Management Communication Quarterly

http://mcq.sagepub.com

Exploring the Moral Consequences of Management Communication Theory and Practice

Graham Sewell
Management Communication Quarterly 2004; 18; 97
DOI: 10.1177/0893318904265132
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://mcq.sagepub.com

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Management Communication Quarterly can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://mcq.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://mcq.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations http://mcq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/18/1/97

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

MANAGEMENTCONSEQUENCES
10.1177/0893318904265132
Sewell/MORAL
COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

Exploring the Moral Consequences of

Management Communication Theory
and Practice
Graham Sewell
University of Melbourne

Keywords: ethics; power; Stewart Clegg; research paradigms; management

theory and practice

lthough the name Stewart Clegg may be less familiar

among communications scholars than among those in the
field of organizations studies, as the other essays in this symposium
have shown, there is a great deal of benefit to be had from an
encounter with his work. One of the most admirable attributes of
Cleggs thinking over many years now has been its suppleness,
especially his ability to embrace with apparent ease (but also with a
distinctly critical bent) emerging theoretical and philosophical
developments, usually well in advance of the herd desperate to
prove that they are au courant with the latest Continental philosopher. No doubt this receptiveness to new ideas is in part due to his
original schooling in the postwar European sociological tradition
where there was a degree of tolerance toward intellectual dissent and
apparently heretical thinking, be it of a liberal or radical ilk. Thus, at
a time when U.S. sociologists were still struggling to shake off
what was, according to Cohen, Hazelrigg, and Pope (1975), the
stultifying hegemonic influence of Parsons monumentally tendentious (not to mention tedious) reading of Weber, British scholars,
like David Silverman (an important early influence on Clegg),
were already well advanced in revivifying Webers interpretive
sociology through a critical engagement with authority, power, and
Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1, August 2004 97-114
DOI: 10.1177/0893318904265132
2004 Sage Publications
97

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

98 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

domination (e.g., Silverman, 1970). There is, however, a second

more personal explanation I would like to advance that accounts for
Cleggs deftness with difficult conceptual material that runs as follows. Despite my aversion to ad hominem arguments and kitchen
sink psychologizing, from my personal encounters with Clegg it is
apparent to me that ideas quite simply fascinate him in the same
way that some grown men are fascinated by things as diverse as
train sets and fine wines; there is a joy to be taken in the sheer difficulty of crafting something intricate or complex that extends well
beyond crass notions of the products ultimate utility or, to add a
more contemporary flavor, its performativity. To use an Australian analogy, although the effects on the body of a $500 bottle of
Grange Hermitage are very similar to those to be obtained drinking
a $5.95 cask of cabernet sauvignon, the knowledge of what happened to a superior wine before it got to your glass is part of the
pleasurable experience of drinking it. This fascination with what
might be called the aesthetics of craft production is also reflected
in Cleggs other passion, his love of jazz music, where, for many,
how you play and what you play are indivisible.
To reiterate, the ability to grasp the nub of concepts developed in
the rarefied atmosphere of social theory and then present them to a
wider audience in a form that does not turn the concepts into blunt
instruments has always been one of Cleggs most commendable
qualities. With respect to the focus of this essay, however, this facility is particularly important because I shall go on to consider what
communications scholars with a more practical bent can learn from
Cleggs work. I work in a management school where you often
imagine hearing students (and, even more disappointingly, some
colleagues) grumbling sotto voce, Thats all very well in theory,
but what about the practice? In contrast, meeting Stewart always
reminds me of the apocryphal French MBA student who complained, Thats all very well in practice, but what about the theory? An old joke? Yes. A lame joke? Certainly, but one that neatly
conveys the importance of Cleggs contribution over the years,
namely, that he has consistently disabused us of the taken-forgranted assumptions that lurk unacknowledged within prescriptive
and descriptive approaches to management and organizing alike.
Perhaps the most confronting statement about what lies behind the
theory and practice of organizational research is also contained in

