Identities and Identifications in Organizations

Abstract

We examine the dynamics of identity formation in organizations, with a particular focus on the development of antipathies and deadlocks, by engaging a well-regarded study of identity in organizations. By revisiting this study through the lens of a social theory of hegemony (STH), we show how this theory can bring fresh insights to studies of identity, resistance, and deadlock in organizations. We argue that the “othering” and scapegoating involved in organizational deadlocks can be driven by fantasmatic identifications that dim the prospects for discerning and exploring areas of common cause. A condition of possibility of breaking such deadlocks is, conversely, a traversing of the fantasies that cement the impasse.

Keywords

identity organizational identity control resistance deadlock critical performativity social theory of hegemony Lacan

The study of identity has emerged as a focal topic in organization studies during the past two decades (see Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008; Ashforth, Harrison, & Corley, 2008; Cornellisen, Haslam, & Balmer, 2007, for recent reviews). Only exceptionally (e.g., Eckman, 2013; Karreman & Alvesson, 2001; Kondo, 1990; Kosmala & Herrbach, 2006; Pratt, 2000), however, have identity and identification in organizations—rather than identity of and identification with organizations—been a primary conceptual or theoretical focus in this field (Ashforth et al., 2008). The significance of the former for the reproduction and transformation of the latter is also rarely considered. Furthermore, existing work has drawn the critique that “important assumptions remain latent in, or peripheral to, many organizational studies of identity in ways that suppress meaningful differences and minimize metatheoretical development” (Alvesson, Hardy, & Harley, 2008, p. 9).

We aim to contribute to “a more engaged conversation across metatheoretical lenses” (Alvesson, Hardy, et al., 2008, p. 9) used to study identity in organizations by exploring some of these important latent assumptions, drawing out “meaningful differences.” By using the social theory of hegemony¹ (STH; Laclau, 1983, 1990, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, 2001) as an alternative metatheoretical lens for revisiting and reinterpreting a state-of-the-art and widely cited study by Brown and Humphreys (2006),² we explore how oppressive and paralyzing organizational deadlocks abhorred by staff may be actively sustained by their fantasmatic identifications. We will show how this reinterpretation provides an instructive way of presenting and assessing the potential contribution of STH as a distinctive perspective on the dynamics of identification and power in organizations.

The site of the study revisited here is Alpha College, a further education college (16+) formed from a merger of “Beta” and ”Gamma” colleges. Based on transcripts of 75 semistructured formal interviews and a larger number of informal interviews, the purpose of Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) study was to “analyse how different groups drew on their understandings of the college as a place of work in order to develop, promote and defend distinctive accounts of their, and their organization’s, identity” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 235). This study is particularly apposite for our purpose as it explicitly connects and addresses the relationship between, and significance of, the respective identities of the staff and the college (for further details of the site of the study and the research design, see appendix³).

In common with processual understandings of identity that challenge the view of identity as enduring, STH deconstructs the naturalization of identities as continuous, cohesive entities. STH is based on a negative ontology that accounts for why every endeavor to institute social realities, including the construction and solidification of identity, is inherently vulnerable to disruption. It is this vulnerability that recurrently provokes emotionally and politically charged efforts to restore or reinvent identity. That is to say, STH is attentive to the affectively colored role of power—in the form of hegemony—in covering over the contingency of identity with an ostensible objectivity. In particular, we engage STH to illuminate how fantasmatic identifications and disidentifications are cemented by the jouissance derived from forms of “othering” and scapegoating, and to show how these dynamics can dim the prospects for discerning and exploring areas of common cause in situations of organizational impasse, even by those ostensibly committed to overcoming deadlocks.

The Lacanian term jouissance, which is incorporated into STH by Laclau (2004),⁴ can be defined as a “bittersweet pleasure of being momentarily liberated from alienation” (Driver, 2013). It is a pleasure enjoyed as we transgress the prevailing, normalized symbolic order, and so more intensely “experience the power of desire” (Driver, 2013), to escape alienation. An attentiveness to jouissance, we suggest, is important for reinterpreting the behavior of staff at Alpha College and specifically their practices of self-elevation, self-pity, resentment, and nostalgia. The negative ontology common to STH and Lacanian thinking suggests that our understanding of subjects is not sufficiently well grasped by attending to their/our positioning within the symbolic and hegemonic structures of discourse. In addition, and in combination, it is important to appreciate how they/we are subjects of jouissance. As Müller (2013) puts it,

Jouissance is the paradoxical satisfaction in dissatisfaction that results from the repeated failure to obtain the full enjoyment subjects are promised in hegemonic discourses. Obtaining this full enjoyment is illusory, precisely because of the constitutive lack of every discourse. Hegemonic discourse thus relies on the dialectic of the promise of enjoyment on the one hand and the jouissance that subjects procure from failing to obtain this enjoyment on the other (p. 282).

As a critical theory, STH explicitly seeks out potentials for progressive social transformation. Accordingly, it attends to the conditions of possibility of traversing fantasies that are rooted in jouissance and that cement “hegemonic discourse.” In the case of Alpha College, we deploy STH to show how breaking through organizational deadlocks may require the traversal of fantasies through an increased reflexive awareness of equivalence. Such equivalence becomes obscured from view, we argue, not only through the fantasmatic identifications of practitioners themselves but also through the scholarly application of dominant identity perspectives, such as Brown & Humphreys,’ that tend to focus on differences between groups. Here we respond to recent calls for scholarship that exemplifies “critical performativity” (Spicer, Karreman, & Alvesson, 2009) as we show how STH’s explicit focus on seeking out potentials for social transformation can be applied to concrete organizational phenomena, such as organizational deadlocks, and thereby offer the potential for progressive organizational transformation.

The article is structured as follows. The first section addresses our stratagem of revisiting existing studies. The second section outlines the distinctive features of STH that are illustrated with examples drawn from Brown & Humphreys’ study. In the third section, we apply the STH framework to reexamine the identifications of, and relations between, staff groups at Alpha College, as exemplified by the “stand-off” between groups of staff at the college. In a concluding section, we reflect on STH’s attentiveness to possibilities of organizational transformation in comparison with more dominant identity perspectives in organization studies.

