Organization Theory, Leadership Theory, Management Theory; who’s right or is it all Bull$#!t?

Recently I had an assignment in my Organizational Theory and Development class.  The essence of the question was what is a more accurate description of Organization Development: has it evolved or is it just adopting every fad that comes along.  I keep seeing this binary thinking rear its ugly head in business and leadership thought frequently: leaders are good/managers bad, servant leadership is the only way to lead, appreciative inquiry only because criticism is wrong.

It’s relatively easy to take a position and adhere to it.  We do it almost viscerally.  But it can stunt our intellectual growth.  We live in a world of practicalities, of getting things done, informed by a certain disdain for theory, and academic thinking.  Heck we ridicule education.  So we are not likely to deeply examine how we understand what we understand.  Theory bores us.

The issue I have with this is the questions and binary thinking ignore a basic fact: theory is not reality.  How we know things (epistemology) and whether or not there is a reality (ontology) aside, no theory has yet been developed that explains everything.

A big part of the reason this problem exists, is few of us learned what theories are and how they are built.  Thankfully, there is Dr. Mary Jo Hatch, author of Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives.  I was lucky enough to have to read from this book for class.  She tells us that we use theory every day, “whenever you create your own meaning or grasp someone else’s, you make things, feelings, ideas, experiences, values and expectations into ideas or concepts. In doing this you explain yourself and your world and this constitutes theorizing.”

She continues to explain how we observe and are told about phenomena and then make abstractions and concepts.  We separate the details from the phenomena to see their similarities and build concepts.  We create the concept of “dog” as distinguished for the concept of “cat.”  This allows us to understand dogs in a general way so we have an idea of how that strange one we just encountered may behave.   We may have never known about Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but we have the concept of "dog" and immediately recognize the Ridgeback as a dog.

So we live with theories.  They help us see and understand our world.  I mentioned epistemology and ontology before.  Taking a look at what we can know and how we can know it allows us to see that there will naturally be varied perspectives and experiences.

And that is the kicker.  While we get bogged down in binary thinking and which view is best, the reality is none of them are right, nor wrong.  They are different.  Hatch says, “In my view the diverse theoretical base … is something to celebrate, not only because it offers a broad perspective on … life, but because it creates more possibilities …”  What she means is these theories are just frameworks to observe and understand the world.  They are not the world.  The value they have is what actions do they let us take.  We act in accordance to our beliefs; our theories.

So what does this mean in a practical way?  You can learn to observe how you are observing.  You can develop a broader view, and recognize your own biases.  You can reflect on how you built your interpretation and how it helped and hindered you.  You can learn the difference between fact and opinion (most of what we say is opinion).

When my colleagues start touting the supremacy of their preferred theory of leadership, I am reminded of Dr. Charles Yoos, who wrote There is No Such Thing as Leadership!  He argues that leadership is an invalid construct, and the research we undertake should not be taken to prove anything in particular about “Leadership.”  In other words at a very rigorous epistemological level, it is all bull$#!t.

So what to do?  Recognize it.  Because application of the theory is the key.  And since constructs are abstractions; they have little detail.  We must therefore supply the detail of the situation when we apply the theory.  Dr. Hatch says “You will want to develop both concepts and theorizing skills with a broad base of personal experience and then translate your abstractions back into specific understanding.”  Figure something out, see if it works.  If not, figure out something else.  Keep learning.

References

Hatch, M. J. (2006). Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (2nd ed.). London: Oxford Univ. Press.

Yoos, C. J. (1984). There is No Such Thing as Leadership! In G.E. Lee, & T.E. Ulrich (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium: Psychology in the Department of Defense (343-352). Colorado Springs, CO: United States Air Force Academy.