Advance organizational behaviour - Coursework Example

?Assignment Question 2 There has always been array of ideas about the nature and habits of mankind. It has been found in history of mankind that the definitions of people in this aspect have been fluctuating usually over time, again and again. For a theorist or a writer to portray the people he needs to know some ground rules about the people he/she is talking about. Thus, one of the most important contributions of romanticists is the creation of the inner self. The creation of the deep interior is common among mankind. All of us have capacities or capabilities or habits which are built deep inside us in our consciousness. These capacities are neither so visible nor so prevalent that they can be understood easily. Deep inside us in the interior there is a major constituent known as the soul. It is this soul which created more value and charm amongst the humans thereby, portraying them as powerful holding the ability to accomplish many tasks. The romanticists believed that the inner self of people had great potential and it was this which they discussed. For the romanticists today, people should try to spread love and moral values should be upheld. One should try to find the meaning of life and should figure out the importance of human life. Lately romanticists have been on the decline and even though there vocabulary and ideas still exist their influence has mostly been from the sidelines. It has been the modernists that have taken over the position of the romanticists. Modernist ideas can be said to be a revival of the enlightenment beliefs of reason and observation. These relate to Darwinist ideas that there should be evolution and evolvement of the theories for its survival in the modern world. Also there are many truths hidden in this world that are yet to be discovered and therefore, there should be a search for these fundamentals or important truths. Along with the above two, modernism has other assumptions as well such as the faith in progress and the absorption of ideas into the way of life in the society. These assumptions have been largely encouraged by the scholars and have been implemented broadly when the society’s organization theories have been formed. As years have progressed modernism and romanticism have been studied, researched and analyzed in detail. However, when it comes to the application of these theories in the real world today these theories seem livid or impractical. As a result, people tend to look towards other theories and this is where post modernism comes in. People tend to look towards post modernism as a relevant theory because it tends to discuss those topics such as culture and intellect which the people are interested in. Postmodernist view, objective, universal, recognizable as the truth is the mythical, all we have ever found in the search for truth is painful “truths” that the only compelling in their own time and culture, but of course the truth is not has never been ours. Also, if we make a mistake to claim to know the truth, there are misleading at best and dangerous at worst. A person’s sense of identity is a complex designed by the forces of the surrounding culture. Individual consciousness – a vague “decentered” the collection of conscious and unconscious beliefs, knowledge and insight of themselves and the world – is malleable and arrived at through interaction with the surrounding culture. Postmodernism, then, as opposed to modernity is the dissolution of self. The postmodern perspective, we should not regard ourselves as unique, unified, confident, independent individuals. The language of our culture (visual and verbal cues that we use to represent the world to ourselves), literally “build” what we consider “real” in our daily lives. In this sense, the reality is a “text” or “composite” of texts and the texts (rather than God created reality) is the only reality we can know. Our sense of self – who we are, how we think about ourselves and how we see and interpret the world and give us a sense in it – is subjectively constructed through language. “Reality” was created for those who are in power. One of the leading theorists of postmodernism, Michel Foucault, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to combine ideas on how to structure the rulers of the world of a theory of how language is the most important tool for making culture. Foucault argues that whoever manages or controls the use of “official” language in society is fundamental to social and political power. (Consider, for example, as the official policy of control “spin” of certain words and phrases can change the public perception of political decisions, policies and events.) In short, Nietzsche said, all reality is a voluntary , strong construction, Foucault says, language is the most important building. We need to neutralize the political power lies in language by “deconstructing” it. Another leading postmodernist, Jacques Derrida, hypothesizes that the language we use when we make statements always creates a set of faith in the face, a “binary”, one of which is “privileged” and the other which is “marginalized” and the privileged knowledge is always recommended. For example, if you say “Honey is better for you than white sugar,” this statement of opinion was “privileged” honey over white sugar. In the area of ??morality can say “sex should occur in marriage “, in this case, the experience of sex within marriage is” privileged “and sex outside marriage is” marginalized. “Derrida argues that any language consists of these binaries, and they are still socially and politically charged. “Deconstruction” is the practice of identifying these binaries can load and restructure them so that marginalized or “unprivileged” end of the binary can be consciously focused on and promoted. Question 3 Because language, for the postmodernist, is the child of cultural process, it follows that one’s descriptions of the world are not outward simulacres of an inner mirror - that is, reports on one’s private "observations" or "perceptions." On the scientific level, this is to say that what we report in our journals and books is not a mirror or map that in some way corresponds to our observations of what there is. Yet, if the modernist view of language as a representational device is eschewed, in what manner can it be replaced? It is in the latter works of Wittgenstein - who, along with Nietzsche, is often viewed as significant precursor of postmodernism - that the major answer is to be located. Language gains its meaning not from its mental or subjective underpinnings, but from its use in action ("language games.") Or, again emphasizing the significant place of human relatedness in postmodern writings, language gains its meaning within organized forms of interaction. To "tell the truth," on this account, is not to furnish an accurate picture of "what actually happened," but to participate in a set of social conventions, a way of putting things sanctioned within a given "form of life." To "be objective" is to play by the rules of a given tradition. More broadly, this is to say that language for the postmodernist is not a reflection of a world, but is world-constituting. Language does not describe action, but is itself a form of action. To do science, then, is to participate actively within a set of sub-cultural relationships. As scientific accounts are made known to the culture - for example, accounts of organizations as information systems, or managers as information processors - they enter the stock of cultural intelligibilities. They shape our modes of understanding and thus our forms of conduct. To treat the organization as an information system and managers as ideally guided by a rational calculus is to favor certain forms of cultural life and to undermine or prevent others. We shall return to the implications of this view shortly. With this relational view of language in place, modernism’s grand narrative