Good Novels, Better Management: Reading Organizational Realities in Fiction

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Good Novels, Better Management

Good Novels, Better Management Reading Organizational Realities Edited by

Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges Lund University, Sweden and

Pierre Guillet de Monthoux Stockholm University, Sweden

harwood academic publishers Switzerland • Australia • Belgium • France • Germany • Great Britain India • Japan • Malaysia • Netherlands • Russia • Singapore • USA

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 1994 by Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Harwood Academic Publishers Poststrasse 22 7000 Chur, Switzerland Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-203-98550-8 Master e-book ISBN

The quickest route to economic wisdom in our time…is a detour through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Donald McCloskey, 1993

The editors wish to express their thanks to the Crafoord Foundation in Lund and the WennerGren Foundation in Stockholm which supported this project. Roger Dunbar, New York University, was of inestimable help in his critical but sympathetic review of our editing efforts. Finally, we would like to emphasise that it was a great honour for us to have Dwight Waldo introduce our book to the reader.

CONTENTS

Preface Dwight Waldo

vii

Chapter 1

Introduction: Management Beyond Case and Cliché Pierre Guillet de MontouxBarbara Czarniawska-Joerges

1

Chapter 2

Docteur Clérambault in Zola’s Paradise: Notes on Naturalist Studies of Passion in Organizations Pierre Guillet de Monthoux

17

Chapter 3

Don Quixote and Capitalism in Poland: On the Cultural Context of Organizing Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges

37

Chapter 4

On Evil Organizations and Illusory Reforms: A Scandinavian Saga Bengt Jacobsson

65

Chapter 5

England Expects: Prosperity, Propriety and Mr. Polly Robert Grafton Small

94

Chapter 6

Identity, Economy and Morality in “The Rise of Silas Lapham” Richard J.Boland, Jnr

117

Chapter 7

The Merchant and the Preacher: As Pictured by Multatuli’s “Max Havelaar” (1860)

140

vi

Geert Hofstede Chapter 8

Capitalism, Order and Moral Value: Joseph Conrad’s “Nostromo” Maureen Whitebrook

156

Chapter 9

From Escapism to Resented Conformity: Market Economies and Modern Organizations in Spanish Literature José Luis AlvarezCarmen Merchán Cantos

177

Chapter 10

Power, Time, Talk and Money: Organizatiom in Italian Literature Franca Olivetti Manoukian

201

Chapter 11

The Man with All the Qualities: Can Business, Science and Arts Go Hand in Hand? Barbara CzarniawskaBernward Joerges

237

Chapter 12

The Gioconda Smile of the Authorities: An Essay on Fictional Pictures of Public Administration and Citizens Torben Beck Jørgensen

271

Epilogue: Realism in the Novel, Social Sciences and Organization Theory Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges

308

About the Authors

330

PREFACE by Dwight Waldo

Now approaching a half-century ago I concluded my first book with the statement that “if the demands of world civilization” are to be met, the study of administration “must establish a working relationship with every major province in the realm of human learning.” In the intervening years much has been done to broaden, as well as to sharpen, our understanding and competence in administration, as anyone who opens this volume is likely to know. In recent decades, of course, there has been vastly increased research, publication, instruction, and so forth, paralleling and interacting with the increasingly large and complex administrative institutions and practices that are the central ‘working’ parts of our civilization—and without which there would be no civilization. But in my view much remains to be done, not just to increase administrative effectiveness, efficiency and economy—the long accepted criteria—but to extend administrative horizons, sharpen administrative vision and—dare I say it?—increase administrative Wisdom. As a central integrating institution (meeting and interacting with markets) in contemporary civilization, administration needs to be well and finely integrated with civilization: not just with its economy, its government and its legal system but with the entire cultural complex. Decisions and actions that affect our lives root and branch—and administrators make decisions which require the widest

viii

and deepest knowledge of effects and consequences, of affects and implications. One need not decry or belittle the vast amount of putatively scientific research to wish for more attention to be given to areas of learning and activity not ordinarily—or at least not seriously or deeply— addressed by students of administration. I instance history as one of these. Here, while we know much, I am sure there is much more to be known, disseminated and appreciated, concerning the interrelations of administration and civilization. And I am certain that administrative biography is a fertile, little appreciated area. I judge the broad stream of literature (‘literature’ and Literature) to be a great resource for knowledge and— again I say it—Wisdom, both for students and practitioners. A quarter of a century ago I published a monograph on the novel as a resource easily available but little appreciated. Thus I am delighted with Good Novels, Better Management and thank the editors for it. Anyone who reads it will, I am sure, find it not only interesting and enlightening, but professionally rewarding.

INTRODUCTION Management Beyond Case and Cliché by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux and Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges The purpose of this book is to show how good novels can educate better managers. What can reading offer to people working in business or public administration? Women and men of action certainly swim in an everyday broth of texts and tables, of memos and files, and yet they would hardly regard what they do as ‘reading’ in a literary sense. Those who earn their living administering services or managing the production and distribution of goods consider reading a luxury, a hobby or, at least, an act of consumption. Their professional texts and tables are more ‘fabricated’ than ‘written’, and organisational people would certainly not claim to be literary authors. They see themselves as word-processing technicians handling texts. Offices, boardrooms, markets and workshops cannot be compared to literary salons. Nevertheless novels are increasingly referred to by those who investigate the professional worlds of organizations. One finds literary texts on the reading lists of management schools: we have seen such lists and such courses in Edmonton, at Stanford, at Harvard and in Stockholm. Harvard Business Review encourages its readers to “read fiction to the bottom line” in order to find managerial wisdom there (DeMott, 1989). Many young business students prefer to get their initiation in administration from Balzac and Kafka rather than some second-hand textbook in organisational behavior. Discussions in marketing seminars based on a text of Zola tend to be more lively than the usual exegesis of

2 • GUILLET DE MONTHOUX AND CZARNIAWSKA-JOERGES

Kotleriana. Managers enjoying books by Heller, Bellow or Eco might unknowingly join a masterclass in administration or human resource management. Yet this is not so surprising. After all, reading novels is not very distant from using the ‘case method’ in some management schools. The case study tradition In countries and cultures lacking management cases, ‘local’ novels sometimes fulfil the same role while waiting for the Harvard crew to produce their classroom stories streamlined according to the Harvard pedagogical standards. But they do not arrive everywhere, at least not at once: to transfer this business teaching technology to former socialist economies for example may take time. Not only are trained academics lacking but there are considerable problems of case data collection from executives and companies. In any case, can management cases really replace reading novels? Is perhaps case teaching to be considered mainly as a first initiation to literary reading for people in managerial positions; tales for the beginner that might eventually awake interest in more complex and ambiguous stories? Even managers who find little professional relevance in arts and aesthetics tend to find case reading useful. What is the specificity of this particular genre and how does it relate to other, less managerially salient, forms of reading? A good case according to a Harvard veteran should create …the willing suspension of disbelief. In other words the willingness to take at face value the situation which the case presents, forgetting that this is artificial, so to speak, forgetting that this is a case, forgetting that this is a classroom, being willing to take the situation at face value and become the person concerned with it—that is the

MANAGEMENT BEYOND CASE AND CLICHÉ • 3

ideal that a case discussion ought to achieve. (McNair, 1971, p. 4) A case should provoke a critical discussion amongst student readers but teachers are strictly advised to drop the cases that make readers criticise the teaching material or teachers themselves. The purpose of the case method is to provide material for a ‘realistic’ classroom discussion on management. Ideally, it should work as a simulation of a corporate policy meeting. The management case is a business replica of a law case. Harvard Business School was developed as a pedagogical copy of the famous Harvard Law School where American common-law jurists were trained in the art of legal judgement and reasoning. Common law, as opposed to Roman rationalized law, is said to be ‘judgemade’. Jurists reflect directly upon a single case rather than subsume or ratiocinate from a set of rules down to the single case. The practice of common law was regarded as a very special craft that could only be acquired by on-the-job training under the guidance of a wise master from the guild of jurists. Therefore when teaching became institutionalised nineteenth century there was considerable professional resistance amongst jurists against sending young students to Law School. The old masters of the legal trade thought that young jurists needed not so much a university scholarity but a taste of practice. Consequently the early Law Schools had to show themselves able to simulate real life in the courts of law. What the law students got at Harvard Law School was a realistic show where the professors drilled them into legal personae and where they had to take actual cases and re-enact the court-room argumentation as if it was ‘for real’. This pedagogic rite-de-passage, where students read themselves into organisational reality, soon became a model for business schools as well. This meant that professors no longer lectured on generalities but


took on a Socratic method, stimulating the commercial philosophising based on reading business cases. Writing management cases is an industry. The huge stock of cases in the Harvard Case Library has been written by teaching assistants, usually recent graduates, assigned to work under the guidance of a particular faculty member. The assistant collects data from corporations following the specifications of the customers, i.e. the professor and the business school. The assistant stages a real world in the Harvard theme park of business. The research assistants play a vital role in the method because to a large extent it is they who must be relied upon not only to prepare the research material which is to be used but also, by accurate reporting of facts, to bring back from the field to the teachers and to the school in general a recognition and an appreciation of the constantly changing realities of business. This is the role that the Harvard Case Clearing House Report prescribes to its authors-assistants according to the case writing instructions issued by the school. The assistants are told how to dictate a case to secretaries, how to make appointments for interviewing, how to fill in the ‘contact slip’ for the next interview and how to get a copyright ‘release card’ signed by the interviewed executive. There are numbers of routines on how to file cases correctly in the Harvard Case Clearing House so that they can easily be retrieved and distributed to other schools in need of classroom realism. This kind of writing is almost like journalism but one must not forget that many writers applied naturalistic methods of writing which fit the Harvard style. Zola would surely be a strong candidate for writing cases. Most literary authors from the nineteenth century were writing for immediate consumption in a craft like manner as journalists of fiction. It is not only Harvard assistants who must currently comply with the requirements of a certain ‘style’ of representing the world. Editors of journals, newspapers and even books


often actively re-shape an author’s specific text to match the general world view and style of their publishing house. Writing is a much less individual activity than we are inclined to believe. Neither can reading be considered an isolated action. It matters a lot, for example, where we read. A school, a university or literary club provide organised forms for socialising the experience of reading, But this kind of socialisation actually starts as soon as we begin to read a book. It is no more a dusty object on a shelf or just another mirror to reflect our well known selves. A case, for instance, is written to put us into a policy making mood. The writer of cases therefore will create a world in tune with the paradigm of individual decision making. He or she will ‘agitate’ and ‘propagate’ for the ideology of decision-making. Their role as educators is to make us assume a managerial responsibility. According to Clearing House instructions: The case as typically used provides ‘realistic’ educational experience both for the mature executives in advanced management programs and for students beginning their study of business administration. These cases, however, are not an actual snap-shot or sound movie of what ‘really took place’. Accepting this paradox, the case writer does not ask for a case ready made as though it were on the tip of the tongue of the executive being interviewed. He [sic] starts rather with the executive’s experience in dealing with some operation of the business. He is on the alert for points at which the management of this operation involved choice. The choice may not have been the subject of much conscious or deliberate thought by the executive, but if it did represent the genuine alternative the case researcher might take this occasion to deign a statement of the situation which would give students an opportunity to decide


for themselves on an alternative. (Case Clearing House Report 9–345–007) But what if we abandon the idea of ‘documenting’ or ‘representing’? Case writing might then appear as creative as that of any fiction. A management case can be considered a sort of script for a drama on ‘decision making’ with cognitive connotations. This is not an accidental similarity: as Alvarez and Merchán (1992) point out, the way managers usually make decision reflects scripts already known to them, consisting of small plots which worked in their previous experience. Plotting, for which the faculty of imagination is required, is thus an activity essential to managerial decision-making. Cases would never work if they were merely ‘information’ or ‘data’. Case writers as well as authors must have an artistic talent in addition to manners and techniques. A work of art influences the world of art through aesthetic quality, style, empathy and meaning. In schools less aware of the importance of textual talents than those using the case method, i.e. in most universities and training centres of the Western world, such artistry is disregarded as non-academic. Instead of art, one speaks of ‘science’; in place of aesthetics, ‘pedagogy’ is discussed, and books become ‘teaching materials’ stored like bricks in the library. Students are burdened by endless course reading lists witnessing the capitulation of quality in the face of quantity. Such students will never experience the marvels and meanings of rich texts carefully served and sampled at the feast of an intellectual seminar table. They will develop into humanoid word processors without judgmental skills. They risk becoming modern illiterates clinging to oral and pictorial sources provided by teachers, fellow-students and mass media. They take texts at their face-value without realising that those texts are creations in need of interpretation and reflection if they are to provide impulses for action and


enterprise. Without enjoying the art of reality creation, how could they ever master the art of managing? As a result of their ‘anaesthetic’ attitude, they will be unable to shape reality, to make things come trae, to act with and through the symbols of everyday life. Such ‘onedimensional’ readers will hardly provide our organizations and economies with enthusiastic leadership and imaginative management. To avert the risk of both cultural and emotional superficiality, it is useful to rediscover the novel as a more comprehensive route to managerial understanding. On the other hand, reading fiction can be a source of both an improved plotting skill and of ready made plots. Novels can offer a more abstract understanding of social, economic and political processes, but also a repertoire of pragmatically useful devices. Is the novel a case? A novel differs from a case in several ways. The essays published in this volume try to indicate how to profit from novels and related literary genres in the teaching of economics, business administration and public management. In an essay on the administrative novel Dwight Waldo emphasised the novel’s special contribution saying that: Literature helps to restore what the professionalscientific literature necessarily omits or slights: the concrete, the sensual, the emotional, the subjective, the valuational (Waldo, 1968, p. 5) This argument, the easiest to concur with and the best known, is only one of many reasons for why we should use novels when learning about organizations. Waldo himself lists several; we borrow from him and add some of our own. For example, in the novel this subjective aspect is often combined with an organisational expertise in a


different way than it is in cases. Many novelists had personal experiences of organisational reality. Everybody knows that Kafka worked as a clerk but it is less known that August Strindberg (see Jacobsson’s contribution to this volume), Joseph Conrad (see Whitebrook) and Italo Svevo (Manoukian in this volume) had inside knowledge of their fields of fiction. Wells (presented here by Grafton Small), Zola (see Guillet de Monthoux) and Prus (Czarniawska-Joerges) were journalists famous for the thoroughness of their quasisociological investigations. With good reason one can maintain that these novelists were better prepared to grasp the complexity of the organisational life than most case writers or economic journalists. Some novels depicting firms or administrations in such a personal way may well be of the “first-and-onlytype” whereby a frustrated organisational drop-out gets his or her bitterness off the chest (Waldo, 1968). But such subjective autobiographies are rather the exception in a genre of the administrative novel. More common is what Waldo calls “the man-in-the-grayflannel-suit” genre, alluding to a novel by Sloan Wilson (1955). This book can be seen as beginning a long chain of romances featuring a wicked-executive-good-person character, crowned recently with The Firm by John Grisham (1991). Before rejecting such works as trash, it is important to consider that Zola was regarded in his time as a writer of about same standing as Barbara Cartland is today. Literary tastes vary, but there is much to learn even from works which do not aspire to the highest literary standards, and there are parallels to be made between this genre and the moral discourse of Silas Lapham (see Boland in this volume). Novels, like research, are usually inspired by a quest for insight and knowledge. A work of art can be very personal in tone but still have an objective quality. This aesthetic quality, which some people might want to call ‘truth’, is not subjective or arbitrary. It has an objective relevance for all of us, by making it possible to approach


salient problems in a personal, although not private, way. It is perhaps more pertinent to speak about generality vs. particularity than objectivity v. subjectivity. Novels talk to us even when written in the most subjectivist of all styles, the stream of consciousness, because we read in them a message that has a general value, that applies to many readers and not only to this one particular character. Fiction accomplishes the feat which organization theory often misses: it combines the subjective with the objective, the fate of individuals with that of institutions, the micro events with the macro systems. Novels also transmit tacit knowledge: they describe knowledge without analysing it, thus tapping on more than an explicit message characteristic for paradigmatic teaching. In broader terms one can say that novels are rich in narrative knowledge, as the one which depicts the world in terms of human actions and motives, in contrast to the logoscientific one, which depicts the world in terms of causal laws and abstract models. Attempts to translate narrative knowledge into the scientific often leads to an absurd reduction, leading the devoted scientific minds to conclude that there was nothing sensible there in the first place, but which to us means simply that the two kinds of knowledge are not reducible to one another. We all learn from narratives. A formal model of professional behaviour will hardly be of use if we wanted to know how to go about publishing this book: we need to ask our colleagues to tell us stories illustrating how such things are done. Which brings us to another point emphasised by Waldo, namely that “through literature dealing with organization we can extend the range of our knowledge… vicarious experience can substitute for personal experience” (Waldo, 1968, p. 5). Moreover novels locate such experience in different cultures and traditions. Knowledge and experience is not decontextualised or simplified. The essays in this volume are based on novels from different times and nations. In this way,


they demonstrate a wider reflection on business culture than is usually the case in management contexts. Textbooks tell us how things are done in New York and Pittsburgh but what about values and attitudes toward business and money in Poland? In Geert Hofstede’s essay we are presented with a managerial reading of a novel showing the influence of moral attitudes on the actions of an administrator stranded in a strange culture. Hofstede adds that his own quantitative research (1980) supports the idea that national characteristics, of the sort qualitatively depicted in the novel Max Havelaar, are important for economic development and trade relations. A novel may help us to grasp processes that are theoretically cumbersome to represent. Management research claims to up-date us on current business behavior. But today’s behaviour often has roots deep-seated in the past. Value systems are part of longstanding traditions. We all have a notion of the Weberian Protestant ethics, but what can we say about ‘Latin management’? Jose Luis Alvarez and Carmen Merchán Cantos explore in their chapter are contradictory demands that organizations based on one value system (promoting competitiveness and success) place on actors who have been educated in a different one, focussed on status and honor. Franca Olivetti Manoukian provides us with a managerial reading of Italian texts, where the novels remind us of the importance of ‘family’ and ‘faith’ for understanding organizations—two key concepts which hardly figure in the standard texts on international management. The historical perspective, represented in these novels, permits much more than a nostalgic excursion to the past: it shows what changes and what resists change in the world of organizations, not a negligible wisdom for those who intend to change. In Torben Beck Jørgensen’s chapter we find yet another contribution that novels can make: they can provide a grass-root perspective on power. Instead of


telling us stories of success and glory, the novels whisper despair and helplessness. They articulate the tacit and the secret. The voice of the novelist can then be that of a rebel, the one who opposes the organization and its power. Fiction offers at least two methods of rebellion unauthorised within the traditional research: irony and wit. And so Bengt Jacobsson gives us a feeling for how the Swedish novelist and playwright, August Strindberg, analysed social and organisational developments of the kind which we also wit ness today. Tongue in cheek, Strindberg pokes fun at institutions and hypocritical reformers. The same form of irony opens up new critical vistas when we read H.G.Wells under the guidance of Grafton Small, and especially the guided tour into Modernity by Robert Musil. Caricature is there an epistemological means to gain insight. Readers should not forget that the naturalistic novels discussed here emerged at a time when sociology and administrative science still belonged to philosophy and when economics was ‘moral philosophy’. The theme of the connections between moral order and the political and economics orders, and between private and public identities, reverberates strongly in Boland’s analysis of the Rise of the Silas Lapham and in Whitebrook’s reading of Nostromo. In the European tradition social sciences are still called sciences humaines or Geisteswissenschaften and they cannot be clearly understood without a solid knowledge of continental philosophy and literature. What can you grasp of Habermas without Hegel? How can you approach Foucault without Nietzsche? Is it possible to appreciate Georg Simmel without some notion about Kant’s philosophy? While social science rests upon philosophy, it is also the case that philosophy, in turn, is deeply rooted in literature, poetics and art, to an extent that one may even be inclined to see continental philosophy as primarily a commentary on art (Rorty, 1989; Welsh, 1990).


When Max Weber suggested that we use ideal types to describe organizations and institutions he indirectly urged us to think as artists do—to gestalten our knowledge in the form of images he called “ideal types”. Caricatures, ironic portraits, satires or other modes of fiction are but such figures distinguished from the ground of reality. It has even been argued that modes of organising are best understood as different kinds of poetical figures: Sköldberg (1990) used Kenneth Burke’s list of tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony) to analyse organisational events in the same way Hayden White (1973) analysed historical events. Manoukian and Whitebrook in this volume make a strong claim for literary works as a privileged source for understanding of organisational phenomena. Suppose we went even further—to claim that our functionalist models of organizations with their rationalistic management are nothing more than stories, dreams and adventures full of heroism and horrors, but usually ending happily and in harmony? This question may seem preposterous in the context of scientific knowledge, but, as Lyotard reminded us, the narrative knowledge is both older and more basic that the scientific one (Lyotard, 1979). The narrative approach to knowledge, as recommended by Bruner (1986), Fisher (1987) and, in the context of organization studies, Czarniawska-Joerges (forthcoming) embraces such inquiry. Further questions can be then formulated: what stories, what genres are typical of and appropriate for organizations? Are managers heroes of relatively simple fairy tales, or are they, when portrayed by Joseph Conrad or Robert Musil, trapped with one foot in capitalist cradlesongs and the other in an off-beat world of contrasting values? The contributions of Maureen Whitebrook and Barbara Czarniawska with Bernward Joerges open up a series of possible reflections on this theme. If modernism, with its monetary, calculating rationalism, is going to be replaced by some


sort of pluralistic postmodernism, we may end up in a world where Musil and Conrad gain new relevance. Management of complexity Our time is as muddled as Musil’s or Conrad’s. We no longer have metanarratives that hold and can tell us a convincing story of progress and emancipation. Europe is splitting up into historical and ethnical entities tapping energy from dark sources obscured by a century of rationalism. Whether we like it or not, we can identify ourselves with Nostromo or Ulrich. The world of planning and crystalline solutions is recognised as a fairy-tale. The increasing acknowledgement of the complexity of the world makes it necessary to turn to the rich, thick sources of knowledge, advocated long ago by Clifford Geertz for understanding cultures (Geertz, 1973). Only in a standardised childishness of an Eurodisneyland can we cherish the modern manager’s world untouched. Today’s world is a terrain vague and we need good authors’ of yesterday to help us reorient ourselves in the melting pot of tomorrow’s Europe. It is here where the novels reveal their most unique capacity: to grasp the complex without simplifying it, to render the paradox without resolving it in a didactic tale. The novels which tell how modernity has begun have the same inquisitive and problematising attitude to what they describe as the one which we need today when it has ceased to be unproblematic. Thus, there is a different role for the manager to be deduced from this unusual collection of texts: that of a socially implicated context analyst, rather than a solitary decision-maker, that of a connoisseur of complexity and paradoxes, rather than a social engineer. Actual decisions made in economic organizations may be seen as effects rather than causes, and may result from an unpredictable combination of contingencies and micro political processes (Brunsson, 1985). It is the understanding of this complex dynamics and of its


embeddedness in the social context of the time rather than the futile ambition to control which, to an increasing degree, characterises learning organizations and their managers. As we attempt to persuade readers interested in understanding organizations, in what Waldo would call an administrative wisdom, to reach for fiction instead for the textbook in management, a legitimate question can be asked: why, then, do we try to read the novels for the readers in this volume? After all, most of the contributors are not literary critics: what is the validity of interpretations offered by lay-readers? Marjorie De Vault (1990) argues that the readings of “cultural outsiders” expand the space of shared meanings. We borrow her argument in order to claim that the contents of the present volume are also the ‘outsiders’ readings’— outside the literary profession but inside the social science profession. In our readings, we confront the world of the novel with the world of social science, best illustrated in the contribution of Pierre Guillet de Monthoux in which the concept of desire is used to connect the world of organised consumption as described by Zola and the world of psychiatry as represented by Clérambault. It is from such encounters between different realities that knowledge emerges. We attempt to provide an interpretive scheme to readers interested in the theory of organization and management, a scheme which focus such interest. In other words, we do the same as teachers in a classroorn do when discussing the case. And, just like teachers, we hope that readers will acquire a taste for further readings, this time without our interference, in the life school of management. The management school of good books One of our hopes is that this volume will stop managers complaining that the artists do not care about managerial worlds. ‘So little is written about us and our


jobs,’ they say. And when they find novels with ‘Business’ or ‘Management’ in the title, they expect another protest against profiteering, abuse of power or bureaucracy. They are sick of sloppy books which fail to get beyond the threshold of understanding by simply clinging to new editions of old agit-prop, labels such as “big-cigar-bosses” or “money-greedy-managers” in “maxi-profit-corporations”. We hope to show that novels contain useful material for managers, especially when they are not produced for the executive market. Why read about corporate organizations in textbooks and not about organising in novels? Why go for how-to-do-it when there is so much good art? Our ambi tion has been to show how well known classics treat topics of high relevance for managers without flirting with stereotypes and without losing their narrative force in superficial prejudice. We hope that the organisational scholars invited to contribute to this volume will convince at least some readers to turn to their local library or bookstore before signing up for another management seminar on business. A well informed librarian or bookseller might be more useful to them than another smart management consultant or even a professor of business administration. Enjoy a novel beyond the case and cliché! References Alvarez, J.L. and Merchán, C.C. (1992) The role of narrative fiction in the development of imagination for action. International Studies of Management & Organization, 22(3): 27–45. Bruner, J. (1986) Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brunsson, N. (1985) The inational organization. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Case Clearing House Reports 9–358–003, 9–345–007. Boston: Harvard Business School.


DeMott, B. (1989) Reading fiction to the bottom line. Harvard Business Review, (May-June): 128–134. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (forthcoming). Narrating the organization. Dramas of institutional identity. DeVault, M.L. (1990) Novel readings: The social organization of interpretation. American Journal of Sociology, 95(4): 887–921. Fisher, W.R. (1987) Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press. Geertz, C. (1973) The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hofstede, G. (1980) Culture’s consequences. London: SAGE. Lyotard, J-F. (1979/1987). The postmodern condition. A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McNair, W. (1971) On cases. Harvard Business School Bulletin, July-August. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, irony and solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sköldberg, K. (1990) Administrationens poetiska logik. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Waldo, D. (1968) The novelist on organization and administration. Berkeley: Institute of Government Studies. Welsh, W. (1990) Ästhetisches Denken. Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag. White, H. (1973) Metahistory. The historical imagination in nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

DOCTEUR CLÉRAMBAULT IN ZOLA’S PARADISE Notes on Naturalist Studies of Passion in Organizations by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux

Victim of passion On the 17th of November 1934 docteur Gaetan de Clérambault was found dead in his Parisian home. Earlier that day he had written a short letter to a friend, drafted his will and tried out his revolver in the garden. His body was found sitting in front of a mirror, the armchair in which he sat kept in place by a bed behind it. He had shot himself through his mouth. Death was instantaneous. Gaetan de Clérambault, the last of the Clérambault family, was a well-known psychiatrist, a war hero and an amateur ethnologist of some repute (Papetti et al., 1981). Amongst his publications were not only psychiatric articles on L’automatisme and Les psychoses passionelles but also a detailed study on La classification des differents drapées—a study of how Arab women draped their veils. After his death the police found to their surprise, several life-size dolls dressed in veils, and also a huge collection of photographs of veiled women. The fate of the strange docteur Clérambault is, as we shall see, an illustration of the secret forces—obscure irrational passions—that underlay modern commercial organizations (Williams, 1984). To explore enterprise from this angle, we will have to escape rationalistic perspectives of organization and search for inspiration in literary fiction, such as the

18 • GUILLET DE MONTHOUX

novel on commercialization of veils by Emile Zola— Au bonheur des dames1 Passionate paradise Zola opens the novel introducing Denise and her two little brothers on their way to look for work with an uncle in Paris. Suddenly, on the road from the railway station, they come upon a new drapery store. They are attracted straight away by the doorway temptations of cheviots, tweeds, merinos, fur, swan’s down, woolen gloves, hoods and strips of American bison. The pavement is covered with goods! A clearance sale? Arrangements of umbrellas, stockings, scarves. They become absorbed by the plate glass windows, especially the one with silks, satins and velvet, captivated by their feminine flippancy, the vibrating colors, the opera cloaks, the lace likes creamy snow. The ladies’ paradise. On the other side of the street, opposite the ‘Ladies’ Paradise’, Zola places a stout man with bloodshot eyes in his yellow face, his mouth contracted with rage at the display. This is Denise’s uncle Baudu, owner of the old dusty black shop where pieces of cloth, mainly for male attire, are heaped in something that when compared with the Ladies’ Paradise opposite, seemed like a dark, damp cellar. Baudu, his wife, their daughter and the young Colomban to whom the latter is engaged to be married, run the shop as a traditional family business. Colomban the employee, has his “washing and mending done, carefully looked after, nursed in illness—loved in fact”. But in the “bazaar” on the other side of the street there is “no affection, no morale, no taste”. As Baudu cannot feed another mouth, Denise crosses the street for a job, and is accepted as a probationer at the Paradise where Oscar Mouret has embarked on the process of developing his shop into a new “trading city” 1

The English edition quoted here is “The Ladies’ Paradise”, 1985, London: Hutchinson & Co.

DOCTEUR CLÉRAMBAULT IN ZOLA’S PARADISE • 19

based on turnover, while the Old Elbeuf, Baudu’s shop, struggles to keep sales profits high. Zola introduces the reader to the workings of Mouret’s commission system. “Creating between the salespeople a struggle for existence to foment this struggle was indeed Mouret’s favorite method. He excited on his employees’ passions battened on this struggle of conflicting interest” (p. 36). Zola shows how Mouret succeeds in converting, in a matter of eight years, a starting capital of 500 thousand francs into 6 million, by increasing the yearly turnover from four to twelve times. As in Magasin du Louvre, carefully researched by Zola for the novel, the fashion department of the Paradise turns capital over some fifty times, while the silk department circulates it only four times. Average profit in this new trade is considered to be low, some four percent remaining when sixteen percent general expenditure has been deducted from the twenty percent sales margin. Many items are sold below cost to attract customers and this bargain policy, together with the offer of free return of purchased goods if the customer is dissatisfied, constitutes another important innovation in the trade. Prices in this new form of organization are also clearly marked on tags and are no longer subject to negotiation between the individual customer and a shopkeeper of the old type, who was the only one with access to information on costs. No more haggling in the marketplace, money made on turnover and not on margins, and hard negotiations with suppliers. Tough inside competition between salespeople, while only Mouret, the top manager, had the power to stage the mass bargains of the external competition comedy. Competition inside and organization outside. New trade turns the old insideout! From the original nineteen departments and four hundred employees, Zola’s Paradise now grows like his well-documented models Bon Marche and Magasin du Louvre, into a thirty-nine department, one thousand eight hundred employee giant. Monsieur L’Homme, the


dirty little cashier, reports an 80 thousand franc sales record, at the beginning of the novel. A winter novelty sale, taking place in a brand store, in the middle of the story, renders 575 thousand francs. When the story ends happily with Denise finally accepting Mouret’s proposal of marriage, the one million target is finally hit on the first day of the exposition du Blanc, held behind the new monumental facade. Zola makes frequent use of his notes of the interior plans collected at his visits to the Magasin du Louvre, and from an architect friend (Guiev, 1983). The novel therefore excels in architectural detail, from the basement where a “Niagara of goods… Lyons silk, English woolens, Flemish linens, Alsatian calicos and Rouen prints” were streaming in “with a roar like that of a torrent”, to the storage rooms of each department, the advertising department, the chief cashier’s office, the pay desks, the bedrooms for unmarried salesmen and women under the roof of the shop, the kitchen and dining rooms and all the sales departments which “seemed bathed in golden light and similar to a city with its monuments, squares and streets” (p. 39). During the physical growth of this monument, carefully depicted in the novel, it becomes obvious that Oscar Mouret, the organizer, is creating a city under his reign. He eschews the old symmetrical school of displaying goods, and instead aims at creating an intoxicating chaos of products. “He laid it down as a law that not a corner of the Ladies’ Paradise ought to remain deserted, he required a noise, a crowd, evidence of life everywhere, for life, said he, attracts life, increases and multiplies it”(p. 245). Mouret is anxious to create a crush at his front doors, to provoke almost riot-like crowding inside the shop and to have it look as if the street actually ran through it. What starts out as a large draper’s shop slowly becomes a state with its own laws, its time-keepers who oversee arrivals, and four police inspectors headed by the terrible Monsieur Joive, a bitter ex competitor tradesman.