Revisiting Studies: The Case of Alpha College

The stratagem of revisiting published studies to explicate the additional illumination offered by an another, less familiar perspective is seldom adopted, yet it can be instructive in contributing to the theoretical clarification, diversification, and enrichment of organizational science (Wicks & Freeman, 1998). The comparative novelty of this stratagem obliges us to offer a brief rationale for its use. Its rarity is, we suggest, a symptom of a dominant genre of scholarship that prizes novel data and/or celebrates the replication and refinement of existing studies. Reexaminations of existing studies tend to be viewed as parasitic upon others’ hard-won data sets and reliant upon access to only the published fraction of the original data. Reinterpretations of existing studies also tax reviewers who are obliged to pay close attention to the “host” study to assess the originality, credibility, and contribution of its “parasitic” reinterpretation. While such considerations are not to be lightly dismissed, they do not, in our view, decisively outweigh the potential benefits of revisiting published studies, especially when the purpose, as it is here, is not to provide a more authoritative or corrective account of the study but, rather, to illustrate the contribution of a different approach, and to share the insights that it offers.

Presenting an alternative perspective to analyze the “same” data can stimulate reflection,⁵ animate debate, and demonstrate how data do not speak for themselves. As Hallett and Ventresca (2006) have argued, this process of revisiting existing studies can valuably open up, rather than suppress, differences of interpretation as a basis for fostering new directions for future study. As they put it, such studies

are valuable in themselves, but they can also be a means to a valuable end. They are a locale in which members of different tribes can think together. At a time in which [social scientific analysis] is increasingly specialized, this common ground is not only a source of solidarity, but also a fertile venue for the growth of vigorous new directions. (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006, pp. 232-233, emphases added)

This is, we believe, more likely when, as in our revisiting of Brown and Humphreys’ study, there is no intention to correct or even to add incrementally to the body of knowledge to which it contributes. The manner of our revisiting Brown and Humphreys’ study is, we note, congruent with the Academy of Management’s (AOM) Code of Conduct that “encourage[s] a broader horizon for decision making by viewing issues from a multiplicity of perspectives, including the perspectives of those who are the least advantaged” (AOM Code of Ethical Conduct cited in Adler & Jermier, 2005, p. 941, emphasis added). Our purpose in revisiting Brown and Humphreys’ is inter alia to clarify and sharpen an alternative analytical framework and to connect the consideration of “high theory” (e.g., STH) with the interrogation of empirical material, and thereby be responsive to perennial complaints about the gap between ideas and data, as well as between theory and practical change.

The Alpha College Case: An Overview

During the decade immediately preceding Brown and Humphreys’ research, five different principals had led Alpha College, and the college had also been subjected to three unflattering Government inspections. There had been five phases of voluntary and compulsory redundancies. The college had also “suffered the effects of the sector’s longest ever strike of academic staff” (see also Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. esp. 237 et seq; see also appendix). This troubled history of Alpha College is relevant as it conveys a sense of the unsettled context in which relations between staff groups, as reported by Brown and Humphreys, had developed. Staff at Alpha College are described as identifying themselves unambiguously as members of three, ”distinct,” homogeneous and mutually exclusive groups or “cohorts” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 231): ex-Beta, ex-Gamma, and the Senior Management Team (SMT):

[Quote 1] Members of these groups not only shared views regarding their groups’ collective characteristics, but they had their own distinctive understanding of the college as a whole. (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237)

Ex-Beta staff are reported to have identified themselves, and were identified by others, in terms of their premerged status (as Beta College staff). This identity differentiated them from ex-Gamma teaching staff to whom a lower status as “cushion-stuffers” was witheringly ascribed. In a parallel manner, ex-Gamma staff differentiated themselves from the overbearing “bureaucratic procedures” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237) of ex-Beta staff. Members of both teaching groups distanced themselves from, and denigrated, members of the SMT whom they viewed as “remote and disinterested” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237). Later, we will show that, in Brown and Humphreys’ own account, these distinctive identifications may not have been as totalizing or clear-cut as they suggest, because their study also indicates some degree of overlap between their memberships and some affinities between their respective values and priorities.

Identity in the STH

As a familiarity with the STH cannot be assumed, this section outlines its basic assumptions before considering how moments of political articulation and the role of fantasy are central to its analysis of processes of identity formation and the dynamics of resistance and change.

Identities in Organizations as Politically Articulated Positivities

STH conceives of processes of identification and identity formation as accomplished within relations of power (e.g., hierarchy, patriarchy) that, in conjunction with fantasmatic elements, provide a precarious sense of closure and stability that is inherently vulnerable to disruption and transformation. It is these fantasmatic elements that are most conspicuously absent even from forms of analysis where attention is paid to the “existential functions of the social” (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012, p. 56). Institutionalized, taken-for-granted, identities—such as “manager” or “lecturer”—are characterized by Laclau and Mouffe (1985) as “positivities.” Positivities are understood to be established in processes of symbolic condensation in which their preceding political articulation (e.g., the process of constructing the identity) is naturalized so that their reality becomes normalized and taken for granted. Positivities are, nonetheless, inherently vulnerable to disruption—as becomes evident when, following an event that discloses their constitutional incompleteness or lack, they are de-normalized and so are (re)politicized. An example, in Brown and Humphreys’ study, is how, following the merger of Beta and Gamma Colleges, the normalized subordination of lecturers is disrupted as this relationship is rearticulated as one of domination and oppression.

As noted above, a “negative ontology” (Coole, 2000) underpins STH and the Lacanian thinking upon which it draws. Positive constructions of social worlds, including identities, are conceived as contingent outcomes of processes of political articulation. Social worlds are real enough, being populated by numerous “positivities” (e.g., lecturers, managers). But the condition of possibility of their construction is a covering over of their radical contingency by fantasies about their objectivity, necessity, and/or durability. All efforts to establish social realities, including the construction and reproduction of a sense of identity, are conceived to be partial and incomplete; they are therefore inherently vulnerable to disruptions of their sense of solidity or closure. The veiled presence of “negativity” continuously provokes a renewal of reality-(re)producing efforts. Yet, to repeat, this process never closes off the radical contingency of, and endemic threat to, positivities.⁶ “Negativity” repeatedly resurfaces in “the spacings, intervals, differences, gaps and non-coincidences with which the positive is riven . . . this restlessness haunts all positive forms” (Coole, 2000, p. 6). So, from the perspective of STH, “ex-Beta” and “ex-Gamma” teaching staff of Alpha College are seen to develop, advance, defend, and revise a series of “positivities” through ongoing processes of emotional and political struggle. Specifically, they endeavor to establish and retain a sense of identity (e.g., as professionals committed to educational values) as they resist other identities (e.g., as employees working in a college that is run as a business) urged upon them by the SMT.