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 99

one of his most recent publicationsa contribution to a forum on

organizational theory that appeared in the Administrative Science
Quarterly. Here he asks, Where in the world of organization theory focused on questions of organizational design of efficient and
effective solutions does one find a concern with the implications of
moral questions of power and responsibility? (Clegg, 2002, p. 429
[italics added]). He goes on to note that, in our relentless pursuit of
novelty, however banal and incremental, we should not be cut off
from the genealogies of our own subject matter. We ignore the
implicit influences on our moral compass at our peril! Taking on
board the substance of these two observations, I shall go on to argue
that the best way we can persuade practitioners of the merit of our
thinking is through our pedagogy and that, in pursuit of this
objective, readers of this journal can learn a lot from Stewart Clegg.

PARADIGM BUSTING IN
MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION STUDIES?
Although Thomas Kuhn is coming under increasing criticism as
an apologist for institutional elitism and the entrenchment of the
scientific status quo (see Fuller, 2003), one of his more enduring
observations was that a paradigm serves two primary functions.
Not only does it convince researchers (and others) that what they
study is worthwhile, but it also provides them with a blueprint for
conducting their activities, including the self-sustaining activities
of passing on knowledge to their studentsthat is, institutionalizing theory and practice. The combined effect is that researchers
rarely reflect on the validity of their founding assumptions, their
methods, and consequently, the validity of their findings and teaching. Kuhn made the point that the emergence of a new paradigm
effectively rewrites history. This is, moreover, uncompromisingly
written by the victors who create a Year Zero where all aspects of
the previous paradigm are, regardless of their merit, consigned to
the dustbin of history, only to re-emerge if and when they help us
confront the anomalies inevitably thrown up by the new paradigm.
Of course, the foregoing discussion lets one important question
go begging: Is there a paradigm within communication studies? Of

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

100 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

course, there is a limit to which Kuhns concepts can be extended

beyond the narrow confines of his own area of specialismtheoretical physics up to the 1920s. Most important, as Popper (1959)
noted, the social sciences find it much harder to forget history, as
should happen when a paradigm falls out of favor. In this sense,
management communication, much like other social and behavioral sciences, is not strictly speaking paradigmatic. It is better to
think of it as quasi-paradigmatic in the sense that there are coherent, parallel, but mutually exclusive systems of knowledge or ways
of thinking about organizations and managers roles in organizing
them. Nevertheless, there is one aspect of the Kuhnian conception
of paradigms that still applies to these coherent systems or discourses. In their reluctance to brook any criticism from within, they
are potentially authoritarian and antidemocratic in their nature
(Fuller, 2003). In this respect, one of Stewart Cleggs major contributions has to be his status as a paradigm buster in organization
studies, someone who has constantly challenged the taken-forgrantedness of much of our mainstream organizational thinking.
But can we borrow from Clegg in order to bust open the dominant
approach to communication studies? My first response to this question is to suggest that many social and behavioral scientists appear
to envy what they see as the transcendental universalism of the natural sciences and seek to emulate them (Nagel, 1986) to such an
extent that they effectively act as if there were no historical antecedents to their theories and practices, although this is more a willful
forgetting of the past than it is a disciplinary effect of a paradigm.
This is especially prevalent in management disciplines that seek
relevance through their claims to scientific status, which renders
such collective amnesia an overtly ideological move dressed in
rationalist clothes. This makes Cleggs appeal for us not to become
cut off from the historical antecedents of theories and practices all
the more pressing. So before I can go on to assess Cleggs potential
influence on the practice of management communication, I need to
reflect on this more fundamental matter. Thus, I shall briefly
explore what we can infer from some recent manifestos for
management communication studies.
My starting point is Craigs (1999) assertion that communication is primarily a practical discipline. Indeed, what could be more
practical than the quotidian practice of talking to others? However,