Zola gives a clear picture of the management structure where Mouret reigns at the top as the real Boucicaut of the Bon Marche, assisted by six administrators or partners who have invested in the business and are remunerated on the basis of net profits. Each partner is the absolute boss over one or several departments, each with its desks. Thus Madame Amelie, emancipated by the system, earns some 12 thousand francs, while her husband the gloomy cashier, l’Homme, gets only 5 thousand for his services. Salesmen and women are paid both a fixed salary and a commission on sales. Newly-hired employees or probationers start on a commission only basis and have a very hard time (unless they find themselves a sweetheart to supplement their monthly pay) as they have to be last in the turn-taking list by which the managers distribute customers arriving at the desk. While the Paradise and its ‘new trade’ constitute the main scenario of the novel, a second scenario, its contrast, is created by the old trade and traders, with uncle Baudu of the Old Elbeuf, Bourras the umbrella manufacturer, the lingerie shop, the furrier, the hosiery shop and the glove-seller making the characters in it. This is a world far removed from plain pricing and bargain shopping. But this old world cannot feed Denise whom the new world across the street can accommodate. Boarded and lodged but haunted by the “money question” of hardly covering the cost of supporting her two brothers, she still resists drifting into “simple solutions”. When the dead summer season arrives, Denise, like many other employees, is dismissed for some minor breach of the in-house law. She now takes lodgings with old Bourras, the umbrella maker who lives in his shop next door to the Paradise and who has invested his wife’s fortune in his little shop. He had done so on the advice of a small silk manufacturer who had been unable to supply his wares in large quantities and at the low prices required by Mouret. The big suppliers who have many weavers,


depend on steady outlets and prefer to cover costs by selling large quantities cheap, for cash, to the large shops, while making an occasional profit on selling small amounts to small shops. When manufacturers grow large enough to have weavers scattered a little bit everywhere (obviously before centralizing workers in large factories), they become unable to control their output and, therefore, accept low prices so long as the new trade swallows up their production, Denise’s new boss, Robineau, wants to fight back, encouraged by a small manufacturer to “kill the big shops”. He engages in a suicidal price-cutting race on a heavy black silk, slowly pushing it down from five francs fifty centimes, its production cost, to five francs. Finally, he even buys silk from the Paradise and sells it cheaper in his own shop. In the end Robineau throws himself under a street car. Baudu’s daughter, Genevieve, dies of sorrow when her boyfriend falls hopelessly in love with a vulgar sales woman from the Paradise, who of course does not care in the least for the boy. Business becomes a matter of life and death. Life on the sunny side of the street; in Mouret’s temple of passion—death of the old world of trade and profits. Zola’s novel bursts with factual knowledge on the evolution of trade. Not one fact or comment, collected by Zola in the field, has remained unused. This is not a piece of romantic journalism and Zola has, as we shall see below, ambitions to discover the causes of evolution. In this quest he introduces a third scenario where the “forces” behind the development can be studied directly—the Salon of Madam Desforges. Crimes of passion Before entering the Salon let us listen to some real-life interviews collected by docteur Gaetan de Clérambault, who took an interest in documenting female thieves caught stealing in large Parisian department stores. This crime was a common one at the time and as such


was, of course, used by Zola in a passage of the novel. In his capacity as a psychiatrist at St Anne’s asylum, Clérambault was required to treat kleptomaniacs, but behind his documented accounts we can clearly see the very personal interest of someone obsessed by “veiled” passions. Thus Clérambault reports of a patient: “We learnt that she stole on impulse from a very strong temptation. Silk attracted her particularly. She refused to describe her first theft. However, we knew that it had taken place when she was 32 while fetishist passions usually have their origins in early childhood” (1981, p. 27). Another ‘silk thief is quoted exclaiming: My joy is particularly great having stolen. To steal silk is delicious, to buy it never gives me the same joy. My will is not strong enough to resist temptation. Silk attracts me when I feel its sound, (she sighs) I get itches under my nails. I have to take it. But if someone gave it to me when I wanted to steal, I would not be happy. On the contrary, this would stop my pleasure. From my 39th year the thefts have been the same—silk thefts. Silk gives me a voluptuous feeling. Oh silk, I could not tear it apart—it would be too…velvet is also nice to touch. I love the soft materials. Heavy silk that ‘screams’. I could never carry it, it would excite me too much. I would love to sleep in silk but how could I ever sleep in it? It would burn me. Calico and cotton does not scream, just a little sigh could be heard when you tear it apart. I could easily tear 600 meters. If you ask me for my opinion I would say that I am guilty of my crime. I would rather go to prison than to St Anne’s. (Papetti, 1981, p. 30–31) Organizing passion Every Saturday the rich widow Madame Desforges, mistress of the charming young widower Mouret, who


had so suc cessfully developed the business inherited from his wife into a “cathedral of women”, offered tea to her friends. In her salon Mouret met a sample of his customers—mostly upper middle-class women of the second empire—and through them his financier, one of Madame Desforges’ ex-lovers. It was here that Mouret planned his new ideas for what he called his “machine”, the business where he was “…throwing himself into speculation like a poet, with such ostentation, such desire to attain the colossal, that everything seemed likely to give way under him.” Here his talks of his “joy of action” and “gaiety of existence” in sharp contrast to another guest, a bored and half-ruined gentry school-friend, struggling on a minimal salary after a too-long university career. Here Mouret explained to his financier the exploitation of woman to which everything conduced, the capital incessantly renewed, the system of assembling goods together, the attraction of cheapness and the tranquilizing effect of the marking in plain figures. It was for woman that all the establishments were struggling in wild competition: it was woman whom they were continually catching in the snares of their bargains, after bewildering her with flesh; they constituted an immense temptation, yielding at first to reasonable purchases of articles needed in the household, then tempted by her coquetry and finally subjugated and devoured. By increasing their business tenfold and popularizing luxury they —the drapers—became a terrible instrument of prodigality, ravaging households, and preparing mad freaks of fashion which proved more and more costly. (pp. 79–80) Mouret emphasized that he did not really “care a hang for women” but loved to create and hammer in his ideas in the heads of people. His affairs were not carnal love


affairs. Zola describes one of the most fervent customers as “incapable of any sexual transgression” but “weak and cow ardly before the least bit of finery”. Thc desire Mouret was awakening by the big shop temptation, which often led to the kleptomania analyzed by Clérambault, was not a sexual desire. Zola noted that sex between the employees was strictly forbidden inside the Paradise, and that marriage and love between salespeople was not supposed to be good for business. Denise, a model of virginity, was fired for having kissed her brother, mistaken by Jouve for her lover. Mouret lived by creating a mass of consumers and then inventing new strategies in his “war on women”, while his partners constantly feared the revenge of the woman. The Ladies’ Paradise depended on women alienated from a family context of the capitalistic kind that kept the Old Elbeuf organization together, gave Robineau his capital through marriage and made Mouret inherit a drapers shop. Alienated women were lured by “counter-jumpers” to ruin their husbands by spending the family fortune on frippery in a big store, supplied by mass production and financed by real estate speculators. This is indeed a novel less about individuals than about the processes of organizing people into crowds and masses. In a theoretical essay Zola declared that a novelist needs more sense of the real than he needs imagination and fantasy. The more trivial and general a story about individuals the better because it conveys the general gist of la vie humaine. The art is to see something while looking at it, to be observant, not to reconstruct a psychology (Zola, 1986). The Danish critic Georg Brandes, a contemporary of Zola, also noted that the characters of his novels were of little interest (Brandes, 1987). Certainly Mouret, Baudu and Denise are far duller and paler than for instance Dickens’ lively characters. They are often painted in an old-fashioned, romantic, banal way; carriers of old fossilized vices and virtues. What makes Zola an interesting writer is the way in which he


personalizes the impersonal, for instance a landscape or a crowd (Shor, 1978). In the case of Au bonheur des dames, it was the way in which he brought life into the main actor—the business organization. Not only did Zola bring life into his organizations, he also seemed to define change, dynamics and movement as purely structural phenomena. Life, which the naturalists set out to depict accurately, was organizational. Passion’s nature While Zola used his naturalistic method to research the forces of passion and their commercial manipulation, Clérambault, some twenty years later, made the following psychiatric remarks on cases of departmentstore kleptomania: Fetishist perversion of seeing or dreaming a fetish is a kind of homage to the adverse sex, and it often symbolizes an intercourse but silk caresses in our cases do not at all evoke the same female senses. Our patients masturbate with silk without dreams, they do not imagine persons clad in the silk. This lack of imaginative foundations is the more intriguing as our patients in no way lack imagination. The stuff in fact seems to act on them through such intrinsic qualities (consistence, odor, sound, reflection) which sometimes are different from tactile qualities. Had the stuff been used by someone or impregnated by some physiological odor, it would most certainly have lost its attraction of novelty and virginity. This perversion is therefore different than fetishism. (Papetti, 1987, pp. 34–37) Clérambault obviously thought he had discovered a passion of a new kind, unrelated to usual human desires, a passion proper to a new commercial era, a very special “modern” passion related to the process of


organizing, which was to be investigated by the naturalists. In fact the naturalists’ novel seems to be a method of understanding and focusing on this huge organizational power. Zola was himself engaged in a heated debate on literary method as a means for studying social processes. Au bonheur des dames is, as I have argued here, really a study of organization, and this goes for most novels in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. Organizational scholars might profit from his view on, and his use of, the naturalist method. Naturalism—A literary method for organizational studies Art and science are inseparable. The scientist has more in common with the artist than with any other profession. Paul Feyerabend is one of the latest advocates of this well-known thesis (Feyerabend, 1984). Such a perspective on scientific work seems intuitively plausible in the social sciences. However, for Feyerabend, mostly interested in natural science, the analogy between experimenting in physics, and seeing in painting, is the key issue. Working with words, instead of with colors on canvas, is more appropriate when dealing with social relations and interactions taking place between humans. In literature there are many examples of authors motivated by scientific curiosity of discovery. Emile Zola stated in the preface to his Therese Raquin: “My aim has been primarily a scientific one. I have depicted the deep perturbations of a sanguine nature brought into contact with a nervous nature. On two living bodies I have performed an analytic work similar to the one done by surgeons on corpses” (Mitterand, 1986, p. 21). In another, earlier, declaration of his literary method, Zola emphasized that writing was for him “the application to the study of moral facts, of the pure


observation and exact analysis, employed in the physical science” (Mitterand, 1986, p. 21). He declared himself a faithful disciple of the nineteenth century French philosopher and literary critic Hyppolyte Taine, who had established a new ‘scientific’ form of reading and interpreting literature. To Taine, literature was a historical document by which general but invisible patterns of human thought and feeling were made clear to the reader—provided, of course, that the reader is equipped with Professor Taine’s method of interpretation. In 1866 Taine made his famous statement that: “vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar, and all complex data emerge out of the unification of simpler facts on which the complex ones depend” (Taine, 1866, p. 15). In a study of Protestant churches and music, Taine traced their strict form to an inner longing for a ‘true’ cult of God. The rejection of appearances and the need for truth was to Taine a “primitive disposition”, a general trait common to a “century” or a “race”. Such a disposition will, in the long run, according to Taine, “cause” the structure of religion, art, philosophy, poetry and human associations such as the family, the state or industrial undertakings. Human development or history becomes a product of a social psychology, manifest in good art. Literature acquires quality by voicing contemporary sentiments or emotions. Its grandeur consists in mirroring the emotions of its readers, its own century and the nation. Art, especially literature, thus become to Taine the best historical document. Constitutions, legal or religious regulations or other dusty archival scriptures are, in comparison to autobiographies, speeches or novels, poor and barren documents. The best source of what would later be called ‘social science’ is, therefore, good literature that gives us knowledge of psychological laws. Taine, a critical reader with social science ambitions, turned the question of artistic quality into a matter of describing human action. Zola, a creative writer, went


on to propose this doctrine as a means for “enlightening” writers into producers of “sources”. Although he ardently declared himself to be the humble disciple of maitre Taine, the master was rather skeptical of Zola’s attempts to transform his ideas on interpretative critical reading into a “scientific” method of creative writing. Zola saw writing as inverted criticism and referred to Taine when he defined art as: “a corner of nature viewed through a temperament of an artist” (Zola, 1986, p. 223). When Taine himself presented a writer, for example Dickens, he first talked of his descriptions like “images prises au daquerrotype” (Taine, 1866, vol. 5, p. 7) then like “streams of visions caught by an almost monomaniac mind with a highly exalted imagination”. To Taine, Dickens had the faculty of engulfing himself in one idea and giving it a multitude of often bizarre forms that were then enlarged and presented to the “eye of the spectator”, in an impressive form impossible to forget. Taine advised us to “look” at David Copperfield, not to “read” it, thereby actually introducing a kind of cinematographic hermeneutics, long before the invention of motion pictures (Cogny, 1978, p. 233). What Zola called simply “temperament” or “personality” was obviously the innate faculty of writing visually by a traveling, zooming or editing action with words. Zola emphasized the importance of the sense du réel to an author, the way to depict in opposition to the faculty of imagination of dreaming up a novel. But while Dickens, so admired by Taine, saw the importance of the plot, Zola mainly had eyes for the organizational scene, like the great new store in Au bonheur des dames, while plots remained largely soap operas. Not surprisingly therefore, Taine commented, in 1881, on Zola’s naturalism as an “imitation of a painting of Henri Monnier and Courbet” and “full of admiration of popular of bourgeois platitudes” that in the final resort only “inspire in us disgust for life and horror of literature” (Weinstein, 1972, p. 146). When Taine died, in 1893,


Zola sadly remarked: “I think he did not particularly like what I was writing”. Still, Taine had encouraged Zola to write in the sixties when the latter was a young clerk working at the marketing department of the great Paris publisher, Hachette. At the incredible pace of professional writers of those days, Zola had produced, from 1871 to 1893, twenty novels. The Rougon-Macquart family epos attempted to follow Taine’s model of representing “moral reality” as the interaction of the three fundamental components of “race”, “environment” and “moment”. By using this method Zola claimed to have taken a stand against the academic literature of his time. His books first appeared as feuilleton in popular journals. They were part of the new mode of mass communication that emerged in France. This was the time of mass transport by rail, of mass education, and of mass communication. Zola himself had worked in this mass media revolution, as the person responsible for advertising at Hachette. He was indeed very well prepared to embark on his eleventh Rougon Macquart, the book which he wanted to become “an optimistic poem of modern activity. In other words a totally new philosophy without pessimism on the contrary showing effort and work’s strength and childish joy. In all, a poem for this time expressing a century of action, victory and enterprise in every direction” (Mitterand, 1980, p. 551). Significantly enough for this writer of the media age, the research on the novel Au bonheur des dames started in 1981, with the reading of an article on new department stores in Paris, in the Figaro, and ended with the seventy-five contributions to Gil Blas from December 17, 1982 to March 1, 1983, the day after Zola’s book was released. Zola left behind a mountain of notebooks, clippings and other material gathered in researching different milieus for his novels. A naturalist whose ambition was to create the science of morals, Zola held interviews and


made investigations ‘on location’ for each major novel. The material for Germinale, the novel about the miners’ strike, was much greater than the novel itself. The investigation itself can be studied in Carnets d’enquetes which are complete texts in their own right. We can see how Zola, like his artist friends, takes his sketchbook wherever he goes, and takes his croquies home to the studio where he completes the picture on canvas. For Au bonheur des dames, there are about seventy manuscript pages where he tries out the characters of his drama, the so called ébauche of the novel, and a further three hundred full of facts concerning the real actor of the drama—the department store. The visual documents seem to dominate, and when Zola takes notes of what he hears, he is equally interested in recording musical rhythms, sounds and noises, as in the spoken words. In preparing his novels, he resembles an anthropologist investigating the peculiar tribes associated with the emergence of the nineteenth century commerce and industry. What makes Zola’s notes interesting is not their textual but their pictorial aspects. This partly explains why Taine, purely a man of texts, had trouble with Zola, a painter with words. Had the movie camera and the tape recorder been invented, Zola might perhaps never have turned to literature. The central characters in Au bonheur des dames, Mouret and Denise, are only representatives of their organizations—the new and old trade. Mouret stands for poetry, adventure and intuition; while Denise is a model of good conduct, courage and logic. Mouret is seduced by beautiful, virtuous Denise who through witnessing the desperate struggle of small trade is slowly convinced that Mouret’s project is natural commercial evolution, impossible to reject on logical grounds. For Denise, one task remains: to turn Mouret, the adventurer and seducer, into a good employer and husband, thereby turning the power of his machinery to good use.


Denise first gets hired, then fired and finally hired again by Mouret who is now so deeply in love that his partners fear that the “revenge of the woman” will finally kill him as a businessman. He drifts away into romantic daydreams and neglects his work. He becomes a ‘nobody’, a dreamer with no sense of the real. When Denise gets back to the Ladies Paradise, she makes use of her power based on her virtuous resistance to Mouret’s attempts, to inspire various reforms for the employees, whose conditions Zola remarked in his notebooks to be “au fond opression terrible” (1986, p. 219). Denise takes on the role of the reformer-so-cialist, arguing that the colossal machine might serve the interests of employees while itself benefiting from being built of “good iron”. She wants to transform the bazaar into a Fourierian “Phalansterium of modern commerce” and obtains recreation rooms, educational programs, free health care, hairdressing and holidays—instead of dead-season-dismissals—for her companions in the store. Denise, using the power of sexual frustration, now tames the libertarian Mouret and, so to speak, creates a second crowd beside the woman customers, turning the Paradise into an embryo of the nineteenth century trade unions. This novel is clearly uninteresting as an individual drama. When one woman is detached from the crowd of women she becomes dangerous to the organization. Zola teaches us how destructive individualism is to organizations. It seems that even Denise does not desire Mouret as an individual. On her first encounter with the Ladies Paradise, the organization, her cheeks flush and “the woman was aroused within her”. No doubt she is fascinated, not by Mouret the man, but by his organizational machine. What Mouret does is not so much rather detach Denise from the crowds of anonymous women, but to run the risk of drifting away from his own organization. Zola carefully remarks that Denise never acts out of calculation. She has no problem resisting Mouret. Her refusal is no trick to catch the


man. Mouret sees only her—Denise the individual woman—while Denise is part of the crowd and the organization. Mouret on his part, by detaching Denise becomes so detached himself that finally he does not even care for the million-franc sales record. The only way of saving the Paradise is for Mouret to marry Denise, say all the partners. Only by doing that can he come back into the machinery. Denise has now become a matter of life and death to the whole enterprise. By marrying Mouret Denise saves the whole business and integrates the old family with the new organization. Au bonheur des dames is a book on les grand magasins published in popular magazines; a text on modern market ing techniques written by an exmarketer of texts; a study following Taine’s scheme of analysis where “race” and “environment” fuse into moral action in the “moment”. But it is not a novel about Octave Mouret of the Rougon-Macquart family falling in love with Denise. It is a novel where ‘race’ is the not a biological family but a species of trade organization. The ‘moment’ is not the love story of Denise and Octave but the transition, or rather the dramatic are really but a landscape for the organizational dragons to roam in. Painting visual passion Gaetan de Clérambault both studied and enjoyed a passion of a sensual kind. He studied it in kleptomaniacs and practiced it in his so-called anthropology of ‘veiled women’. Such a passion has no abstract or psychological explanation. This is the reason why Clérambault rejected the psychoanalytical fetish explanation and even invented the special term hypophile to describe the passion for cloth. ‘To feel’ not ‘to imagine’ is the nature of this passion. When Zola wanted to find the driving force behind the commercial organization of the novelty stores, he referred to “passion”. This is no psychological term and the reason why Taine did not value Zola’s literary work


was probably because of its poor account of individual psychology. It might be claimed that Zola neglected both individuals and their psychology. Emile Zola was interested in organizations. Passion was to him a strictly organizational phenomenon. Zola undertook a kind of textual painting in his novel. “To see”, not “to think” was central to his naturalistic organizational study. And through his method of writing he learnt more from the painters than from the poets. When Clérambault was found dead, it did not surprise his close friends. They knew that he was slowly going blind. Had he lived, he might no longer have been able to enjoy the passion that Zola seems to point to as the most powerful force behind the organization of the Ladies’ Paradise. Neither Zola nor Clérambault provide us with any clear theory of organizational passion but they indicate important elements of a possible theory. The novel, which was written in 1883, depicts the structural change in trade taking place in the fifties and sixties in France. Small units were abandoned or reorganized. Single weavers whose products were marketed by middle-men were combined into larger manufacturing firms. The drapers shops on the market streets turned into departments of a store organizing the free street shoppers into mass consumers of great bazaars. While the success of the old trade was based on profits through the shopkeepers striking bargain sales with wealthy customers the new trade was based on fast turnover of a stock bought at low prices from large manufacturers. Turnover was kept high by means of a commission system and a plain pricing policy “disturbed only by the top managers exceptional bargain offers”. The old trade channeled its profits into the owners family fortune—often some country estate. In the new trade few reserves were kept and most revenue reinvested in stock and buildings. Together with the ‘push-effects’ of production technology not mentioned in the novel the ‘pull-force’ of passion account for the dynamics behind this process.


This passion is an organizational passion. It is disconnected from individual passions like love or hatred. Although very erotic, it is not really sexual. Actually, it arises when the more natural family ties are broken: when, for instance, family firms are transformed into large organizations disconnected from households. The crowd of women making Mouret’s mass-market was composed of wives of second empire civil servants. In Madame Desforges’ Salon Mouret gained access to finance money disconnected from heritage or marriage. Business becomes a passion—generating a show presented to an audience of alienated consumers. On a stage with a regular machinery of managerial systems the top manager becomes an artist, a director more like a modern rock star than a patriarch of the old trade. Mouret was the man of the street in the French revolutionary tradition, a populist manager turning the street into an organization by means of passionate visual agitation. References Brandes, G. (1987) Emile Zola. In: Braunche, M. and Möller, C., (Eds.) Naturalismus manifeste und dokumentation zur deutschen Literatur 1880–1900. Stuttgart: J.B.Metzkersche Verlagsbuchandlung. Cogny, P. (1978) Le naturalisme. Paris: Union Gènèrale d’Edition. Feyerabend, P. (1984) Wissenschaft als Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Guiev, J. (1983) Le theatre lyrique d’Emile Zola. Paris: Librarie Fischbacher. Lapp, J. (1972) Les racines du naturalisme. Zola avant les RougonMacquart. Paris: Bordas. Mitterand, H. (1980) Note to Zola, E., Au bonheur des dames. Paris: Gallimard. Mitterand, H. (1986) Zola et le naturalisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Papetti, Y., et al. (1981) La passion des étoffes chez un neuropsychiatre. Paris: Editions Solin. Shor, N. (1978) Zola’s Crowds. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.


Taine, H. (1866) Histoire de la litterature Anglaise. Paris: Librairie Hachette. Weinstein, I. (1972) Hippolyte Taine. New York: Twayne Publishers. Williams, R. (1984) Dream Worlds—mass consumption in the late nineteenth century France. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zola, E. (1883) Au bonheur des dames. The Ladies’ Paradise. London: Hutchinson & Co. Zola, E. (1880) Le roman experimentale. Paris: Librairie Plon. Zola, E. (1986) Carnet d’enquetes. Paris: Librairie Plon.

DON QUIXOTE AND CAPITALISM IN POLAND On the Cultural Context of Organising by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges

The topos of capitalism Central Europe, in the nineteenth century. A young, bright boy serves wine and food in a wine cellar to earn his living and spends the rest of time studying. He takes courses in the Preparatory School and then the Main School.1 He gets engaged in the political upheavals of his times, takes part in an uprising, ends up in exile, but even there continues his education. For a while he considers becoming a scientist, but the exigencies of life take the upper hand. He marries his former principal’s wife and doubles her property. When she dies, the still young entrepreneur throws his savings into the whirlpool markets of the then turbulent Europe and emerges a millionaire. The salons of the epoch, after some due hesitation, open to the brave self-made man who marries an impoverished aristocratic beauty. Thus joining together the two central social spheres, the man becomes one of the pillars of his nation. That is, he would if he did. In the novel analysed in this paper, Lalka (“The Doll”) by Boleslaw Prus, the hero fails to fulfil his archetypal fate. He falls romantically in love

1

After an anti-Russian uprising in 1830, Warsaw University was abolished. The later liberalization of political life in Russia permitted the establishment, in 1862, of a crypto-university called “the Main School”.

38 • CZARNIAWSKA-JOERGES

with the beautiful and shallow (thus the title) aristocrat. Discovering her indifference and flirtatious nature is such a trauma to the hero that he withdraws from his business and explodes himself and the stone bearing a romantic inscription witnessing the romantic love of several generations. With Wokulski, such is our hero’s name, dies the hope of Polish capitalism. Wokulski identifies himself with Don Quixote, “the man, who for several years lived in the sphere of poetry —like he, who attacked the windmills—like he, who ruined his life chasing an ideal of a woman—like he, and who, instead of a princess, found a dirty cowgirl— just like he himself!” (Lalka, v. 3, pp. 219–220).2 For the readers, it is clear that Wokulski is both Don Quixote and the miller. I choose, in the following interpretation, to see the Don Quixote aspect of the hero as representing the old-fashioned romanticism which, in the last defence attempt, kills the miller and stills the windmills of capitalism. Prus’ novel treats a topic which is very close to that of The Ladies’ Paradise discussed in the previous chapter, and this is not an accident. Like Zola, Prus (the pseudonym of Aleksander Glowacki, 1847–1912) was a journalist and a novelist; like Zola’s his ideal was a “neutral observatory” of social events; like Zola, Prus was fascinated by machines and by biology; and his aesthetic ideals were, like Zola’s, supplied by Taine. In addition, Prus’ novels often directly al luded to Zola’s production. Not only can Lalka be seen as a Polish equivalent of The Ladies’ Paradise—characters in Lalka

2

All quotes come from the 3rd edition of Lalka, published by PIW in Warsaw, 1987. It is a reprint of the first edition (1890) with addition of the original version of Chapter V in Volume 1, then removed by the Czar’s censorship. Main translations: The Doll, translated by David J.Welsh, New York, 1972; La poupèe, translated by Simone Deligne, Wenceslas Godlewski and Michel Marcq, Paris, 1962–1964; Die Puppe, translated by Kurt Harrer, East Berlin, 1954 (two editions). In this text, all translations are mine unless noted otherwise, BCJ.

