Presentation by:

Issaka L. TETTEH

YILDIRIM BEYAZIT UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL

SCIENCES
(CINNAH CAMPUS - ROOM 1002)
Date: 8th November, 2016
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ORGANIZING DERRIDA
ORGANIZING: Deconstruction
and Organization Theory
Reference:
Rasche, A. (2011) Organizing Derrida Organizing: Deconstruction
and Organization theory. H. Tsoukas and R. Chia (Eds). Philosophy
and Organization Theory. Research in the Sociology of
Organizations, Vol. 32 (pp.251-280), Howard House: Emerald Books.

Structure of the Article:

Explores the connection between the philosophy if Jacques Derrida (ie.
Deconstruction) and organizational analysis from an aporetic perspective.
FIRST PART: ORGANIZING DERRIDA
The reading introduces the Derridas philosophy as a way to expose the aporetic
nature of theorizing about organizations.
Reviews literature on Derrida and organization theory
SECOND PART: DERRIDA ORGANIZING
The reading discusses three aporias environmental adaptation, decision-making
and rule following
The article then shows how Derridian philosophy can help us better understand how
the experience of the impossible acts as a necessary limit to our theorizing about the
functioning of organizations.
Finally, the author argues that the recognition of aporias turns against wellestablished oppositions within organization theory and helps us to better understand
the rich interplay between the formerly separated poles of these oppositions.

Aporia 1. an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction

in a text, argument, or theory. 2. entails perplexity, doubt and that

which is impassable 3. "impasse, difficulty of passing, lack of resources,
puzzlement 4. "state of the aporetic" and "a perplexity or difficulty".
The adjective "aporetic - "to be at a loss", "impassable" and "inclined to doubt, or
to raise objections"

Organizing Derrida and Derrida Organizing are both

concerned with the aporetic (ie. Impossible) operations
which are often suppressed in writings on organizations
and organizing.
A deconstructive discussion implies uncovering the
numerous aporias that our discourse on organizations
and organizing rests on.
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DECONSTRUCTION:
ORGANIZING DERRIDA
Deconstruction: Against the Metaphysics of Presence
Questions the security we usually attach to categories
such as beginning or origin.
Deconstruction is an attempt to dismantle the hierarchical
oppositions that govern our thinking.
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Deconstruction and Aporia:

The insolubility of Arguments
Aporias cannot be resolved or even clarified by regular logic: the origin
comes before the supplement only because it comes after the
supplement. For Derrida, any aporia refers to the puzzling moments of
metaphysical statements that cannot be explained through regular
logic
The impossibility of any aporia is a constant reminder that the world
of organizations is not based on a pure and safe conceptual ground, but
that we need to face the impossibility of organizations and organizing
before we can meaningfully start to think about their possibility
Tsoukas and Chia (2011)

DECONSTRUCTION AND
ORGANIZATION THEORY:

Existing Applications

of Deconstruction in Organization Theory

1. Deconstruction as a strategy for an analysis of

classicial texts within organization theory.
2. Deconstruction as a way to discuss the conceptual
opposition within the academic discourse on
organizaitons
3. Deconstruction as a way to study the language
occurring in organizations and
4. Deconstruction as an epistemological and ontological
frame of reference

The Deconstruction of Classical

Texts
Deconstruction has been applied as a strategy for a literary
analysis of
classical texts within organization theory. The aim is a
deconstruction of oppositions within a particular publication
to show that the neglected concept within a text/publication
actually is constitutive of the privileged one.

Deconstruction of Oppositions
Underlying Organization Theory
Deconstruction has also been applied to expose those conceptual
oppositions that the academic discourse on organization theory has
produced over time.
Scholars of organization theory are used to thinking in an either/or way.
Deconstruction has helped to unravel oppositions like organization/
disorganization, decision/action, resources/application and
structure/agency (Knights, 1997).
These dualisms are usually constructed in privileging one side over the
other.

Deconstruction as a Way to Study

the Language of/in Organizations

Some scholars used deconstruction to analyze the

language occurring in organizations.

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Deconstruction as an Epistemological
and Ontological Frame of Reference
Scholars following this approach try to establish a deconstructive perspective for
conducting organizational analysis, but do not base their arguments on particular
oppositions
Chia (1996) refers to deconstruction as one possible way to show that meaning
structures in organizations are never fixed, and hence representational, but subject
to differance and thus depended on the differing and deferring effects of signs.
Organizations, then, are not the supposedly pure phenomena we are searching
after.

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APORIAS: Deconstruction and the

Impossible Possibility
Derrida exposes aporias as the indispensable limits of knowledge about
the functioning of organizations.

Appreciating impossibilities within the research process implies to

discover different assumptions, shift perspectives, pose problems in
fundamentally different ways, and focus on different research questions

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THREE APORIAS: DERRIDA

ORGANIZING
1. Environment/Organization: The Aporia of Adaptation
2. Decision/Action: The Aporia of Undecidability
3. Rule/Application: The Aporia of Rule Following
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1. Environment/Organization: The Aporia of Adaptation

Organizations are left with the task of adapting and fitting to the environment
as well as possible. There can be no natural boundary around what we believe
to be inside an organization.
The implications of this finding lead to an aporia: you cannot distance yourself
from the environment (for the sake of adaptation) and at the same time
produce this very environment
IMPLICATIONS: The Difference of Competitive Advantage
What is the identity of competitive advantage?
Identity is not a static concept, not something that imposes itself on us from
the outside. Identity is a constant reinvention and nothing that we can derive
from some metaphysical origin. The identity of competitive advantage is a
product of the play of differences between environment and organization; 14
these differences are not stable but change constantly.