Beyond Positive Constructionism: Identity Struggle as Struggles With a “Lack”

With regard to political struggles, STH does not assume the existence of an objective basis for determining oppression, nor does it affirm the validity of attributions of “false consciousness” to participants in such relations. Accordingly, resistance to relations of subordination, for example, is understood to be contingent on the presence or emergence of identifications, including counteridentifications and disidentifications (see Holmer-Nadesan, 1996), such as the disindentification of Alpha College staff with the SMT. Such resistance, including worker resistance to the “wage slavery” of capitalism, is understood to be a contingent, rather than, say, a logical, consequence of being a seller of labor power: “The worker’s attitude vis à vis capitalism will depend entirely on how his or her identity is constituted” (Laclau, 2000c, p. 202), while STH also acknowledges that this process of constitution does not float free of political economy, even if it cannot be reduced to it.⁷ While dis/identifications—such as those embraced and reviled by staff groups at Alpha College—are not reducible to persons’ “objective” positioning within relations of subordination (e.g., of class, gender, etc.), or to “interests” ascribed to such positioning, they are capable of disrupting normalized relations of subordination. This is demonstrated where the identification of lecturers at Alpha College disrupted their relationship to the SMT: The teaching staff engaged in acts of resistance when their identity as teachers, defined by a commitment to educational values, was felt to be impugned by managers’ prioritization of business objectives. When demands from the SMT could not readily be accommodated within existing identifications, previously normalized relations of subordination came to be experienced, and resented, as oppressive. Participants in those relations no longer consensually acted out their normalized—superordinate and subordinate—positions. Instead, a struggle developed over the necessity and legitimacy of what they experienced as oppressive. Grievances of the teaching staff emerged as the restructuring of the college generated changes that, from an STH perspective, were experienced as a “theft” of their enjoyment as teachers, and that were resisted through the (pleasurable) scapegoating of the SMT whom they held entirely responsible for the “theft.” As Žižek (1993, p. 201) comments, “the element holding together a given community”—such as “ex-Beta” and “ex-Gamma’ in the Alpha College example—“cannot be reduced to the point of symbolic identification,” such as the status enjoyed by teachers.⁸ For there is also the emotional significance of such identification, characterized as “Our Thing,” which is properly accessible and meaningful only to us:

The bond linking together its members always implies a shared relationship to [their] Thing, toward Enjoyment incarnated. This relationship toward [our] Thing, structured by means of fantasies, is what is at stake when we speak of the menace to “our way of life” presented by the Other . . . If we are asked how we can recognise the presence of this Thing, the only consistent answer is that the Thing is present in the elusive entity called “our way of life.” (Žižek, 1993, p. 201)

Crucially, in STH, struggles, such as those between the SMT and the teaching groups are conceived not simply as contests between competing identifications and associated worldviews but also as ongoing emotional and political struggles animated by a negative ontology of “lack.” This lack continuously solicits identifications that promise to fill it. Yet, the possibility of the lack being (ful)filled by any identification is denied. So the desire for identification that promises to fill the lack, but then falls short, is repeatedly reignited. Laclau (2000b), drawing upon Lacanian thinking (to be considered below), characterizes the force of this negative ontology as follows:

It is the very lack within the structure that is the origin of the subject. This means that we do not simply have subject positions [e.g. “teacher,” “manager”] within the structure, but also the subject as an attempt to fill these structural gaps. That is why we do not just have identities but, rather, identification. (p. 58)

In privileging the process of political articulation, STH appreciates how the formation and reproduction of social realities relies upon “a particular social force assum(ing) the representation of a totality that is radically incommensurable with it” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. x)—that is, its (im)possibility. This “radical incommensurability” refers to the negative ontology that repeatedly disrupts positivities (see above). Another way to conceive of this is in terms of “universals” and “particulars.” A “particular” theory, for example, may make the (hegemonic) claim to be of universal relevance, validity, and so on. In doing so, it offers itself up as a possibility (a particular) but in an impossible form (a universal) as it (powerfully) denies its contingency (historical, cultural, etc.).

If STH’s negative ontology were not so seldom assumed and engaged in social scientific inquiry, it might be viewed as self-evident. Identity, after all, is widely recognized “by its very nature [to be a] flawed and incomplete process” (Hoedemaekers, 2010, p. 391). Yet, this understanding is clearly not so obvious as to be central to most accounts of identity formation and contestation, even those advanced by constructionists (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1967). In Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) analysis of the identities and identifications of groups at Alpha College, the emphasis is upon positivities (see above), in the form of the “shared views” and “distinctive understandings” of the different groups (see Quote 1). From an STH perspective, however, the kind of “constructionism” favored by Brown and Humphreys

. . . can only be the starting point for a complex understanding of human experience . . . [STH is] interested in showing how human construction is never able to institute itself as a closed and self-contained order. There is always something which frustrates all efforts to reach an exhaustive representation of the world—whether natural or social. One can approach this constitutive frustration by speaking of the limits of discourse, often associated with notions like “incompleteness of identity” (poststructuralism), “impossibility of society” (Laclau), or “the lack in the Other” (Lacan). (Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2004, pp. 203-204, emphasis added)

The Process of Fantasmatic Identification in Organizations

To recap, we have noted how, for STH, the analysis of every “positivity” (e.g., “lecturer” or “manager”) invites an attentiveness of how this positivity is constructed, reproduced, and transformed in relation to the negativity that unsettles and overflows the reality to which it lays claim. In every identification, there is a lack or impossibility. It is the unsettling intrusion of this lack that, theoretically, speaks to the negative ontology; and that, practically, prompts recurrent efforts to attain, secure, and sustain whatever identifications hold out the (impossible, hence fantastical) promise of fullness in the form of stability and continuity. To sustain their very existence, practices of dis/counter/identification incorporate fantasmatic elements that provide more or less conscious reassurances of their capacity to fill the lack, and thereby preserve their “Thing” (Žižek, 1993, p. 201, quoted earlier). In the case of ex-Beta and ex-Gamma staff groups, it was imagined that any threat to the stability of identity could be parried by overcoming forces or enemies (e.g., the SMT) that challenge it or by denigrating others (e.g., “cushion-stuffers”) to the point that they are regarded as nonpersons or at least nonlecturers.

To better understand such fantasmatic identification processes, it is necessary to relate their formation to three key Lacanian terms—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. In combination, these concepts serve to illuminate subterranean dynamics of identity formation, about which most theories of identity in organizations have little to say, as a fantasmatic process borne out of a desire to recuperate lost jouissance.