DON QUIXOTE AND CAPITALISM IN POLAND • 39

read Zola’s novels, and there is a quote from Germinal which appears as Izabela’s dream. Typically enough, the person who most often relates to Zola in the novel is Izabela, the least likely person to do so. This is one of the most important differences between Zola and Prus, namely, Prus’ irony. The satirical note emerges in all his novels, even the most tragic ones. But the most important point in the present context is that both The Doll and The Ladies’ Paradise portray the development of mature capitalism in two very different countries and cultures. Interpretation à l’epoque According to the theories held by the hero himself, the explanation of his fate is quite simple. He cannot—must not—survive because of the fatal flaw in his mental equipment. This flaw is his romanticism. Like a biological defect, it makes him inadequate and unable to cope with the exigencies of the situation. Therefore he is eliminated by Nature, which chooses him as the executor of its verdict. Too strong to be directly killed by his environment (when facing dangerous situations, he either frightens his attackers or is rescued by people who he helped in the past) the hero must himself help the evolution whose laws he respects. It is difficult to say whether the author espoused the theories of his hero. Boleslaw Prus was—and is—a symbol of positivist thinking in the Polish literature of the late nineteenth century. He most certainly accepted many of the current scientific theories of the time, especially those of Darwin and Spencer but, apparently, selectively and with variations: in his own philosophical writings he claimed that solidarity and mutual support became more important in the human world than struggle (Szweykowski, 1972). His contemporary, the world-famous writer Sienkiewicz, described him as follows:


…he does not pursue any specific philosophical theses, be it survival of the fittest or determinism…. Prus is a democrat, but out of feeling. He perceives democracy not as an independent philosophical-social theory, but as the simplest life situation, that should be practised on the strength of justice and love of people to their brethren (Sienkiewicz, 1881/1988, p. 49) Social Darwinism reverberates throughout the book but only as expressed by those heroes who swore faith to the theory. It would be possible to assume that the author put his own ideas into the mouth of his characters, except that it is difficult to decide whose ideas belonged to him. The contemporary critics assumed, variously, that Prus identified with the main hero, Wokulski; then with his accountant, Rzecki, and even with doctor Szuman, the Jewish physician. This only exhausts the list of the main characters and does not give any further clue as they tend to contradict each other. I prefer to assume that Prus, full sympathy towards his characters notwithstanding, tended to ironize the laws of social evolution (in the epilogue, the two potential progenitors of the new, better generation, end their careers one in a grave, one in a monastery). It is interesting for the contemporary reader that Prus managed to present all the fashionable thoughts of his times by attributing them to his characters. Staying within the realist tradition, he nevertheless found a way to illustrate what were then the current systems of meaning without intrusions from the omniscient author or any other non-realist literary devices. Whatever the case is (or rather was), Prus offered his readers bountiful material for interpretations that have their foundations more in culture than in biology. In the following, I shall try to analyse Wokulski’s rise and fall as an entrepreneur in terms of the cultural context of organising (Czarniawska, 1986) which he had to face when developing his business. Although this


issue is of theoretical interest, its practical relevance is obvious. At a time when most countries in Central Europe attempt to transplant mature capitalism in their economies, historical lessons acquire a special meaning. The political and economic stage …this Polish or, to be more specific, Warsaw novel shows an unusual society: immobilised between the resignation of serfdom and longing for freedom, between a congealing past and a future which it rejects, between the Russian world which it does not want to join and the West, from whom it is separated, between the 18th century that doomed it when in its renaissance, and the 19th century whose impetus it is unable to follow…(Fabre, 1962/ 1988, pp. 419–420) The action of the novel starts in January 1878 and ends in October 1879. At that time the so-called Polish Kingdom (the central-eastern part of the present Poland), was again under Russian governance. The century which was coming to an end bore witness to many wars of independence: the uprising of 1830, the Napoleonic wars 1848–1849 and 1853–1856 and finally the tragic and romantic uprising of 1863, were alive in people’s memories. But the patriotic wounds were at least apparently healed and the wars continuing in other countries created prosperity for grain suppliers (for many centuries grain was the main source of revenue for the Polish economy). The textile industry was dominated by Germans, agriculture by Polish landowners, and merchants were to a decreasing degree Germans and Poles, and to an increasing degree Jews. The economy went hand in hand with politics, especially in public rhetoric. The economic situation of the country is illustrated and symbolised in the novel by the Company for


Commerce (…with the Russian Empire, added the malicious commentators) founded by Wokulski. Although Prus’ critics pointed out that the commercial details were never very explicit in his novel, the cultural context of organising was sketched very clearly indeed. Wokulski begun his public entrepreneurial career (the only thing we know about his doubling of the initial capital by supplies to the Bulgarian war is that it was done in conditions of absolute honesty) by opening credits at Moscow’s textile manufacturers for his shop. This provoked a reaction and a Duke (as there is only one duke of importance in the novel, we shall call him the Duke) was asked to intervene: “Imagine that your projects frightened our cotton producers very much indeed… Do I say right— cotton? They claim that you plan to kill our industry. “As a matter of fact”, said Wokulski, “I do have a credit with the Moscow factory owners open up to 3, maybe 4 million rubles, but I don’t know yet whether their products will sell.” “A terrifying!…terrifying figure!” whispered the Duke. “Don’t you see in it a serious danger for our factories?” “Oh, no. What I see is only a significant reduction of their enormous profits, which is something I do not care about. My duty is to care about my profits and a low price for my customers; our goods will be cheaper.” “But have you considered this question as a citizen?” said the Duke pressing his hand. “We have so little to lose…” “I think that it is a citizen’s duty to supply the consumers with a merchandise at a lower price and at the same time to break the monopoly of the factory owners who have with us only one thing in common: they exploit our consumers and our workers.” (vol. I, pp. 160–161)


This conversation illustrates three points that Prus made again and again: that the Duke, who was asked to exert pressure in economic matters, knew very little about commerce, industry and the economy; that the argument of ‘patriotism’ was the crucial one in economic negotiations and that Wokulski, as portrayed by Prus, was not a profit-hungry capitalist. Rather than sacrifice his profits on the altar of the abstract ‘patriotism’, he collected his gains, while at the same time taking care of consumers and workers. (If he had been born a hundred years later, he would have been asked to become a Solidarity adviser and to help in formulating their economic reform program. On the other hand, in the novel the Duke uses the type of arguments which typify a benevolent communist party official, say, Gierek). The patriotically inspired Duke proposed that Wokulski should start a Polish textile factory, to make the country independent of foreign capital (an autarchic economy was also an ideal for many party leaders, see Czarniawska-Joerges, 1987). Wokulski refused, justifying refusal by the resistance to technology which could be observed in Polish industry. As a result, he predicted an even more prominent dependence on imports: “In a few years we shall import even flour, because our millers do not want to replace the millstones with rollers” (vol. I, p. 163). As Wokulski’s department store prospered and the Duke increasingly listened to his advice, a new opportunity arose. The rich aristocrats (and some impoverished ones), the landowners (nobility), and the Polish merchants, persuaded by the Duke, decided to listen to Wokulski’s project of the Company for Commerce. The introductory speech by the Duke emphasised the nobility’s duty to take care of the public interest. Wokulski commenced by explaining the advantageous geopolitical situation of Warsaw, which could become a centre of commerce between East and West. The way to


achieve this was by introducing order into the relations with the West (most likely, cutting unnecessary imports and developing profitable exports) and by extending contacts with Russia, as a supplier of cheap merchandise, of which textiles were the most interesting item. The merchants opposed, using the patriotic argument, to which Wokulski responded in kind: “I am ready”, Wokulski was saying, “to immediately give you a list of factories where all the administration and all better paid workers are German, whose capital is German, and the board of directors resides in Germany; where, finally, our workers have no opportunity to learn more about their vocations, but are serfs, badly paid, badly treated and, furthermore, germanised…” (vol. I, p. 242) As Germans, together with the Russians, were traditionally the main enemies of Polish independence, the matter of patriotism was thus settled. The aristocrats demanded to know the profits; the profits for the country, corrected the Duke. Wokulski explained the potential savings made by the consumers, and finally disclosed the high interest rate that the owners could get for their capital, if invested. Just as agreement was about to be reached, the landowners, generally in conflict with aristocrats, protested, emphasising that their interests lay in grain, and not in textiles. But for the next intervention of the Duke, who proposed to open another Company for that purpose, and, indeed, any number of Companies as needed, an impasse would have resulted. Finally, the first offers came: from rich magnates, who understood little except the last item— the interest rate named by Wokulski. The scene is grotesque in its character, which is typical of Prus’ writing. Unmasking, i.e. revealing the other side of everything with humour rather than


accusatory passion,3 was very characteristic of his novels. “It seems as he were telling us: the world is completely different from what it appears; we succumb to these appearances, and yet our common sense should make us understand that an A is also a non-A and a non-A is also an A…” (Swietochowski, 1890/ 1988, pp. 119–120). There was nothing encouraging in the company from which the future Company was to arise but the author did not demonise it either (as some of the later critics would have it): the business can be done, the deal can be transacted, no matter how ridiculous the partners might appear. And done it was, albeit with foreseeable problems. The shareholders’ attitude was best summarised by one of the characters who talked to Wokulski after his breakdown and the subsequent liquidation of Wokulski’s participation in the Company: “As long as they thought you were going to cheat them on this Company for Commerce with the Empire, they kept calling you a genius; today they are saying that you are suffering from softening of the brain, because you gave your partners three percent more than you promised.” (vol. III, p. 257) Wokulski’s partners followed both their own greed, and the traditional mores of Christianity: business is dishonest and an honest businessman is crazy. Therefore the Jews who replaced Wokulski in the company (paying much lower interest rates) were considered to be appropriate partners, that is, they were despised and assumed dishonest and could therefore be taken advantage of. The ‘Jewish question’ returns on pages of Lalka in on the basis of certain unflattering portrayals of Jewish characters, but this is a very peculiar comment since 3

See R.H.Brown, 1977, for the need of unmasking in social sciences.


there are also many extremely unflattering Polish characters. Probably, those criticisms were addressed to the literary scene of a century later where the only literature accepted was the one that showed positive relationships between Poles and Jews—everything else being either a lie or author’s antisemitism. I would rather follow one of Prus’ contemporary critics who said that in The Doll the author gave a “picture of the positivist era in times of its decay: we see there the new formations growing in its body: mysticism, antisemitism, Jewish nationalism, students’ socialism… Above all those formations floats the spirit of romanticism…”(Feldman, 1908/1988, p. 250). Georg Brandes, who visited Poland several times just before The Doll was published, still spoke about Poland as possibly the only country in Europe where antisemitism did not show its ugly head (Brandes, 1890). Indeed, Polish society was fermenting, and this fermentation is one of the most important aspects of the novel and one of the most significant elements of the context in which Wokulski undertook his organising efforts. The social stage With his satirical talents, Prus sketched the social stage in group portraits with a touch of caricature, whose traits we see most clearly in collective action. Even the individuals who we approach in various close-ups, still reproduce these group characteristics which Prus wanted to caricature, despite their very human and personal traits. The most detailed picture is that of the group which was of passing social importance: the aristocrats. Still believing in their “mission for the country”, they spent most of the time in recreating their own vanishing world. Some of them were clever enough to maintain sound finances be hind a blasé facade; most of them were not


and would have to leave the stage. The most cruel portrait is that of Wokulski’s beloved—Izabela: 4 Miss Izabela had lived since the crib in a beautiful world which was not only superhuman, but also supernatural. She slept on down, dressed in silks and laces, sat on carved and upholstered ebony and rosewood, drank from crystal glasses, ate from silver and porcelain as costly as gold. (vol. I, p. 61) Izabela, in simple words, lived in a complete ignorance of the human condition. Once only, after having visited an ironworks in France (Germinal comes in here) she had a premonition of the end of this world: Only then did she understand how much she loved her spiritual fatherland where crystal spiders replace the sun, carpets replace the ground, and columns and monuments replace trees. This second fatherland, where all aristocrats belong, where the refinement of all times and the most beautiful achievements of civilisation belong. Should all this vanish, die out or fall into ruins!… (vol. III, p. 67) Izabela was, of course, an avid customer of Wokulski’s department store, although it was not her that he had in mind when proposing to buy cheaper textiles. 4

It must be added that Prus did not seem to be exaggeratedly fond of women in general, especially when they were not eager to incarnate male ideals. In another novel, one of the first in Poland on the subject of emancipation, he ridiculed the feminist movement and then, attacked by female critics, declared that in relation to the “women’s issue”, he did not care “either for universities or for voting rights, but for some way to remove all the injustice that nowadays touches women, wrings tears from their eyes and ruins their lives” (Matuszewski, 1899/1988, p. 157). Women’s role, according to Prus, was to be “geniuses of feeling”, and Izabela fares poorly in this.


Not all the members of the aristocrat class were equally incognizant. Some of them realised the imminent ruin of their class, through their personal bankruptcy, and tried to make new friends. This was how Izabela’s father reacted to social rejection by his own class: Almost at the same time Sir Tomasz broke company with society and to prove his revolutionary attitude became a member of the Merchant Guildhall. There, together with previously scorned tanners, brush-makers and distillers, he played whist, telling left and right that aristocracy must not isolate itself in its exclusiveness, but lead the enlightened bourgeois, and through them, the nation, To return the favour, the now proud tanners, brush-makers and distillers admitted that Sir Tomasz is the only aristocrat who understood his duties towards his country and fulfils them diligently. They could also add: he fulfils them daily between nine o’clock p.m. and midnight. (vol. I, p. 72). Much was said about aristocracy and its attitude as the true and real reason for Wokulski’s fall: again, it seems to be one of the interpretations that met a current need. We know enough about aristocrats from Balzac and Zola, if not directly from Prus, and we know what to expect of them. True, they made Wokulski pay dearly for opening the doors of their salons; they ridiculed his manners and at the same time were anxious that he did not imitate theirs (a merchant cannot have duels: what about the interest due to his partners?) But they were also greedy and/or at the edge of bankruptcy: the money was well thought of and it was most probably the nouveaux-riches who dictated conditions (that is, if they did not happen to be romantically in love). Such were the aristocrats, Wokulski’s social target. The other most clearly sketched group were the merchants. Prus made fun of both. Compare the two


scenes where a duel is in offing and the issue of ‘honour’ at stake. According to a baron: “It’s my rotten luck”, he sighed, “to have a duel with a petty merchant. If I hit him, it will be like a hunter who chases a bear and shoots a cow. If he hits me, it will be like being whiplashed by a cabby… Let this stupid social revolution come at last and finish off either us, or those bloody liberals…”(vol. I, p. 301) And now a quarrel between the accountant Rzecki and his drinking companion: “I demand satisfaction”, I roared, banging the table. “Fiddle-dee!” said Szprot and made circles in the air with his finger. “It is easy for you to demand satisfaction because you are a Hungarian officer. To murder a person or two or even get killed yourself is like bread and butter for you… But I, mister, am a merchant, I have wife, children, and deadlines in business…”. “You have no honour!” I exclaimed. This time he started banging the table. “Who has no honour?… You say that to me?… What do I do: sell bad merchandise, or go bankrupt?… We shall see in the court who has got no honour…”(vol. III, p. 27) Honour in business, proved in the civil courts instead of in duels—here comes the new morality. But most merchants in the book are of the old kind: mediocre, careful deals and the assumption that” [war] supplies are something for Jews and Germans; our people do not have the brains for that” (vol. I, p. 7). It was also the merchants who, tradition ally, tried to fight competition, not through prices, but through lobbying aristocrats, through politics, through rumours and patriotic


arguments. Risk-taking was seen as especially unpatriotic… The ‘people’ is the social class whose presentation makes a contemporary reader uneasy. Prus was always hailed for his love and sympathy for the poor, the underprivileged, the exploited. When Wokulski was struck by all possible misfortunes, all that remained was “God, the earth and the simple man” (Feldman, 1908/1988, p. 252). If the intentions of the author were undoubtedly noble and humanistic, the dramatic change of rhetoric that has taken place in the last hundred years makes his pictures exasperatingly paternalistic (which was pointed out later by Marxist critics, e.g. Kamienski, 1931/1988). The cheap stereotypes of the ‘fallen woman’, the ‘starving family father’ fail to capture—unlike the descriptions of other social groups—the character and the condition of the poor. Here, too, another leading idea of the epoch—“the organic work” sounds most false: And yet there is a simple medicine: obligatory work —justly paid. Only that can strengthen the best individuals and remove the bad ones without trouble…and we would have a brave population in place of the one we have today, starving and ill. (vol. I, p. 23) It is Wokulski who is speaking, but Prus failed to point out to his hero that the help he was giving to his chosen ‘simple people’ consisted not only in giving them an opportunity to work hard for decent pay, but primarily in creating conditions that enabled them to work. And giving decent work to one ‘fallen woman’ and one ‘starving father’ is not to change society—it is a question of charity. Therefore, the contemporary reader sympathises, not so much with Wokulski’s patronising view of ‘simple people’, but rather with aristocrats’ terrorised view:


“You do not know these people, and I’ve seen them working… In their hands, the steel rails bend like ribbons. These are terrifying people. For their own purposes they can move all earthly forces, at which we cannot even guess” (vol. I, p. 97) One thing is certain: this was not a static society, but a changing one. These …separate worlds do not lead separate lives, on the contrary, they enter one another, support one another, thwart one another; they penetrate each other, one enters another, one chases, another escapes, and the other way around. In other words, the society in “The Doll” does not stand still but, on the contrary, moves so that the contrasts between separate worlds vanish or the new ones are created. It is a society in ferment where we see different groups of people where each considers its own interests of primary importance and therefore conflicts between the groups arise…(Lange, 1890/ 1988, p. 130) This was a society where old (or maybe just nostalgically fantasised) harmony had ceased to exist and no one knew what the emerging structure was going to be. This was, however, not a mobile society in which the ways upward were suddenly created (in Prus’ eyes, England was an example of such a society), but rather a whirlpool where everybody tried to keep others under the surface. Those who, like Wokulski, managed to break free and go forward were looked upon with suspicion, envy and increased scrutiny. In a comic way, Prus goes through all the strata, presenting their attitude towards his hero. The aristocrats decided to let him in and therefore expected him to adopt all their prejudices and follow all their whims. They were genuinely surprised that this did not happen.” ‘Harsh man…selfish…egoist!’—thought the Duke and more and


more wondered about the cheek shown by this nouveauriche” (vol. III, p. 103). Noblemen ironised about Wokulski calling him a “nouveau-riche” and a “democrat”, but claimed he had noble origins and contrasted him to Jewish merchants. The merchants, and even more the industrialists, accused him of being a nobleman, a grand man, a politician. The poor, or those among them who were lucky enough to meet Wokulski, saw him as a benefactor. A “transitional man” (Boguslawski, 1891/1988), whose identity was just as unclear for himself as it was for the others. The old shop and the new shop But what about the organising itself? The change in modes of organising are best illustrated in the examples of two shops: old Mincel’s shop, where Rzecki acquired his education and which Wokulski inherited from his wife, and the modern department store, which Wokulski in the end sold to Szlangbaum, his former employee. The old shop was mainly a family operation. Owned by Jan Mincel, a polonised German, it employed his two sons and two external people, one of them Rzecki. The shop already had three departments (groceries, haberdashery and perfumery) and three specialised salesmen, but supply and accounts were always under the control of the owner. And so was everything of importance: the owner trained salespeople (using a whip if necessary), and lessons in accounting, economic geography and merchandise were strengthened by lessons in business ethics: not saving was considered a crime at the same level as theft. The principal’s mother took care of the positive reinforcements: coffee at 8 a.m. (after the shop had been already open for two hours), dinners in shifts, and Christmas celebration with gifts. The interior of the shop reminded one of an enormous cellar, whose extremities Rzecki, as a child, could never see due to partial darkness. Even the ceiling was used to store the goods, and the main decoration was a


wooden Cossack soldier in the window, which moved when the principal pulled the rope. The clients varied: the dawn of the day (as Prus says, the only customer who never fails a merchant) welcomed working people and servants. The grocery section had most customers. In the afternoon the wellto-do arrived to buy other goods. After the death of the owner, the two sons divided the shop, separating groceries from the rest; and this rest became the start of Wokulski’s fortune. Not that he himself considered it of importance: the old ways of business seemed ridiculous to him: “Mincels, always Mincels!… They should compare me with Mincels—today. Alone and in half a year I made ten times more than two generations of Mincels in half a century. To earn what I earned among the bullet, the knife and the typhoid, a thousands Mincels would have to sweat in their shops and in their night-caps…. I would rather fear death and bankruptcy than ingratiate myself with those who consider buying an umbrella at my store, than bow to those who are so kind as to acquire water closets at my place…” (vol. I, p. 49) The owners stopped working in the shop; they began to run it instead. Shopkeepers became business people, a development that Rzecki did not quite approve of: “In my times the principal was a father and a teacher to his employees and the most attentive servant of his shop; his mother or wife were the housekeepers, and all family members its employees. Nowadays the principal takes the income, usually does not know much about commerce, and his main worry is that his children do not become merchants…” (vol. I, p. 42)


Indeed, the first condition Izabela made was that Wokulski got rid of his shop: even owning it was a shame. Business must not be based on petty commerce. But the new shop, or rather department store, was hardly petty commerce. Following Paris models, it had five enormous departments situated in separate halls. One of them presented Russian textiles, therefore advertising the activities of the Company for Commerce; another contained more textiles together with dress accessories. The third, central department, sold bronzes, crystals, ebony and porcelains. The remaining two specialised in toys, wooden and metal products and finally rubber and leather products. Wokulski secured the supplies, organised the administrative side, employed salesmen and, much to Rzecki’s sorrow, left the shop alone. Rzecki was responsible for the accounts and for window decoration: the latter was the old accountant’s concession to modernity. The windows were supposed to summarise the riches of the shop and at the same time attract attention with fashionable products and ingenious tricks. Therefore the windows were redecorated every week. The salespersons, who in the old shop performed technical services, like cutting soap into pieces, became skilful psychologists. Seducing clients was their main duty, the mundane services left to the servants. The new shop employed many more people: seven salesmen, of whom five were employed at once, and their numerous assistants. Orders sent to the client were taken care of by special collectors. Organization was becoming complex, and personnel problems could no longer be solved in traditional ways. Division of labour, personnel management, incentive systems—all those were problems which did not yet have names, but which were noticed even by the old-fashioned Rzecki. Interestingly enough, the same old accountant, very much enchanted by Wokulski, nevertheless managed to notice that personnel problems were the same under Wokulski the


‘benefactor’ and his Jewish successor: it was the organization, not the leaders that created—or solved— problems. The opening ceremony attracted public attention. “[I]n my young days”, commented Rzecki as usual, …merchants also organised blessing ceremonies for the shop’s opening, taking care that the priest who fulfilled the ceremony was old and pious, that there was holy water at the spot, a new incense burner and an organ-player who was fluent in Latin. After the ceremony, when almost every cupboard and each product was prayed over and sprayed with water, one would put a horseshoe above the entrance door to attract the guests, and only then one would think about some snack, usually a glass of vodka, beer and sausage” (vol. I, p. 219) This was, of course, not how Wokulski’s new department store was opened. A journalist visited the shop on the eve of the ceremony: described the shop and interviewed the employees, expressing his disappointment that no scandal was to be reported as yet. (The comic figure of the journalist might well be an ironic self-portrait of the author). The main ceremony took place in the best city hotel: there were 150 guests to dinner, mainly merchants from Warsaw and Moscow, but also some from Vienna and Paris (corporate entertainment has a long history). One duke, two counts and many noblemen completed the invitation list. The shop prospered; it served not only as a source of supply, but as a social symbol and therefore reflected the social atmosphere. The news of a pest epidemic in Russia reduced the demand; gossip about Wokulski’s possible bankruptcy increased it dramatically. The shop had branches (bankrupt shops that Wokulski bought out, leaving exowners as managers or accountants) and, what is more, it set the standard for new shops to follow. A new era in retail commerce was established.5


Clash of ideas: Positivism contra romanticism What went wrong, then? Why couldn’t Wokulski wake up from his dreams, like Don Quixote did, and take to organic work, a medicine he himself recommended? The value system which was part of his (self) education, the romantic drive for spiritual achievements, diminished all his achievements in the world of business and made them meaningless. In order to convince the reader that this is not a personal tragedy, an idiosyncrasy of individual character, Prus shows us not one, but three romantics in whom the ‘positivist’, sober side fights against their romantic ideals. These are: Wokulski, an entrepreneur and a private romantic; Rzecki, an accountant and a political romantic; and Doctor Szuman, a scientist and a social romantic. All three of them fought their own battles and arrived at their own, more or less tragic, solutions. All three of them acquired their ideals in their early youth, and whatever happened to them afterwards could not change the values that were introduced first and which were the most important. Wokulski’s education, with the exception of those years when he hoped to become a scientist, prepared him to deal with business matters—to earn profits. But the romantic poets whom he was reading together with his commerce books, implanted in him another idea: earning money is good only if it serves some higher ideal, “an object great and unknown” (vol. III, p. 283). Wokulski hesitated between Politics, Science and Love— and finally chose Love. Subsequently, as Szuman dryly comments, he turned into a dual person, a romantic from the 1860s and a positivist from 1870s. The latter made money, the former wondered about the sense of it

5

Although, when compared with Mouret’s department store as described in Zola (at the end of the novel, 50 departments and 3045 employees), it was indeed only a beginning.


“[W]hat should I spend my money on, if not on securing myself happiness? What do I care about some saving theories, if I feel a pain in my heart?” (vol. I, p. 145) He always carried this pain hidden in his heart, and this helped him to reach a state of compassion6—an ability to feel the pain of others, people, animals, plants —“even objects which are called dead” (vol. I, p. 127). So, as long as he wrote letters, made calculations, received purchases, sent agents or loaded the carts, his heart was quiet. As soon as his business activities ceased, the heart would hurt again. Romanticism is a heart disease. Most of the time, his business side seemed to serve his romantic soul well, and peace seemed to be near, together with success. But when his princess turned out to be nothing but a cowgirl the equilibrium vanished. “On this earth we chase a phantom that each of us carries in our heart, and only when it flees, do we recognise it as madness…” (vol. I, p. 106) But who is to be blamed? Wokulski accuses the romantic poets: “‘You have wasted my life… You poisoned two generations!’… he whispered. ‘These are the effects of your sentimental beliefs about love’” (vol. II, p. 278).7 But love was not the only ideal and poets were not the only ones who were guilty. Rzecki, a very proper accountant, became poisoned in a different way. His father and all his friends had but one love: Napoleon. No matter which number he wore, a Napoleon served for them as a symbol of Polish independence, to which they dedicated their dreams. Before he began his commercial education, that is, before the age of seven, Rzecki was already trained to become a soldier. In 1848, when Napoleon III entered Paris, Rzecki dreamed of his dead father and read it as a sign. Soon he was ready to travel. His romanticism did not ruin his accounting career only because in those years many people shared in some or other version of romanticism (the prophet of


romanticism, Adam Mickiewicz, died in the Crimean war in 1855). Rzecki was joined by another salesman from the same shop and only the fact that somebody had to stay stopped the young principal going with them. They joined the Hungarian army (which fought for independence against the Austrians) and suffered the soldier’s fate: fear, hunger, tiredness, death, and doubt. 8 Rzecki’s companion died of the latter: he lost his faith in equality and justice. The accountant came back to wait for the next Napoleon, and to fight back the doubts, which grew together with new phenomena, such as antisemitism: “Is this the century that came after the eighteenth, after this eighteenth century that wrote on its banners: freedom, equality, fraternity?… Hell, why did I fight the Austrians?… What did my companions die for?…

6 “All

languages that derive from Latin form the word ‘compassion’ by combining the prefix meaning ‘with’ (com-) and the root meaning ‘suffering’ (late Latin, passio). In other languages— Czech, Polish, German and Swedish, for instance—this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means ‘feeling’… In languages that derive from Latin, ‘compassion’ means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, ‘pity’…connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer… In languages that form the word ‘compassion’ not from the root ‘suffering’ but from the root ‘feeling’, the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult… This kind of compassion… therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme” (Kundera, 1985, pp. 19–20). 7 Zola’s Mouret is also in love. But his love is a passion, which can be countervailed by another passion, that of interest, or love of gain (Hirschman, 1981). Wokulski’s is a sublime passion, a virtue, not a demned and rejected the role of interest as a governing passion.


Stories! hallucinations! the Emperor Napoleon the IVth will set everything right again.” (vol. III, pp. 200–201) Death saved the old accountant from seeing his illusions fall. He—the luckiest of them all—died a romantic, uncured. But his was the romantic generation, unlike the two other men, who were younger and whose fate was to become “transitional men”. Doctor Szuman, a Jewish physician, is in many respects Wokulski’s complement. Having read the same poems, his dream was first dedicated to Love. In love with a Polish noblewoman, he believed in equality and the ending of social prejudice, but the fight was unequal and his fiancee could not stand it—she died. Szuman tried to commit suicide, but a colleague passing by saved him from death—and took his practice, since it was clear that Szuman was psychically unstable and could not be trusted. This personal tragedy pushed him towards science, but the romanticism persisted. Instead of dedicating himself to his medical duties, Szuman put all his efforts into research on relations between hair and race, and when the results were published and interested no one, the doctor began dreaming again. In times of growing antisemitism, he dreamt about educated Jews joining forces with Polish people in a fight

8

Prus, as a result of his political adventures (participation in the uprising of 1863), became also a political realist (Szweykowski, 1972). This attitude cost him an accusation of lack of patriotism (Piescikowski, 1988). More sophisticated literary criticism, however, praised the ‘antithetical’ character of his writing, where contrasting opposite beliefs was seen as a conscious device. This trait proved to be contagious for his critics: indeed, there is no thesis in critiques of Prus’ works that was not contradicted by some other reviewer. It is therefore advisable to recall the hermeneutical canon, according to which an author lives only in and through a text. The ‘Prus’ I am speaking about is a fictitious character emerging from my interpretations of his texts and others’ texts about him.


against oppressors—the magnates, the exploiters. It was Wokulski’s turn to call him a dreamer. Hence the three representatives of positivism, an entrepreneur, an accountant and a physician, could not defend their lives from their romantic inheritance. The old times were over, but they took their price. Wokulski, says Szuman, “died under the remnants of feudalism”. Capitalism had to begin on the ruins.9 The most interesting lesson for us today is that the cultural context that shaped the fates of the three main characters10 was not the context inhabited by the characters, the one presented in the previous sections. It was a past context, that lived at one generation’s remove, as a result of the intensive socialisation process which took place in the protagonists’ youth. In other words, Prus demonstrated how history influences present events not by deterministic developments, but by its seeds that, sown in young people, give fruit long after the main plant is dead (if I may be excused such a feudal metaphor). This is a lesson which should be especially crucial for organization studies, which tend to observe what is visible and take what sits in people’s hearts very lightly. Fiction and organization studies Prus was compared to Zola because of his realism; to Balzac because of his psychologising sociology; to Dickens because of his humour. All this made him, in the eyes of his enemies, an eclectic, additionally tainted by a touch of—God forbid!—symbolism; in the eyes of his admirers, an entirely original author, who never found followers. In the present perspective, the literary faults or virtues are of less importance. The crucial question is whether there is anything that organization studies can learn from fiction. An instantaneous—and somewhat malicious—answer would be: good writing, although not


necessarily in the same form. But there is also something else. In the first place, novels can be seen as rich and neglected source of “capta” 11 on both organising practices and contexts of organising. As to the former, Zola is a richer source than Prus. It has been rightly pointed out by his critics that the details of Wokulski’s successful business in the Bulgarian war, the dealings behind his shop and the famous “Company for Commerce” operations are rather vague and do not progress beyond the fact that he always invests at the right moment and in the right place (Kotarbinski, 1890/ 1988). But as to the context of organising, Prus tells us more than Zola. Using his literary privilege, he explores spheres that we, as students of organizations, vaguely sense but have no license to explore. Zeitgeist, intellectual fashion, the core of yesterday’s socialisation system—we mention them carefully, equally convinced of their role in shaping the actual organisational processes and helpless in our impotence, unable to address them directly. Our methods do not permit us to do so, but literary methods do. We are to deal in facts, whereas they can deal in fiction. However, novels are facts, and therefore can be legitimately used—not as sources of theories to be repeated, but as social facts to be studied in order to arrive at richer theories. In the second place, novels, especially of the kind represented by The Doll, can be direct models for our undertakings. What impresses me most in Prus’ 9

One could question the faith in sanative powers of capitalism, as expressed in the novel and, most likely, in the positivist program as such. It can be explained, in Hirschman’s formulation, as a “desperate search for a way of avoiding society’s ruin, permanently threatening at the time because of precarious arrangements for internal and external order” (Hirschman 1981, p. 130). 10 Izabela, although prominent in the novel, can hardly be called a ‘character’ at all: she is presented as a mechanical doll, with a primitive program implanted, unable to change and develop.


attempt is that he does what we should be doing: focuses on the social stage, on patterns of social actions and interactions, assuming that it is these patterns that shape both personalities and social structures which, in turn, will prepare the next stage for the future social action. In this sense, he remains on the meso-level, as Harrè puts it (1981), and is undoubtedly a social constructionist in the best sense of the word. In this light, the accusation of psychologism is unwarranted. 12 Prus was not really psychologising: he knew no more about his characters than anybody who was in their confidence could learn by reading a diary (Rzecki’s diary is one of the main devices in the novel) or in conversation. In other words, he presents the readers with as much of the personalities as it is necessary in order to understand their social observations—as much, in fact, as social scientists would when presenting their respondents. In this sense, he extends the possibilities of naturalists: he not only observes the objects of his interest; he also talks to them, aware of the basic similarity between them and himself. An ideal social scientist, one may say, on an ideal analytical plane: that of the long-desired bridge between the individual and the societal, between agency and structure. 11

In concordance with Laing (1967), I claim that we do not ‘collect data’. There is nobody ‘out there’ to give us anything. What we do, is to capture meanings, using such nets as we ourselves are able to produce. 12 Prus was additionally accused of being a poor psychologist: his characters were “unconvincing” and their psychological troubles “boring” (see e.g. Swietochowski, 1890/1988). Evidently. Swietochowski had not read Zola… Prus’ psychology is of a sociological kind. It was rightly said that he was not really interested in his characters (although he liked them) but used their psychic processes as illustrations of social phenomena. Technically speaking, however, he used very advanced psychologist devices like integral recall, associations and dissociations, digressive recall—later to be developed to perfection by Proust and Joyce (Turey, 1933/1988).