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 101

the very presence of a carefully delineated area of intellectual

endeavor that holds its own in respectable seats of higher learning
suggests that management communication is more than just carefully chosen words of persuasion that make up the talk of managers and their associates, more than just rhetoric and sophistry.
Despite drawing on a wide range of sources, management communication is something that we can study systematically, and in the
process, we seek to acquire all the trappings of a legitimate intellectual discipline. Still, the term management communication (rather
than, say, the more inherently pluralistic organizational communication) tells us something importantwhether we see our agenda
as being positive or normative, prescriptive or descriptive, the
objects of our research are indisputably managers and those who
communicate with them. This is in line with a well-established tradition in management communication research and teaching,
forcefully articulated by leading scholars in the field such as
Shelby (1993) and Smeltzer (1996), that management communication ultimately obtains its coherence and, hence, its raison dtre
through its mission to influence the decisions of managers. Of
course, as Smeltzer (1996) points out, this does not necessarily
require that management communication be split into pure and
applied camps using some criterion of relevance to managers,
but if we accept Cleggs point about the absence of an explicit
moral focus in much organizational theory, then we can ask the
same question of all management communication research. To
paraphrase Clegg then, in line with Smeltzers definition of the discipline, this question would run as follows: Where in the world of
management communications research focused on influencing
managers in their pursuit of efficient and effective organizations
does one find a concern with the implications of moral questions of
power and responsibility? Thus, if we are to bust open the paradigm of management communication research, then we must make
the discipline more receptive to the moral consequences of managers communication strategies. Of course, for some authors (for
example, regular contributors to this journal, such as Cynthia Stohl
and George Cheney) this matter has always been in the front and
center of the research agenda. We should at this stage, however,
remember Kuhns comments on the tendency of instructors to
school their students in the principles of normal science without

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

102 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

reflecting on the underlying assumptions of their paradigms, students who then go out and use normal science to solve the puzzles
of everyday life. In light of this observation, it is my contention that
we are likely to have the most impact on practitioners when they are
still students through the use of what the communications scholar
Ronald Wendt (2001) has styled as a radical pedagogy (cf. Freire,
1970, 1985). This attempt to reach practitioners through our teaching activities becomes all the more pressing if, as Smeltzer (1996)
contends, few (if any) practicing managers respect, let alone read,
academic journals. This dilemma of relevance sets the tone for the
rest of this essay. What I present from hereon is my assessment of
how we can use the work of Stewart Clegg to inform a project of
radical pedagogy that takes on the considerable burden of
considering the moral dimensions of power and responsibility in a
form that is explicitly aimed at students who are preparing
themselves for a life in management communications practice.

TALKING ABOUT MANAGEMENT,

TALKING WITH MANAGERS
My initial focus for this discussion is not arbitrary. It is the article
published in Organization Studies (Clegg, 1987) that serves as a
coda to much of Cleggs work up to that point. Although he had
flirted with the linguistic turn in philosophy and social theory
before (see, for example, his discussion of grammars in Power,
Rule, and Domination and of discourses in The Theory of Power
and Organization), in this article we see Clegg revisiting his work
by using the analysis of language to get at power. Ostensibly, this
can be seen as a retrospective justification of his previously materialist approach, the abstract talks of identifying the limitations,
both in practical and analytical terms, of the languageapproach to
power (Clegg, 1987, p. 61). It is ironic then that the article goes a
long way toward setting out the strengths of such an approach. In
particular, Clegg revisits previously reported data gathered through
participant observation of a gang of construction laborers to demonstrate how an ostensibly fixed textthe legally recognized contract governing the construction siteinvolves many ambiguities