The Imaginary

The Imaginary arises during an early period of development, normally between the 6th and 18th month of life, when the human infant becomes attentive to, and progressively captivated by, what he or she takes to be indicative of his or her own substance and permanence (see Lacan, 1996). Prior to this stage, the infant is conceived to have an identity for others (e.g., she or he is identified as a “baby”); but she or he has not, as yet, developed a sense of self-identity. Such self-consciousness emerges through his or her identification with elements of the Imaginary, such as the indications of substance and permanence. In this process, the infant becomes split (self/Other). By disclosing how, within the Imaginary, the subject becomes split and, in this sense alienated, Lacan “offers a penetrating critique of the imaginary homogeneity of the ego, showing how self-images of mastery, autonomy, omnipotence are fabrications woven of fantasies” (Purser, 2011, p. 296). An ensuing, generally unacknowledged, desire to restore a pre-Imaginary experience of unity or fullness fuels fantasies that promise its restoration.⁹ Such fantasies take the form of what Lacan terms, generically, objet petit a.¹⁰ The objet petit a—for example, the “good old days”—is a beguiling (nostalgic) notion, as a return to those days promises to overcome the lack. It is a fantasy, however, that, even if fulfilled, inescapably falls short of the jouissance associated with the pre-Imaginary experience of fullness.

The Symbolic

In the process of splitting (self/Other), the infant is drawn into the media—notably of language and what Lacanian terms the Symbolic—through which an embryonic self-identity (a “positivity”) is more firmly established and elaborated. As there is nothing within the Symbolic that can effectively fill the lacking pre-Imaginary sense of fullness, the anticipated fulfillment never quite materializes, or it is not entirely satisfying: “The jouissance obtained is distinguished from the jouissance expected.” As Driver (2009) explains,

. . . we always construct the self in language. But language is a symbolic order that can never provide us with the unmediated experience of the world we have had prior to attaining language and [self]consciousness. The self we construct in this symbolic order is alienated as an object constructed in the language of an other, internalized others or even conventions of language itself handed down through generations of others. Therefore the answers we continuously seek about who we are and what we want never actually answer our questions or, importantly, fulfil our desires. (p. 495)

The Real

The Real has been characterized as “the nonsymbolizable kernel around which the subject organizes his or her desire” (Salecl, 1998, p. 18, in Bernstein, 2007, p. 717). The Symbolic meets its limits—as the blow of disappointment—in the form of the Lacanian Real. The anticipated fulfillment—or jouissance—is present in its felt absence—perhaps most commonly experienced as frustration and resentment and intensely experienced as melancholia. Engaging in, or becoming engaged by, practices of denigration, for example, provides, from this perspective, some relief from the sense of lack; and, in this respect, such practices can be experienced as enjoyable. At the same time, participation in such practices is frustrating as they fail to match up to the Lacanian Real: The jouissance turns out to be partial, falling short of what is fantasized. The Real, as Newman (2003) puts it, “is the point at which symbolic structures break down” (p. 156).

Consider Brown and Humphreys’ account of the “real buzz” of teaching reported by a lecturer at Alpha College (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 240). This suggests that, for the lecturer concerned, teaching was, on occasion, a highly rewarding, pleasurable experience. In Lacanian terms, the lecturer’s participation in the Symbolic of the classroom was experienced as the pleasurable “buzz” that is responsive to a desire to fill the sense of “lack” (consequent upon the splitting of the subject by entry into the Imaginary). Unlike the fullness of the pre-Imaginary phase, the “buzz” obtained within the Symbolic is, however, comparatively partial and is also vulnerable to disruption. A class may not respond to a new topic or a passing joke, thereby frustrating the desired “buzz.” Or other priorities, like hitting “financial targets” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 249), may exert a distracting and/or demoralizing effect, so impeding a lecturer’s capacity to generate and/or enjoy the “buzz.” Such disruptions (or the apprehensive anticipation of them) may then animate a defensive preservation of existing identifications, and/or they may propel a search for new identifications supported and sustained by the fantasy that something else (another objet petit a) will yield an (absent) sense of fullness and thereby remedy the felt lack and suture the split subject.

Caught up in this dynamic of fantasy and disappointment, particular identifications—such as ”lecturer”—become an objet petit a: something that (more or less consciously) promises to fill the sense of lack. Such identifications operate to suture the split subject, and so they become hegemonic for him or her, as exemplified by the strength of allegiance of ex-Beta and ex-Gamma staff to their respective group values.¹¹ The coherence and sense of fullness is, however, fantasmatic. It is unobtainable precisely because the subject is always more than, and is never reducible to, the (multiple) identifications that the subject hosts. The Real, when it intrudes, shows each (sutured) identity to be a “partial and precarious objectification” susceptible to reformation through processes of (multiple) dis/identification(s) (Laclau, 1983; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 125). Its seemingly universal (or full) status is betrayed by what exceeds and disrupts it.

Reproductive, Fantasmatic Resistance, and the Possibility of Its Traversal

A common fantasy is that the sense of fullness promised by a positivity could be complete and lasting if only it were not for the presence of some “other”—an obstacle or a scapegoat—that is presently blocking the realization of fullness. Such fantasies illustrate what Stavrakakis (2008) refers to as “a libinal, affective support that binds subjects to the conditions of their symbolic subordination” (p. 1053). In the Alpha College example, teaching staff were “bound” to the SMT by an affective (in addition to material) investment in education. Unblocking such “identifications and passionate attachments” (Stavrakakis, 2008, p. 1053), Stavrakakis (2008) notes, is “impossible . . . without paying attention to this important dimension of affect” (p. 1053). In other words, central to the analysis of identity and identification is an appreciation of embodiment and the significance of affect—something which, from a Lacanian perspective, is bound up in fantasies about the obstacle to a realization of the sense of fullness. Fantasies of fullness are alluring but also fateful as they may solidify into what Lacan terms “the armour of an alienating identity” (Roberts, 2005, p. 629). The “armour” comprises identifications—such as what it means to be an “ex-Beta” or “ex-Gamma” member of staff at Alpha College—that become fixations for the subject.

As noted earlier, it is also the insufficiency of the Symbolic that “makes resistance possible, at least in principle” (Stavrakakis, 2008, p. 1049, emphasis added). In the Alpha College study, such resistance took the form of challenges posed by disaffected staff to their normalized subordination to the SMT. Where there is an assumption that the Symbolic can regain lost, pre-Imaginary jouissance, removal of the obstacle or hate object (e.g., the Winchester Road building) acts to test and problematize this assumption. When the removal of the obstacle results in some jouissance but is not accompanied by regaining the lost jouissance, the disappointment may bring to consciousness what remains problematical—namely, the fantasy that removing the obstacle will restore pre-Imaginary jouissance. In other words, the disappointment may prompt a Real-ization—perhaps only momentary but possibly more sustained—that (the alienated) identity is indeed “alienated.” In turn, such disappointment may initiate or propel a process of critical reflection on the repetitive cycle of desire and frustration.