References Boguslawski, W. (1891/1988) Boleslaw Prus. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Brandes, G. (1890) Intryck från Polen. Stockholm: Ulrik Fredriksons Förlag. Brown, R.H. (1977) A poetic for sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Czarniawska, B. (1986) The management of meaning in the Polish crisis. Journal of Management Studies, 23 (3): 313–331. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1987) Control processes in declining organizations: The Polish Economy 1971–1981. Organization Studies, 8(2): 149–168. Fabre, J. (1962/1988) Przedmowa do “Lalki”. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Feldman, W. Wspolczesna literatura polska. (1908/1988) In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci. Warszawa: PWN. Hirschman, A. ([1977/1981) The passions and the interests.. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Kamienski, H.S. (1931/1988) Pol wieku literatury polskiej. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Kotarbinski, J. (1890/1988) Powiesc mieszczanska. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Kundera. M. (1985) The unbearable lightness of being. London: faber and faber. Laing, R.D. (1967) The politics of experience. New York: Ballantine Books. Lange, A. (1890/1988) Przeglad literacki. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci. Warszawa: PWN. Matuszewski, I. (1894/1988) Artysta i filozof. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus, Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) (1988) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Prus, B. (1987) Lalka. Warszawa: PIW. Sienkiewicz, H. (1881/1988) Szkice literackie. “Pisma” Boleslawa Prusa. In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN. Swietochowski, A. (1890/1988) Aleksander Glowacki (Boleslaw Prus). In: Piescikowski, E. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci…Warszawa: PWN.


Szweykowski, Z. (1972) Tworczosc Boleslawa Prusa. Warszawa: PIW. Turey, K. (1933/1988) Boleslaw Prus a wspolczesnosc. In: Piescikowski, É. (Ed.) Prus. Z dziejow recepcji tworczosci… Warszawa: PWN.

ON EVIL ORGANIZATIONS AND ILLUSORY REFORMS A Scandinavian Saga by Bengt Jacobsson

There is an old rumour claiming that Arvid Falk, the main character in Strindberg’s novel “The Red Room” (Röda rummet, 1879), was a member of socialistic and anarchistic secret societies on the Continent.1 As an agent for these societies, inspired by Russian nihilists and the Paris Commune, he collected intelligence on the distribution of power in Swedish public administration, on mechanisms of opinion formation, and on citizens’ possibilities to influence their living conditions. Nowadays, such investigations belong to the realm of social sciences. Falk’s mission was in a sense identical with the one that the research programe, The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden, was given by the government about a century later.2 In today’s terms, we would call his method participant observation or, even more specifically, action learning. Röda rummet takes place in the years following the parliamentary reform of 1866, when the Parliament as

1

All following quotes come from “The Red Room”, 1913, London: Howard Latimer. Authorized translation by Ellie Scleussner. 2 It was an investigation whose aim was to “take into consideration the distribution of power resources and influence among different individuals and within different areas of society. By gathering empirical information and developing theories, the investigation should broaden and deepen our knowledge of the conditions of Swedish democracy and assess whether the general development of society is bringing it closer to the Swedish ideal of democracy” (Government’s Instruction, 1985:36)

66 • JACOBSSON

based on the four Estates (the Nobility, the Clergy, the Bourgeoisie and the Farmers) had been abolished. Sweden was at the turning-point from an agrarian to an industrial, capitalist society. The industrial revolution, prepared for through this parliamentary reform and through removal of barriers for industry and commerce, was in the offing. Although the revolution did not take place until the 1880s, its characteristic traits could also be seen in the preceding decades. Nevertheless, a great deal of Swedish production was still untouched by modern machine technology, even if it was carried out in factories. Also, much of the industry was still unprofitable (Gårdlund, 1942). But changes were near. Railroads were built, and other communication facilities had gradually been improved. Companies were founded. Industry and commerce expanded. Sweden was changing. In the 1870s, idealistic and quite fanciful, homebrewed ideologies still dominated the Swedish cultural scene. A dominating administrative philosophy and the leading academic standard was for decades Boströmianism (Liedman, 1980; Nordin, 1981). Boström’s philosophy stressed eternal hierarchies, fixed rights and duties and, at the top, the King and God as the guardians of social order. Arvid Falk learned all of it together with other future employees of the Swedish state bureaucracy at the university in Uppsala.3 According to Boström, Kant had been refuted by Fichte, Fichte by Schelling, Schelling by Hegel, and Hegel, of course, by Professor Boström himself. Stockholm’s high society was also still mainly untouched by these materialistic currents. The novelist Hjalmar Söderberg, for instance, claimed that literary critique in Sweden condemned as dirty everything that was not about cathedrals, lilacs or the Royal Family. 3

Even today, the motto of the Uppsala University—“It is great to think free, but to think right is even greater”—sounds appropriate for a school of public administration.

ON EVIL ORGANIZATIONS AND ILLUSORY REFORMS • 67

Even if times were materialistic, the dominant ideology was still idealistic (Nordin, 1981). If not explicitly elaborated by Strindberg, this institutional background is present throughout Röda rummet. Strindberg’s primary interest focused on the power of opinion-formation; the power over thoughts.4 He already knew a lot about the weight of public opinion from his own experience. His drama about Master Olof, the main character in the Swedish Reformation, had never been allowed on stage in Stockholm, in spite of the fact that it was disguised as an historic drama of ideas, which was, then, the legitimate way of writing about eternal problems. In Mäster Olof, Strindberg elaborated on the impossibility of realisation of high ideals, and the necessity of giving them up, as much as on the necessity of holding high ideals, and the impossibility of giving them up. Thus the tragedy. When Röda rummet was published, it immediately turned out to be a great success. Strindberg was compared to Emile Zola; a writer whom he, up to that time, had never read. Even in the far North, however, the Zeitgeist in the late nineteenth century tended more and more towards naturalism: the book documents in a realistic way Falk’s experiences. But Strindberg did not consider writing an experimental, scientific endeavour as Zola did. August Strindberg described the world in all its guises, but never tried to con vince anybody that the observations were objective and independent of the observer. Quite the opposite, it is apparent in all his works that events could be experienced from different perspectives. Moreover, Strindberg was writing with a

4

The Study of Power and Democracy in the late 1980s also focused on the importance of opinion formation claiming that “… issues that the mass media chooses to cover and its reflection and interpretation of different social events, conflicts and tensions condition the exercise of power” (The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden, Progress Report 1987).

68 • JACOBSSON

fair dose of humour and was frequently entertainingly sarcastic. Posterity has saluted Strindberg for his rude and irreverent assault on Swedish society, but has condemned his hero (Falk) for his resignation and acceptance of the regime then in force. By true idealists Falk was interpreted (just like Master Olof) as a renegade. We should, however, be cautious in our judgements concerning both the author and the hero. Falk’s place in the story is ambiguous. He deceived the other characters by saying that he was writing a textbook in numismatics (of all topics). Did he deceive the author as well? Falk might have been busy documenting the situation in Sweden for his principals, but we still know little about who the principals were and what these reports looked like. It is therefore safer to decode Röda rummet as a story about the origins of the modern, organised Sweden. And this is what I propose to do in this chapter. Strindberg arranged Falk’s experiences in a kind of Bildungsroman. Falk starts out as a true believer in the humanitarian spirit of at least some people. Gradually, he is confronted with the deceitfulness inherent in individuals and, above all, organizations. Thus we learn about society at the same pace as Falk did. But before we confront this knowledge, it is necessary to return to the plot and briefly sketch the pains that Falk had to endure during his tour de societé. The continuing disillusions of Arvid Falk Falk’s venture started in early May. Disappointed by a year of work for the civil service, Arvid Falk decided to leave his career as a government employee and to take up literature instead. To get some advice on this he arranged a meeting with Struve, who—in Falk’s eyes— was a newspaper writer with liberal ideas and a man of progress. Struve thought it wrong to terminate an


employment just like that, and asked Falk why he should resign from a career that brings both honours and power. “Honours to those who have usurped the power and influence to the most unscrupulous” (p. 6), answered Falk, thereby summarising one year of humiliations in the civil service. In an entertaining way, Falk told Struve about the inner workings of ministerial departments like the Board of Administration of Employee Pensions and the Board of Payment of Employee Salaries. Clearly, these offices were not what Weber had in mind when he spoke about the efficiency of bureaucratic organizations. In the land of the copyists, the notaries, the clerks, the comptrollers and their secretaries, the public prosecutors, the registrar of the exchequers, the master of the rolls, the librarians, the treasurers, the cashiers, the procurators, the pronotarys, the keeper of the minutes, the actuaries, the keepers of the records, the secretaries, the first clerks, it was difficult to see if any work at all was done.5 Falk was full of hope, courage and strength, which he did not want to surrender to the boredom of bureaucracy. “Soon our hopes will become realities” (p. 5), he told Struve. Falk was like a child who “still believed in everything, truth and fairy tales alike” (p. 3). Strindberg let us follow Falk to artists’ colonies, worker’s associations, theatre companies, publishers, newspapers (where an editor, among other things, must be “a little stupid, because true stupidity always goes hand in hand with conservative leanings; he must be endowed with a certain amount of shrewdness, which would enable him to know intuitively the wishes of his chiefs and never let him forget that the public and private welfare are…one and the same thing…”, p. 115). 5

In a tongue-in-cheek footnote which became famous Strindberg commented that “since the reorganization of the public offices, this description is no longer true to life”.

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Bit by bit, Falk’s belief in institutions vanished. The parliamentary reform, which he earlier had thought should introduce changes, proved to change nothing. The country believed that now it was time for the dreams to come true, but this was a mistake. It (that is: the country) slept for years, and when it woke up it was faced by a reality which looked as it always had. In the bureaucracy, things which appeared small and ridiculous to Falk were treated seriously, and everything that Falk thought of as important was scoffed at. “The people were called the mob and their only use was to be shot at by the army if the occasion should arise. The new form of government was openly reviled…” (p. 12). Falk could not stand it any longer. He confided, to Struve, that he detested a society that was not founded on a voluntary basis; a society that was a web of lies. When Falk, later that same year, summarised his experiences in writing, he was no longer a believer. He felt tired and indifferent. He had been visiting meetings in the Parliament and in the church councils, meetings of share-holders, philanthropic meetings, police court proceedings, festivals, funerals, meetings with working men. Everywhere he had heard “…big words and many words, words never used in daily intercourse, a particular species of words which mean nothing…he could see in man nothing but the deceitful social animal” (p. 182). And he had seen that all conservative journalists who defended and upheld everything that was wrong (or left it untouched), were treated with utmost respect. He attacked Struve, whom he earlier had thought a man of progress, for committing crime by always supporting the powerful. Struve claimed that he was on the side of the law. And Falk answered: “Haha! The Law! Who has dictated the law which governs the life of the poor man, you fool! The rich man! That is to say, the master made the law for the slave… Who wrote the law of 1734? Mr


Kronstedt! Who is responsible for the law of corporal punishment? Colonel Sabelman—it was his Bill, and his friends, who formed the majority at that time, pushed it through. Who is responsible for the law concerning joint stock companies? Judge Svindelgren. Who is responsible for the new Parliamentary laws? Assessor Wallonius… Who has written the new law of succession? Criminals! The forest laws? Thieves! The law relating to bills of private banks? Swindlers! And you maintain that God has done it? Poor God!” (p. 202) Struve was however not unprepared for this outburst. If Falk wanted to be able to escape the situation of the burnout that he was in, he had to change his view of the world. He had to abandon his ideals. Struve advised Falk to “…take a bird’s-view of the world” (p. 203), and see how small and insignificant everything was. He should start with a conviction that the world was a heap of rubbish and that people were refuse. Then nothing more should come as a surprise. “You will never lose an illusion; but, on the contrary, you will be filled with great joy whenever you come across a fine thought, a good action; try to acquire a calm contempt of the world…” (p. 203) Falk longed for a fight with Struve, but discovered himself unable to attack the journalist. Instead, he showed him both kindness and sympathy. His mind was in a chaos, as he thought about Struve’s advice. Truth and lies, right and wrong danced together in a harmony. He managed to work himself into a condition of a complete indifference, and found fine motives for the actions of his enemies. It appeared to him that he had been wrong all along and that is was quite uninteresting whether the whole was black or white. And whatever it was, he was not entitled to criticise it. His current mood gave him a sense of relief and restfulness that he had not felt in all those years when he had made the troubles of humanity his own.

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The journey was not over, however. Falk’s last illusions disappeared as he followed Olle Montanus, a free-thinking artist, to the meeting of the Working Men Association. Falk hoped to finally meet generous people, free from pettiness. Olle warned him that most things in life differ from our expectations. And even at the Working Men Association, the front bench was filled with members of the aristocracy, officers and government officials. The Association made a statement against the unlawful movements which under the name of strikes were spreading all over Europe. And when carpenter Eriksson asked permission to speak and claimed that strikers were right, he was accused of bad conduct. The meeting also decided to regal a gift to the Duke of Dalsland as an “expression of gratitude of the working man to the Royal Family and, more especially, of his disapproval of those working men’s disturbances which under the name of the ‘Commune’ devastated the French capital” (p. 260). At the end of the meeting, Olle Montanus was allowed to hold a lecture on Sweden. He had promised not to exceed half a hour, but he was thrown out of the meeting before that. Olle, a virtuous man and an idealist, managed to offend the audience in more than one way during his speech. He claimed that Sweden was more or less denationalised. He maintained that the Swedes were a stupid, conceited, slavish, envious and uncouth nation, which was approaching its end. As Olle vigorously attacked everything including the Royal Family, the ‘workers’ at the meeting finally kicked him out. Falk told him that the speech was crazy (he should at least have left Charles the XIIth out of it), and that the papers would pull him to pieces. Olle admitted that it was a pity but said that “it was fun to give it to them for once” (p. 266). Falk worked then for a while at the staff of the Workman’s Flag (a radical paper), but became more and more demoralised by the standards of the editorial procedures. The rules of the paper were strict: once a


month, the town councillors were to be accused of extravagance; once a week, the Royal Theatre should be attacked; as often as possible he should assail the form of government (but not the Government itself); and attacks at certain members of Parliament and ministers were always censored. Falk went into a period of indecision and melancholy. And, eventually, was found in the company of two scandal writers in a low public house, drinking heavily. Sitting together with these irreverent and sarcastic writers, he opened the window and looked out. He fancied that he was sitting in his grave “breathing brandy fumes and kitchen smells, eating the funeral repast at the burial of his youth, his principles and his honour” (p. 288). What a contrast with the situation in the beginning of the book when Falk had been watching the city from above. Then, he had been cheerful, decisive and full of energy. At Mosebacke,6 “…his nostrils expanded, his eyes flashed, and he raised his clenched fist as if he were challenging or threatening the poor town” (p. 3). Now, his societal tour had come to an end. His perspective of the world had changed. Both literally and metaphorically, Falk was at the bottom. Everything smelled of death. Once more, he looked out of the window eager to find an object which would not inspire him with loathing…there was nothing but a newly tarred dust-bin—standing like a coffin— with its contents of cast-off finery and broken litter” (p. 288). Falk’s thoughts climbed up the fire-escape from the dirt right up into the blue sky “…but no angels were ascending and descending, and no love was watching from above—there was nothing but the empty, blue void” (p. 288). No God. No God but Borg, a man of science (of course the natural sciences) became Falk’s saviour. He took him to an island in the archipelago of Stockholm, where Falk was left to recover. And in the Archipelago, in its Edenlike at mosphere, Falk recovered. In Borg’s words, Falk was able to re-enter society, register his name with the

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rest of the cattle and hold his tongue. He did not read and he did not talk, but he was on the road to sanity. Back in Stockholm, Falk re-entered civilisation. He adjusted to the latest fashion in clothes. He started teaching, presenting both Louis the XIVth and Alexander as great men, since they had been successful. He called the French Revolution a terrible event and, eventually, he re-started his career in the civil service. With friends, he discussed numismatics and autographs. He was “so free from fixed opinions that he is the most amiable man in the world, liked and appreciated by bosses and colleagues” (p. 302). He took part in social life, and was popular among women although they did not know what to think of him as he always smiled and made sarcastic little pleasantries. And he could be out-spoken about everything, except politics! Falk survived, but Olle Montanus drowned himself. In his last note, Olle outlined his views of a world in which the will of princes and people always clashes, and where one-half of humanity is engaged in spiritual growth while the other merely has time to get food for the day. Falk listened together with some friends to Montanus’ last words. Borg asked Falk what he thought about it, and got the answer: “…the usual cry—nothing more” (p. 313). In the last chapter of the book (called revue), Borg writes about what happens in Stockholm and with Falk. Falk was going to get married, and he could afford it since the public offices had been reorganised doubling the salaries and number of posts. In the meantime, he was enthusiastically writing a textbook on numismatics, but was totally uninterested in what was going on in the world. Borg, however, could not make Falk out. He thought of him as a potential political 6 A hill from which one can see almost the whole city of Stockholm. It is sometimes translated as “Moses Heights”, incorrectly though.


fanatic. Between you and me, he told one of his friends, Falk could be a member of one of those secret continental societies. Not very long ago, Borg had seen Falk at the reading of the King’s speech in Parliament… …dressed in a purple cloak, with a feather in his hat, sitting at the foot of the throne (at the foot of the throne!) and I thought—no, it would be a sin to say what I thought. But when the Prime Minister read his Majesty’s gracious propositions respecting the state of the country and its needs, I saw a look in Falk’s eyes which plainly said: What on earth does his majesty know of the condition and needs of the country? That man, oh! that man! (p. 323) Age of reform—days of illusions Rien n’est si désagréable que d’être pendu obscurément7 — Voltaire’s words stand as a motto for Röda rummet. Since the theatres did not put his drama Mäster Olof on stage, Strindberg felt condemned to silence. He was also in desperate need of money having experienced personal bankruptcy. Röda rummet was meant as a violent attack on a society full of rigidity, greed and mendacity. During his tour across political organizations, bureaucracies, companies, newspapers, workers’ associations and publishers, it became clear to Falk that greed and selfishness was always hidden behind more idealistic facades. One good example of differences between practices and appearances can be found in the discussion about reforms. In the centre of Falk’s initial enthusiasm was the recent change in the Swedish constitution. Democratic ideas were flourishing both on the continent and in Sweden, and constitutional change was a way of responding to such demands. The old Ständestaat based on the four Estates had been abolished: not with a revolution, but through consent from both the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie and the farmers. In the

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beginning, Falk was sure that this political and organisational reform also would mean changes in terms of the real power of citizens. As Strindberg notes, Falk still believed in fairy tales.8 The discussion about the reform had been going on for a long time. Strindberg comments that “pamphlets had been written, newspapers founded, stones thrown, suppers eaten and speeches made; meetings had been held, petitions had been presented, the railways had been used, hands had been pressed, volunteer regiments had been formed; and so, in the end, with a great deal of noise, the desired object had been attained” (p. 113). Much attention focused on the reform, and many people were full of enthusiasm. This was the reform of the nineteenth century, and those who fought arduously thought that the game was won. But, as Falk painfully found out, the game may had been subject to a change in rules but it was definitely not won: The reform-punsch9 attracted many a politician, who, later on, became a great screamer; the smell of reform cigars excited many an ambitious dream which was never realised; the old dust was washed off with reform soap; it was generally believed that everything would be right now; and after the tremendous uproar the country lay down and fell asleep, confidently awaiting the brilliant results which were to be the outcome of all this fuss. (p. 113) The country, in Strindberg’s accounts, slept for some years, woke up and found out that nothing really had changed. No brilliant results were in sight. Politicians were criticised, and some persons accused the promoters that the Bill orig inated in another country,

7

Nothing is more unpleasant than to be hanged in silence.


and that the original could be found in a well-known handbook. There was nothing ‘Swedish’ about it. Olle Montanus’ reflections about Sweden, in his “speech on Sweden”, come to mind, where he claimed that Sweden was being denationalised: “…you all know that we owe the new Swedish constitution to a Walloon.10 Capable people, these Walloons, and very honest.” (p. 263) And as Olle continued to tell about the scum that over the years had sat on the Swedish throne, he was soon thrown out from the meeting.11 Strindberg, thus, implied that reforms were changes initiated from the outside; a position which is similar to that taken by today’s institutional theorists (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Developments on the international scene forced even the Swedish élite to re-think their strategies and actions. An accurate interpretation of the parliamentary reform would be that those who used to have power (the nobility) were in desperate need of legitimation, and therefore formally tried to co-opt new important strata of the community (a mechanism elegantly described later by Selznick, 1965). By voting in favour of the reform, the aristocracy actively took part in the process which consequently wiped them out as the major political actor. The advocates of the reform celebrated the fact that the streets of Stockholm did not have to be coloured by the blood of the aristocrats. In Strindberg’s essay about the “Days of Illusions” (Illusionernas dagar, in Nya Riket), the King rides through the streets of Stockholm celebrated by the people, thinking that “you salute me, because you think that I can give you a new free constitution, but I can’t give you any freedom, and, surely, I do not want to do 8

In fact, only 6% of the population were allowed to take part in the elections to the new parliament. Most of all, the reform favoured the new middle class. 9 Punsch is a special kind of very sweet alcoholic beverage made on the basis of arrack, popular in Sweden,

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it, to an assembly that cheers my pipe-cleaner, and is so ignorant concerning the constitution, that they think that I can give them anything… Bread and spectacles! I haven’t got any bread, but I can give you a spectacle, that you have to pay for. You want to have humbug! And you get it!” (p. 9). The King (which was Charles the XVth, popular among the artists) knew the importance of staging a good performance, and the difference between actual political processes and their presentation. This kind of image-making and the differences between talk and action are today phenomena of great interest to the social sciences (Edelman, 1975; Brunsson, 1989). Röda rummet shows clearly how sceptical Strindberg was where reforms are concerned. In his educational journey, one of Falk’s ambition was to “gain an idea of the division of labour in so important and comprehensive department” (p. 7) (he was referring to the Board of Payment of Employee Salaries), but all he found was attention to superfluous matters and contempt for the people. Falk’s experiences in the state bureaucracy was filled with examples of rigidity, indolence, laziness and inefficiency. As he entered one of the rooms, the following scene enfolded: The redoubtable actuary sat in a capacious easychair with his feet on reindeer skin. He was engaged in seasoning a real meerschaum pipe, sewn up in soft leather. So as not to appear idle, he was glancing at yesterday’s Post, acquainting himself in this way with the wishes of the Government. (p. 10)

10 A derogative allusion to Bernadottes, a French family which rules Sweden since 1818. 11 Olle’s doubts about the Swedishness of the reform was provoking. It could be noted that the instructions to The Study of Power and Democracy took great care to speak about the ‘Swedish model’ and about the “Swedish ideal of democracy”.


Strindberg is not alone in his scepticism toward the reformatory power of reforms. Let us see how this topic is viewed by contemporary organisational analysts. Brunsson and Olsen (1993) argued that reforms of organisational forms often are presented as dramatic changes that will solve problems once and for all. In fact, these reforms reflect stability more than change. Reforms can be seen as routines that stabilise action patterns in organizations. They offer seductive solutions to problems, especially for those who are willing to forget the previous reform. They seldom solve problems. And as reforms “lose their appeal over time, they become easy victims of proposals for new reforms” (Brunsson 1990, p. 225). Thereby, it becomes necessary to launch new reforms, and to claim that the sulky present, through this reform (compare Strindberg’s reform-soap), will be replaced by a splendid future. Their contemporary equivalent are administrative reforms, and more specifically budgetary reforms, in the late twentieth century. It has been observed that such reforms recur in the Swedish public administration at intervals of 8–10 years, and it seems to be basically the same reform which pops up every time (CzarniawskaJoerges and Jacobsson, 1989). These reforms represent continuity through change, which at first glance could appear paradoxical. However, budget reforms can be also considered as temporary Utopias which will never materialise, but at any given period of time give comfort by establishing whether the organization is heading in the right direction. Capitalist firms and the rise of a political economy The power élite in the nineteenth century was situated within the state bureaucracy. Ministers were recruited from the bureaucracy, and they looked upon themselves as bureaucrats (Nordin, 1981). However, capitalist companies began to play an important role and became

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more and more resourceful as organizations. There was a rapid increase in joint stock companies in the 1870s, even if 1878 ended in a crash (when Strindberg himself became a victim). This was, however, only a short-term decrease in economic activity. From the beginning of the 1880s, the growth of capitalist companies recommenced. Joint stock companies were growing in number and the society was becoming more and more organised. In the story about the Marine Insurance Company, called Triton, Strindberg retraced the mechanisms: [T]he greatest discovery of a great century was made, namely, that one could live more cheaply and better on other people’s money than on the results of one’s own efforts. Many, a great many people had taken advantage of the discovery, and as no patent law protected it…(p. 135) Levi, another character in Röda rummet, was a man born and educated for a life in business. As his father died when he was twenty-five, he had to take care of the family. All this happened when he was thinking of finishing work and letting others work for him. But he was made for business; “…his small feet were made for walking on the Brussels carpet of a Board-room, and his carefully manicured hands were particularly suitable for very light work, such as the signing of a name, preferably on a printed circular” (p. 135). He went to his uncle and told him that he thought of founding a joint stock company. The uncle considered it a good idea, and knew already how to staff it (Aaron could be treasurer, Simon secretary, Isaac cashier and the other boys book-keepers.12) By his insights into the development of Triton, Falk was confronted with business life in this era. It was also natural for a twenty-five year old business-educated man like Levi, to take advantage of all brilliant contemporary ideas. Together with his more experienced


uncle, he outlined the company’s strategy. The basic idea was, of course, to make money, even if it was not presented like that. As the Chairman of the Marine Insurance Company (Triton) later said, it was wrong to call the Marine Insurance Institution a business. It was not a business; just a group of men who had collected a sum of money and were ready to risk it. It was a philanthropic institution in the interest of mankind. If Triton was to be considered an altruistic and humane institution, prominent men in the board were needed: a naval officer, a retired minister of the State, a count, a professor and (most important) a legal man, that is a counsellor of a High Court. Then they had to issue debentures, but little in cash (risk-capital). Levi, in spite of his education still blue-eyed and innocent of the mysteries of business life, asked what would happen if matters should go wrong. The uncle answered that “one goes into liquidation…declare oneself insolvent… And what does it matter if the company becomes insolvent? It isn’t you, or I, or he! But one can also increase the number of shares, or issue debentures which the Government may buy up in hard times at a good price” (p. 138). It became clear for Levi that he need not risk anything. At the shareholders meeting for this philanthropic institution (that is: the Insurance Company), Falk reported for the Red Cap (another radical paper, which he joined in a late stage of his societal excursion). He was astonished when he saw the shareholders. It required (he did understand that much) great love to risk one’s money “…for the benefit of the suffering neighbour whom misfortune had befallen” (p. 139). In fact, Falk had never seen such accumulation of love simultaneously at one spot, as he did at the shareholders meeting. And Strindberg noted: “… although not yet an entirely disillusioned man, he could 12 These antisemitic ironies are, like many other texts from that time, taken for granted and never commented upon in the text.

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not suppress a feeling of amazement” (p. 139). He was reporting on a gathering of people full of compassion. As the Managing Director began his speech with words about the unexpected ways of Providence, the altruistic and compassionate crowd got somewhat worried. And as he continued about accidents which had “…brought to scorn the foresight of the wisest and the calculations of the most cautious” (p. 143), the crowd was not that sympathetic anymore, but shouted instead that they wanted him to come to business. They wanted the figures!13 The Managing Director was under pressure, and he had to admit that he could only propose a dividend of 5% on the paid capital. The crowd was roaring that it was a shame. Disgusting! Just like throwing one’s money away. And what should the small capitalists do? The State ought to help them, and that without delay. The meeting was closed in disorder, but with the hope that next year’s dividend might be about 20%. Later, the situation of the Marine Insurance Company Triton was discussed in Parliament. The issue of the state support was voted upon and it was decided that the government “…in view of the greatness, the patriotism, which characterised the enterprise, should take over the debentures” (p. 277). The company went into liquidation; the state protected the capitalists. Falk became furious and claimed that he “should like to see those sharpers in prison; it would help to put a stop to these swindles. But they call it political economy! It’s fraudulent!” (p. 278). When today’s scholars talk about the rise of a negotiated economy (Hernes, 1978; Jacobsson, 1989) as something characteristic of the late twentieth century, they should bear the story of Triton in mind. Against organizations Hobsbawm described the 1870s as a breaking point between the age of individualism and the age of


collectivism. And it is clear in Röda rummet that the collectivism inherent in bureaucratic organizations made Strindberg pessimistic. The argument has since then been developed by prominent sociologists: The way things seem becomes, in this context, more important than the way they are, with the result that verbal formulas (degenerating readily into propaganda), and formal organizational devices, appear to be adequate to fill the need. The problem becomes one of manipulating public opinion…(Selznick, 1966, p. 261) Thus, from a means, organization becomes an end. To the institutions and qualities which at the outset were destined simply to ensure the good working of the party-machine…, a greater importance comes ultimately to be attached than to the productivity of the machine. Henceforward the sole preoccupation is to avoid anything which may clog the machinery. (Michels, 1949, p. 390) It has been proposed by Lindblom that the growth of influence of organizations was gradual and noncontroversial: “never much agitated, never even much resisted, a revolution for which no flags were raised…” (Lindblom, 1977, p. 95). Even if this is true as the overall picture, some individuals were suspicious and opposed these changes. He looked upon public bureaucracies, newspapers and firms as organizations publicly presenting themselves in a way that did not correspond to their actual behavior.

13 To come to business was to arrive at figures. The accounts were (and are) the icons of business firms (Czarniawska-Joerges and Jacobsson, 1989). To talk about the future and of the foresight of the wisest, could have been (and can be) a rhetoric appropriate for a philanthropic institution.