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 103

that are resolved through the play of highly localized power relations. In this way, he shows that power comes to be enacted through
the play of discourse itself, in the way in which the available categories for talk in particular contexts were lodged in a particular
form of rationality, constituted within a particular form of life, of
domination (Clegg, 1987, p. 68). For practical purposes, at a
superficial level at least, Cleggs story of power could serve as a salutary case study for demonstrating the idexicality of texts commonly encountered by people in organizations (i.e., that texts have
different meanings depending on their contexts) and that recognition of the need to negotiate the ambiguities surrounding their
interpretation by organizational members would lead to less misunderstanding and reduced conflict. If, however, we were to consider how we might use this article to make a more profound point, I
believe it would stem from its anticipationat this stage not yet
fully developed in Cleggs workof what Foucault called the
productive aspect of power. In other words, the case of the construction workers could be used to demonstrate that the exercise of
power not only negates or constrains but also creates and enables
certain kinds of action, that it is not simply a case of the powerful
versus the powerless but that power is its own presupposition, pervading all aspects of social relationships. This is important because
it gives the lie to the idea of power and resistance in organizations
being about homogenous power blocs (i.e., Capital versus Labor)
slugging it out across a frontier of control, setting the tone for his
more explicitly Machiavellian approach to organization power in
his later work.

POSTMODERN ORGANIZATIONS,
MODERN PREOCCUPATIONS
The second piece I have chosen to discuss1990s Modern
Organizationswas Cleggs first major book after working
through his own misgivings about Foucaults treatment of power.
Indeed, it comes directly after Frameworks of Power, in which
Clegg can be seen thinking out loud about Foucault. One of the
interesting things about Modern Organizations is its departure

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

104 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

from the high theorizing of previous works like Frameworks and its
engagement with the eminently practical consideration of exploring alternatives to the One Best Way narrative of Western bureaucracy. Clegg articulates this view by comparing Western organizations and Japanese organizations. Here Clegg relies on Elliot
Jacques, that most practically oriented of management scholars, to
provide the dimensions by which he makes his comparison.
According to Jacques (1989), all effective organizations must
satisfy the following seven imperatives:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Articulating mission, goals, strategies, and main functions

Arranging functional alignments
Identifying mechanisms of coordination and control
Constituting accountability and role relationships
Institutionalizing planning and communication
Relating rewards and performance
Achieving effective leadership

Clegg (1990) takes each of these in turn and demonstrates how the
Western response to these imperatives represents the apotheosis of
Modernity in that they lead to specialized and hierarchical organizations (Imperatives 1 and 2) ruled through centralized and direct
managerial control (Imperative 3) where employees prefer to identify with outside organizations like professional associations or
trade unions, rather than with their employer (Imperative 4). Add to
this the financial short-term nature of Western organizations
(Imperative 5), their emphasis on individual reward structures
(Imperative 6), and their propensity toward relations of mistrust
between levels in the hierarchy (Imperative 7), and we can see a
familiar picture emerging of all the aspects of organization that
have long been denounced as undesirable or even pathological in
prescriptive management literature. In contrast, Japanese corporations are presented as being in the vanguard of Postmodern organizing in that they are diversified (Imperative 1) and achieve a flatter structure (Imperative 2) through promoting greater autonomy
and responsibility among their employees (Imperative 3), features
that, in turn, lead employees to identify with the corporation as an
extension of their family (Imperative 4). When these are combined
with much longer term financial horizons (Imperative 5), the utilization of collective systems of reward (Imperative 6), and the fos-