Alternatively, the stronger impulse may be to avoid reflection on the trauma of disappointment—for instance, by, fantasizing that some other objet petit a will be effective. In the latter case, identity is recuperated and the acknowledgment of the “traumatic kernel” (the Lacanian Real) is circumvented or postponed. That postponement may be accomplished by, for example, continuing to engage in some petty “delinquency” (e.g., name-calling of the SMT) or some other minor disobedience (e.g., refusal to subscribe to the SMT’s preferred definition of the college). In such ways, the positivity of “lecturer” is reaffirmed in the face of the experience of its denigration by the SMT. Minor transgressions of the boundaries of social respectability—what Contu (2008) terms “decaf resistance”—offer some gratification, albeit shallow, that has some resonance with what has been lost; and it is this resonance that lends it an apparently irresistable appeal, or “kick.” In this way, people can continue to reproduce power relations despite ostensibly being committed to transforming them.

The transformative alternative is to “traverse the fantasy”—that is, to attain release from the captivating fantasy that the sense of lack can be filled by some objet petit a.¹² Such traversals may be possible where there is a loosening of the captivating demands of the Symbolic—for example, the confining demands of “lecturer”—on the subject. For example, ex-Beta staff could partially traverse their fantasmatic attempt at identity closure by loosening the grip of their disidentifications with ex-Gamma staff and members of the SMT. Such loosening requires not only a recognition that, for example, the disposition of SMT members is not identical to the fantasies of the teaching staff but also, and crucially, an inclination to detect and abandon the impulse that fosters the fantasy that sustains such practices of disidentification. This movement necessarily involves a sacrifice of the jouissance previously derived inter alia from scapegoating other groups, and that contributes to the difficulty of accomplishing even a partial traversal. However, such traversals can bring the unexpected windfall of “surplus enjoyment” (Zupančič, 2000) that accompanies the release of subjects from “the conditions of their symbolic subordination” (Stavrakakis, 2008, p. 1053)—as long, of course, as such loosening does not invite its replacement by some other comparable fantasy, such as a fantasy that supports a self-elevating (narcissistic) sense of the righteousness of desisting from scapegoating.

Revisiting Identification and Disidentification in Alpha College: From Reproductive Struggle to the Possibility of Progressive Transformation

Having outlined key elements of the STH perspective through brief illustrations from the Alpha College study, we now analytically use STH to show how, following the merger of Beta and Gamma Colleges, the three groups of staff at Alpha College cemented their group’s dis/identifications by denigrating and demonizing each other. Each group, we will suggest, was captivated by fantasies in which only a change in some other (scapegoated) group would allow them to be more fully and enjoyably themselves. This captivation resulted in a deadlock, abhorred by all staff, that, we suggest, was (re)produced by them through such fantasmatic (dis)identifications.

Scapegoating and Jouissance

Scapegoating reflects and reinforces difference in a way that affirms the purity of “us” as it castigates the contaminated “Other.” Following the merger, obtaining full enjoyment from “being a teacher” was found by ex-Beta staff to be illusive, but its hegemony was also reaffirmed as enjoyment derived from scapegoating and denigrating the other groups.¹³ Members of each teaching group and members of the SMT contrived to secure their “Thing” in response to “the menace to ‘our way of life’ presented by the Other” (Žižek, 1993, p. 201, quoted earlier). Strong group identifications were expressed in the projection of all problems onto the other group(s). Possibilities for the formation of alliances to fulfill their “responsibility for improving the lives and career prospects of students” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 251) were not explored. The energies of the three factions at Alpha College were instead consumed in the production and elaboration of fantasies that reaffirmed the validity of “the negative stereotypical conceptions they held of each other” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 252). For the teaching groups at Alpha College, the hegemonic discourse was that of “being a teacher,” not a commodified worker in a business; and jouissance was derived from denigrating the other teaching group and scapegoating the SMT.

The working lives of the three groups at Alpha College, when examined from an STH perspective, are seen to be shaped and directed by economies of enjoyment that took the form of nostalgia, resentment, self-pity, and/or self-elevation. As denigration of their colleagues transgressed the respectability of the identity of professional teachers, it may be speculated that participation in those economies provided a frisson of (guilty) pleasure. Building upon this interpretation, mutual negation, or at least the absence of respect and recognition can be “perceived as a lack and simultaneously a source of satisfaction” (Holmer-Nadesan, 1996, p. 72). At Alpha College, a conservative, if not regressive, libidinal economy is seen to have supported its staff’s continuing attachment to, and reproduction of, a deadlocked status quo. Mutual denigration and scapegoating combined with nostalgic appeals to a golden era preserved a situation¹⁴ that all three staff groups unanimously deplored. The deadlock was sustained by fantasies—notably by nostalgia for a past that allegedly incorporated “a quest for a community” and nurtured “the importance and joys of teaching” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 244). Such fantasies not only served to distance teaching staff from “a threatening culture and unpleasant working conditions” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 246) but also lessened any inclination, and weakened any capacity, to mobilize support for transformative change. Shared allegiance, or even a limited sense of solidarity, based on shared concerns, or equivalences, between the groups of staff, was located exclusively in the past and so denied to any possible future.

In sum, Brown and Humphreys’ analysis of struggles between groups of Alpha college staff interprets scapegoating and fantasizing as means of mitigating or removing tensions, rather than confirming and heightening them. In STH, the jouissance derived from fantasizing and scapegoating is seen to maintain, or to increase, tensions associated with the construction of group identity—not only by reinforcing differentiation from other groups but also through mutual disidentification.

Revising Hegemony

In Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) analysis, the reproduction of relations at Alpha College is framed in terms of the “hegemonic imposition(s)” of a dominant group (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 242)—that is, the SMT. In this formulation of hegemony, the emphasis is upon the capacity of a materially and/or symbolically advantaged group (e.g., SMT) to force or inveigle its demands upon subordinates (e.g., staff groups) despite the latter’s opposition and resistance.