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Strindberg ridicules the idea of organizations as moral entities. When Rhenhjelm, Falk’s spiritual brother in the parallel story in the book, tried to start a career as an actor, he came upon the statutes of the theatre. The first paragraph read: “The theatre is a moral institution… therefore the members should endeavour to live in the fear of God, and to lead a virtuous and moral life” (p. 171). But if the theatre was a moral institution, Rhenhjelm thought, why then should the individuals have to practice “all these beautiful things” (p. 171). In his perspective, only human beings could possibly act morally. The idea of joint-stock companies as “juridical persons” was jested by Strindberg. One of the members of Parliament that Falk overheard, was fascinated by the idea of a joint-stock company “but begged to be allowed to explain to the Chamber that the joint-stock company was not an accumulation of funds, not a combination of people, but a moral personality, as such not responsible…” (p. 105). Strindberg’s position towards the emerging working class movement is also ambivalent. The most heroic character in the book is carpenter Eriksson, who tells the upper-class ladies that “the next campaign will be against all idlers who live on the work of others” (p. 194). The influence of the expanding working class movement is salient, but Falk’s stance is somewhat ambiguous. Falk has problems in letting himself be engaged by seemingly good causes. In a letter to Eduard Brandes, Strindberg himself claimed that: I am socialist, nihilist, republican; everything that can be contrary to the reactionaries! This on intuition, since I am Jean-Jacques’s intimate when it comes to the return to Nature. I would like to turn everything upside-down; to see what is placed at the bottom; I think that we are so snarled, so exceedingly governed that it cannot be settled, but has to be burned down, blown up, and then


established again. (Letter to Eduard Brandes, Dalarö, 29 July 1880) This is undoubtedly revolutionary rhetoric, but it is also a nostalgic yearning for an era, where the evil forces of specialisation and the division of labour did not exist. Strindberg questions specialisation, the new technology, and the division of labour. He stands for an extreme individualism and is suspicious of all forms of organization and bureaucracy. One of his early ideas was to travel around in Europe on a bicycle to investigate the conditions of the aborigines. He wanted to find the ideal, self-sufficient farmers; those who did not yet know about the curse inherent in the division of labour. The latter was seen by Strindberg as the big crook, which locked people up in their pigeonholes, unable to take a comprehensive view. Organizations, thus, stand for the evil. For Falk, it was Nature that most often brought comfort to life (Strindberg was an admirer of Jean-Jacques). Nature plays an important part in the book, symbolising both innocence and lack of hypocrisy. For instance when Falk was drinking together with his friends, he found out that they spoke like human beings (not like persons in books), and: “even their coarseness was not unattractive; there was so much nature in it; so much innocence” (p. 86). Exit, voice or loyalty During his societal round-trip, Falk encountered persons that tried to advise him how to act in a society which was less than perfect. Such a plot is characteristic of an educational novel, and all these advisors had different attitudes and solutions to offer. Three of the most important tutors were Olle Montanus, Borg and Struve. They had all chosen differently among Hirschman’s options of exit, choice or loyalty (Hirschman, 1970). Neither of them can, however, be

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viewed as an ideal-type. They all are entertainingly depicted by Strindberg and, as most of Strindberg’s characters, they reveal a distinct amount of paradoxicality and ambiguity. Olle Montanus was the idealist. He was a sculptor who believed that art can make a difference in the world. He had connections to foreign nihilistic movements, and was also one of the few persons with affiliations to a working class movement at home. He took Falk to the Working Men Association, well aware that Falk would be disappointed. Obviously, Montanus knew that this organization did not represent workers. This was also clear from the description of the meeting. Montanus warned Falk that the working men were not as generous and free from pettiness as Falk had hoped. As he told Falk: “…most things in the world differ from our expectations” (p. 257). And when Olle raised his voice at the meeting, he was soon kicked out. In his suicide letter, Olle told about his background among farmers who had to work hard from sunrise to sunset. He escaped this tiresome life and became an artist. But he also fooled himself, thinking that he could stand above his fellow human beings. Olle was a radical who had not found his part in the society of artists. He belonged nowhere. Clearly influenced by nihilistic and revolutionary ideals, he longed for radical change. For instance, he noted that “it is a strange thing that the will of the princes and the will of the people always clashes. Isn’t there a very simple and easy remedy?” (p. 311). Olle was a friend of Falk, and it plagued Falk (even after his ‘recovery’) to see Olle getting more and more depressed after his failure as a political speaker. When Falk, entertaining himself with friends one night, caught a glimpse of Olle, his mood changed. He became “gloomy like a night on the sea”, and started to drink heavily “as if he wanted to extinguish a smouldering fire” (p. 303). Despite Falk’s re-appearance in the civilised society, Olle’s radical ideas were still attractive to Falk.


Olle was a human being, who could not stand a lessthen-human society. He chose to leave the world, and wanted to look happy as a corpse. Exit. A second tutor to Falk was Borg; a scientist and a pragmatist. He ‘saved’ Falk from chaos and took him to the Stockholm Archipelago. Borg was a biologist who regarded mankind “…with calm indifference; men are to me geological preparations, minerals; some crystallise under one condition, other under another; it all depends on certain laws or circumstances which should leave us completely unmoved” (p. 291). Borg symbolises objectivity and modern science. Different from Montanus, he tries to convince Falk about the importance of a dispassionate attitude. And about the extraordinary foolishness in giving up a career for the sake of ideals. Borg’s role is, however, far from unambiguous. When Falk was on the road to melancholy, Borg had kept an eye on him (with the help of a woman), and eventually managed to stop him from going too far. He was also able to give Falk a prescription for how he should live his life as he re-entered the society. Borg saved Falk with a purpose in mind. There may be a clue to the ambiguity of Borg in the last chapter. He presents a realist’s view of the situation in the society: “…all parties have corrupted one another by presents and counter-presents, and now all of them are grey. This reaction will probably end in socialism…” (p. 314). Furthermore, in the final chapter, it is Borg who says that he believed that Falk might have belonged to the secret societies on the continent, societies that had been triggered by reaction and militarism. Borg’s scientistic attitude leads him to conclusions about institutions in a society similar to Falk’s. Instead of getting depressed by wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, Borg made some forecasts about future dramatic changes. And he could see that Falk would have a part to play in these changes. Falk should, according to Borg, hold his tongue until his words bear weight. In a letter

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to a friend, Strindberg also made some forecasts and commented that “…this whole deceitful building can not carefully be deconstructed but must once, as the foundation is touched, fall, and I do not dislike dynamite in politics” (Letter to Helena Nyblom, 31 January 1882). It may be so that Borg was also waiting for the right moment to come. Voice, in the future. Struve was the most interesting of Falk’s tutors. Early in the book he stood together with Falk at Mosebacke. As Falk told him about his plans to leave his career, Struve tried to change the subject. Finally, he told Falk about the importance of learning the art of living: “…you will find out how difficult it is to earn bread and butter, and how it gradually becomes the main interest… Believe me, who have wife and child, that I know what I’m talking about” (p. 13). Falk made it clear that he despised society, since it was a web of lies. “It’s beginning to grow chilly…” (p. 13), Struve quickly replied, and the flame of conversation ended. On a rainy evening in September, as Falk walked home, he met Struve once again. Struve was in misery, as he had just lost one child. Falk, ignorant of this, accused him of always taking the part of the rich. Struve was, however, not totally defenceless. He argued on the importance of taking a “bird’s-eye view” of the world; of being more dispassionate. If not, he thought that Falk would burn himself to death. Just like in the first meeting with Struve, Falk had tried to attack—in search of steel—but, once again, he struck wood. He ended up lending his dress-coat to Struve and promised to help him with funeral services. Struve is a kind of Mephistophelian character that brought Falk through different stages of frustration. He preached non-commitment and indifference, and Falk, who was oscillating between “voice” and “loyalty”, ended up in chaos. In the darkest moments, it appeared to Falk that “…it was quite immaterial whether the whole was black or white”. Whatever it was, he was not authorised to criticise it. Struve claimed that one had to


cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. He had chosen to be loyal. Struve was well aware of all the greed and folly that ruled life. In the novel, he is the one who pointed out to Falk that the world was a rubbish-heap and should be looked upon from above. Struve always stayed loyal to those in power; both in his work as a journalist and as a house-manager in the poor districts of Stockholm. Struve wished to survive and acted accordingly. Both Montanus’ and Falk’s idealism contrast with Struve’s detached attitude. Montanus’ initial “voice-strategy”, climaxing in his speech on denationalisation of Sweden at the Working Men Association, failed, thus leading to an exit; Falk seemed to go from “voice” to “loyalty”. Struve, as most of us, preferred the bird’s-eye view of the world. Conclusions in the form of letters— revue Letter from Arvid Falk in Paris to the author August Strindberg in Stockholm

Arrived yesterday from London. For two months, I’ve been renting an apartment together with some Danish and Norwegian friends. The landlady claimed that Bakunin had stayed there some years earlier just before he died. Imagine, I have been using Bakunin’s bath-tub! The Scandinavians, unceasingly, and with appreciation, speak about the explosion in Stockholm created by Röda rummet. You have made yourself quite a reputation. Obviously, no silence. And they didn’t hang you. At least not this time. Apart from now being famous, I suppose that you also have made some money. I must admit that the book is both witty and worrying. Success, as you had planned! I don’t mind the satiric exaggerations, since they are so ingeniously accomplished. Very much like Dickens (although they say that you are compared to Zola). However, I met Mr

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Gradgrind in London, and described the book and told him about your style. He wasn’t that enthusiastic about intertwining fact and fiction. Constantly, he asked me if the stories in the book were true to life. What could I tell him; I had to admit that you have been using my research quite unscrupulously! Some judgement, then, about your composition of my character (after all, it is me!). I didn’t fancy the end with me sitting at the foot of the throne dressed in purple cloak; writing a text-book on numismatics; loyally accepting all the unfairness and hypocrisy. Me, as a collaborator! How could that have happened. The readers must think that Borg provided me with some kind of drugs out on Ingarö. Not even the overwhelming nature out in the archipelago, could have had such a tranquillising effect. You didn’t outline that much about my international connections, but I suppose the publisher wanted to have an optimistic end. I would have preferred the more nihilistic one. I know that you wrote one. I admit that you also have provided me with some ambiguity, especially through the remarks by Borg. To be sure, this will put me in the centre of the literary debates in the future. In London, they are interested in your opinion in the “working question”. They thought that my statements in the book were both odd and dubious. Why didn’t you refer to the strike in Sundsvall? It must have created much unrest and fear even in Stockholm. And my friends here are puzzled, as they think that your solution lies less in dynamite, than in returning to Rousseau’s nature. I have tried to tell them that you don’t look upon yourself as someone who has to provide any solutions, but, still, they want to have your “program”. By the way, I’d like to know about what happened to Struve, whom I strongly dislike, and to Borg, that soulless scoundrel. And let me know if you hear anything about the destiny of Beda. Is she still in the


same distinguished trade as before? The Women’s Question is really on the agenda. For instance, women are allowed to study at the London University. On the Isle of Man, women now are getting the same voting rights as men. How about that! Enough, this time. The Scandinavian Community is happy about your success, and would like you to come here. Especially if the spiritual climate in our native country is getting chillier. Why don’t you give up on your plans to find the ideal farmer, and take a look at the real worker. He belongs to the future. Think about it. I will hear from you. A.F. 1880 Letter from Bengt Jacobsson in Tumba, to Barbara CzarniawskaJoerges and Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, Somewhere in the World.

So much for Röda rummet. Accounted in history books as the first modern Swedish novel. Two years after Röda rummet, Mäster Olof was put at stage in Stockholm. Two more years later, Strindberg offended the church and fled the country. Hundred-and-two years later, reforms are still proposed, idealistic façades are still produced, and the politi cal economy is prospering better than ever. Röda rummet is still considered a great novel. In schools, however, children first of all read Strindberg’s Hemsöborna, which is a naturalistic and witty story about life among people in the Archipelago. Swedes are still fond of the Nature. When television, after the success of Hemsöborna, made a TV-series of Röda rummet, they ended it with Falk’s boat trip to the Archipelago. The producer thought the end of the book too complicated. He preferred a more encouraging and romantic farewell. As you may have found out, Swedes rarely miss an opportunity of a boat trip to the Archipelago! What happened to Falk, then? He tried to establish contacts with the Second International, but failed. Back in Sweden, he resumed his career. In fact, he was one

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of the instigators of a School of Commerce in Stockholm in 1909. He wanted young men to get a high-standard education in the art of business. And, eventually, Falk returned to the civil service; to the Ministry of Finance. He spent his last years in office loyally preparing the King’s budget speeches in Parliament. That man! B.J. 1990 References Brunsson, N. (1989) The organization of hypocrisy. Talk, decisions and actions in organizations. London: Wiley. Brunsson, N. (1990) Administrative reforms as routines. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 5(3): 219–228. Brunsson, N. and Olsen, J.P. (1993) (Eds.) The reforming organization, London: Routledge. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. and Jacobsson, B. (1989) Budget in a cold climate. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 14: 29– 41. DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W.W. (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective ratio nality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48:147– 160. Edelman, M. (1975) Politics as symbolic action. New York: Academic Press. Gårdlund, T. (1942) Industrialismens samhälle, Dissertation, Stockholms Högskola. Hernes, G. (ed.) (1978) Forhandlingsøkonomi og blandingsadministrasjon. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Hirschman, A.O. (1970) Exit, voice, loyalty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Jacobsson, B. (1989) Konsten att reagera. Intresser, institutioner och näringspolitik. Stockholm: Carlssons. Liedman, S-E. (1980) Boströmianismen. In: 17 uppsatser i svensk idé och lärdomshistoria. Stockholm: Carmina. Lindblom, C. (1977) Politics and markets. New York: Basic Books March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1989) Political institutions. New York: Free Press/Macmillan. Michels, R. (1915/1949) Political parties. New York: Free Press. Nordin, S. (1981) Den Böstromska skolan och den svenska idealismens fall. Lund: Doxa.


Selznick, P. (1949/1966) TVA and the grassroots. New York: Harper & Row. Strindberg, A. (1879) Röda rummet. English edition: (1913), The red room, London: Howard Latimer. Strindberg, A. (1882/1962) Det nya riket. Lund: Aldus.

ENGLAND EXPECTS Prosperity, Propriety and Mr. Polly by Robert Grafton Small

As Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecúchet is able to lampoon France’s archetypal bourgeois because it was written when they and their habits were established to the point of being common knowledge, so The History of Mr. Polly by H.G.Wells1 is a good-humored examination of England’s lower middle classes and their development at the turn of the twentieth century. That some of us in Britain are still laughing, though the joke is literally at our expense and no longer funny, is why Well’s original insights were so telling and why his criticisms still apply. Granted, a great many others have remarked on the English as a nation of shopkeepers. Indeed, Henry’s father, Joseph Wells, actually ran a successful hardware store, yet the very ‘market forces’ that were of such importance to him and to Zola’s series of department store romances, or is that chain-store novels, were now vital to Margaret Thatcher’s abiding impact upon Britain in at least two ways. ‘Market forces’ have turned Napoleon’s insult into a boast, if only where the English are concerned, for a great deal of Thatcher’s much vaunted economic revival was founded on a massive, if somewhat volatile, expansion of trade within the retail sector (Gardner & Sheppard, 1989).

1

All quotes come from the edition published by Pan Books, London, in 1963. The History of Mr. Polly was published for the first time in 1910.

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These same ‘market forces’ have also been responsible, as anything from an excuse to a metaphor, for changes in the social and economic fabric of contemporary Britain that parallel those vast programmes of urban and industrial development which Dickens once lambasted and Wells chooses to mock in “Mr. Polly”. To business, then, and the matter in hand. Mr. Polly, or Alfred as he is occasionally called, though usually just Polly, is a one-time retailer of haberdashery and his history is written from his own middle-age in 1910. Chronologically, he is forty years old and if the story he tells is taken at face value (a particularly dangerous practice nowadays, I admit, though not then) Polly believes himself to be at the end rather than the mid point of his life. That, or he sees no reason but death itself to fall from the peak his life has led him to. Mr. Polly has, in effect, grown up with department stores as a part of his everyday life and consequently, his family, his career and his social circle are shaped by those very forces that Zola finds so intriguing. The History of Mr. Polly is, therefore, not only an alternative view of the pressures that would drive M.Baudu and his daughter out of business but also a significant critique of entrepreneurship in late nineteenth and early twentieth century England. For this, Wells depends on the implicit links between Polly’s failings as a haberdasher and husband, the demands of a rapidly maturing urban economy and the recent spread of industrial society to those very parts of England where Mr. Polly’s personal drama is acted out. More specifically, in every episode of a life told through vignettes covering all the significant aspect of existence bar, notably, parenthood, Polly is made to appear amusingly out-of-touch with the already established mores of popular industrial society. Equally, Polly the entrepreneur and symbol of England’s lesser trading classes epitomises those hapless types who can only react to the demands of contemporary commerce and culture, never seeming able to learn from either

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their circumstance or their experiences. In sum, Alfred Polly can neither manage his personal life, he is ever at the mercy of other people’s desires, nor even conceive a strategy for his own chosen business. This inability to plan for the future and his lack of any recognisable sense of purpose run through the book, showing the extent to which Polly has, almost without noticing it and certainly without understanding, fallen behind the advance of Modernist thought and practice into English social structures and the twentieth century, leaving Alfred to fade with the afterglow of Victorian High Romanticism. The flaws, however, are not all of Polly’s making. Throughout the book, it is made apparent that he is both an individual and an archetype, meant to represent the failure of thousands just like himself. Nor does this failure begin with the man for Polly is as much undone by his parents’ thoughtless vanity as by his own well-practised incompetence. In fact, the majority of Polly’s biography is based on the continual interplay, and the tension, between his open acknowledgement of public propriety and his repeated inability to fulfil communal expectations of him. That a final resolution should only prove possible when these conventions are overturned, and by their staunchest supporters, is surely the point Wells wishes to make though we will return to this later. Until then, it will be enough to note that The History of Mr. Polly as a lesson in morality and prosperity accrues solely to those who appreciate propriety sufficiently well to abandon it when they should. Mr. Polly’s history begins with reminiscences of his childhood, of which there is little before the death of his mother when he was seven, and thereafter the part that Education played in loco parentis. Polly went to a National School at the age of six and left a private school at fourteen yet learned practically nothing from either in the entire eight years. National Service Schools were publicly funded from the rates, a local property tax that


was not replaced in England until the spring of 1990, and therefore overly economical in their approach to education in general. The largely untrained staff offered Polly sums he did not understand, a Bible without explanation and various other subjects which his mind simply refused to entertain. From the age of twelve, Polly spent two further years at a dingy, pretentious and incompetent private school, meaning one which is run as a business and where pupils, or rather their parents, pay fees. Here he failed to grasp either French or bookkeeping, though he was offered both, and much of his self-confidence was caned out of him. As a result of his schooling, Alfred Polly is unable to speak or write proper English. He cannot do mental arithmetic, nor make sense of any form of science and he thinks of Divinity as an infinite capacity for setting rules and punishing their transgression. Whilst this all sounds very much like the sort of criticism Richard Critchfield has made of English education relatively recently (The Guardian, 10th August, 1990), Wells does show, through other characters in the book, how more suitable alternatives would have been available for Polly had his parents considered the roles he was likely to play in later life. Alfred’s education was, in effect, a poor imitation of that which prepared entrants for the Civil Service and so on yet he, by virtue of his lower middle class origin, would always be debarred from any such post. Alfred does, nevertheless, gain one thing from his eight years at school, a taste for ‘pulp’ literature of the most sentimental sort which stays with him until at least his middle thirties. The rest of Polly’s diet is equally suspect and with similarly long-lasting results for, despite hints from his monthly nurse and the family charwoman, Alfred’s mother had never learned anything about the rearing of children. Thus, by the age of five, Polly has already become a victim to chronic indigestion and a life-time of the same poor catering is soon to follow. We soon realise, though signifi cantly they do not, that at


every turn in the story, be it major occasions like his father’s funeral or his own wedding—which boasts a green salad!—or simply his midday meal, Polly and his peers all dine on variations from one short menu. This encompasses cold meat, potatoes, beer, bread and cheese, followed as often as not, by some typically English pudding based on suet. Incidentally, it is worth pointing out in this context that Wells has understood the importance of brand names two generations before Tom Wolfe. Only one item of Polly’s diet is described in specific rather than generic terms and that is Rashdall’s Mixed Pickle, an industrial intrusion into what was once a purely domestic preserve (p. 18). The meat, the bread and the beer also come from commercial suppliers and no-one remarks on the matter. By the 1890s, England’s newly industrialised society is well enough established for the dietary deficiencies of contemporary Britain to be clearly evident in at least one of those classes that has the money to choose what it eats but not the education or the palate to discriminate. In addition, green vegetables are rarely mentioned at all by Wells and fruit other than apples is apparently unknown or unsought after. The apples, by the way, seem to occur only as a pie-filling. Eventually, of course, Polly’s father decides it’s “time that dratted boy did something for a living” (p. 25). Despite his mental and physical uncertainties, Polly is apprenticed to “one of those large, rather low-class establishments which sell everything from pianos and furniture to books and millinery, a department store” (p. 26). The whole tenor of this decision is astonishing. It shows, in short, that the turmoil of the world’s first Industrial Revolution has already been crystallized into a social structure of amazing complexity and great rigidity. Even so, Polly’s father is not concerned with finding his son a vocation or securing him a future. Polly is seen as an avoidable expense, in financial rather than emotional terms, so he is disposed of. Here, too, we find tones of contemporary culture and a certain


attitude to paternity and the role of men in the raising of children. Polly’s apprenticeship involves life in a company dormitory along with five other apprentices and work in one of three townships “grouped around the Port Burdock naval dockyards” (p. 26) for in Victorian as in contemporary England, the Defence Budget offers a vital underpinning to commercial and popular wellbeing. Here, at last, Polly begins to learn what is expected of him as an adult. This is particularly meaningful when seen against the current background of complaints from British industry about illiteracy and innumeracy amongst the workforce as well as shortages of other social and commercially useful skills. These same employers are nevertheless inclined to hire each other’s staff rather than invest in training schemes so latter-day Alfreds must discover for themselves what Polly is taught about friendship, money and girls, even the need for regular washing. His work, though, is tedious if a lot less tense than school, there being few beatings given out in a department store. There are, however, certain public standards to be met, even by apprentices. Polly and his pals, Parsons and Platt, two other trainees at the Port Burdock Drapery Bazaar, cause an uproar in the company dormitory when they decide to buy ready-made working men’s hob-nail boots and not the more genteel bespoke items of their station. The apprentice threesome enjoy the surrounding countryside, in a foretaste of Polly’s future, perhaps, but cannot afford bicycles so they spend their money on footwear that will last, the fault being that they put their own pleasure and convenience before the reputation of their employers and their appearance at work. Whilst this may at first sight seem a trivial example of the English obsession with degrees of status, Polly and his pals being pure petit bourgeois and not at all working class, the same debate lives on in the dress codes that companies still enforce even nowadays, and


not just in Britain. Consider, too, the attention paid to the allocation, or not, of company cars. These declassé boots do, nevertheless, enable Polly to discover Fishbourne, the little seaside town where he will eventually set up his own business. That the place itself is a product of late nineteenth century holiday making, or tourism as it has now become, is literally not worth Wells’ mentioning. By the time Polly’s history is written, it is commonly understood that in the new industrial society, some people at least can afford not to work all the time whilst others will earn their living taking care of these hedonists. This combination of social and commercial accommodation is also apparent within the Port Burdock Drapery Bazaar, specifically when Polly’s friend Parsons gets himself dismissed. Parsons has finished his apprenticeship and become a window-dresser for the Manchester department, meaning that which sells nothing but goods from what was then one of the great industrial centres of the world. Parsons feels sure of his job because his displays sell goods and he refuses to believe that Mr. Garvace, the senior partner and managing director of the Bazaar, would sack such an employee with ease. Parsons also claims that windowdressing is in its infancy as a commercial art and it is this which leads to his undoing. He puts together a huge asymmetrical display of the sort we would recognise instantly, one involving white and red blankets “twisted and rolled to accentuate their woolly richness”, with “large window tickets inscribed in blazing red letters: ‘Cosy Comfort at Cut Prices’, and ‘Curl up and Cuddle below Cost’” (p. 38). In addition, he uses electric rather than natural light because it gives a warm glow to the window. Bearing in mind that this must have happened in about 1890, Parsons is clearly something of an innovator, though hardly to be censured given his sales record. Not so. Mr. Garvace orders another more conventional dresser to redeem the window he considers to be an outrage and Parsons


refuses to allow it. In the subsequent mêlée, blows are exchanged and ultimately Parsons is arrested. He is then summoned to appear before the Magistrate’s Bench and as he himself explains to the rest of the dormitory, “What’s the good of a Cross summons, with old Corks the chemist and Mottishead the house agent and all that on the Bench?” (p. 42). A hundred years on, the wider implications of stifled innovation are a clearly acknowledged problem for British businesses but at the time, the social and organisational significance of this vignette escape Mr. Polly altogether. He does, however, lose interest in his work when he loses his friend and even he knows what is meant by his employer’s refusal to grant him a raise. Polly resigns from the Port Burdock Drapery Bazaar without a job to go to but with a reference from the company, Parsons having been punished more by the loss of this commendation than by the fine he paid to the Magistrate’s Court. Polly’s friend has, in fact, become a warehouseman in a London shop which does not require references, a significant belittlement, given the understanding that, in industrial societies, one’s job and one’s wider standing are inextricably linked parts of the same very subtle set of rules and social structures. Without doubt, Wells’ first readers would realise, just a surely as we do, that Parson’s transgression within the Bazaar betokens a more serious challenge to the social order outside. After all, each of us recognises the system in question as our contemporary! The same can be said for Polly and his search for work; he, too, finds himself testing the job market in London. In a scene that echoes the hiring fair in Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, Polly competes against a press of would-be shop assistants of every age and ability who gather at the Wood Street Warehouse to meet prospective employers from all over the country. Largely because he knows the nuances of a nicely chosen necktie, Polly finds himself working in Canterbury, which he enjoys very much and where he has his own apprentices


to care for. Even so, it is this apparent advancement which forces Mr. Polly to admit he cannot compete against “the naturally gifted, the born hustlers, the young men who mean to get on” (p. 52). A case, perhaps, of Polly’s Precursor to the Peter Principle? Torn between the need to work and the prospect of leaving outfitting altogether, Polly is clearly caught. The one thing he does, he does badly and there is little possibility of him being able to make anything else of himself, already a notable handicap in a society built upon and committed to entrepreneurship and personal advancement on an industrial scale. Polly, however, understands none of this despite the social upheavals, the widespread political debates of the time and the palpable distress of all those other people with similar frustrations. In an obvious prelude to the ‘dependency culture’ so derided by Margaret Thatcher during her premiership, Polly feels himself to be both blameless and helpless, until, that is, his father dies. This simple incident determines the rest of Polly’s life. It introduces him to the ‘property-owning democracy’ and thereby the difficulties of familial expectation and public propriety, whilst giving him, through his father’s life-insurance, the opportunities and the duties of private capital. Though in his early twenties himself, Polly had not expected his father to die when he did. Nor had the cousins with whom Polly’s father and, on occasions, Polly took lodging. Significantly, Wells also touches on the other side of life-expectancy amongst the lower middle classes in late Victorian England. The doctor in attendance on Polly senior is sure the old man has died of “imagination” but, in shades or maybe the light of Emile Durkheim’s Suicide, puts “the appendicitis that was then so fashionable” (p. 55) on the death certificate. There is no post-mortem. In the few days between the death of Polly’s father and his actual burial, Harold Johnson suggests, among a number of things, that Mr. Polly might do worse with the money “than put it into a small shop” (p. 60). Harold


even goes so far as to show Polly suitable premises being built nearby and in an area with a rapidly developing commercial life, too. The funeral itself is not only a gathering of Polly’s appropriately dutiful family, a morbid dry run for the wedding that will soon follow, but also an opportunity for Wells to present a range of archetypes, perhaps even stereotypes, representing at least part of the new and the old social order. Consequently, we are introduced to Uncle Pentstemon, “a fragment from the ruder agricultural past of our race” (p. 65)—presumably Wells means the English—and Polly’s cousins, the Larkins sisters, who work in factories as dressmakers, a practice which scandalises Uncle Pentstemon. He thinks the Larkins girls ought to be “in service”, because of their background, a view their mother sees as a distinct slight and which she criticises accordingly. The subsequent argument allows Wells to emphasise the difference, and thereby the friction, between one form of order and morality, old and crumbling like Uncle Pentstemon, and another, Aunt Larkins’ emergent industrial society. Whilst he’s bucolic, conservative and increasingly ill-at-ease with the rituals and mores of Polly’s progress, Aunt Larkins is entirely at home with life in a factory town. Wells even goes so far as to provide a symbolic underlining for any reader who might feel some sympathy for the integrity of Uncle Pentstemon’s views. He is twice widowed and childless whereas Aunt Larkins has lost her sole husband yet still has three daughters, one of whom is to marry Alfred Polly and share the social, if not the Darwinian sterility of his fruitless High Romanticism. Polly’s employers, on the other hand, have their own view of filial propriety, and Alfred is fired, for overstaying his funeral leave. At this point, however, Polly’s inheritance makes itself felt for he is able to take a holiday rather than return to Wood Street in search of work. For Polly, holidays are “his life, and the rest merely adulterated living” (p. 75) but he has no-one to


share his good fortune with, his apprentice friends having long since disappeared. Instead, he leaves London and returns to Easewood where he takes a room with the Johnsons. He also buys a bicycle and a number of the books that have always fascinated him, though these are increasingly a matter of second-hand shops and jumble sales and he still cannot read them as an adult might Confronted with this expanse of decaying literature, the ever-practical Harold Johnson suggests that Polly would be better advised to “get yourself a good book on book-keeping” (p. 78). Alfred ignores him completely, being at heart a High Victorian Romantic and one with other things on his mind. Quixote-like, his new bicycle takes him, with increasing frequency, from Easewood to nearby Stamton and the dingy little cul-desac where his cousins, the Larkins, all live. From his first visit, Polly is a great success and he soon finds himself torn between the pleasures of not working, yet being able to enjoy his cousins’ company, and the increasing urgency of Harold Johnson’s attempts to get him “into something” (p. 85). Not that Harold is intending to use Polly as a cat’s paw or surrogate for his own ambitions. Harold simply hates waste, anybody’s waste, much more than he desires profit though his wife, mindful perhaps of the rent involved, is more inclined to let Polly loiter. During one such dalliance, at the Larkins house in Stamton, Cousin Minnie who now works in a “carpetmaking place” (p. 96) and not a dressmaking factory, comes home late with a detailed and highly technical complaint about her manager and his calculation of the piece-work rate. Polly grasps very little of what this implies and talks instead of his own aspirations as a shop-keeper. Significantly, these are the result of his need to contribute something to the conversation and not his audiences with Harold Johnson. Polly even confesses to hating “cribs” (p. 99), that is, working for other people, but as we know from his reaction to


Cousin Harold’s investment proposals, he is no entrepreneur either. Nor does he have Minnie’s insight into factory life so he is equally incapable of explaining why he is so out of place, so completely alienated. Nevertheless, Polly clearly recognises the threat in discovering he has spent a seventh of his inheritance to no real purpose. Caught between this and his promise to marry Miriam Larkin, a contract which seems to owe more to her desire and her mother’s man-management than to any great initiative on Polly’s part, our Alfred makes not one but two investments. In addition to a wife, he also decides to take a shop, each being apparently a part of the same system of property and propriety, at least where Miriam and Polly are concerned. However, in making these commitments, Polly has managed to offend another set of proprieties for his other cousins, the Johnsons, know nothing of either his wife-to-be or his plan to rent a property in Fishbourne rather than the arcade in Easewood which Harold Johnson has promoted so vigorously. To compound the error, and before saying anything about his plans, Polly asks Cousin Harold to prepare a set of costings for such an investment. As a result, Polly learns that he would have a real chance commercially but only if he were to take the newly completed premises nearby and go on living as he has done, that is, cheaply and unmarried and with the Johnsons. This prompts the ever incompetent Alfred to declare his hand while Harold’s wife, Grace, is equally characteristic in her valedictory blessing. After all the trouble we’ve ‘ad to make you comfortable and see after you—out late, and sitting up, and everything; and then you go off as sly as sly, without a word, an’ get a shop behind our backs, as though you thought we mean to steal your money. I ‘aven’t patience with such deceitfulness, and I didn’t think it of you, Elfrid.