Cont.
Identity is identification competitive advantage rests on
identification.
Identification is neither a product of the organization nor the
environment alone; it occurs as an effect of the relation between
organization and environment (Derrida, 1987).
There is no environment or organization as such, but whenever
an environment is framed the organization is framed as well (et
vice versa).

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2. Decision/Action Aporia:
The Aporia of Undecidability

Decisions and decision-making are much-debated concepts within organization theory. Action
constantly supplements, in fact gives-new meaning-to, thinking in a way that makes it impossible
to fully justify a decision a priori.
The justification one chooses prior to action cannot stand in, at least not in a pure sense, for the
decision one is about to make.
These insights lead to aporia: a decision can only be justified with regard to action, but action
needs a decision to come about.
The point here is not whether decisions exist or not, but to question in how far a decision can be
present in the sense that it offers a safe ground for action. The aporia of undecidability is at the
heart of Derridas thinking about decisions.
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Implications: Decisions as Incisions

Decisions are not impossible per se, but their rational justification becomes out of reach.

The aporia that underlies Derridas notion of undecidability Deconstruction helps us to rethink the
status of decisions as such. Neither decisions nor actions are pure concepts.

On the one hand, action already is a part of decision because the very act of decision-making
represents a fundamental ontological act of making an incision into the flow of experiences. On
the other hand, decisions are also part of action since every act involves a decision (i.e. the
decision to act in a certain, and not a different, way).

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3. Rule/Application: The Aporia of Rule

Following

Organizations are made up of rules and numerous studies have reflected on the role
of rules in organizations. In its most general sense, a rule can be characterized as a
formalized prescription regulating (and eventually sanctioning) human behavior.

Rules have one aspect to them which is of central importance when thinking about
their nature: they need to be generalizable and thus applicable over a range of
contexts.

A rule that is just applicable once is not a rule since every rule, by definition, is
repeatable. According to Derrida, the perfect repetition that is needed to make
generalizations valid is impossible.

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Cont.
The impossibility of perfect repetition points towards an aporia. We
cannot replicate rules in their purest sense, which is to say without
modification.
Organizational members need to regulate and, at the same time, need to
distance themselves from regulation to invent the rule anew.
To think of perfectly repeatable rules means to establish a metaphysics of
presence (i.e. an origin that is self-defining and does not need any
application to create meaning).

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Implications: The Iterability of Rules

Derrida discusses this interconnectedness of repetition and alteration
with regard to the term: iterability. Iterability comes from the Latin iter
(again) and the Sanskrit itara (other) and is the logic that ties repetition to
alteration.
Iterability asks us to think replication and modification together to consider
that reproduction/replication is the possibility of singularity. Conceiving of
rules as being reproduced by iterability entails accepting that they are
modified within and through their repetition.
Like a parasite, the social practices of people constantly recontextualize and
revise rules. That is why Derrida remarks deconstruction is always a
discourse
about the parasite.
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IMPLICATIONS OF
DECONSTRUCTIVE THINKING

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Theorizing Organizations and the

Importance of the And
Recognizing the importance of the and implies to not treat the impossibility of an operation as
negative or something we should avoid, but requires us to consider the impossible acts as a precondition
for the possible.
Without acknowledging the impossible moments of organizing, we may arrive too quickly at the possible
and thus forget about the conditions of its occurrence.
Powell (2006, p. 220), while discussing Derridas thinking, argues in this context: The gift of the
impossible is the precondition for the possible to occur
From the perspective of deconstruction, any acknowledgement of the impossible makes us think about
whether we did not too easily accept an origin as given without challenging the conditions of its
existence.

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Cont.
Deconstruction thinks about the possibility of
organizations and organizing by displacing an either/or
and applying a both/and logic.
The point is not to distance oneself from the
phenomenon under deconstruction, but to give it the
possibility of being thought in another way.

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Deconstruction and the Impossible

Moments of Justice
If justice cannot be ensured by the law, it remains
locked in an aporia. Hence, the aporia of undecidability
acts as the condition of the possibility of justice.
Deconstruction therefore calls for questioning the desire
of standards to pre-regulate justice in a universal way.

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CONCLUSION:
For Derrida, there can only be interpretations of
interpretations.
Deconstruction is the deconstruction of fixed ideas and the
attempt to show that our preconceived ideas rest on the
exclusion of something on difference.
With Derrida, Deconstruction becomes a form of textuality.
Society and Culture can be read like a text- Delanty (1997)
According to Tsoukas and Chia (2011), a good way to start
grasping what Derrida means by deconstruction is to recognize
that any origin from which we could start exploring the core of
deconstruction remains insecure.
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Cont.

Decontruction has always already begun; it is

happening and does not wait for someone to complete a
theoretical analysis ; it is existing in many more critical,
yet affirmative contributions to organization theory than
we think.
What is deconstruction ?
Derrida replies: I have no simple and formalizable
response to this question. All my essays are attempts to
have it out with this formidable question.
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Questions for Discussion:

1. What are the consequences of Derridas deconstructive philosophy for
organization studies ?
2. What lessons can we learn from Deconstruction (Derrida Organizing)
regarding decision making?
3. What are some of the possible implications of Deconstructive thinking
for theorizing about organizations ?
4. What are some of the aporias that we encounter in our daily lives; and
how can we suppress them applying Derrida or using deconstructive
philosophy ?
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