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 105

tering of trust between employees and managers (Imperative 7), we

see all the aspects of organization that have recently been celebrated in recent prescriptive literature. Who could have failed to be
affected over the last decade or so by the constant bombardment of
approaches that exhort us to empower our workforce, flatten our
organizations, or build trust (all using some form of teamwork)?
Although many of the exhortations are contained in books that we
find in airport bookshops (what Joe Queenan, the cultural critic and
regular contributor to the magazine Chief Executive, calls luft
scheisse), they have also infiltrated many scholarly articles and
books. Indeed, Clegg relies on such scholarly material to supply
examples of the way in which Japanese corporations are seen as
having dealt with Jacques imperatives. But what could a practitioner take from this discussion? I suppose he or she could take
Cleggs assembled pundits quite literally and seek to implement the
kinds of practice that Japanese firms were lionized for in the late
1980s and early 1990s, systematically and point-by-point. However, anyone who considers Cleggs depiction of the Postmodern
organization to be a desideratum for business success need only
cast half an eye on the Japanese economy over the past decade to
know that the compulsion to emulate Japanese firms is no longer
as strong as it was. What is more helpfuland more in tune
with much contemporary thinking in management communication
studiesis to use Cleggs discussion as a salutary example of the
way in which a discourse attains a certain coherence as a body of
knowledge and how this specific knowledge about organization
gains authoritythat is, why one discourse becomes accepted as a
representation of the truth of the matter while others do not. This
injects a welcome degree of reflexivity into the business of practicing management communication by challenging us to confront the
assumptions that underpin our action. Here some researchers, as
well as peddlers of the next Big Idea in management, are implicated in a self-reinforcing cycle of mutual admiration that often
fails to ask the difficult questions about what really happens to matters of power and domination under conditions of organizational
restructuring. Thus, in the hapless practitioners elusive search for
the Postmodern organization, this discourse not only claims to supply practical knowledge about how we are to order Jacquess seven
imperatives but also provides the normative basis by which organi-

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

106 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

zational members are expected to regulate their own conduct and

that of othersthat is, it carries with it a whole agenda of particular
management practices that are imbued with a value system that is
enacted through systems of coercion, reward, training, teamwork,
empowerment, and so on. For me, this is where Clegg is at his strongest in his engagement with the messy business of managing, not in
providing yet another exhortation to international best practice
(one that is bound to fail or be superseded), but again in showing
how the practical implies an ethical stance that is all too rarely
questioned.

FROM MANAGEMENT CRITIC

TO MANAGEMENT GURU?
Many of the preoccupations about transitions to new organizational states contained in Modern Organizations resurface in Changing Paradigms. This volumecoauthored by Thomas Clarke
represents Cleggs first real attempt to break into what I previously
described as the airport market for management books. Evidence
of the authors aspirations toward becoming gurus is clear; in
HarperCollins, they have attached themselves to one of the worlds
major publishers (whose list includes the biggest management
guru of them all, Peter Drucker), and in places, the book displays
the kind of business jargon and unsupported hyperbolic claims that
would make Tom Peters or Michael Hammer blush. Despite these
faults, however, there are many passages in the book that would
make it a rewarding read for practitioners and management scholars alike, and to be fair, for the most part it remains true to Cleggs
self-defined ethical mission for organizational studies. Thus, it
attempts to render into an easily digestible form the way in which
developments in management ideas relate to specific interventions
in organizations. Rather than being structured around Jacquess
seven imperatives, this time we have seven paradigms that are in
transition (see Table 1).
To its credit, the book attempts to work through some of the
complexities of these transitions, including their paradoxes and
contradictions. For example, rather than taking the position of

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

107

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Source: Clarke and Clegg (1998).

Classical/neoclassical management orthodoxy

Local/national international
Manual/analogue stand alone
Strategic planning rational strategy
Taylorism/Fordism
Shareholders/financial performance indicators
Profit/growth/control

From
Ideas and Values
Market Environment
Processing and Communication
Orientation
Organization and Control
Measures
Objectives

In

Changing Paradigms

TABLE 1: Changing Paradigms in Management Theory and Practice

Multiple changing management paradigms

Glocalization [sic]/ globalization
Electronic/digital network
Strategic thinking/innovation/core competence
Intelligent/networked virtuality
Stakeholders/non-financial performance indicators
Sustainable enterprise