of progress is thrown into question. Because scientific theory is not a map of existing conditions, then research does not function to improve the accuracy of the scientific account. Scientific research may lead to technical accomplishments, but it does not improve our descriptions and explanations of reality; descriptions and explanations are, rather, like lenses through which we index our accomplishments. As research operates to displace one scientific theory with another, we are not moving ineluctably "forward" on the road to truth; we are - as many would say - simply replacing one way of putting things with another. Again, this is not to deny that scientific research enhances our capacities for certain kinds of prediction, and generates new forms of technology. However, it is to question the accompanying descriptions and theoretical explanations as in any way giving an accurate picture of events. It is again the function of scientific language that primarily concerns the postmodern critic. As a modernist byproduct, scientific endeavors work toward a single language - a monologue. Scientific research operates to narrow the range of descriptions and explanations - to winnow out the false, the imprecise, and the inconsistent forms of language, and to emerge with the single best account - that which best approximates the "objectively true." For the postmodernist the results of this effort toward univocality are disastrous in implication. The culture is made up of a rich array of idioms, accounts, and explanations, and these various forms of talk are constitutive of cultural life. To eradicate our ways of talking about love, family, justice, value and so on, would be to undermine ways of life shared by many people. In its search for the "single best account," science operates as a powerful discrediting device - revealing the "ignorance" of the layman in one sector after another. Love is shown to be a myth, families are formed out of the requirements of "selfish genes," values are merely the result of social influence, and so on. For the culture at large, then, scientific activity does not represent progress but often its reverse. From the postmodern perspective, it is imperative to strive toward pluralism of understanding. When translated into the sphere of organizational life, the outcome of such arguments is a threat to longstanding assumptions of effective leadership, the scientifically managed transformation of organizations, the promise of steady growth in organizational efficacy, and the capacity of organizational science to produce increments in knowledge of organizational functioning. These are indeed momentous transformations, and if current discussions continue unabated we may soon confront a major evolution in the concept of and practice of organizational science. Yet, while the vast majority of scientists and practitioners may see these emerging threats as tantamount to nihilism, we have also attempted to locate a reconstructive theme. In particular, we have emphasized the replacement of individual rationality by communal negotiation, the importance of social processes in the observational enterprise, the socio practical function of language, and the significance of pluralistic cultural investments in the conception of the true and the good. In short, we have derived a rough outline for a social constructionist view of the scientific effort, a view that is congenial to many of the postmodern critiques but enables us to press beyond the critical moment Question 4 According to the modernists, language was a tool to help bring about the rational truth to the masses.  The language therefore, was a slave and the theories the findings and the truth was the masters. Initially language was claimed as the picture of reality as it was a medium by which reality could reach out to the people. But later it was realized that this was not the case. Instead language was playing the role of creating the reality. To the modernists language was a tool for the logical representation of the real. However, it was later rediscovered that the language no longer had a role of conveying the truth to the masses. Instead it had a new master and was no longer supporting empirical research. According to the post modernists the new master of language was the community. Now the language was serving a new master and it was getting its meaning and understanding through the social interchange. A word does not have a pure meaning if the listener does not accept the meaning of the word. Therefore, for language to make sense it should be a result of the communication of two people meaning a joint process. They both should understand the meaning of the conversation and only then will the aim of language will be fulfilled. Due to these changes in the role of language the psychological explanations have almost been forgotten. The shift has been primarily due to the reason that the earlier role of language as a reality has been replaced to the role of representation. The psychological events which were once highlighted by the scientists as a medium to understand the reality or to learn the truth were now ignored because it sounded dubious. However, as language is placed into the hands of the community it leads to much greater confusion. This is because the people are under the assumption that the brain is a medium to convey their thoughts to the public. But this theory means that instead the public is forming the language, so an individual is not feeding the public but the community is feeding the individual. So it is no longer that the relationships are being fed by language but they express themselves through the language of the individual person who is there. Critical suspicion of one’s own suppositions or in other words self-reflexivity is a very popular theme within postmodernist groups. The vast share of contemporary theory and practice in organizational science is still conducted within a modernist framework. Most remain committed to one or more of the modernist presumptions. However, across many branches of the sciences and humanities - indeed, some would say across the culture more generally - a new sensibility has slowly emerged. Within the academy this sensibility is predominantly critical, systematically dismantling the corpus of modernist assumptions and practices. Such critiques not only obliterate the modernist logics, but throw into question the moral and political outcomes of modernist commitments. Yet, while critique is pervasive and catalytic, it has not yet been restorative. While faulting existing traditions, it has left the future in question. How do we now proceed? The question lingers ominously in the wings. In our view, however, there lie embedded within certain forms of critique, implicit logics of great potential. Criticism, too, proceeds from an assumptive base, and as its implicate is explored, a vision of alternatives unfolds. In terms of positive potentials, we feel the most promising forms of critique are social constructionist in character. In what follows, we shall outline the nature of the critique and the grounds for a constructionist vision of organizational science. From Individual to Communal Rationality. Postmodernism began as a theory of literature and literary criticism, concerned with the properties of the literary text, meaning, and reading. It focuses on the role of language. Concern with language quickly led postmodernists to deal with human nature, explaining what being human is and what it means to be human. As a theory, postmodernism claims, speaking of human beings, which "language is our home." Language here refers to spoken discursive language. According to postmodernism, it is our possession of language that makes us human. Language distinguishes us absolutely from animals. Everything human about us is contained within language. Consciousness, thinking, and behavior are based in language and have no source outside language. Read More