Organizational Playtime

It does pay to read to the end of the book.  I was prepared to dismiss In the Shadow of Organization by Robert Denhardt as not in the end very useful for me.  It was written in 1981, which I think would make it an early entry in the field of critical organizational theory, but there were things that frustrated me about it all through.  It concerns the devil's bargain of organizational life in modern society--necessary for survival, but at the cost of surrendering individual autonomy and creativity for the logic, or ethic, of organization, a model dominated by submission to the imperatives of the organization for control and survival.  Denhardt writes about how the rational model of organizational life denies individual human meaning, rationalizes existing patterns of domination, and asks for the abandonment of personal values. 

I was frustrated because I was looking for something more on what he imagines by meaning and autonomy.  In some cases, he reverts to a static sense of self-identity, and the core material on meanings consists of a long discussion of personality types.

But in the last chapter he introduces the idea of play, that interaction within the organization would consist both of work and play. Denhardt immediately moves to a balancing of rigor and "inventiveness," but would also involved activity directed at goals that contribute to organizational preservation with "purposeless" activity designed to affirm and provide space for the individual.  

There are many things play can mean, and I think that is OK.  Denhardt defined it as "free and spontaneous activity limited only by individual imagination" (p 124).  Sure, but play can also involve games that have rules, or which require skill, or which have goals, scores, and winners or losers. (To quote Black Stone Cherry, "If you a play a game, somebody's gonna lose" as something that distinguishes Kentucky.)  

Play refers to games, but it also refers to playing an instrument.  Similar points there.  One form of playing music is that you achieve mastery of an instrument and play, without mistakes, technically difficult music spelled out in a score.  In other cases, you play a song you wrote.  Or you improvise in jazz, but that has rules, competition, and technique.  However, there are forms of playing music that don't require that.  In improvisational music, and by this I mean what some would call non-generic improvisation, the sort of thing cultivated by Pauline Oliveros and the many people influenced by her and her idea of Deep Listening.  In this case, you can play no matter what your technical level.  The music-making encounter opens space for everyone to participate and contribute. There may be loose games or rules set up to get things going, but it's not required. 

Deep Listening and free improvisation encounters require a form of social agreement.  The process will be disrupted if someone wants to show off--to dominate others via mastery.  The process is also disrupted if one is over-deferential, and participants need to have an entry point that helps with that--one time I was in a workshop with members of the fringe music community in Houston with the revered saxophonist and improviser Evan Parker.  We were in awe, and everyone waited for him to lead.  No one wanted to make a mistake or disrupt--a mistake could be putting down something trite, or trying too hard to impress. Parker has great technique, and I wouldn't want to "show off" by circular breathing in front of someone who has mastered that.  It was frustrating, I expect for him as well as us. The whole point of this process is to allow for disruptions (like Czarniawska's interruptions) and there are not mistakes.  But power creeps in easily.  

One interesting thing about play is that it is not necessarily or primarily verbal. Denhardt's discussion of phenomenology includes this quote from Hwa Yol Jung: "Meaning involves experiencing that is preconceptual, presymbolic and preverbal (that is, something felt)" (p 103).  I have been on the lookout for where the preverbal enters into the discussion of organizational experience.  I've felt that there is a preverbal quality to sense-formation and am on the lookout for scholars who have worked on this.  Every time I see something that references images, my ears pick up but a lot of times that is still about verbal descriptions.  

In order to unleash individual consciousness and autonomy, one could imagine engaging in non-verbal forms of interaction, like doing a Deep Listening exercise--it's a lot like a form of meditation.  It also seems highly likely that this will seem hackneyed and trite, like doing morning calisthenics in emulation of Japanese corporate practices.  Sometime that devolved immediately into self-satire. 

One last thought on play.  One way of seeing the liminal experience of a consulting project is that it is a recess from the usual routine, and introduces some freedom into the work experience.  The consulting project can be a sort of play time.  This is in essence the critique of some projects--what productive output comes from them.  But framed up in terms of balancing the ethic of individual autonomy and the ethic of organization, can it be OK for it to be play time?  

Robert Denhardt. 1981. In the Shadow of Organization. University of Kansas Press.