To

108 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

many pop management books that seem to think that the knowledge economy has been beamed in from another planet completely new and fully formed, Clarke and Clegg examine how it
involves some new departures but mostly pursues enduring themes.
Significantly, when it comes to their discussion of technology,
from a close reading of their assembled sources, we can take away
the overwhelming message that the Nietzschean will-to-power we
associate with traditional forms of workplace control has been
repackaged in a language of technophilia and normative integrationthat is, new technology now gives us enabling power to do
things rather than the power over things (especially fellow
humans). This is characteristic of the Panglossian stance of much
current management discourse, where closed hierarchies become
open networks through the intermediation of new technology, discipline is replaced by learning, vicious circles are replaced by virtuous circles, administrators become leaders, and bosses become
facilitators (see Clarke & Clegg, 1998, Chap. 1). When considering
the significance of this tendency, we would do well to remember
Heideggers (1977) observation that although technology is ultimately only a means to an end, in pursuing those ends we are
revealing what we believe to be true. In this way, Clarke and Clegg
demonstrate that in setting out a preferred normative program
around matters such as empowerment or learning, we are challenged to devise the means to realize the potential of what
Heidegger (1977) called a standing reservean elusive resource
that already exists out there somewhere and will greatly benefit
us, if only we can find a way of tapping into it. This goes a long way
toward explaining the compulsive force of much of the literature
aimed squarely at management practitionersif we do not do the
things that it exhorts us to do, then we are not only failing in our
moral duty, we are also missing out on a great business opportunity
(the latter point itself being a moral failing under the rubric of
shareholder sovereignty where we place so much emphasis on
managers fiduciary duty to shareholders). Moreover, it suggests
that some, if not all, practicing managers may really believe in the
normative agenda of emancipation and business performance that
they pursue through the kinds of organizational restructuring projects that Clarke and Clegg map out in Changing Paradigms. This
is important for us in avoiding what Sturdy and Fleming (2003)

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 109

identify in management research as the traditional analytical fault

line between words and deeds. Thus, to reflect on management
practice critically, we do not have to prove a priori that managers
are engaged in some cynical and willfully misleading act of saying
one thing (Look, were empowering you) and doing another
(What were really doing is exploiting you more effectively, but
you just havent realized it yet). In one way, this is an obvious
point. Few MBA schools teach the Marxist economics and sociology necessary for their graduates to exercise a degree of strategic
exploitative intent over their activities.
However, reading Changing Paradigms reveals a more important point. If paradigms are changing, then what passes for todays
best practice will inevitably become tomorrows outmoded ideology. Moreover, what MBA students (or, for that matter, management communication students) are currently taught, with all its
positive rhetoric of empowerment and unitary interests, should not
lead them to expect that pursuing this normative agenda will be universally successful and popular. Importantly for students, once
they arrive in their first job with a freshly minted MBA, it may come
as a rude awakening that employees appear to be so ungrateful. We
can well imagine the challenge of understanding why workers are
still recalcitrant and resistant to change when we are supposed to be
managing in everyones interest. And if managers really believe in
unitary interests, then any resistance must necessarily be irrational,
which further reinforces the logic that, like the turkeys voting for an
early Christmas, only crazy people will act against their own interests. This highlights a message tucked away in the final passage of
Changing Paradigms: More than ever before management will be
based on intelligence, creativity and the capacity to question and
learn (Clarke & Clegg, 1998, p. 432). Part of creating these capacities should be the realization that there is a potential contradiction
between the desire to establish what Giddens (1990) calls ontological securitythe confidence that individuals have in their
self-identity and the constancy of their social and material environmentsand the need to stay on top of new ideas without letting our
critical faculties desert us.
By drawing our attention to the paradox that the apparent proliferation of new paradigms in management thinking is underpinned
by some enduring themes (for example, balancing the competing

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

110 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

demands for social cohesion around the traditional dichotomy of

coercion versus consent), Clarke and Clegg are making a useful
contribution to surveying the current moral terrain of management
theory and practice. However, like Modern Organizations, we
should read Changing Paradigms less as a desideratum for management practice (although this is almost certainly against the publishers wishes) and more as a users guide to the ideas that managers rely on to legitimate what they do in organizations. Ultimately,
however, Cleggs attempt to engage with practitioners through
Changing Paradigms can only be considered as a qualified success,
not least because it is probably still too uncompromising in its
academic style and focus for a general audience yet rather too
populist to satisfy Cleggs normal readership.