And now the letting season’s ‘arf gone by, and what I shall do with that room of yours I’ve no idea (p. 106). Once away from Easewood, Polly’s problem is that having made his own decision, he has no means of managing the outcome. He lacks the insight to appreciate his own shortcomings in commercial terms and his ineptitude has completely estranged Harold Johnson, the one person he might have accommodated as both a friend and business partner. Consequently, the following fifteen years of Polly’s life as a “respectable shopkeeper in Fishbourne” are ones “in which every day was tedious, and when they were gone it was as if they had gone in a flash” (p. 123). He still reads old books when he can but physically, Polly is gone to seed and childless, a lack which links him more with Uncle Penstemon and the supplanted past than any bounty to come with the industrialised future. He hates the business, too, though he has at last realised he took it “to escape the doom of Johnson’s choice” (p. 123). In other words, Polly the petit bourgeois entrepreneur and prototypical venture capitalist did what he did not for profit but simply because it offered an immediate solution to his most pressing problems. He hated having other people manage his life, he had a wife and a sum of capital to protect and he liked Fishbourne. His haberdashery business has no other basis and he himself has no long term plans whatsoever, so his story is episodic, one of drifting into the daily difficulties any reader could anticipate, then or now.. Miriam hates the house equally, never having seen it before the wedding and not having been considered when Polly chose it. She insists, nevertheless, on “‘aving everything right” (p. 124) and equips the place accordingly. Unfortunately, though, she is Polly’s equal in that her earnestness is matched a notable inability to manage anything practical.


In essence, then, we as readers are confronted by an undertaking which depends on an entrepreneur with no commercial abilities and a housekeeper who can’t keep house. Even so, it is Miriam who first realises that the haberdashery is only of marginal profitability at best and she who harangues her husband, the owner and manager, to do something. Polly defends himself by arguing that you can’t make people buy flannel trousers if they don’t want to. Whilst this is true, he never seems to realise that if there’s no real demand for haberdashery there is no need for a supplier like him. Polly’s business is also extremely seasonal and depends on tourists and passing custom, which he and the neighbouring traders soon learn is not enough to keep any of them. Instead of a thriving commercial district like the one picked out by his cousin, Harold Johnson, Polly has chosen to invest in an area where the shopkeepers have no singular or collective future. He can therefore neither sell up nor take on more business. His push-bike, too, is wearing out after some twenty years of use and he can no longer afford a replacement. It is noteworthy, even so, that Polly’s incompetence in commercial affairs is often matched by his competitors and fiercest social critics. In Fishbourne High Street, where he rents his shop, many of the properties change hands frequently, but only to go from a bankrupt concern to another marginal investor like Polly, who will soon be that way. Incidentally, and despite wearing one out, Alfred Polly has not really learned to ride a bicycle either. At least, he has not adapted his technique to allow for the evergrowing number of private and commercial motor vehicles on the road where, personally and symbolically, he no longer has a place. That this growth in passing traffic could well mean a loss of passing trade, because people on wheels do not stop where pedestrians or public transport might, eludes both Mr. Polly and his neighbours. Clearly, though, business in the region has expanded enormously but its focus has moved away


from Fishbourne High Street. Polly’s judgement is, once again, a poor second to the reality of his circumstances and also, by implication, to the wisdom of Harold Johnson’s proposal. Just as the shrinking of his inheritance forced Polly into his original investment so an unprecedented yet entirely predictable inability to pay the rent on his shop forces Polly into a terrible irony. To escape the shame of his position, Polly decides on suicide as the only sensible way out and, for the first time in his life, his plans are indeed scrupulous. His passionate hatred for Miriam vanished directly the idea of getting away from her for ever became clear in his mind. He found himself full of solicitude then for her welfare. He did not want to buy his release at her expense. He had not the remotest intention of leaving her unprotected, with a painfully dead husband and a bankrupt shop on her hands. It seemed to him that he could contrive to secure for her the full benefit of both his life insurance and his fire insurance if he managed things in a tactful manner (p. 147). Whilst it can be argued that, under these circumstances, even Alfred Polly must appreciate what lies in store, this still says a lot about understandings of marriage at the time. Miriam had stopped listening to Polly the day after the wedding yet their union, and the business that was to support it, were a direct result of him wanting something to say to her. Polly admits, in turn, to feeling an obligation, not a desire, to marry her, any notion of love being neither here nor there despite his Romantic readings. Polly intends, all the same, to do in death what he has failed to do in life, namely, provide for his wife in a proper manner. Polly has endured, without complaint, years of tedium in his marriage and his business. Still, he would rather kill himself than live with the dishonour of bankruptcy.


Suicide was, in itself, a shameful thing, if not a criminal offence, in England at the time and Wells’ original readers would have known this, hence the need for Polly to destroy himself as well as his crime. Equally, Miriam should not be left with his guilt as her burden. Consequently, he plans to burn himself and their shop to ashes while she is at Church, Polly having long since abandoned the habit. This, in passing, says much about the lessening importance of religious observance, and spirituality in general, in everyday industrial England. However, secular propriety is such that his failure as a businessman prompts Polly to commit a mortal sin, and on a Sunday! Perhaps in divine retribution, Polly’s plans go severely astray and though he burns down the shop, along with much of the surrounding High Street, he not only fails to kill himself but manages, entirely by accident of course, to emerge from the flames a hero. Originally, Polly had intended that only he should die, and not those of his neigh bours who were too old or infirm to go to Church, so he is forced by his conscience and the gathering fire to save Mr. Gambell and the Widow Rumbold. Immediately after the disaster, and with his plans in ashes, Polly goes to a meeting of all the traders whose business had burned down, ostensibly to assess the damage to their property. Not one of these excellent men but was already realizing that a great door had opened, as it were, in the opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to get their money again that had seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope in the deeps of retail trade. Life was already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames. (p. 163) Not surprisingly, then, no-one is prepared to question Polly’s considered account of the fire’s beginnings for the entire community has an interest in an innocent explanation. Polly and Miriam even agree to start again,


in “a better house”, as she puts it “a better position where there’s more doing” (p. 165). Obviously, given the opportunity fifteen years ago, she would have listened to Harold Johnson! By the same token, Polly finally has an insight very reminiscent of Cousin Harold. As circumstances in Fishbourne neither please nor constrain him, and given the insurance money, Polly can simply “clear out” (p. 167). His crime undetected, he will take just a little of the settlement and leave his wife to be provided for, exactly as he had planned. That Miriam might want for more than money never crosses his mind, largely because theirs is not so much a marriage as a trading agreement by another name. In the following five years, he is to think of his wife infrequently and rarely, if ever, of how she might be managing life alone, with the shame of being deserted. Honour otherwise intact, Polly becomes a vagrant, meaning he now does on foot what he used to do on a bicycle in the days before he met Miriam. He is, however, still woefully ignorant of his own country’s past and its geography. He is also at risk from speeding motor cars where once there were none. Eventually, he lands at the Potwell Inn, a riverside tavern run by a large and very able woman called Flo. She is in many ways a composite antithesis to Polly and Miriam for she has his build and her eye for commercial opportunity yet manages better by herself than they do as a couple. Flo is, in addition, the moral touchstone of the story. She considers Polly for the post of odd-job man and asks if he has “done anything”, implicitly anything criminal. When he admits to arson, his casual honesty is taken as a joke. “It’s all right if you haven’t been to prison”, said the plump woman. “It isn’t what a man’s happened to do makes ‘im bad. We all happen to do things at times. It’s bringing it home to him and spoiling his self-respect does the mischief. You don’t look a wrong ‘un. ‘Ave you been to prison?”(p. 176)


So we understand that arson is not a proper crime, it’s being caught that matters. This Wells demonstrates at some length by way of Uncle Jim, a violent recidivist who is related to and preys upon the landlady of the Potwell Inn. Polly finally sees him off, without ever knowing quite how, and in effect takes Uncle Jim’s place as Flo’s dependent. Polly is, in fact, now back in a “crib” but it no longer irks him because he doesn’t resent what he is expected to do. Naturally, the insight escapes him as he is still not inclined to that sort of reflection and besides, he abandoned haberdashery when he left Miriam. At the Potwell Inn, Polly even proves to be something of a salesman. In an incident which echoes the predictions of his long-lost friend Parsons, Polly paints two simple signs outside the tavern. One says “Museum” in large letters while the other reads “Omlets”, his characteristically ungrammatical version of “omelettes”, a dish which Flo actually cooks very well. The slogan is another unintentional triumph. Boat loads of passing holiday-makers, caught by the sign and wishing to remark on it, stop at the inn and become customers, hungry for Flo’s cooking. Business booms and the place becomes famous but as “Omlets” and not as the Potwell Inn (p. 208). Softened by his great good fortune, Polly finally feels remorse for Miriam and five years after leaving her, he returns briefly to Fishbourne, to see how she is coping. That he is physically much changed and confident of going unrecognized is not entirely incidental under the circumstances. In Fishbourne High Street, rebuilt for the better after the fire, Miriam and her sister Annie, the unwed one who doesn’t care for housework, have started a tea-room with the money Mrs. Polly got from his arson and his life insurance! In a brief conversation with her supposedly dead husband, Miriam admits that she knowingly identified as him the body of a man, in fact, Uncle Jim, who drowned whilst wearing clothes he had stolen from Polly at the Potwell Inn. She, too, is


only concerned with being found out and not at all with the loss of her spouse. Thus reconciled by their mutual fraud, they part for the final time, finally partners, in crime. What more can we draw from all this? In terms of the original intention, Polly’s failings as a haberdasher and husband should be self-evident. As an archetype, he is also significant because the entire lower middle class of England seems similarly fated and for similar reasons. Consider, for example, the tea-room that Miriam and Annie have opened. It may be a worthwhile enterprise and in a well-chosen site but neither of the sisters has any experience of managing such a concern and they have both shown distaste for the household skills that might make a café inviting. Nevertheless, their capital is to them as Polly’s inheritance was to his haberdashery though, of course, Mrs. Polly and her sibling have committed fraud to start rather than liquidate their business. This apparently widespread willingness to value wealth for its own sake rather than its origins, remember who benefitted from the Fishbourne fire, is remarkable in a number of ways and not just in terms of social and moral order. The same mercenary tendency is evident in the current public disquiet in Britain over the likes of “Funny Money” from the City of London and “Insider Trading” on The Stock Exchange. Such a linkage may seem at first to be somewhat stretched until, that is, Flo’s dictum is brought to mind. She is simply putting into words what the petit bourgeois traders of Stamton have always assumed in their criticism of Alfred, the poor neighbour. As Polly’s history has shown, these people regard the maintenance of public seemliness as vital because their place in the new industrial society, as well as their individual and group morality, is based on the propriety of ownership, hence the expropriation of production, and consequently no-one can afford to question the ethics of acquisition too closely. Nowadays, we know


this as “status panic” (Fussell, 1984, p. 39; after C.Wright Mills) though in Polly’s time, as he has proved, property and propriety were life-and-death issues. Polly’s petit bourgeois peers are themselves under a great deal of pressure as many of them lack the necessary skills to survive outside larger organisations like the Port Burdock Drapery Bazaar or the factories where the Larkins sisters work. “Cribs”, however, do not appeal to Alfred and his ilk. These people have instead naive yet inflexible notions of commerce, to rent a shop and stock it is to guarantee their living, and just enough capital, though not enough business sense, to invest in such a venture. In spite of this, Wells clearly feels that these lower middle class entrepreneurs are responding to the very ‘market forces’ which made them for whilst England’s great commercial concerns are rarely if ever mentioned by name, their influence upon the rest of society is explicit and undeniable. So the Potwell Inn becomes Omlets and flourishes by catering to customers who earn their living as apprentices or clerks in the now well-established industrial conurbations. Fishbourne itself only exists because of the wealth generated by these unknown business giants and, thanks to Polly, we already know about the trade in mass-produced clothes which matches this commercially sponsored holiday-making. Similarly, the railways that permeate the South-East of Alfred’s England are surely the equal, as distributors of industrially generated goods and standards, to any of Zola’s grands magasins. M.Baudu’s dilemma may be seen in the same light. Had he and Robineau accepted the new bases of commerce and tried to accommodate, rather than resist, the influence of the department stores and their kind, the old-fashioned traders might have stayed in business, albeit as employees or agents. Of course, abandoning his independence, his view of the world and perhaps even his daughter, as Polly’s Pa did him, could also have led Baudu to fraud but surely everyone


recognises profit as the reward for risk-bearing. Similarly, the understanding that kinship does no more than moderate the tendency for people to treat each other as commodities is fundamental to The History of Mr. Polly and not entirely alien to contemporary thinking either. Harold may encourage Cousin Alfred to invest his money, not waste it, but there is an expectation of payment in kind for this free advice; Polly will continue as a single lodger, though at a reduced rate, no doubt. How, then, does Polly accede to Heaven on Earth for, in some men’s eyes at least, the Potwell Inn is surely a secular paradise where Alfred is paid for his hobbies, and by a capable but unattached landlady who has her own pub! Not that Wells is particularly prejudiced in this way as Flo can cope with almost anything apart from male violence and the punt which Polly propels. Nor it is entirely an accident that the hero of the book has a woman’s name and is generally undone when he attempts to play the accepted male role of the time. We might, even so, raise an eye-brow at the implications of Flo, the earth mother, who cares for Alfred in his second childhood, a “crib” being also a cot or cradle. The Potwell Inn has a further and more current significance as part of the mythology of the Industrial Revolution. The surrounding countryside is presented as disciplined and manageable, a place where people from the nearby urban expanses can go walking, rowing and fishing, in other words, as a ‘leisure resource’. The rhythms and the harshness of the old bucolic order, of Uncle Pentstemon and “the ruder agricultural past”, are distanced and made safe for city folk, which means most of us. We appreciate, too, the assumptions that Wells characters make about the value of other more commonplace commodities than the countryside. Clearly, there is nothing new in the notion that industrial goods are not only the visible signs of success but also proof of their owners real worth and worthiness.


Accordingly, Polly’s parents are a clear warning to those, of whom there are more than a few at the moment, who would let ‘market forces’ determine the provision of their children’s instruction. Alfred’s schooling is, after all, a product of snobbery; he is given the veneer of an expensive, hence enviable, education and not the substance. Polly’s real enlightenment begins with the first employers who house their trainees because, like domestic servants from an earlier era, they own their apprentices completely. However, despite the fact that British Rail has recently considered a return to company housing because its workers cannot afford the price of property in London, Wells is not describing an English ancestor to the Japanese or, indeed, the Quaker concept of companies that will care for their employees “from the cradle to the grave.” Though Wells develops most of his criticisms of British capitalism, he talks of England yet includes Glasgow, through the medium of Mr. Polly, it is quite clear the Port Burdock Drapery Bazaar and Minnie Larkins “carpet-making place” are just as guilty of the same transgressions. What makes these organizations a true measure of the new industrial order and its overwhelming impact on English society is the way their hierarchies, their obsessions and their casual brutality come to shape every life in Alfred’s history yet go so unremarked. It can hardly be a coincidence, then, that Mr. Polly finds Heaven in a rural retreat and a Romantic view of the past while Zola uncovers urban ecstasy in The Ladies Paradise. Consider, too, that Margaret Thatcher is herself a grocer’s daughter from Lincolnshire, which was hardly the heart of industrial England, and her parents, Alderman Roberts and his wife, were of an age with Alfred Polly. References Fussell, P. (1984) Caste marks: Style and status in the USA. New York and London: William Heinemann.


Gardner, C. & Sheppard, J. (1989) Consuming passion: The rise of retail culture. London: Unwin Hyman. Wells, H.G. (1910/1963) The History of Mr. Polly. Pan Books: London.

IDENTITY, ECONOMY AND MORALITY IN “THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM”1 by Richard J.Boland, Jr

The Rise of Silas Lapham tells the story of a successful paint manufacturer who encounters a series of business problems as he and his family awkwardly seek acceptance in the cultured society of Boston in the 1880s. William Dean Howells published The Rise of Silas Lapham in 1885, establishing his reputation as a leading American novelist. It was the first realist novel of American business and did not follow the familiar romantic tale of ‘rags to riches’ success. The Rise of Silas Lapham has been interpreted and reinterpreted by critics since its publication and Pease (1991, pp. 1–28) recounts the history of its readings by progressivists, modernists, formalists, deconstructionists, feminists and new historicists, among others. I will draw upon some of these interpretive efforts in this essay (Pease, 1991; Goldman, 1986; Young, 1992), but for the most part will make my own reading of this classic from the unique perspective posed by the editors of this volume, who ask: what can we learn about management from novels? I will organize my reading by considering the surface level of events and economic conditions depicted in the novel, and then exploring the symbolic level of their meanings for Silas Lapham and for a present day manager.

1 Thanks to Katrine Kirk for helpful comments on a draft of this chapter.

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At the surface level, we can learn from a realist novel like The Rise of Silas Lapham by comparing those elements in the text which describe the world of business and its characteristics in 1885, with those of today. Through this kind of comparison we can learn something about what is truly new and different in the managerial world of today, as well as what elements are relatively unchanged. At this first level of analysis, Silas Lapham’s managerial world appears much more similar to ours than we usually consider it to be. We can also learn about management by considering the meaning of being a manager as it is dramatized in this novel. We can learn about the experience of being a manager by interpreting the motivations, anxieties, joys, and moral dilemmas of Silas Lapham. Reading the meanings of management found in this novel reveals the way personal identity, a sense of economy, and questions of morality are intertwined and mutually constitutive. Silas Lapham’s life reveals how the self is invested into a business by a manager; how the distribution of business rewards and suffering challenges notions of responsibility and self for the manager; and how moral questions of managing are framed as a kind of economic calculation and are plagued by an ambiguity between being honorably unselfish or needlessly self-sacrificing. Howells uses a lovely phrase to describe the proper distribution of rewards and sufferings in life, calling it the “economy of pain”. Silas Lapham’s questioning of self and his allocation of pain in the moral economy of his business dealings is both the occasion for his “Rise” and an important lesson for today’s manager. Following a short synopsis of the novel, I will discuss some of the surface lessons and parallels that can be drawn for today’s manager. Finally, I will explore ways in which the entanglement of identity, economy and morality can be seen in Silas Lapham, and the implications of this complex sense of self for a manager today.

IDENTITY, ECONOMY AND MORALITY… • 119

The story The story opens with Silas Lapham being interviewed in the office of his paint company by a reporter, Bartley Hubbard, for a profile in a local newspaper. Through this interview and other reflective devices throughout the novel, we learn that Silas Lapham was raised on a family farm in Northern Vermont, near the Canadian border. He began working in a nearby town, eventually marrying Persis, the local school teacher, and buying the town hotel. Following her suggestion that he find a way to improve the appearance of the hotel, he experimented with making mineral paint from deposits that his father had discovered on the family property several decades before. By baking the mineral base and mixing it with linseed oil, he developed “a paint that will stand like the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.” (p. 11) The Civil War interrupted his plans to develop the paint business, and he joined the Northern forces, eventually achieving the rank of Colonel. When he returned from the war, Lapham found that Persis had kept the paint business going and he set about expanding it. He took a partner named Rogers in order to get the capital he needed for expansion, but just as profits began to grow, he forced Rogers to accept a buyout. Although Lapham believed that Rogers was a hindrance and had been paid a fair price, Persis held that her husband had, in effect, stolen the share of growing future profits which Rogers’ investment had made possible. She tries throughout the novel to make Silas see his moral failure and recompense to Rogers somehow. After the newspaper interview, Silas Lapham goes home. Lapham, Persis and their two daughters, Penelope and Irene, live in a fine house in an unfashionable part of Boston. Howells makes it clear to the reader that the Laphams had not learned to spend their money as the accepted families of society did. Tom

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Corey comes from such a family, but is not interested in the life of the idle rich that his father has proposed for him. He asks Lapham to let him invest in the paint company and open branches outside the United States, beginning with Mexico. Silas Lapham would not consider another partner, but does take Tom Corey on as an employee. Tom’s frequent visits at the Lapham house make it clear he is interested in one of the daughters, but both the Lapham and Corey families mistakenly assume it is the younger daughter, Irene, that he loves. When, instead, he proposes marriage to Penelope, she feels she has betrayed her sister and rejects him. By the end of the novel, however, she overcomes her misgivings and they are married. The other major plot of the novel involves the return of Rogers into Silas Lapham’s life. Playing on Lapham’s confused sense of guilt, Rogers succeeds in borrowing money from him, and gives as collateral some questionable securities and the deed to a mill property out West. At about this time, the mineral paint business slows considerably, and a competitor emerges in West Virginia producing an equal quality paint at a lower cost than Lapham’s. All the while, Rogers keeps working on Lapham, borrowing more on the promise of making good for previous losses. Compounding these problems, a house when Silas Lapham has been building in a fashionable part of town burns down several days after his builder’s insurance policy had expired. The sum of these financial pressures is about to push Lapham into bankruptcy when he strikes an agreement to merge with the West Virginia company. But he needs capital to do so. This sets the stage for his moral rise. Rogers appears again, this time with some agents for a charitable group in England who want to start a utopian community on the mill property. They offer Lapham a high price that will cover all of Rogers’ debts to him. Lapham knows that the property is served by a spur line of a railroad company intent on buying the


property for a bargain price. By restricting service, the railroad can reduce the value of the property to whatever price it wishes to pay. Considering this, Lapham refuses to sell to these agents, even though they assure him their clients are aware of this risk and willing to assume it. Shortly afterward, a potential investor in Lapham’s paint company appears, offering substantial new capital. Lapham, however, reveals all the details of his financial and market situation and makes it clear that he will use the money to buy into the West Virginia company as a last chance to avoid bankruptcy. This potential investor withdraws, and Lapham turns his business assets, as well as his Boston house and furnishings, over to his creditors. The Laphams then return to their family home in Vermont where Silas Lapham is able to continue making a small line of specialty paints. Tom Corey becomes a part owner of the West Virginia paint company and he and Penelope leave for Mexico to develop new markets. Lessons on the world of management: then and now Silas Lapham is both an entrepreneur and manager. He is an entrepreneur in that he took the raw materials for mineral paint that had been unearthed on the family farm by his father decades before, and developed a thriving paint business. He and Persis created an enterprise where there had been none—taking risks and nurturing its growth. But the period of time presented in the novel finds the Lapham Paint Company at its apogee. Silas Lapham is very much the manager in this novel. He is not developing new products or founding new enterprise. He is instead trying to control inventories, balance cash flows and cope with declining demand and increased competition. At an immediate, surface level, the elements and incidents in the novel enable us to compare a realistic

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depiction of business conditions in 1885 with those of today. In doing so we find a remarkable example of the old adage, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” It seems that many of the features of today’s management world which we see as unique to our own time, were also seen as the unique, almost defining features of Silas Lapham’s business world. Like today’s manager, Silas Lapham felt he lived in a new and suddenly different world where all the rules had changed. It was a world of large enterprise, globally interconnected with rapidly changing markets. He faced strong competitors and was challenged by the press and the younger generation about his attitude and behavior toward the environment. In 1865, when Silas Lapham returned from the American Civil War to his family farm in Vermont, he tried to pick up where he had left off in running his fledging paint company, but he couldn’t. “I found that I had got back to another world. The day of the small things was past, and I don’t suppose it will ever come again in this country” (p. 16). In order to succeed in the face of fluctuating American market demand for mineral paint, Lapham expanded sales of his paint globally. In his warehouse we see labels in many languages including Spanish, French, German and Italian. These distant lands are more familiar places to do business than areas in the Western United States. “We ship to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, lots of it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, and it goes to China, and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope… We’ve got our agencies in Cadiz now, and in Paris, and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn.” (p. 17) We like to think that today’s manager faces a different, more global world, but novels such as Silas Lapham can help us gain a sense of perspective on how its newness


may be primarily a function of our declaring it to be so. Silas Lapham was following long established traditions of global trade. This novel helps us to ask how, in the absence of the computing and telecommunications technologies that make global operation almost inevitable today, managers were able to create such operations over a century ago. Another theme that seems unique to our times is a concern for the environment, but here again we see some familiar relations between the press and the manager, and between different generations of managers as represented by Lapham and Tom Corey. In his opening interview with the reporter, Bartley Hubbard, Silas Lapham brags: “In less’n six months there wa’n’t a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region that didn’t have ‘Lapham’s Mineral Paint—Specimen’ on it in the three colors we begun by making.” (p. 14) Defending himself against articles in the press critical of this form of advertising he argues: “I don’t see what the public has got to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn’t do to put mineral paint on it in three colors… I say the landscape was made for man, and not man for the landscape.” (pp. 14–15) Later, as Tom Corey begins working for Lapham’s company, he assures his parents, “I’ll use my influence with Colonel Lapham—if I ever have any—to have his paint scraped off the landscape” (p. 101). Whether we as managers or educators are discussing rapidly changing markets, global operations, intense competition, generational gap or cynicism toward management values, we seem to believe that our time is

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like no other. Perhaps this is helpful for managers, making it easier for them to rise up and meet a new challenge full of hope for ultimate success in a foreseeable future. We like to speak of decision making and problem solving as if managers could take action that would, in a sense, end a problem rather than merely cope with it temporarily. If, instead, managers realized that the organizational and environmental conditions we consider so unique to our own time have been faced in very much the same form, over and over again, by managers through the ages and will continue to be, it could reduce the enthusiasm and optimism with which they meet today’s version of these enduring struggles. These functionalist speculations aside, the lesson remains that the world of managers and organizations is not the radically new one we often propose it to be. While the details are endlessly changing, much of the substance of management experience remains familiar, and novels give us access to reasoning, dialogue, motivations and action as they unfold in a way that is accessible and immediate. Novels can inform the world view, strategy and style of a manager in a way that no accounting or information system report could ever hope to. And novels can also help us see into characteristics of the personal life and psychology of managers that have also remained essentially the same since perhaps the earliest management settings. In particular, I will consider the enduring sameness of the role played by the horse for Silas Lapham and the car for today’s manager. While telling Bartley Hubbard about an early work experience caring for horses at the town hotel, Silas Lapham interjects: “I always did like a good horse” (p. 9). And throughout the novel we see him seeking relief from difficult situations or simply enjoying himself on the weekend by taking out a horse. Not just any horse, but a high spirited one that could go right to the edge of being dangerous. At different points in the story, Silas


Lapham invites Bartley Hubbard and later Tom’s father, Bromfield Corey, to go with him and ‘speed’ his good horse. Both decline, and the senior Corey remarks: “Oh, no, no, no: thank you! The better the horse the more I should be scared. Tom has told me of your driving!” (p. 143). On one such horse ride with Persis, a thrilling scene unfolds as Lapham announces “I’m going to let her out”. Nothing in the immutable iron of Lapham’s face betrayed his sense of triumph, as the mare left everything behind her on the road. Mrs. Lapham, if she felt fear, was too busy holding her flying wraps about her, and shielding her face from the scud of ice flung from the mare’s heels, to betray it; except for the rush of her feet, the mare was as silent as the people behind her; the muscles of her back and thighs worked more and more swiftly, like some mechanism responding to an alien force, and she shot to the end of the course, grazing a hundred encountered and rival sledges in her passage, but unmolested by the policemen, who probably saw that the mare and the Colonel knew what they were about, and, at any rate, were not the sort of men to interfere with trotting like that. (pp. 35–36) Substitute a Mercedes or BMW for Lapham’s mare and we have today’s manager. Take for example Victor Wilcox, the new Managing Director for the Pringles factory complex in David Lodge’s Nice Work (1988). As a condition of accepting his position, Wilcox had insisted upon and held out for a Jaguar, convinced that it “is superior to every other car on the road…” (Lodge, 1988, p. 28). As he drives to work one morning, A red Toyota Celica draws up beside him, then inches forward as its driver rides his clutch, evidently intending a quick get away. The lights turn to amber and the Toyota darts forward… Vic…

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presses the accelerator hard. The Jaguar surges forward, catches the Toyota in two seconds, and sweeps effortlessly past—Carly Simon, by happy coincidence, hitting a thrilling crescendo at the very same moment. Vic glances in his rear-view mirror and smiles thinly. (Lodge, 1988, p. 30) For Victor Wilcox, and no doubt countless managers today, driving an automobile to and from work is a powerful, sensuous moment. “It is an interval of peace between the irritations of home and the anxieties of work, a time of pure sensation, total control, effortless superiority” (Lodge, 1988, p. 28). This is the same experience sought by Lapham with his horse. He explained to Tom Corey: “There’s one thing I always make it a rule to do… and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business… Why, I suppose if I hadn’t adopted some such rule, with the strain I’ve had on me for the last ten years, I should ‘a’ been a dead man long ago. That’s the reason I like a horse. You’ve got to give your mind to the horse; you can’t help it, unless you want to break your neck…” (p. 79) The horse and car both allow a vivid experience of power unleashed, yet controlled. As the manager travels between home and office, the transition is mediated by an evocative conveyance—one that can mix feelings of sexuality, separation, and dominance in a strong, sensual experience. In the uniquely personal space provided by their rides to and from work, Silas Lapham and Victor Wilcox can, for a brief time, find a mastery over nature and others that eludes them both at home and the office. Home and office are two different realms providing two different faces for the self. The ride mediates a transition between these primary sites where the manager shares the two faces of self with others, and does so in a way that keeps alive the hope for both


a better family life and a better office life. It does so by allowing the manager to experience what is missing from each realm while moving between them. The possibilities for physical mastery over persons and things, and for sensuous enjoyment without guilt are available everyday in the ride. The ride keeps managers going, if they can give their mind to it. Lessons on meaning in management: the question of personal identity In addition to comparing the events and practices of a man ager’s life in the present day with those of the late nineteenth century, a novel such as The Rise of Silas Lapham can also give us an insight at a symbolic level into the meanings associated with being a manager; on how being a manager is intimately related to one’s identity as a person, and how a manager’s identity is founded on an affinity with the business. Throughout the novel we see the identity of the manager depending on a deep, almost religious belief in the product. Early on Lapham tells Bartley Hubbard, “I believe in my paint. I believe it’s a blessing to the world.” (p. 17) When Tom Corey first asks to join with Lapham in the paint business, he explains: “I haven’t come to you without making some inquiries about the paint, and I know how it stands with those who know best. I believe in it.” Lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, deeply moved. “It’ the best paint in God’s universe,” he said with the solemnity of prayer. “It’s the best in the market,” said Corey; and he repeated, “I believe in it.” (p. 76) After Tom joins the company, Bromfield Corey visits Lapham to express his acceptance of his son’s involvement and comments:

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“… And he seems to have gone into your business for the love of it… You might think he had invented it, if you heard him celebrating it.” “Is that so?” demanded Lapham, pleased through and through. “Well, there ain’t any other way. You’ve got to believe in a thing before you can put any heart in it…” (p. 141) Even after Silas Lapham realizes that the West Virginia paint company can produce an equivalent paint at a lower price and tells young Corey to look for another job, Tom’s belief is unshaken. “I don’t wish to give it up,” said the young fellow, setting his lips. “I’ve as much faith in it as ever; and I want to propose now what I only hinted at in the first place. I want to put some money in the business.” (p. 250) The basis of one’s identity with the business goes deeper than a belief or commitment, and is portrayed as a fundamental inner quality—almost a genetic characteristic. Lapham explains to Bromfield Corey that when Tom first proposed joining the paint company, “… I saw that he meant business from the start. I could see it was born in him. Any one could.” “I’m afraid he didn’t inherit it directly from me,” said Bromfield Corey, “but it’s in his blood, on both sides.” “Well, sir, we can’t help those things,” said Lapham, compassionately. “Some of us have got it and some of us haven’t…” (p. 142) Later, when Mrs. Corey confides to Persis that Tom worked all summer without his usual vacation, Persis confirms “Yes, he’s a born business man…. If it’s born in you, it’s bound to come out” (p. 167).


