Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Keynote Paper: What Can Architectural Research Bring to Organization Theory?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Penn, Alan |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | As organisation theory has developed from its foundations in administration and management to incorporate sociological concepts, it has become subject to some of sociology’s concerns with method. In particular the separability of people from organisational structures comes into question. Here I review the place of architectural research which studies the effects of the design of the built environment on the behaviour of individuals and organisations. I suggest that as modern organisation theory conceives of the organisation as an emergent phenomenon, the role of the designer as a key actor needs to be incorporated alongside other management roles. Sociology abounds in problems of method. Many of these result from questioning how it is possible to study systems in which the objects of attention are not only aware and conscious, but may be affected by the fact that they are being studied. This problem is exacerbated by the realisation that they may also be aware of the results of sociological research itself. In this sense sociology is said to be ‘doubly hermeneutic’ – it depends on at least two layers of interpretation, those by the subjects themselves and those by the researcher. This problem might be considered just to be a fact of the field; it raises questions about ones research tactics, and must always be taken into account (consider the Hawthorn effect), but it does not undermine the programme of sociological research itself. If anything the realisation of the reflexive nature of organisational and individual action serves to highlight the importance of well formulated social theory for those who must intervene in the social world. However, other current methodological debates in sociology call into question just how ‘well formulated’ social theory actually is. In a nutshell the debate turns on whether society is formed through the interplay between different ‘strata’ – social structures such as rule systems or institutional entities for example at one level, and individual people as agents at another - or whether it is all really one thing since ultimately all societies are composed of individual people. In the latter view higher level structures can only arise out of individual actions and reactions, and so the separation of structure from agency in sociological method in fact mistakes the appearance of something for the existence of the thing itself and runs the risk of ‘reifying’ or treating as real, something which is not. Lurking not far beneath the surface is a fear of Cartesian dualism rearing its head in another guise. Here lies the attraction of two currently fashionable sets of theories, Pierre Bordieu’s (1977) notion of the ‘habitus’ and Anthony Giddens theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984). In both of these structure and agency are held to be part of a single and inseparable whole, the one continually informing the other (although in quite different ways). In this way they avoid both reification and dualism. And yet, these approaches are not without their critics (see Robert Willmott, 1997, for a critique, but see the Introduction to the Second Edition of Giddens, 1993, for his view). They point to the emergent nature of societies as being the fundamental phenomenon to explain, and suggest that in order for systems to show emergence, |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar2006-0001-0007_Penn.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