BACK TO BASICS?
More recently Clegg has undertaken a number of collaborative
projects that are a return to the style of the aforementioned
ethnographic research he undertook on a British construction site
in the 1970s (Clegg, 1987). Of these, perhaps the most interesting is
the study of the development of infrastructure projects in preparation for the Sydney Olympic games of 2000 (Pitsis, Clegg,
Marosszkey, & Rura-Polley, 2003). This examines how managers
attempted to confront a problem that the average MBA curriculum
does not prepare them forthe impossibility of exerting strategic
control over a project that is fraught with uncertainty. For example,
the rationalistic assumptions of most prescriptive approaches to
strategic management inhabit the kind of fantasy world where
things roll out in a sequential and well-ordered manner (Mintzberg
& Lampel, 1999). Drawing on the work of Alfred Schutz and Karl
Weick, Clegg and his colleagues deploy the concept of the future
perfect to understand how managers develop a sense of control
over a project without being brought crashing down by the sheer
frustration of their failures in these matters. This involves a cognitive trick of self-deception in which we think about the project as if
it were already completed, that is, we think about the future as if it
were already the past. From this invocation of the future ends, we

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 111

interpolate the means to achieve them in the here-and-now (Weick,

1979). Thus, in the same way that architectural models or plans are
perfect representations of buildings as yet unbuilt that allow us to
work out the detailed project management issues, a strategic plan is
a perfect representation of an organization as it ought to look after
the protracted business of organizing. Moreover, in the same way
that the most modest of construction projects may require a good
deal of deviation from the project management schedule, achieving
the ultimate vision of the building project as a collaborative form of
organization requires the flexibility to deviate from preordained
structures. Paradoxically, an organization is more likely to achieve
its desired strategic ends when it is willing to defy the organizational logic implied by its expressed strategy. In this way, the key
challenge faced by managers who are trying to establish common
purpose among groups with diverse interests is not to convince
them of the universal rationality of some abstract strategy but to
create a shared culture that galvanizes these groups to reach agreement around day-to-day issues and to form pragmatic responses to
the changing requirements of the project.
This final point links well with a more conceptual collaborative
piece that constitutes Cleggs most recent attempt to map out
explicitly the relationship between theory and practice (Clegg,
Kornberger, & Rhodes, 2004). The key insight here, courtesy of
Serres (1982), is that a management consultant has to negotiate
between the desire for order and the need to disrupt it so that a pet
project may be brought to fruition. In this sense, rather than theory
being a priori to practice (i.e., it is devised as a tool to be used to
understand organizations and inform the nature of practice), the
actual role of theory is to disturb organizational realities so that
they might be changed. This is a rare occasion in which communication explicitly takes center stage in Cleggs analysis. (Of course,
it has been a central theme of this essay that communication has
been an implicit element of his analysis throughout his career).
Through partial accounts shaped by theoretical allegiances, consultants define organizational problems, then disseminate (or even
invent) the language by which the organization can first recognize
the problem, communicate the need for change, and finally, foster a
climate of change where existing practices are in the realm of the
past, yet the new practices are not yet fully in sight. Thus, consul-

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

112 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

tants act like a parasite (a phrase that they borrow from Serres),
and to be successful, the parasite must disrupt the organization but
not so much that it ends up destroying its host. This reformulates
the relationship between theory and practice to one in which theory
disrupts practice, a relationship where we evaluate theory in terms
of its challenge to the taken-for-granted and its simultaneous
capacity to open new departures for action (Gergen, 1992, p. 218
[italics added]).

