it depends on

relational processes and the way in which social construction is ‘in motion’. Implicit in her argu-

ment is a critique of critical realists who downplay the role of social construction in our sense of

the ontological. At the same time, Hosking’s stress on relational becoming does not imply that

constructionism invokes a world that is necessarily transient. ‘Reality’ is socially constructed,

whether it appears transient or stable.

As with Hosking’s paper, Holt and Mueller (2011) also argue that it is difficult to ‘fix’ the onto-

logical and define ‘what is’. Yet unlike Hosking, they associate the desire to ‘fix things’ as much

with constructionism as critical realism. Using the example of cigarette production and consump-

tion, they seek to transcend the tendency toward fixity within constructionism and realism. In so

doing, they use the work of Wittgenstein and Heidegger to emphasize how we are deeply enmeshed

in a local normative order of ‘rule following’ that tacitly informs our orientation to the world.

Drawing on this perspective, Holt and Mueller argue that constructionism and critical realism share

similar limitations and, in this respect, are more alike than previously assumed.

References

Abrahamson, E., & Eisenman, M. (2001). Why management scholars must intervene strategically in the man-

agement knowledge market. Human Relations, 54, 67–75.

Al-Amoudi, I., & Willmott, H. (2011). Where constructionism and critical realism converge: Interrogating the

domain of epistemological relativism. Organization Studies, 32 (1).

Apel, K.-O. (1979). Towards a transformation of philosophy, trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby. London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bansal, P., & Gao, J. (2006). Building the future by looking to the past: Examining research published onorganizations and environment. Organization & Environment, 19 (4), 458–478.

Barnes, B., Bloor, D., & Henry, J. (1996). Scientific knowledge: A sociological analysis. London: Athlone.

Beck, U. (1992 [1986]). The risk society: Towards a new modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.

Burningham, K., & Cooper, G. (1999) Being constructive: Social constructionism and the environment.

Sociology, 33 (2), 297–316.

Callon, M. (1991). Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters?

Essays on power, technology and domination (Sociological Review Monograph 38). London: Routledge.

Carolan, M. S. (2005). Society, biology, and ecology: Bringing nature back into sociology’s disciplinary nar-Society, biology, and ecology: Bringing nature back into sociology’s disciplinary nar-

rative through critical realism. Organization & Environment , 18 (4), 393–421.

Catton, W. R., & Dunlap, R. E. (1980) A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant sociology. American Behavioral Scientist , 24 (1), 15–47.

Clegg, S., Courpasson, D., & Phillips, N. (2006). Power and organizations. London: SAGE.




18/20


Colignon, R. A. (1997). Power plays: Critical events and the institutionalization of the Tennessee Valley

Authority. New York: State University of New York Press.

Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2009). Rethinking expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Coopey, J. (2003). Sustainable development and environmental management: The performance of UK busi-

ness schools. Management Learning , 34, 5–26.

Courpasson, D. (2006). Soft constraint: Liberal organizations and domination. Copenhagen: CopenhagenBusiness School Press.

Courpasson, D., & Dany, F. (2009). Cultures of resistance in the workplace. In S. R. Clegg and M. Haugaard

(Eds.), The SAGE handbook of power (pp. 332–347). London: SAGE.

Crossley, N. (2003). Even newer social movements: Anti-corporate protests, capitalist crises and the re-mor-

alization of society. Organization, 10 (2), 287–305.

Crouch, C. (2005). Capitalist diversity and change: Recombinant governance and institutional entrepreneurs.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London: SAGE.

Deetz, S. (2000). Putting the community into organizational science: Exploring the construction of knowledge

claims. Organization Science, 11, 732–738.

Deetz, S. (2003). Reclaiming the legacy of the linguistic turn. Organization, 10 (3), 421–429.Ezzamel, M., & Reed, M. (2008). Governance: A code of multiple colours. Human Relations, 61 (5), 597–615.

Farrell, C., & Morris, J. (2003). The neo-bureaucratic state: Professionals, managers and professional manag-

ers in schools, general practices and social work. Organization, 10 (1), 129–156.

Ferraro, F., Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2005). Economics language and assumptions: How theories become

self-fulfilling. Academy of Management Review, 30, 8–24.

Fischer, F. (2000). Reframing public policy: Discursive politics and deliberative practices. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Fischer, F. (2009). Democracy and expertise: Reorienting policy inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect (pp.

87–104). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended . London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press.Franklin, A. (2002). Nature and social theory. London: SAGE.