Taking issue with this understanding, and returning to Gramsci, STH understands hegemony as the production of “consent,” rather than simply the outcome of irresistible coercion. “Consent” is in scare quotes because it does not imply simple agreement or domination, but, rather, as Mumby’s (1997) dialectical reading of Gramsci suggests, it embodies “possibilities for critique and practice” (Mumby, 1997, p. 369) that are “manifested through partial, dynamic, fragmented, discontinuous moments of struggle” (Mumby, 1997, p. 369). Such “consent” is not necessarily unconditional or calculated, but is pragmatically effective, and not the least because it is affirming and pleasurable. Underprivileged supporters of conservative parties, for example, are often attracted by values and associated practices—such as confining marriage to heterosexuals, which affirms their traditional or religious identifications. But that does not exempt such actors from engaging in forms of struggle (e.g., union activism) that may challenge the rule of conservative parties. From an STH perspective, the hegemonic form of domination is not unilaterally imposed but, rather, is the outcome of bilateral and multilateral forms of resistance and accommodation. Hegemony is understood to reside in processes that, at Alpha College, comprised the (enjoyably) resistant, grudgingly, and resentfully compliant relationship of the teaching staff to the SMT. Despite some resistance, these processes made possible a measure of passive-aggressive consent to “the business-oriented and success-slanted discourses drawn-on by the SMT” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 246), and so they were unintentionally productive of “the stabilization of subordination as difference” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 159).

Such “consent” is not primarily or exclusively a product of astute manipulation that is “cleverly masked” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 234), nor is it the product of superordinates’ “hegemonic imposition” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 242). Rather, according to STH, such “consent” arises from subordinates’ more-or-less partial participation in, and identification with, established dominant practices and values that, in the Alpha College case, fostered nostalgia, etc., and the enjoyment derived from it. In Brown and Humphreys’ analysis, “hegemonic imposition” is seen to be accomplished as the teaching groups continued to act—that is, to teach—what they had previously done, even if they were less identified with those practices and more resentful about engaging in them. Although the teaching staff never agreed to the demands of the SMT, they participated in “practices that are a condition and consequence of their reproduction” (Holmer-Nadesan, 1996, p. 57, citing; Knights & Willmott, 1989, p. 550). Applying STH, their participation in those practices is seen to be animated by the jouissance derived from contemptuous forms of disidentification. Whatever the efforts of the SMT to “ cleverly mask” their managerialism, it is clear from what Brown and Humphreys themselves report that these efforts had not escaped or hoodwinked the teaching staff:

[Quote 3] Ex-Beta and ex-Gamma staff said that they were appalled at the SMT’s definition of the college as a business and its conception of the [main college site] as a unit of resource to be managed. They instead subscribed to a view of the college as an educational institution focally concerned with pedagogy, and emphasized the importance (and joys) of teaching and learning . . . Their constitution of the college as a chaotic, depressing, fear-filled place contradicted both the SMT’s preferred construction of it as a business that was steadily improving, and their own aspirations for it to be an effective institution of higher education. (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 240)

The degree of disaffection and hostility toward the SMT, as articulated by ex-Beta and ex-Gamma teaching staff, suggests that it is questionable whether the stance of the SMT was “hegemonic” in the sense ascribed to this term by Brown and Humphreys (2006, p. 248). This assessment does not imply that Brown and Humphreys’ association of “hegemony” with controlling resources and/or controlling representations of the college to the outside world is wrong—as if “hegemony” has some essential meaning, or that its meaning was effectively patented by Gramsci. But use of the meaning of “hegemony” favored by Brown and Humphreys does, potentially, have performative effects. It effectively depoliticizes the concept of hegemony by decoupling it from a Gramscian concern with critique and praxis, and so it displaces the use of “hegemony” in analyses, such as those inspired by STH, that can sensitize us to processes (e.g., scapegoating and put-downs) in maintaining the “hegemonic domination” attributed to the SMT in Brown and Humphreys’ analysis.

Difference, Equivalence, and the Possibility of Progressive Transformation

In Brown and Humphreys’ analysis, the counterproductive actions of Alpha College staff are represented, unequivocally and exclusively, in terms of differences between the staff groups that serve to animate and justify their mutual negation. Consider the following extract where it is reported that ex-Beta staff

[Quote 2] said that they were long-serving and long-suffering at the hands of successive teams of incompetent and short-termist senior managers who had wasted resources, engendered feelings of insecurity, and, latterly, managed a flawed merger strategy with Gamma staff whom they described in disparaging terms as “cushion stuffers” and “egg-painters.” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237)

Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) study provides details of how the loss of status associated with a merger resulted, in the view of ex-Beta staff, in a devaluation of their skills and expertise to a level of the ex-Gamma “cushion-stuffers.” In a parallel manner, ex-Gamma staff complained about the imposition of bureaucratic procedures established by Beta College with which they had been forced to merge in a “shotgun marriage” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237). For both teaching groups, “feelings of insecurity” (p. 237) and resentment are related to the actions of the SMT who presided over an unwelcome merger. Some overlaps between the respective “views” (p. 237) of the three groups are noted by Brown and Humphreys (2006) in passing, but there is no consideration of, or even contemplation of potentials for, equivalences.

When revisited from the perspective of STH, an attentiveness to equivalences based on similar viewpoints, goals, and mutual respect for each other as (equivalent) human beings is prioritized, in addition to an appreciation of difference and a focus on relations of subordination and oppression. With the benefit of this perspective, it becomes questionable whether, on the basis of the evidence provided by Brown and Humphreys (2006), the deadlock of mutual suspicions and resentments was as totalizing as they imply. This questioning is directly invited by STH’s negative ontology as it assumes the “impossibility” of symbolic constructions being closed off from disruption and dislocation. STH enables us to entertain the possibility of impasses being eased and perhaps transformed by considering the formation of (albeit temporary) alliances and the development of collective, transformative actions.

Thus, to transcend the hegemonic “grip” of relations based on difference and mutual disidentification, we suggest that the target of resistance (and change) needs to shift from the SMT as an object of disidentification, to the (enjoyable and fantasmatic) processes of subordinated self-identification that are associated with it. In other words, resistance to hegemony becomes possible when the fantasies that sustain its reproductive “consent” through (dis)identifications are exposed and traversed. Building upon the legacy of Gramsci to advance a post-Marxian understanding of domination and processes of resistance, STH thus engages Lacanian insights to provide a more sophisticated understanding of social reproduction—as a process of struggle involving “consent” but one that is also open to the possibility of potential praxis leading to social transformation. Crucially, in STH, attention is paid to the role of subjectivity in processes of subordination in which forms of resistance may be animated and constrained as much by forms of identity-affirming, insecurity buffering, and resentful enjoyment as by a concerted demand for change. It is by acknowledging and transgressing such habitual, oppressive practices—by exposing and traversing the fantasies that they engage and harbor—that hegemony is disrupted and emancipatory transformation, rather than a “decaf” (e.g., cynical) accommodation of the status quo, can result.

Discussion: Prospects of Commonality?