CONCLUDING REMARKS
In these final two works, Clegg is re-engaging with the sort of
microcircuits of power that he first encountered 30 years ago as a
graduate student undertaking summer vacation work. Drawing
attention to this nice piece of symmetry is, of course, something of
a stylistic conceit on my part; another commentator on Cleggs
career could see things in a totally different way. If, however, we are
to make a meaningful assessment of what Stewart Clegg can teach
us when it comes to the practical aspects of management communication, the surety is that, in exploring the link between discourse
and action, we are showing that the quotidian business of working
through organizational power relationships is not separate from the
abstract systems of knowledge we use to understand organizations.
So next time a student says, Thats all very well in theory, but what
about the practice? we can show that they are but two sides of the
same coin.

REFERENCES
Clarke, T., & Clegg, S. R. (1998). Changing paradigms: The transformation of
management knowledge for the 21st century. London: HarperCollins
Business.
Clegg, S. R. (1975). Power, rule, and domination: A critical and empirical understanding of power in sociological theory and organizational life. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

Sewell/MORAL CONSEQUENCES 113

Clegg, S. R. (1979). The theory of power and organization. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Clegg, S. R. (1987). The power of language, the language of power. Organization
Studies, 8, 60-70.
Clegg, S. R. (1989). Frameworks of power. London: Sage.
Clegg, S. R. (1990). Modern organizations. London: Sage.
Clegg, S. R. (2002). Lives in the balance: A comment on Hinings and Greenwoods disconnects and consequences in organization theory. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47, 428-441.
Clegg, S. R., Kornberger, M., & Rhodes, C. Noise, parasites and translation: Theory and practice in management consulting. Management Learning, 35, 31-43.
Cohen, J., Hazelrigg, L. E., & Pope, W. (1975). De-Parsonizing Weber: A critique
of Parsons interpretation of Webers sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 40, 229-241.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9,
118-161.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.
Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. London: Macmillan.
Fuller, S. (2003). Kuhn vs. Popper: The struggle for the soul of science. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books.
Gergen, K. (1992). Organization theory in the postmodern era. In M. Reed & M.
Hughes (Eds.), Rethinking organization: New directions in organization theory and analysis (pp. 207-226). London: Sage.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. New
York: Harper & Row.
Jacques, E. (1989) Requisite organizations. Arlington: Casson Hall.
Mintzberg, H., & Lampel, J. (1999). Reflecting on the strategy process. Sloan
Management Review, 41, 21-30.
Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Pitsis, T. S., Clegg, S. R., Marosszkey, M., & Rura-Polley, T. (2003). Constructing
the Olympic dream: A future perfect strategy of project management. Organization Science, 44, 574-590.
Popper, K. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Hutchinson.
Serres, M. (1982). The parasite. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Shelby, A. N. (1993). Organizational, business, management, and corporate communication: An analysis of boundaries and relationships. Journal of Business
Communication, 30, 241-267.
Silverman, D. (1970). The theory of organization. London: Heinemann.
Smeltzer, L. R. (1996). Communication within the managers context. Management Communication Quarterly, 10, 5-26.
Sturdy, A., & Fleming, P. (2003). Talk as technique: A critique of the words and
deeds distinction in the diffusion of customer service cultures in call centres.
Journal of Management Studies, 40, 753-773.

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009

114 MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / AUGUST 2004

Weick, K. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: Addison

Wesley.
Wendt, R. F. (2001). The paradox of empowerment: Suspended power and the possibility of resistance. Westport, CT: Praeger Press.

Graham Sewell, Ph.D., University of Wales College of Cardiff, 1994, is

associate professor of organization studies and human resource management in the Department of Management at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. He has published widely in the areas of teamwork, workplace
surveillance, and management ethics. His two main current research projects focus on the problems of evolutionary psychology and the economic
and social impact of identity theft.

Downloaded from http://mcq.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 15, 2009