Gergen, K. J. (1992). Organization theory in the postmodern era. In M. Reed & M. Hughes (Eds.), Rethinking

organization. London: SAGE.

Giddens, A. (2009). The politics of climate change. Cambridge: Polity.

Goldenberg, S. (2010). Industry group targets Obama’s green plan. The Guardian, 22 April.

Hambrick, D. C. (1994). What if the Academy actually mattered? Academy of Management Review, 19, 11–16.

Hoggan, J., & Littlemore, R. (2009). Climate cover-up: The crusade to deny global warming . Vancouver:

Greystone.

Holt, R., & Mueller, F. (2011). Wittgenstein, Heidegger and fixing meaning in organization studies.

Organization Studies, 32 (1).

Hosking, D. M. (2011). Telling tales of relations: Appreciating relational constructionism. OrganizationStudies, 32 (1).

Irwin, A. (2001). Sociology and the environment: A critical introduction to society, nature and knowledge.

Cambridge: Polity.

Jarzabkowski, P., Mohrman, S., & Scherer, A. G. (2010). Organization studies as applied science: The genera-

tion and use of academic knowledge about organizations. Organization Studies Special Issue, 31 (9/10),

1189–1207.

Jasanoff, S. (Ed.). (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order . London:

Routledge.

Jermier, J. M., Forbes, L. C., Benn, S., & Orsato, R. J. (2006). The new corporate environmentalism and green

politics. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. Lawrence, & W. Nord (Eds.), Handbook of organizational studies (2nd

edn, pp. 619–650). London: SAGE.Kallio, T. J., & Nordberg, P. (2006). The evolution of organizations and the natural environment discourse:

Some critical remarks. Organization and Environment , 19 (4), 439–457.

Laclau, E. (1990). New reflections on the revolution of our time, London: Verso.




19/20

Newton et al. 25

Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy, trans. W. Moore and P. Cammack. London:

Verso.

Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Latour, B. (1991). Technology is society made durable. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters? Essays on

power, technology and domination (Sociological Review Monograph 38). London: Routledge.

Law, J. (1994). Organizing modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Law, J., & Hassard, J. (Eds.). (1999). Actor Network Theory and After . Oxford: Blackwell.

Levy, D. L., & Newell, P. J. (Eds.). (2005). The business of global environmental governance. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view, 2nd Edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Miller, P., & Rose, N. (2008). Governing the present . Cambridge: Polity.

Munro, R. (2009). Actor-Network-Theory. In M. Haugaard & S. Clegg (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Power

(pp. 125–139). London: SAGE.

Murphy, R. (1994). Rationality and nature: A sociological inquiry into a changing relationship, Boulder, CO:

Westview Press.

Newton, T. (1996). Postmodernism and action. Organization, 3 (1), 7–29.

Newton, T. (1998). Theorizing subjectivity in organizations: The failure of Foucauldian studies? OrganizationStudies, 19 (3), 415–447.

Newton, T. (2002). Creating the new ecological order? Academy of Management Review, 27 (4), 523–540.

Newton, T. (2003). Crossing the great divide: Time, nature and the social. Sociology, 37 (3), 433–457.

Newton, T. (2005). Practical idealism: An oxymoron? Journal of Management Studies, 42 (4), 869–884.

Newton, T. (2007). Nature and sociology. London: Routledge.

Newton, T. (2009). Organizations and the natural environment. In M. Alvesson, H. Willmott, &T. Bridgman

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of critical management studies (pp. 125–143). Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Newton, T. (2010). Knowledge and practice: Organization studies within a historical and figurational con-

text’. Organization Studies, 31 (9/10), 1369–1395.

Newton, T., & Keenan, T. (1991). Further analyses of the dispositional argument in organizational behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76 (6), 781–787.

Newton, T., & Harte, G. (1997) Green business: Technicist kitsch? Journal of Management Studies, 34 (1),

75–98.

Parker, M. (1992). Post-modern organizations or postmodern organization theory. Organization Studies, 13,

1–17.

Pearce, F. (2010). Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review: A close reading of

the hacked emails exposes the real process of science, its jealousies and tribalism. Available at: http://

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review (accessed 16

February 2010).

Pfeffer, J., & Fong, C. T. (2002). The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye. Academy of

Management Learning and Education,

1(1), 78–95.Reed, M. (1993). Organizations and modernity: Continuity and discontinuity in organization theory. In J.

Hassard & M. Parker (Eds.), Postmodernism and organizations. London: SAGE.

Reed, M. (2008). Exploring Plato’s cave: Critical reali

2011_responses to social constructionism and critical realism in organization studies

Documents