Control challenged: Why homogenetic structures may fail in radically changing environments
William C. Murray, Saint Mary’s University
Anthony R. Yue, Saint Mary’s University
Gabrielle Durepos, Saint Mary’s University
Albert J. Mills, Saint Mary’s University
“Imagination is not a gift usually associate with bureaucracies…It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing the exercise of imagination.” (Commission, 2004)
The 9/11 Commission makes the claim (2004) that the lack of imagination within bureaucratic structures (Weick, 2005) was in part to blame for the successful execution of the attacks on New York and Pennsylvania. However, a contrasting view highlights that the decreased existence of conflict within organizations, based on sought-after homogeneity (Lipsitz, 1981), influenced the systemic existence of sameness within business units.
This examination focuses on the pressures faced by organizations, and by extrapolation societies, to celebrate and encourage sameness (Landau, 2006) drawing on events in two distinct eras of the last 50 years: the Cold War (1946-1991) and September 11, 2001. The temporal focus of this examination will centre on the beginning years of the Cold War, where those who were trained in the militaristic structure transferred their organizational skills back into the civilian workforce. Pressures of societal homogeneity, specifically within the context of U.S. policy, created extreme patriotism; yet, this also involved isolation, fear of the unknown, and the oppression of radical thought stemming from McCarthyism (Tadajewski, 2006). In the time period pre and post the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., societal pressures again moved in a homogeneitic pattern with increased desires of isolation and sameness. During these time, the use of imagination to challenge hegemonic systems, as demonstrated through “radical” or “revolutionary” processes and actions (Tadajewski, 2006), became interpreted as dangerous, or worse, unnecessary.
The examination of formative context (Unger, 1987) and its discourse has been used to explore hegemonic management styles (Cooke, Mills, & Kelley, 2005) and the pressures between balancing reaffirming contexts and radical change (Cooke et al., 2005) during times of desired social stabilization in the United States. This paper will focus specifically on how the pressures of social homogeneity create imbalances between reaffirming contexts and domains of radical change using moments from both the Cold War and 9/11 as historical examples. Unger’s heuristic will also be used to explore the false necessitarianistic perceptions and deceptions of control within times of chaos.
References
Commission. (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United State. In T. Commission (Ed.) (pp. 604). New York: W.W. Norton.
Cooke, B., Mills, A. J., & Kelley, E. S. (2005). Situating Maslow in Cold War America: A Recontextualization of Management Theory. Group & Organization Management, 30(2), 129-152.
Landau, O. (2006). Cold War Political Culture and the Return of Systems Rationality. Human Relations, 59(5), 637-663.
Lipsitz, G. (1981). Class and Culture in Cold War America. Massachusetts, USA: Praeger Publishers.
Tadajewski, M. (2006). The Ordering of Marketing Theory: The Influence of McCarthyism and the Cold War. Marketing Theory, 6(2), 163-199.
Unger, R. M. (1987). Social Theory: It's Situation and It's Task (Vol. 2). New York: Verso.
Weick, K. E. (2005). Organizing and Failures of Imagination. International Public Management Journal, 8(3), 425.