The intimate relation of personal identity on the one hand and the product and business entity on the other is visceral and flows in the blood of the manager. The life of the factory and the life of the manager become one. Howells brings this lesson out quite powerfully by linking the fire in the factory used for heat treating the paint to the fire in Silas Lapham’s heart. Although market demand fluctuates through the years, Lapham keeps the factory fires going, hoping the market will improve. Towards the end of the novel, however, with mineral paint glutting the market and the West Virginia company able to produce at a lower cost, Lapham tells Persis that he has taken the decision to shut down the plant. “Shut down the Works!” she echoed with dismay. She could not take it in. The fire at the Works had never been out before since it was first kindled. She knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he had bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged the fact in as the last expression of his sense of success. “Oh, Silas!” (p. 288) When the fire goes out at the plant, the fire goes out within Lapham as well. He returns to Vermont, weak and “more broken than he knew” (p. 354). The West Virginia company did not try to compete with him on the fine specialty paints he had produced (named the Persis Line), leaving him a significant market niche, but his “flagging energies” could not develop that opportunity. This identity of self based on product and organization, taking place as it does in a market context, is an inherently unstable relationship. It’s like being in love with someone who only cares for you in a contingent, utilitarian sense. The manager, in loving and finding a self through an organization and its product, is being set up for heart break. The market is fickle, making the product and the organization an

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unreliable object of affection. The manager finds a self through loving the product and factory, but ultimately finds that it does not love or remain faithful in return. Lessons on meaning in management: the moral economy of pain The ‘new world’ of large scale enterprise that Lapham experienced after the American Civil War is importantly a new kind of economy. In both a financial and moral sense, it is characterized by a new degree of interconnection. The growth of railroads, canals and steamships brought distant suppliers and customers within reach as never before, enlarging the scope and increasing the dynamism of markets. It also created a new sense of causal interconnection, in which local events could be seen to have distant consequences and distant events had direct local effects. A rail strike based far away, could shut down a local plant. Or, as happened to Lapham, a distant customer with different local conditions goes out of business, leaving Lapham short of cash. Suppliers from other regions, moving toward shorter payment cycles than were customary in Lapham’s local market, put further strains on his cash position. The discovery of natural gas on property owned by the paint company in West Virginia changes their cost structure relative to his, and destroys the value of his factory in upstate Vermont. This new sense of interconnection in the financial realm, in which actions taken locally have consequences at a great distance, is associated with an expanded sense of causal relations in the moral realm as well. Persis Lapham dramatically reflects this newly expanded causal universe as part of her campaign to get Silas Lapham to acknowledge his guilt in the Rogers affair. Silas Lapham wants to contain the question to a narrow accounting in which Rogers’ contribution to the firm had been repaid to him along with a fair return for the use of his money. Persis, instead, sees a vastly


expanded set of causal connections. By her accounting, all the profits earned since Rogers was forced out were actually caused by Rogers’ initial contribution and have been wrongly taken from him . When Lapham points out that Rogers has a history of business failure and he is fortunate to be rid of Rogers, Persis counters that all the financial difficulties Rogers had had were caused by Lapham’s action. “Well, I want you should ask yourself whether Rogers would ever have gone wrong, or got into these ways of his, if it hadn’t been for your forcing him out of the business when you did. I want you should think whether you’re not responsible for everything he’s done since.” (pp. 261–262) The self which finds an identity in the product and factory is entangled through the new market economy with causal interconnections to distant persons and events that stretch the self to extremes financially and morally. It is against this nexus of identity, economy and morality, which appears to create impossible demands on the self, that Howells introduces the notion of an ‘economy of pain’ and chastises the role of romantic, idealist novels in creating a false understanding of its workings. Recall that after Tom Corey had proposed to Penelope, she felt responsible for her family’s mistaken belief that Tom was interested in Irene, and also for the pain her sister was to suffer. Penelope believed it would be wrong for her to find happiness with Tom if her sister were so unhappy and Penelope were in part to blame. And so, she refused to marry him or even allow him to visit her. Silas and Persis Lapham were perplexed and sought counsel from Reverend Sewell. “One suffers instead of three, if none is to blame?” suggested Sewell. “That’s sense, and that’s justice. It’s the economy of pain which naturally suggests

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itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the shallowest sentimentality…” ‘No,’ cried the minister, “we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us round with its meshes, and we can’t fight our way out of it…” “… I don’t know where this false ideal comes from, unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every intelligence in some degree.” (p. 241) The economy of pain, in which suffering is selectively distributed to minimize its total effect, is in contrast to the newly interconnected world of commerce and causal relations generally. Wai-Chee Dimock (1991) argues that the economy of pain as depicted by Howells in The Rise of Silas Lapham indicates a self limiting cognitive structure characteristic of free market capitalism. When self interest as a prime motivator was coupled with the expanded causal universe associated with American capitalism in the late nineteenth century, it created opportunities for an almost limitless sense of moral obligation for the individual. The economy of pain is a self limiting feature of the managerial world in that it plaees a check on the unbounded expansion of moral responsibility and shifts our dialogue from exploring all the things one could be responsible for, to exploring how one could most economically distribute rewards and sufferings among the actors in the vast network of our financial relations. Dimock argues that novelists play an active role in constructing our understanding of the moral economy of capitalism. For in the composing of a plot, in orchestrating the destinies of characters, distributing benefits and assigning suffering, the novelist is necessarily a practicing economist, enforcing some model of


resource management. Indeed, if the task of the novelist is, as Howells says, to portray “human feelings in their true proportion and relation,” some principle of apportionment—some way of adjudicating rival claims and affixing balances—is crucial. ‘Resource allocation’ might turn out to be as much a necessity in the composition of a novel as it is in the composition of a society. (Dimock, 1991, pp. 74–80) Building upon Dimock’s view of the novelist as a moral economist, we can see several ways in which Silas Lapham deals with the ethical questions of the extended responsibilities for his actions by invoking the calculus of an economy of pain. When Lapham finally takes the decision to shut down the plant in Vermont, Persis asks about the impact on the workers. Lapham replies “They’ve shared my luck; now let ‘em share the other thing. And if you’re so very sorry for the hands, I wish you’d keep a little pity for me. Don’t you know what shutting down the Works means?” (p. 288) Note the complex economy of pain Lapham draws upon here. One element of the calculation balances the sharing of monetary gains and losses over time between Lapham and his workers. Another element, perhaps more important, balances the pain to his self, his identity as constituted through the product and the Works, to theirs. In this sense, Lapham as owner and manager is suffering a far greater loss of self than can be ascribed to the workers and is even more deserving of his wife’s pity. Another example of the economy of pain is in evidence when Lapham first considers assigning his non-cash assets to creditors under terms that might keep the business going for awhile. He makes a calculation in his managerial moral economy that balances his own willingness “to give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only they would let him go out with clean hands…” (p. 308) with the way he had not found

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his creditors “so very liberal or faithful with him” (p. 308). As a result, “he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too,” (p. 308) and refused the assignment. But along with this calculation comes another: Above all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment It was an open confession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear to have his family—his brother the judge, especially, to whom he had always appeared the soul of business wisdom—think him imprudent or stupid. (p. 308) Once again, we have a question of the self being the deciding factor. Just as he had with the workers at the plant, Lapham’s moral economy as a manager distributed suffering primarily based on the quantity of pain associated with a loss of self. Lapham’s identity is so deeply entwined with his love of the product and its market that his pain in loss of self outweighs the pain of his creditors. Behind both these examples in which the economy of pain is adjudicated through balancing questions of identity and self, there are suggestions of a basis for moral judgment in evidence throughout the novel that I would propose as a major lesson for managers to learn from The Rise of Silas Lapham. Repeatedly, the characters in this novel grapple with the ambiguity of whether their actions will be seen as ‘not selfish’ or will be seen as ‘self-sacrificing’. In the many adjudications of the economy of pain portrayed by Howells, we always see a tension as to whether individuals are accepting personal suffering because they have chosen to make a self-sacrifice or because they are avoiding being selfish. An important message of Howells’ realist novels is that accepting suffering as a self-sacrifice is an inappropriate basis for moral judgment. It represents the moral economy of the sentimental, romantic novels that he is trying to displace.


Penelope’s decision to refuse Tom Corey’s proposal of marriage because her family had believed he was interested in Irene, is the novel’s principle example of the “false ideal of self-sacrifice,” that so enraged Reverend Sewell, who had “grown quite heated and red in the face,” while telling the Laphams: “And I’m sorry to say that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred—oh, nine hundred and ninetynine out of a thousand!—would consider that noble and beautiful and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would be foolish and cruel and revolting.” (pp. 241–242) In the densely interconnected world of the expanding market economy, the possibilities for tracing chains of distant effects resulting from our actions poses a universe of moral responsibility in which the individual’s obligation is potentially unbounded. Howells uses Persis Lapham to dramatize this lesson as she considers her own responsibility for the pain experienced by Irene and Penelope over the mistaken intentions of Tom Corey. She begins to question her own responsibility for their suffering, but rejects this familiar romantic way of thinking about moral obligation. Instead, she comes to see this willingness to blame the self for the suffering of others and to self sacrifice as if in atonement, as a selfish and unworthy act: The time had been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been sent upon her. But now she could not feel that the innocent suffering of others was inflicted for her fault; she shrank instinctively from that cruel and egotistical interpretation of the mystery of pain and loss. (p. 231)

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Howells is more direct in applying this principle to Silas Lapham. Recounting his initial decision to force Rogers out of the partnership, Howells notes: It was a time of terrible trial. Happy is the man forever after who can choose the ideal, the unselfish part in such an exigency! Lapham could not rise to it. (p. 50) Later in the novel, Lapham’s moral rise is also tied to a judgment of what course of action is unselfish, and this judgment of the unselfish course is praised as the true mark of a gentleman Bellingham, a business advisor to Lapham tells Tom Corey of Lapham’s financial condition and confides that in turning down Corey’s offer of help, Lapham “behaved very well—like a gentleman… It’s hard to behave like a gentleman where your interest is vitally concerned.” (p. 300) Lessons on meaning in management: then and now In looking for management lessons in The Rise of Silas Lapham, we have seen how the economy of pain provides a basis for moral judgment. It warns us against the false romantic notion of self sacrifice, which distributes suffering according to a repugnantly egotistical ideal, and proposes instead that we take actions to allocate suffering and loss in as unselfish a way as possible. This formula both limits and transforms the self. It limits the self by cutting short the chain of causal relations for which the manager could be morally responsible, but it also transforms the self by involving it in a complex calculative space. The economy of pain frees the manager from a hopelessly expansive set of moral responsibilities, but in turn forces the manager to address fundamental questions of defining the self with a calculative practice.


In the romantic ideal which Howells tries to displace, the individual can experience an expanded causal responsibility for the suffering of others and can choose the seemingly heroic course of self sacrifice, without considering others and without considering the relative distribution of suffering or rewards among them. In the contrasting realist alternative which The Rise of Silas Lapham presents, the individual must necessarily consider others by making calculations of how sufferings and rewards are to be allocated among self and other. In order to determine whether one is acting selfishly or not, the distributive consequences must be taken into account. Self and other must be brought into a calculative space in which the accountings for rewards and sufferings can be balanced in an economy of pain. Calculations in this moral economy of pain are no easy matter for the manager. Because the manager finds identity and self through product and organization, and because the manager is expected to act wisely in promoting and maintaining the business, the balance between actions which reflect appropriate self interest for the business, versus those that re flect inappropriate selfishness of the individual are essentially ambiguous. We can see how keenly this ambiguity is experienced by Lapham when he chooses to unselfishly refuse the sale of the Western mill property to the agents for the English utopian group, and when he reveals to the potential investor from New York that he needs to merge with the West Virginia company. Both these decisions reflect an unselfish choice for Lapham, but a failure to act in the self interest of the company which is a basis for his identity. Lapham, struggling at the limits of his economy of pain, fears he will appear foolish for having taken these actions. He fears that others might feel he had mistakenly chosen the false ideal of self sacrifice and that it wasn’t a question of being selfish at all. Because of this fear, Lapham told Bellingham only in the most cursory way about the New York investor, and said nothing of the Englishmen.

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He believed he had acted right in that matter, and he was satisfied; but he did not care to have Bellingham or anybody, perhaps think he had been a fool. (p. 352) At the end of the novel, Reverend Sewell counsels Lapham on the inherent ambiguity of an unselfish choice in an economy of pain. He tells Lapham that the “operation of evil” in the “moral world” is “often so very obscure”, but that with respect to Rogers, “your fear of having possibly behaved self-ishly toward this man kept you on your guard, and strengthened you when you came face to face with a greater…emergency” (p. 364). For the manager, then, the lesson is a hard one: when in doubt as to allocating loss or pain in a manager’s moral economy, choose with a fear of being selfish. Even in error, you will find strength. Concluding thoughts In The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells dramatized the profound shift in social and economic relations with accompanying changes in cognitive structure that characterized the move toward free market capitalism in late nineteenth century America. The expanded network of causal interconnections in both an economic and moral sense that marked that shift, and the moral economy of pain that provided its self limiting characteristic, are still important features of the world of management today. Our established, taken for granted ways of thinking and talking about ourselves are perhaps only visible to us when encountered in a novel such as this, which helps us to see ourselves from afar. Today, the use of calculative practices for allocating rewards and sufferings in our moral economy, and the use of imagery from business and the capitalist market to define ourselves as persons in both our home life and our work life are so prominent they have become


invisible. Perhaps one of the most important lessons about management that we might learn from novels is how these everyday ways of thinking and talking—of defining our identity as persons, of locating ourselves in a moral economy, of moving between a home life and office life, of being seen as rational—is historically bound and contingent. By reading good fiction, we can open ourselves to view the origins of these familiar realities and can also open ourselves to the possibility for changing them. References Dimock, W-C. (1991) The economy of pain: Capitalism, humanitarianism and the realistic novel. In: Pease, D. (Ed.), New essays on the rise of Silas Lapham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 67–90. Goldman, I.C. (1986) Business made her nervous: The fall of Persis Lapham. The Old Northwest, 13 (4): 419–438. Howells, W.D. (1971) The rise of Silas Lapham. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lodge, D. (1988) Nice work London: Penguin. Pease, D. (1991) (Ed.) New essays on The Rise of Silas Lapham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, A. (1992) The triumph of irony in The Rise of Silas Lapham. Studies in American Fiction, 20 (1): 45–55.

THE MERCHANT AND THE PREACHER As Pictured by Multatuli’s Max Havelaar (1860) by Geert Hofstede

Multatuli and Max Havelaar Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company is generally considered the masterpiece of Dutch nineteenth century literature. As is often the case with masterpieces, its author was completely unknown to the public before the novel appeared in 1860. Eduard Douwes Dekker who wrote under the pen name Multatuli (Latin for ‘I have borne much’), started his literary career with this book and never equalled its success in his later writings. The theme for the book is autobiographical, but its presentation is a mixture of autobiographical and caricatural elements. Dekker was born in 1820 as the son of a sea captain. He started an education to become a minister of the Church, then worked as an apprentice in a trading company, and at the age of eighteen was taken by his father to the Dutch East Indies—the present Indonesia—in order to try making his fortune. He joined the Dutch colonial administration where he became known as an intelligent but impulsive young man. He married in 1846; his wife, Tine, plays an important role in the novel. After several other posts, Dekker was appointed Assistant Resident of Lebak, in western Java, in 1856, by a personal decision of the Governor-General.

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In the Dutch colonial administration the direct authority in a district was carried out by a member of the native nobility known as the Regent. Regents received a salary from the government and enjoyed additional traditional privileges in terms of goods and services from the population. Next to and over every native Regent stood a Dutch Assistant Resident, and several of these reported to a Resident. Dutch colonial officials had to take an oath promising loyalty to the King of the Netherlands, and to “protect the native population against oppression, ill-treatment and extortion”. All Dutch in the colonial administration were able to communicate in Malay, the trade language, and sometimes also in local languages. The district of Lebak, at the time, was known to be in trouble. It was one of the poorest districts of Java and there were rumours of exploitation of the local population by the Regent and his family. Many inhabitants emigrated to more prosperous parts of Java; others joined an insurrection in nearby southern Sumatra. Dekker’s predecessor had tried to get support for redressing the abuses, but he had died suddenly. When Dekker arrived, his predecessor’s widow indicated she assumed her husband to have been poisoned by the Regent’s son-in-law. In the novel the new Assistant Resident is called Max Havelaar. One of the most famous parts of the book is Havelaar’s inaugural speech to the Regent and the other native Chiefs of Lebak which is no doubt authentic. In oriental metaphor he refers to the plight of the starving district and his mission to improve the status of the population and to redress abuses.1 “Radhen Adhipatti, Regent of Bantam-Kidul, and you, Radhens Demang, who are the Chiefs of the Districts in this Division, and you, Radhen Jaksa, 1 All quotes are from the translation by Roy Edwards, which appeared as a Penguin Book in 1987.

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whose office is to see to justice, and you also, Radhen Kliwon, who exercise authority in the Divisional Centre, and you, Radhens, Mantris, and all who are Chiefs in the Division of Bantam-Kidul, I greet you! And I say unto you that I feel joy in my heart, seeing you all assembled here, listening to the words of my mouth. When the Governor-General commanded me to come to you as Assistant Resident of this Division, my heart was rejoiced…. I perceived that your people are poor, and for this I was glad in my inmost soul. For I know that Allah loves the poor, and that He gives riches to those whom He will try. But to the poor He sends the one who speaks His word, that they may lift up their heads in the midst of their misery…. Chiefs of Lebak, we have made many mistakes, and our land is poor because we have made so many mistakes. For in Chikandi and Bolang, and in Krawang, and in the regions round Batavia, there are many who were born in our land and who have left our land. Why do they seek labour far from the place where they buried their parents? Why have they fled from the dessah where they were circumcised? Why did they choose the coolness under the tree that grows there rather than the shade of our forests? And even yonder in the north-west, across the sea, there are many who should have been our children but have left Lebak to wander around in alien regions with kris and klewang and rifle. And they perish miserably, for the power of the Government is there, which strikes down the rebels. Chiefs of Lebak, I ask you, why have so many gone away to be buried where they were not born? Why does the tree ask: ‘Where is the man I saw playing at my foot as a child?’…

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I should like to live on good terms with you all, and so I ask you to look upon me as a friend. If anyone has erred, he may count on a lenient judgment from me, for, since I err only too often myself, I shall not be severe…that is to say, not in the matter of ordinary offences of commission or omission in the service. Only when neglect of duty becomes a habit shall I seek to combat it. I will not speak of grosser misdemeanours—of extortion and oppression…” and so the speech continues. Afterwards, poor farmers visit him during the night to complain about gross extortion. The body of one of them is found in the river the next morning. In public sessions, complainers remain silent, afraid of being the next victim. Havelaar/Dekker then proposes to his superior, the Resident, to summon the Regent to the Resident’s office and to arrest the other Chiefs so that complainers can witness without fearing for their lives. The careful Resident (called Slymering in the novel), judging this action too drastic, refuses. Havelaar/ Dekker, assuming that his nomination by a personal decision of the Governor-General justifies direct access, bypasses the Resident and addresses the GovernorGeneral. This, however, is considered insubordination. Havelaar/Dekker is suspended and offered another post, but on an impulse he resigns. He then tries to get an audience with the Governor-General who, however, refuses to see him. Dekker is never reinstated, although his accusations against the Chiefs of Lebak are proven true, and first some of the subordinate Chiefs, later on also the Regent are fired. Dekker returns to Europe where he henceforward lives a poor and bohemian life. The novel has been written as an appeal by Dekker to the general public in order to be vindicated. The miracle is that this document which resulted from a personal grudge— Havelaar told the Colonial Office that he would not publish it if he was reinstated—is at the same time a


literary masterpiece. The same originality and spontaneity which made Dekker fail as a civil servant made him succeed as a writer. He writes in a style which differs greatly from the solemn, bombastic worduse of his contemporaries in the Netherlands, and even today looks fresh. He has also made his dramatic autobiographic story part of a complex caricatural plot which at first bewilders but then enchants the reader. Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trade Company has been written as a story in a story. The book opens in Amsterdam, with notes written by a supposed Batavus Droogstoppel (Drystubble), coffee broker, a prosperous businessman and pedantic bourgeois. Droogstoppel meets an old schoolmate who obviously has not fared well in life: this man does not even have a coat to protect himself against the winter cold, and goes around wrapped in a scarf. This Sjaalman (Scarfman) offers him a parcel of his notes to look at. Droogstoppel sees that some of the notes deal with the Dutch East Indies, and imagines they may be relevant to his one great passion, the coffee trade. He charges a young, romantic German apprentice, Stern, with turning a selection of the notes into a novel. And then the Havelaar story starts, with occasional comments from Droogstoppel in Amsterdam who is hardly pleased with the way the plot develops. After Havelaars speech to the Chiefs of Lebak, Droogstoppel quotes a sermon by the Rev. Wawelaar (Blatherer), the name obviously a perversion of Havelaar. The sermon deals with “Gods love in his wrath against the nonbelievers” and is in all respects a caricature of Havelaar’s speech to the Chiefs. Some fragments follow: “Cast your eyes upon the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions upon millions of the children of the accursed son—the rightly accursed son—of the noble Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord! There they crawl about in the loathsome snakepits of heathenish ignorance—

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there they bow the black, frizzy head under the yoke of self-seeking priests! There they pray to God, invoking a false prophet who is an abomination in the sight of the Lord! And, Beloved! as though it were not enough to obey a false prophet, there are even those among them who worship another God, nay, other gods, gods of wood and stone, which they themselves have made after their own image, black, horrible, with flat noses, and devilish!… But, Beloved, God is a God of Love! He will not that the sinner shall be lost, but that he shall be saved by grace, in Christ, through faith! And therefore our Holland has been chosen to save what may be saved of those wrenched ones! Therefore has God, in His inscrutinable Wisdom, given power to a land of small compass but great and strong in the knowledge of Him, power over the dwellers in those regions, that by the holy, ever-inestimable Gospel they may be delivered from the pains of hell! The ships of our Holland sail the great waters, to bring civilization, religion, Christianity, to the misguided Javanese! Nay, our happy Fatherland does nor covet eternal bliss for itself alone: we wish to share it also with the wretched creatures on those distant shores who lie bound in the fetters of unbelief, superstition and immorality!… The duties that we had to perform on behalf of those poor heathens included the following: 1. Making liberal contributions to the missionary society. 2. Supporting the Bible Societies, to enable them to distribute Bibles in Java. 3. Furthering prayer meetings at Harderwijk [a garrison town in the Netherlands, GH] for the benefit of the colonial army recruiting depot. 4. Writing sermons and hymns, suitable for our soldiers and sailors to read and sing to the Javanese.


5. Formation of a society of influential men whose task it should be to petition our gracious King: a. To appoint as governors, officers and officials only such men as may be considered steadfast in the true faith; b. To have permission granted to the Javanese to visit the barracks, and also the men-of-war and merchantmen lying in the ports, so that by intercourse with Dutch soldiers and sailors they may be prepared for the Kingdom of God; c. To prohibit the acceptance of Bibles or religious tracts in public houses in payment for drink; d. To make it a condition of the granting of opium licences in Java that in every opium house there shall be kept a stock of Bibles in proportion to the probable number of visitors to the institution, and that the licensee shall undertake to sell no opium unless the purchaser takes a religious tract at the same time; e. To command that the Javanese shall be brought to God by labour. So far the Rev. Blatherer, as quoted by Batavus Droogstoppel. In the last chapter of the book, Multatuli appears himself and dismisses Stern. The finishing lines of the book dwell in the mind of many a Dutch schoolboy or girl: “… I dedicate my book to you, William the Third, Prince, Grand Duke and King… Emperor of the glorious realm of Insulinde, that coils yonder round the Equator like a girdle of emerald… You I dare ask with confidence whether it is Your Imperial will: that the Havelaars be spatted with the mud of Slymerings and Droogstoppels? and that yonder Your more than thirty million

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subjects be maltreated and exploited in your name?” Havelaar as an exponent of Dutch culture Dutch colonial wealth dated from the seventeenth century when the Netherlands had been a world power. The most important colonies were in the East Indies, where the Dutch acquired overlordship of a population ten times the size of that of the mother country. This overlordship was mostly exercised in indirect ways, by leaving the local rulers in place and playing them against each other. A relatively small military contingent was used as a final resort. From 1795 to 1813 the Netherlands were occupied by the Napoleonic French, and the East Indian colonies by the British, who, however, gave most of them back in 1815. Since 1830 the native population was compelled to grow the crops prescribed by the colonial government, on behalf of the Dutch Trading Company (the so-called ‘Culture System’), hence the novel’s reference to coffee, although the Lebak district did not grow coffee. The Dutch have always been ambivalent about their wealth. A book dealing with the Dutch ‘golden age’, the seventeenth century, was called by its American author, historian Simon Schama (1987) The Embarrassment of Riches. To the present day, many Dutch people show evidence of a role conflict between the merchant and the preacher within themselves. The success of the Dutch as merchants is on the one hand due to the geographical position of the country, which equipped it with several good seaports at the estuary of large navigable rivers. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition. On the other hand, the Dutch in comparison with other people showed distinct cultural traits sup porting the merchant role and well recognized by their trading partners: most were thrifty (greedy, according to some of their partners),


egalitarian, peaceful, and oriented towards maintaining good relationships. In my own research on present-day value differences between matched samples from over fifty nations, these traits were confirmed (Hofstede, 1980a, 1991). At the same time, there is a preacher inside many Dutchmen and Dutchwomen. In this century, Dutch novelist Menno ter Braak has expressed his resentment of this character in a novel Afscheid van Domineesland (“Farewell to Preachers’ Country”). The Dutch Preacher is a Calvinist, even if he or she is Catholic, Jew, Humanist, Communist or Agnostic. The Preacher admonishes others in their own best interest, even across the national borders. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini (1983) wrote: “The Dutch see themselves as the only sane people in an insane world: they defend all moral causes”, and the Swiss Ernest Zahn (1984), who for many years was university professor at Amsterdam, calls the Dutch “the most meddlesome nation in the world”. A remarkable term in the English language to describe a person inclined to preaching is ‘a Dutch uncle’. “Talk to one like a Dutch uncle”, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is to “lecture him paternally”, and this expression has been part of the English idiom at least since the early nineteenth century. In my own research the Dutch, accompanied by the Scandinavians, produced extreme scores in two respects: strongly individualistic, that is, inclined to let individual interests and individual opinions prevail, and at the same time strongly feminine, that is caring for others, with a desire to help the weak and to maintain warm personal relationship with others. This is the profile of the Preacher who honestly wants to help others, but in his way because he alone knows where the other persons’ best interests lie. There is an obvious conflict between the merchant and the preacher role, and their combination has led to curious paradoxes. Where commercial interests were involved, some preachers (the Wawelaar type) justified

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the fact that certain peoples were excluded from the national trend towards generosity, and were turned into objects for trade. This ambiguity had also allowed the Dutch involvement in the international slave trade in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The double standard which resolves the conflict between the merchant and the preacher has always been wielded by the bourgeois regent (plural: regenten; not to be confused with the title of the native chiefs in the colonial administration). The regenten are the members of the informal class of ‘nice people’ who pulled and to a large extent still pull the informal ropes of Dutch society. Regenten today are found in all political parties, from left to right, and on the boards of voluntary associations, charitative bodies, and business companies. They are non-heroic leaders and they are replaceable: one hardly notices the substitution of one by another. They are pictured on the large seventeenth century paintings by Rembrandt and others: they form the Night Watch of Dutch culture. In Batavus Droogstoppel, Multatuli has created the archetypal regent. On the other hand this double standard has also regularly been under attack. Havelaar personifies another archetype, another kind of preacher who from the embarrassment of his riches proposes a universal standard in dealing with other people and peoples; a spiritual heir of Humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam and of Hugo Grotius, the founder of international law. The appeal of this other preacher in Dutch society explains why the novel became one of the forces leading to the gradual abolition of the Culture System after 1860. Later on, an “Ethical Movement” developed, receiving for a time strong support from colonial administrators. Today’s Development Cooperation with the Third World reflects the same ethos: in per cents of Gross National Product, the Dutch with the Scandinavians are world champion donors. The Dutch “exceed in generosity all


the nations of Europe”, the Italian journalist Edmondo de Amicis wrote as early as in 1873 . Havelaar’s ethical single-standard approach raises the problem whether it is right to apply the standards of one culture to another. The behaviour of the Javanese Chiefs is no doubt less extreme in Javanese eyes than it looks in Dutch eyes. In my own research carried out around 1970, I found Indonesians scoring much higher than Dutch respondents on “Power Distance”: the extent to which inequality in society is accepted and expected (Hofstede, 1983). The opinion that Chiefs should enjoy privileges would be disputed by few Indonesians even today. Dekker was quite conscious of the cultural differences between Indonesians and Dutch. In the book, he lets Havelaar look at the Regent’s behaviour from the Regent’s point of view, and shows a sympathetic understanding for the fact that the Regent needs to fulfil many social obligations corresponding to his high rank, such as receiving neighbouring Regents and building mosques, while the District is very poor and therefore yields few benefits. Such considerations may also have explained the Resident’s hesitation to act although Havelaar attributes to him (Slymering) less noble motives. In spite of his understanding of the Regent’s culturally determined dilemma, Havelaar feels compelled to accuse him because of his own oath “to protect the native population against oppression, illtreatment and extortion”, and because he feels that the Chiefs’ deeds are intolerable even by Javanese standards. Forms of abuse of power like the Chief s in Dekker’s novel are probably not rare even in presentday Indonesia. An admirable film based on the novel, produced in the 1970s, was not shown in Indonesia until recently because it was seen as politically subversive. Because he raises a fundamental conflict issue within Dutch culture, Multatuli, probably alone among all nineteenth century Dutch authors, is still able to raise