Our reexamination of Brown and Humphreys’ study has placed the formation of identity at the center of the analysis of the organization and reproduction of power relations. Their focus on differences between staff groups valuably illustrates how group identity construction can be counterproductive to efforts to challenge the identity claims and solidarity of other groups. In response to claims made by SMT members about recent progress and successes in turning Alpha College around (p. 239), ex-Beta and ex-Gamma staff are reported to have to become absorbed in “defensive nostalgia [that] constituted a kind of resistance” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 246). The “resistance” of teaching staff to the managerialism associated with the SMT commended an identity for the college that harped back to an era prior to the merger. Such “nostalgia” is plausibly interpreted by Brown and Humphreys as counterproductive or self-defeating as it was ineffective in countering the SMT’s “business-oriented and success-slanted discourses” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 246). In a parallel manner, the SMT’s focus on staff reorganization and improvements in procedures was “self-defeating because, as [the SMT] recognised, the site disadvantaged them in their efforts to compete for resources and the best students and staff” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 240). In Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) analysis, accusations of “incompetence” and “short-term(ism)” (p. 237) are plausibly seen to de-normalize the formally superordinate position in the decision-making hierarchy occupied by the SMT.

From an STH perspective, the relationship between the teaching groups and the SMT is likewise regarded as oppressive but one in whose reproduction, the teaching staff are also seen to be unintentionally complicit. Their divisive, disparaging discourses are not only viewed as self-defeating because they were nostalgic or because they failed to address the physical shortcomings of the College but also because they impeded the forging of some degree of solidarity, based on equivalences, necessary to facilitate the transformative change espoused by all groups. Thus, STH draws attention to the involvement of all staff at Alpha College in developing and maintaining the “positivities” resulting from their respective identifications, disidentifications, and associated social divisions. Drawing upon Lacanian thinking, STH’s understanding of the social dynamics at Alpha College is informed by, but not reduced to, an appreciation of the loss of the pre-Imaginary experience of unity and fullness, which precedes the development of self-consciousness. As a consequence of the splitting of self, social life is understood to be infused with a relentless political and emotional struggle to restore a pre-Imaginary experience of unity while preserving a self-conscious positivity. Pre-Imaginary enjoyment of fullness becomes the object of fantasies developed within the Symbolic that act to cover over but cannot rectify its incapacity to fill the lack. Through processes of symbolic condensation and investment, a measure of fulfillment and pleasure is gained.

An understanding of how “self as lack” prompts restitution through differentiation and elevation illuminates how groups at Alpha College derived enjoyment from “othering” their colleagues as incompetent managers, as units of resource, as “cushion-stuffers,” and so on. A by-product of such “othering,” we have suggested, is the creation and strengthening of “the armour of alienating identity” (Roberts, 2005, p. 629) that is forged from a denial of equivalences impelled by the jouissance derived from ubiquitous, scapegoating and put-downs. This source of jouissance would likely be marginalized, ironicized, or tabooed by a more collegial, collaborative orientation. However, at Alpha College, ubiquitous scapegoating impeded and subverted possible bases of alliance between members of the three groups. Logics of difference, which are well-presented in Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) analysis, are seen, from an STH perspective, to have operated to stifle a logic of equivalence.

What, then, was the potential for the future development of a less deadlocked, more equivalential logic as a basis for organizing social relations at Alpha College? We have earlier noted how, in Brown and Humphreys’ descriptively rich narrative, there are a number of teasing and undeveloped references to connections and overlaps between the memberships, as well as the concerns, of the three groups at Alpha College. Ex-Beta and ex-Gamma staff, in particular, are described as being “enmeshed in multiple, intersecting and overlapping conversations” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 252). Notably, the main building was described by teaching staff as a prison/asylum (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 238), and this was echoed by the Principal, the main spokesperson of the SMT, who characterized it as “dour at the extreme, a big old-fashioned monolith” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 239). Mention is also made of an overlap of membership between ex-Beta staff and the SMT in the form of “a small cadre” who “had both teaching and administrative duties” (Brown & Humphreys, 2006, p. 237).

Neither this dual membership nor overlaps of view about the site are thematized in Brown and Humphreys’ analysis. Yet, both are at least suggestive of the possibility of developing pragmatic alliances around common concerns—such as an espoused concern with educational values and associated priorities, the fulfillment of which might conceivably be enabled, and not just impeded, by accommodating a more “business-like” approach to financing the college as a means of materially securing the future of a more educationally centered institution. Each of the three factions—the SMT as well as the teaching groups—is reported to have “subscribed to a view of the college as an educational institution focally concerned with pedagogy” (Quote 3). So, the prospect of identifying and building upon equivalences between the three groups is perhaps not so remote. If the factions could somehow have been encouraged to reflect critically upon, and thereby loosen, their libidinal attachments to fantasies of nostalgia and negation, then alliances, albeit pragmatic and precarious, might have been fostered in the pursuit of shared areas of expressed concern.

The challenge of enabling such transformation should not, of course, be underestimated. On Brown and Humphreys’ account, relations at Alpha College were deeply deadlocked. Even so, and as Brown and Humphreys (2006, p. 249) themselves note, “while the SMT did not denigrate the importance of teaching and learning, they had not found a felicitous means of combining the pedagogical concerns of their staff with their own preoccupations with financial targets and systems of management” (see also Gioia & Thomas, 1996). Brown and Humphreys (2006) also note that the SMT was by no means disinterested in, let alone implacably opposed to, the substantive activities of “teaching and learning.” What, seemingly, most impeded communication of SMT support for this activity was its members’ fantasy about the teaching staff being unremittingly hostile to anything they proposed.

Key to breaking the deadlock, resulting from a disconnect between the concern of teaching staff with pedagogy and the SMT’s focus on finance/management systems, is, from the perspective of STH, praxis inspired and guided by a critique and traversal of fantasies (e.g., disidentifications) that obstruct collective action. Critique and removal of such obstructions are understood to prepare the ground for negotiating a mutual accommodation of the protagonists’ respective concerns as it becomes possible for “subjects and social groups ‘to hear something else, to think something new’ (Castoriadis, 1991: 271)” (Arnaud, 2002, p. 708). In the Alpha College case, an accommodation could perhaps have been accomplished through a partial traversal of the respective fantasies of the SMT and the teaching groups. Conceivably, such a movement might permit and promote practices consistent with recognizing the status and value of Alpha College as an educational institution whose raison d’etre is teaching and learning while collectively acknowledging and addressing the financial viability of the college as a condition of its possible future as an educationally centered establishment.

From the perspective of STH, a more evenhanded appreciation of logics of equivalence and logics of difference holds out the prospect of generating increased awareness of possibilities of relatedness to others in ways that are not embroiled in fantasies of disidentification—such as the labeling of all SMT members as “incompetent,” or the demolition of the main building as the only solution to the problems of Alpha College. This dual appreciation of equivalence and difference is important because a singular focus on equivalence without an appreciation of differences, and without a renegotiation of power relations, is likely to cement deadlocks and/or lead to new divisive, fantasmatic identifications. For example, without a renegotiation of power relations, an exclusive focus on equivalence could enable the SMT to define what “equivalence” means, and impose their particular agenda by overriding or ignoring staff grievances under the banner of “equivalence.”¹⁵ A singular focus on equivalence could also foster a new fantasy of a world of equivalences in which those deemed to be different are denigrated and scapegoated as “change blockers” on the fantasmatic road to a projected organizational unity.¹⁶ Only as the allure of such fantasies is traversed is space opened up for alternative, potentially less “armoured” and perverse forms of enjoyment. This opening, as Hoedemaekers (2009) remarks, is not a singular event but, rather, an iterative practice in which one’s relation to objet petit a—that is, in the Alpha College example, the distinctive and divisive identifications (and disidentifications) of the staff—is loosened and ultimately “sacrificed” (p. 194). With this sacrificial loosening, scope for collective transformative action can then expand.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored STH as an alternative to existing approaches to identity in organizations with the aim of showing that STH—unlike more dominant perspectives on identity in organizations—can expose the conditions of possibility of breaking through organizational deadlocks caused by opposing identifications. We have shown how breaking through such deadlocks may require the traversal of fantasies that sustain opposing identifications through an increased reflexive awareness of equivalence. We have argued that such equivalence becomes obscured from view, not only through the fantasmatic identifications of people in organizations but also through the scholarly application of dominant identity perspectives, such as Brown and Humphreys’, that tend to focus on differences between groups. This argument forms the basis for two main contributions, which we discuss next.

STH as a Means of Loosening Impasse in Organizations

First, we have shown how STH offers a “vigorous new direction” (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006, p. 233) for studying the presence, and appreciating the significance, of identities in organizations, notably with regard to processes of resistance and change. Incorporating Lacanian insights, STH is particularly incisive in illuminating the role of fantasies in processes of organizational reproduction. In the case of Alpha College fantasies acted to preserve what staff overtly denigrated; and they inhibited changes which staff professedly desired. We have deployed STH to show how a libidinal economy—comprising identifications and disidentifications, cemented by jouissance derived from forms of “othering” and scapegoating—dimmed the prospects for discerning and exploring areas of common cause at Alpha College. Conversely, a condition of possibility of breaking such deadlocks is a traversal of the fantasies that cement the impasse. Our engagement of STH to reflect critically upon the dynamics of resistance and alliance at Alpha College has thus served to show how libidinal attachments to divisive, nostalgic, and utopian fantasies can operate to blunt resistance to relations experienced as oppressive through denial, ignorance, and/or displacement.

It is by exposing and critiquing such fantasies (incorporating praxis) that their partial traversal may be accomplished, thereby facilitating collective action in the direction of progressive change (Alvesson & Willmott, 2012); and, in this regard, such analysis can contribute to “expand(ing) horizons through selective and informed critical-constructive questioning” (Spicer et al., 2009, p. 546). At the same time, it is important to acknowledge how alliances based on equivalences may themselves rely on fantasies that suppress and displace grievances and so weaken or compromise the capacity of groups to wrestle effectively with their alliance partners over other issues. Keeping this important proviso firmly in mind, we conclude that our reexamination of Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) study of Alpha College has been fruitful in showing how the praxis of surfacing equivalences and traversing fantasies of mutual denigration may offer a “critically performative” means of loosening impasses in organizations, thereby removing unnecessary suffering and mitigating unproductive tensions. STH, with its Lacanian and poststructuralist insights into the dynamics of deadlock (re)production, offers a powerful means of interrogating, deconstructing, and potentially loosening their destructive grip.

Enriching Organization Studies Through Critical Reexamination

Second, in this article, we have shown how the stratagem of revisiting published empirical studies can contribute to the theoretical clarification, diversification, and enrichment of organizational sciences. We have shown that the critical reexamination of existing published work need not provide a more authoritative or corrective account for it to be valuable. Rather, such critical reexaminations can be a powerful means of illustrating the distinctive contribution of a different approach as its insights are shared and clarified by contrasting them against those of the existing study. Its intent is not to demonstrate that research is multiparadigmatic but, rather, to deploy something comparatively familiar (e.g., an interpretive ethnography) to show the relevance of an approach (STH) that might otherwise seem, or be dismissed as, exotic and perhaps irrelevant.

The nature of our engagement with Brown and Humphreys’ study could, we acknowledge, disappoint or frustrate scholars who expect the revisiting of the Alpha College case to provide a more accurate, faithful, or truthful analysis of their findings. However, from the perspective of STH, any claim to provide a more adequate account of a phenomenon, such as identities at Alpha College, is seen to involve an implausible universalization of the value-based claims of a particular “machinery of knowing” (Knorr Cetina, 1999). STH commends a respectful acknowledgment of differences between traditions of analysis, as signaled here by our refusal to claim any value-independent supremacy for STH as a strand within a particular (e.g., critical) tradition of analysis. Our revisiting of Brown and Humphreys’ (2006) study has been guided by a value orientation that, in addition to its appreciation of differences, is attentive to reported and potential equivalences between the groups of staff at Alpha College and also between STH and Brown and Humphreys’ analysis. Specifically, our focus has been upon equivalences that are identified, yet largely unexamined, by Brown and Humphreys. Their significance is that they can stimulate and facilitate transformative release from pathologies of organizing, such as the deadlock in which staff at Alpha College found themselves captive. Presenting these insights serves to challenge the rather widespread presumption that it is hard or unrewarding, and perhaps impossible, to apply abstract forms of social theory, such as STH, to analyze concrete organizational phenomena.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Jaco Lok is a senior lecturer at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales. He received his PhD from Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include further developing the microfoundations of institutional theory by exploring the complex relations between institutions and the people and organizations who inhabit them.

Hugh Willmott is research professor in organization studies, Cardiff Business School, and has held visiting professors at Copenhagen Business School and the Universities of Uppsala, Lund, Innsbruck, Sydney, and the University of Technology, Sydney. He previously held professorial appointments at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST; now Manchester Business School) and Cambridge. He cofounded the International Labour Process Conference and the International Critical Management Studies Conference. He currently serves on the board of Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and is an associate editor of Organization. He has previously served on the board of Administrative Science Quarterly and Accounting, Organizations and Society. He has contributed to a wide range of management and social science journals and has published more than 20 books. Full details can be found on his home page: .

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