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controversy after a century or more. When I was at school, a classmate from a conservative family called him “a dangerous trouble-maker”, The conflict between the merchant and the preacher is still going on and often referred to in the Dutch press. A study of the postWorld-War II Dutch for eign policy has been called: Peace, Profits, and Principles (Voorhoeve, 1979). Havelaar and the emergence of modern Dutch business corporations The Netherlands in the nineteenth century were one of the last European countries to industrialize. The country had a past as a trading and agricultural nation; wealthy merchants would invest in the shares of British industries rather than found industries at home. The separation from Belgium in 1830 was a further setback because it split the industrializing south from the trading north. The source of Dutch wealth was still very much the colonial trade, since 1815 exercised under the auspices of the Dutch Trading Company. The Netherlands have not produced any major literature about industrial life, neither in the nineteenth nor in the twentieth century. Industrial activity does not appeal to the Dutch in a way that anybody would become lyrical about it, or sufficiently moved to describe it as a social problem. There is no equivalent to Max Havelaar in an industrial setting, although there would have been sufficient case material for a social novel in the revelations of the Parliamentary Investigation on Child Labour which led to a 1874 law prohibiting such labour; the very beginning of the Dutch Welfare State. When the Netherlands finally industrialized, after 1870 and after a tax which spared capital gains but charged industrial activities had been lifted, it produced several remarkable pioneers who tried to establish a social entrepreneurship. They were moved by the same concern for equality and humanity which radiates from Multatuli’s novel. J.C. van Marken (1845–1906) was a


church minister’s son who became the founder of the first Dutch biochemical industry, the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Gist-en Spiritusfabriek (Royal Dutch Yeast and Spiritworks). Among other things, he built a village for all his personnel including himself, created a Works Council of elected representatives of the personnel in 1878, and published a personnel journal in 1882; the latter two have survived until the present day. When the textile workers in another part of the country struck against their miserable work situation, van Marken publicly sided with the workers against his colleague factory owners. C. T.Stork (1822–1895) was another pioneer who founded an engineering company; he copied most of Van Marken’s ideas and added a range of adult education acitivities. In the twentieth century the Netherlands have been economically successful in spite of one of the fastest population growth rates in Europe. This was not achieved by the creation of large production factories; the ones that were set up, like in textiles and engineering, went down again in international competition. Rather, the country excelled in high-value agricultural and horticultural products, such as seed potatoes and flowers, in services, such as banking, consulting and transport, and in developing multinational businesses. Three of the largest multinationals in the world are Dutch or Anglo/Dutch with a Dutch majority; Philips electronics, Shell oil and chemicals and Unilever branded consumer products. In the past decades more than half of the Dutch Gross National Product has been earned by exports of goods and services, including management. In a competitive world market the Dutch seem to be able to hold their own due to their trading, customer relations, and negotiation abilities. It is extremely likely that national characteristics of peoples play a role in the development of their national economies and businesses, the more so in period of a relatively free international flow of money, goods and

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services. My own research provides strong support for this assumption (Hofstede, 1991). In the case of the Dutch, I suggest that their particular position in world business can be understood from the dialectic between the merchant and the preacher. This dialectic has been personified by Multatuli in Droogstoppel and Wawelaar on the one side, and Havelaar on the other. Wawelaar is the tame preacher, the one who soothes the merchant’s conscience by equalling business interests with God’s will. Havelaar is the wild preacher, who asks painful questions and interferes with the business; the one who matters. Paradoxically, I believe, Dutch business would never have played the role on the international scene that it has, without its share of Havelaars inside and outside its organizations. There is even a small piece of Havelaar inside many Droogstoppels. The Havelaars inside are the managers and employees who are prepared to raise fundamental questions as to the course the business is taking. In the short run, these persons may be a nuisance; in the long run, they assure an awareness of issues in the social, political, cultural and ecological business environment which forces the leaders to be proactive rather than reactive. The Netherlands never produced enough political conservatives to form a Conservative Party; there are conservatives within the other parties but the leadership, both within politics and within business, tends to go to the moderately progressive thinkers. Political reactionaries in the Dutch multinationals seem to have a lesser chance of promotion than progressives, probably because the former are out of touch with mainstream feelings in their society. Even right-wingers on the Dutch political scene would be considered leftwing in many other countries. The Havelaars outside business are found within various invited or uninvited stakeholder groups: the government, the churches (that actually produce as many Havelaars as Wawelaars), the press, relatives of


employees, consumer organizations, environmentalists, and pressure groups around certain issues, like the liberation of women, of Sub-Saharan Africans, or even of animals. In a case study of successful stakeholder action I once described how politically mobilized consumers forced the country’s largest coffee roaster to stop importing from preindependence Angola (Hofstede, 1980b). Even if the stakes of such groups are not recognized by a business’ management as legitimate, these Havelaars do have a proactive influence on the management’s decisions. The presence of all these Dutch Uncles in and around Dutch business, I believe, is a competitive disadvantage in the short term, but through their impact on long-term strategies and policies, they in fact reinforce business’ base. This even holds true for those groups that try to do the opposite, from an anti-big-business ideological stance. Max Havelaar is alive and well in the Netherlands today, and the country owes him a lot. References Barzini, L. (1983) The Europeans. New York NY: Simon & Schuster. de Amicis, E. (1876/1985) Nederland en zijn bewoners. Utrecht: Veen. Douwes Dekker, E. (1860/1983) Max Havelaar of de koffieveilingen der Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij’. Rotterdam: Ad Donker. English language version: Max Havelaar or the coffee auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, translated by Roy Edwards. Harmondsworth Mddx.: Penguin, 1967/1983 . Hofstede, G. (1980a) Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills CA: Sage. Hofstede, G. (1980b) Angola coffee—or the confrontation of an organization with changing values in its environment. Organization Studies, 1(1): 21–40. Hofstede, G. (1983) Cultural pitfalls for Dutch expatriates in Indonesia. Deventer, Neth.: Twijnstra Gudde International and Maastricht, Neth.: Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation (IRIC).

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Hofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw Hill. Schama, S. (1987) The embarrassment of riches: An interpretation of Dutch culture in the golden age. New York: Alfred A.Knopf. ter Braak, M. (1931) Afscheid van Domineesland, Brussels: Stols. Voorhoeve, J.J.C. (1979) Peace, profits, and principles: A study of Dutch foreign policy. The Hague: M.Nijhoff. Zahn, E. (1984) Das unbekannte Holland: Regenten, Rebellen und Reformatoren. Berlin: Siedler.

CAPITALISM, ORDER AND MORAL VALUE: Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo by Maureen Whitebrook

Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard1 can be read as a discussion in fictional form of the effects of the introduction of capitalist organization into a particular society. Conrad shows very clearly both the influence of Western capitalism in a developing country, especially its effect on attempts to set up a state order, and the incompatibility of capitalist values with other more political and/or moral requirements. And he does this in a mode which is transitional between realism and modernism, so that the form of the novel contributes to the meaning to be drawn from the content. Nostromo thus constitutes a sound contribution to social theory, offering organization studies a study of the events resulting from the regeneration of a business—a silver mine—in an emergent modern society. ‘Capitalism’ and ‘organization’ are embodied in and depicted through the life of the mine, the coming of the railway and the effects of these business ventures on the society of Costaguana. The introduction of capitalism has an organisational and ordering outcome which has a profound impact not only on the economy and therefore on the development of the state but also on the lives of individuals and therefore on the moral nature of society —“the core achievement of Nostromo is the searching,

1 Joseph Conrad, Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (London: Dent, 1904); all references are from the Uniform Edition, 1923.

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delicate investigation into the relationship between material interest, material changes, and the hearts and minds of characters…” (Hawthorn, 1979, p. 58).2 This novel depicts the effects of the introduction of capitalism, commenting on capitalism and modernity and provoking consideration of those forces in a way which transcends the specificity of the setting. A major theme of the novel is the way in which a society is westernised, confirmed in its development from a colonial past, under the impact of European business methods and North American capital. The politicallydisordered South American setting may serve as an analogy in fictionalised form for nineteenth century Europe and, indeed, for contemporary Eastern and Central Europe.3 It can be thus be read in a way that provides a kind of commentary to this collection of studies of mature capitalism in fiction: the progression of Costaguana towards twentieth century advanced capitalism offers an experimental setting in which the results of the introduction of capitalism and business methods can be examined. In Nostromo the social themes are clear and inescapable but so are the human dilemmas that are a result of social forces (Raval, 1986).4 The interaction of social and individual is related to the apparent contradiction in Conrad’s writing, noted by many critics, between skepticism and faith. Such contradictions result in a consideration of matters that are of central interest to the social

2

For other relevant criticism of Nostromo, see Hay, 1963; Fleishman, 1967; Howe, 1961; Cox, 1974; Bantock, 1958; Wilding, 1966; Jameson, 1981. 3 The critics who think that this is a novel ‘about’ a ‘typical’ South American situation place an unnecessary limitation on the novel; cf. Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges, “Don Quijote and Capitalism in Poland” (in this volume). Her comment on nineteenth century Poland could perfectly well describe Costaguana—“This was a society where old harmony had ceased to exist and no one knew what the emerging structure was going to be”. (Chapter 3, p. 58); cf. chapter 3, pp. 64–65.

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scientist; these are not treated didactically or programmatically but precisely as problems, so that novels such as Nostromo are effectively discussions of those problems. The introduction of capitalism: Plot and characters The story recounted in Nostromo takes place in a country experiencing the introduction of capitalist finance and organization through the medium of a European railway company and United States backing for a European-run silver mine, the Gould Concession. These economic and business ventures take place in a country prone to political upheaval: the narrative is on one level an account of the attempts to move, with the help of the resources of the mine, from “Fifty Years of Misrule”—the title given to an account of an unstable period of revolts, counterrevolts, and short-lived governments—towards modernity. The emergence of the state is thus clearly tied to the introduction of capitalism. The major protagonists represent the influence of both Europe—the old order in both economic and political sense—and North America—the source of new capital— on such a regime. The old order of Europe is represented by characters such as Sir John, Chairman of the railway company, and Giorgio, the ardent Garabaldino. Europe is also, more significantly, where the young Gould made a decision to develop the mine abandoned in despair by his father. This choice provides a narrative link to the new capitalism of the United States embodied in the financier Holroyd (though Holroyd’s capitalism and, specifically, his venture into the affairs of Costaguana, have a Christian background, 4

Raval’s chapter on Nostromo, “The Politics of History” is a very helpful analysis of the novel as depicting “the operation of political forces in society”.

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thus linking this ‘new’ man to another kind of old order). Both of these traditional orders are brought to bear on the underdeveloped and politically disordered South American society of Costaguana. Order and disorder This connection between old and new, developed and underdeveloped is individualised in the character of Nostromo, the eponymous central figure of the narrative. Nostromo’s story is linked inextricably with the development of the province and specifically with the silver of the mine. In his character as “the Incorruptible” he is able to save the silver which “must be kept flowing north to return in the form of financial backing from the great house of Holroyd” (Part 2, Chapter 6, p. 219). His name identifies him as an essentially public persona —‘our man’ (It. nostro uomo). He is an Italian seaman, protegee of Giorgio, who has settled in Costaguana and there made himself indispensable to the Europeans as “a sort of universal factotum—a prodigy of efficiency in his own sphere of life” (Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 44). However, that he is known as “Nostromo” becomes increasingly ironic as his motivations become more and more personal. His Christian name, Gian’Battista (John the Baptist) is also ironic in that it suggests that “he prepares the way for the control of Sulaco by the economic imperialists and is thus an inaugurator of its capitalist era” (Watts, 1982, p. 178). But his part in the maintenance of order and, thereby, the economic development of his chosen homeland is counteracted by both personal greed—he steals the silver he has been entrusted with, and re-emerges as Captain Fidanza (“Faithful”—thus further reinforcing the irony of his namings)—and affiliation with indigenous political movements which may threaten the precarious order imposed on the province. Nostromo deals on several levels with the effects of social and political disorder; specifically, the novel


presents the implications of order being established on the basis of capitalism. For the duration of the narrative, the Gould mine imposes a certain order on a disordered system, to meet its own need for order. Conrad is quite explicit about the situation pertaining in Sulaco: the mine functions as a state-within-a-state. “The authorites of Sulaco had learnt that the San Tome mine could make it worth their while to leave things and people alone. In fact, the mine…was a power in the land”. The mine imposes a “steadying effect…upon the life of that remote province” and Charles Gould is “the visible sign of the stability that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions”. And “the San Tome mine was to become an institution, a rallying point for everything in the Province that needed order and stability to live. Security seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge” (Part 1, Chapter 8, p. 110). As the working of the mine is established it brings order to the province: to preserve that order, Gould is drawn into political affairs and backs the Ribierist party. By the time of the Monterist defeat of the Ribierist government he is so involved that he is prepared to blow up the mine if necessary. “The Gould concession has struck such deep roots in this country that…nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from there”. In the event, destruction is unnecessary because Sulaco is liberated by Barrios assisted by the San Tome miners; then Gould asserts that “the San Tome mine is big enough to take in hand the making of a new state” (Part 2, Chapter 5, p. 205; Part 3, Chapter 4, p. 380). So the organization of the mine becomes the basis of the politics of Sulaco, capable of underpinning civil government, The Gould Concession is shown as the equivalent, for Sulaco, of rational-legal authority, a basis for organization in the context of which the life of the province can proceed peacefully. Imperialist money injected into the province assists in the achievement of peace—and is more successful in that respect than the

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‘liberal’ Ribierist government. It could be argued that this is an acceptable state of affairs—and it is indeed what various characters in the tale claim that they want. Several critics, including Robert Penn Warren judge that the final state of affairs in Sulaco is better than what has gone before (Warren, 1960).5 It is indeed a common assumption that material prosperity, the conditions flowing from the order of the mine, can only bring good to Sulaco. But the novel shows that it cannot be simply assumed that (imposed) law and order will improve social order as a whole. The establishment of order by way of the mine and the eventual ‘stability’ in Sulaco represents a decrease in arbitrariness rather than the establishment of a politico-economic system within which interests can compete and develop. Order is partial and limited because the connections between individuals and the system are weak or non-existent. Although imposed rule is accepted, that in itself helps to explain the expectation that there will be more disorder in the future. The ‘law and order’ imposed on the province is a product of external influences rather than a development from within society itself. It is significant aspect of the novel that it deals directly with the basis of modern state order in capitalism and shows that order as an unsatisfactory framework for political life on both the collective and the individual level. As Raval has it, The narrative of Nostromo…recognises the need for scientific and technological advance, but recognises as well that socio-historical forces do not harmonize with such advance. In their contingency, these forces, however recurrent in man’s history, are catastrophic… Economic and political activity in Costaguana is the very cause of violence and disorder… Nostromo is about the coming of capitalism in a world which is not prepared for it. In Nostromo Conrad undermines


the idealism which aligns capitalism with justice, morality and order. (Raval, 1986, pp. 92–94) As Raval points out, Holroyd wants to give laws for everything but disdains politics in favour of profit; and in general, self-interests do not act as countervailing forces to the passions but in fact intensify the prevailing disorder (see also Hirschman, 1977). The fact and idea of capitalism The depiction of capitalism in the novel is focussed in the financier, Holroyd. He is shown as a character whose very embodiment of an idea is complicated by his expression of it—“manifest destiny” is combined with Christian charity and something approaching real care for Gould himself. In contrast with the concrete portrayal of capitalism in a character, Holroyd, Nostromo also presents the idea of capitalism through the recurrent fact and image of “the silver of the mine”. Literary critics such as Jacques Berthoud have wanted to explain away the introduction of overt capitalist forces into the story as evidence of Conrad’s intention to show history as subject to forces beyond man’s control (and thus on a par with the forces of nature alluded to in the narrative). But this is to ignore the specificity of the references to capitalism, for example, the organisational methods Gould employs. So, for instance, there is concern for the safety of the men, but this entails their organization into villages closely controlled by the officials of the mine. Albert Guerard 5

Avron Fleishman comments “It is one of the minor ironies of literary history that Warren, like other New Critics, has been critical of the values of modern industrial society, yet when a judgement of society is to be made he bases it on typically capitalist norms: political stability, the security of life and property, expanding production and trade” (Fleishman, 1967, p. 165).

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notes that in defence of material interests, “the Gould Concession must work in an imperfect world of men and manners and must stoop for its weapons”. The use of bribes may serve to increase or decrease the overall corruption of this society. But Guerard suggests that however questionable the methods the mine employed, at least they encouraged a kind of “nepotistic energy” which counteracted the normal culture of this regime. (However, Guerard also notes that the indirect effects— which do imply some choice—become direct intervention in the affairs of the whole society when Gould chooses to finance the Ribierist revolution—Guerard, 1958; Berthoud, 1978). Most critics discuss the mine and particularly “the silver of the mine”, as a given fact, a matter of content and plot without comment on the significance of the organization as such or the effect of change on the society depicted.6 One characteristic of this interaction between economic and political developments is that words and ideas become important. As Jeremy Hawthorn notes, “industrialization and the societies to which it gives rise rely more heavily on precise verbal expression than on non-verbal forms of communication” and Holroyd, the capitalist financier’s claim that “we shall be giving the word for everything…” “can have a wider sense than just imposing an alien set of meanings upon a people; it can involve planting the seeds of a far more ‘verbal’ culture”. And again, “it is the ability of human beings to speculate, to imagine states of affairs other than those that they are actually experiencing, that allows of the financial sort of speculation. And it is this sort of speculation which can set the wheels of imperialism in motion” (Hawthorn, 1979, pp. 64–65). So he notes that “Conrad’s significant insight in Nostromo is to have seen that although, fundamentally, it is material interests not ideas that effect historical change, material interests effect this change through ideas” (Hawthorn, 1979, p. 160).


If the silver of the mine can work its effect on hearts and minds—of Holroyd and Gould as well as of ‘the workers’—only through ideas, those ideas can themselves have currency only through their constitution in words. Words without the backing of material interests may be vain but material interests need words to gain sway over hearts and minds of men. (Hawthorn, 1979, p. 63) The story begins and ends with the silver of the mine; the imagery of the silver is used to indicate the basis of the tenuous public order that does exist and the destructive effects on the moral personalities of all those who become associated with it. The material presence of the mine has an adverse effect on individuals. All the characters most closely connected with the mine are corrupted by it (even where, as is the case with Mrs Gould and the Avellanos, there is an attempt to use the silver for public good). The disordering effect of capitalist order Nostromo gains prestige through his ability to cope and his incorruptibility; he is entrusted with the silver if the mine but then is believed to have lost it. When he reenters society, therefore, it is as a ‘new man’ who will need to regain recognition and identify—hitherto only achieved through public acts. The events of the narrative suggest that Nostromo should be able to reestablish his status and, thereby, his identity. He is persuaded to save Sulaco by riding to fetch Barrios, and his mission is successful. But the success only increases Nostromo’s isolation. The ride does not serve

6

The literary critics come close to a discussion which would engage with the concerns of social science when they enter into discussion of the materialist/idealist split evident in Conrad and his writings.

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to dispel his grievances against the world at large, the treasure becomes the justification of every action and confuses his moral values: First a woman, then a man, abandoned each in their last extremity for the sake of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by a soul lost and by a vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but Gian’ Battista Fidenza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price … The treasure was putting forth its latent power… “I must grow rich very slowly” he meditated aloud. (Part 3, Chapter 10, p. 52) Irving Howe argues that Nostromo “as he staggers under the weight of his secret and the loneliness which is its price, develops what he never before knew or needed: a political awareness” (Howe, 1961, p. 107). But this is only an awareness of his own loss of power and some understanding of the power of the mine. And his eventual ‘politicisation’ is as much a function of “material interests” as is Gould’s incursion into political activity (Fleishman, 1967, p. 175). Nostromo comes to need material reward rather than mere praise for carrying out services to the Blancos, so that his second identity reflects the increasingly corrupting effects of the silver of the mine. Nostromo, the self-made man apparently does not depend on a place in society for his identity. But when he fails in a task carried out for society, he loses—or feels that he lost—the respect of that society and, therefore, his identity.7 And the narrative makes clear that his public and private lives are separated by the silver which eventually destroys him: his death results from his use of the silver to try and re-establish a kind of public repute. For Nostromo there is no integration of public and private.


It might appear that this is better achieved by Charles and Emilia Gould who are the embodiment, within the structure of the novel, of the order established by the mine. The Goulds are instrumental in bringing a measure of stability to Sulaco through the San Tome mine. But this is achieved at the expense of the breakdown of their marriage and of their relationships with each other and with society. So, finally, It was a colossal and lasting success; and love was only a short moment of forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose delight one remembered with a sense of sadness, as if it had been a great grief lived through. There was something inherent in the necessities of successful action which carried with it the moral degradation of the idea… An immense desolation, the dread of her own continued life descended upon the first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself surviving alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of love, of work—all alone in the Treasure House of the world. The profound blind, suffering expression of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes. In the distinct voice of a unlucky sleeper, lying passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare she stammered out aimlessly the words: “Material interest”. (Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 520) Thus the Goulds both focus the order of the mine and point directly to the inadequacy of an order reliant on capitalist values. Charles Gould is, like Holroyd, an embodiment of the effect of capitalist forces. The problems this causes are easily recognisable—as Raval points out, Gould’s decision to safeguard material interests “perverts the very meaning of progress for Costaguana, since the 7 But see Raval, 1986, p. 96 and Winner, 1988, pp. 13, 43 for alternative interpretations.

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progress he envisions has very little relationship to the happiness which human beings seek” (Raval, 1986, p. 95). And Hawthorn speaks of the “indirect mediation of human contact through material interest that Gould champions” as “inhuman. When human interests are personified in material interests they are, effec tively, lost” (Hawthorn, 1979, p. 67).8 Berthoud discusses Charles Gould in terms of “materialist, as opposed to political, action” (Berthoud, 1978, pp. 103–104). But that materialist activity, stemming from Gould’s involvement in capitalist enterprise, does have political consequences. Gould has insisted on “order first, justice second”; he needs “law and order” for the smooth running of the mine (from which prosperity may well follow for the province as a whole). But Gould is shown as incapable of understanding political activity as anything more than the establishment of law and order, and there is no necessary connection between his inclination for “leaving things and people alone” and the development of “a rule of common sense and justice”. Raval suggests that Gould’s failure is the most shattering and the most suggestive because he dreams of uniting middleclass morality and capitalist economic practice: this dream is a mystifying moral event, cast far into the future, which legitimises the capitalist in the present. Nostromo thus has the structure of a myth that has failed to be mythical; it retains the bitterness and failure of history (Raval, 1986, p. 97). Public and private order The connection between identity and the capacity of the social and political order to allow its recognition is central to Nostromo. Berthoud notes that although identity is the theme of most literature, “what is modern about Conrad’s treatment of it is the form he gives it—


or, more accurately, the form it assumes as he struggles to give it definition” (Berthoud, 1978, p. 187) and in this novel it is not just thematically but structurally important. Nostromo’s personal tragedy is structurally interspersed with the development of Sulaco’s prosperity and Emilia Gould’s suspicion of material interests. Attention is thus drawn to the precarious position of the individuals who exist within the unstable social order depicted in the novel. The lack of cohesion between public/political and private/ personal is a consequence, to a large extent, of the imposition of a particular kind of law and order, and the personal tragedies of the book, notably the Gould’s marriage, Decoud’s death and Nostromo’s loss of identity are all related to the mine. It has been argued that the failures and tragedies of personal life depicted in Nostromo stem from the contradiction between personal morality and public activity. The world of action makes certain demands that “subtly alter motives, involve personalities in equivocations”. This judgement is usually associated with Conrad’s pessimism and conservatism. Thus Jocelyn Baines comments: “Nostromo is an investigation of the motives of human behaviour, in which idealism is set against scepticism, illusion against disillusion, and responsibility against irresponsibility” (Baines, 1982, p. 301). But Conrad depicts a necessary interaction between private and public life, and he does not privilege the former or dismiss the latter.9 What Conrad shows in Nostromo is that the disjunction of public and private is not necessarily due to the incompatibility of the two spheres—the inability of the public to match the level of worthiness of the personal—but to the inadequacy of the public in failing to provide an order within which the two spheres may be reconciled. 8 But see Cox, 1974, p. 72 for a reading which suggests that these kinds of analysis of Gould are wrong and that his failure is the result of personal weakness and irrationality.

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The silver of the mine appears to give the major char acters of Nostromo their identity, but it also underlies their failures as moral beings—“material interests” certainly do not constitute a sufficient moral value, capable of underpinning both individual and social behaviour in such way that there is coherence on both an individual and social level—order, that is (Hawthorn, 1979).10 Not only do material interests fail to unify, they actually separate—the Goulds from each other, Nostromo from his fellows, Decoud from life itself. But the problem is not a purely personal one—it is not, as Frederick Karl has it, that “the mine is the public symbol of each private failure; as cause and effect, instigator and outcome, it is the symbolic embodiment of private neuroses” (Karl, 1960, p. 157). The “failure” is a failure to integrate private and public and it is the form of public order, the organization of the mine and the pursuit of material interests which works on—if not determines—personal life. Nostromo shows the moral dimensions of the failure to integrate personal and public order. Because the sociopolitical order depicted in Nostromo is inadequate and incomplete, individuals cannot reconcile their public and private existences, lack of integration leads to a moral failure (Leavis, 1948, p. 229). The problem depicted in Nostromo is not that public order (of any kind) cannot comprehend the personal, but that the pursuit of, and dependence on, material interests works to the detriment of moral development. Capitalist values and (moral) order Integration—between public and private, politics and morality, reality and illusion—is not possible in the

9 It

would appear from Conrad’s treatment of Decoud that he does not pit “illusion” against “reality” in such a crude way as some critics tend to think: see Bantock, 1958, pp. 122–135; and see Conrad, 1923 Part 3, Chapter 10, p. 497.


society depicted in Nostromo because that society lacks a coherent set of values to which citizens could adhere. The imperfect order modelled in Nostromo follows from the conditions which Conrad lays out in the novel by way of form and structure, plot and characters: that human existence is confused and ambigous, and without some unifying moral idea, individual aspirations cannot coexist with the requirements of economic and political stability. Simply, there is no fundamental norm entailing the everyday rules (and thence behaviour) of society which enough people can recognise as binding on themselves for the benefit of the political community (King, 1974; 1976). What the story shows very clearly is that the only common element in the lives of the characters who inhabit that territory is the silver of the mine. The only constant ‘rule’ is expediency and ‘order’ follows as a means to commercial prosperity: these are hardly norms which can serve as the basis for a well-or-dered, integrated society. Gould proclaims: What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about things, but I pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests get a firm footing and they are bound to impose the conditions on which alone they can continue to exist. (Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 84) But as Monghyam points out, the Gould authority becomes a potential force for dis-order: There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their

10

See also Said, 1985, pp. 109–110, 115: Said argues that the use of the silver as the sustained metaphor of the novel does not entail pitting “spiritual interests” against material interests but accepts the latter as a fact; see also Hay, 1963, p. 209, Hawthorn, 1979, pp. 58, 60.

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justice. But it is founded on expediency, and it is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle…the time approaches when all that the Gould concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty and misrule of a few years back. (Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 511) The ‘pessimism’—or irony—of Nostromo lies in its conclusion that order based on economic organization and rational-bureaucratic principles has failed to achieve political order (Hawthorn, 1979, p. 71). The narrative shows Sulaco eventually achieving a kind of stability but it also depicts individuals as unable to live under the conditions of that stability—an apparent paradox. The major characters all come to a tragic end; and although the novel could be read simply as an account of law and order being brought to an undeveloped society, a closer reading shows that this involves the loss of integrity and failures of personal order. Whatever order exists is shown to be incapable of involving its subject in a joint enterprise for the good of the whole.11 Literary order: Political order Conrad’s major theme of ‘order’—the order of the mine, the order introduced to a disordered society by capitalist organization—is mediated through a particular approach to literary order: the concept of order provides a link between content and form. The conjunction of social order as a theme with questions of literary order in terms of technique, intention and effect make this novel a complex but, accordingly, very suggestive example for the social sciences. The order of literary discources can alert the reader to problems and possibilities surrounding the idea of order in human affairs: this is clearly the case in this novel where an


apparently disordered narrative sequence has specifiable links with political events and human moral dilemmas12. The “disordered” structure of Nostromo and the way that the reader has to engage with it is a positive aspect of the novel—Albert Guerard suggests that it compels the reader to organise; he speaks of “the extraordinary effort we must make to apprehend and organise”. This is an important point if the novel is to be taken as a contribution to understanding of organization and order. At the basic level of structure, the ordering of the novel, order is not to be taken for granted. Guerard queries whether it is not the case that the structure reflects a theory of history “as repetitive yet inconsecutive, devoid of reason, refusing to make sense. The method would then reflect the material in an extreme example of organic or imitative form” (Guerard, 1958, pp. 175–176, 215). This, like similar judgments, is clearly wrong—it is a mistake to think that order— literary, political or economic—is simple and immediately perceptible from surface appearances. A (premodernist) assumption that the reader ought to be personally and morally involved in a narrative has led some critics to adopt Ian Watt’s suggestion that Conrad has to be “decoded” (Guerard, 1958, p. 182). However, Bruce Johnson argues in “Conrad’s Impressionism and Watt’s ‘Delayed Decoding’” that the effort to decode Conrad is wrong because virtually all of Conrad’s main instances of delayed decoding imply not so much an 11 cf Chapter 8, below; see especially the suggestion that order in a Hobbesian sense may be imposed at a star-level while disorder arrives below this level; and see Chapter 11, p. 271: Sørensen confirms my claim that fiction can show both the apparent success and the actual weakness of order. 12 Thus Raval notes that the structure of Nostromo “reveals a curious logic, operating through history in such a way that events initially disparate proceed seemingly in accord with the hopes of men, only in the end to proceed with profound indifference to those hopes” (Raval, 1986, p. 74).

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initial misunderstanding that will subsequently “clear up” as they do an initial unguarded perception that may be far more revealing for the reader than the subsequent decoding. Conrad’s meaning depends not on eventual decoding but on “preconceived nets of meaning which instantly trap an event, sight, sound, comment, alleged fact or what have you” (Johnson, 1985).13 Nostromo well sup ports Johnson’s argument. The form of the novel ensures that the reader is required to experience events before they can be “ordered”; events are “later” explained by other events actually chronologically prior to the unexpected one. Conrad effectively carries out his own decoding within the narrative; this is important for this reading of Nostromo. In particular, the underlying power of the silver of mine is a pervasive influence which itself “explains” much that happens in the story as it unfolds (Karl, 1960). The inadequacy of capitalism as a basis for order A conclusion to be drawn from reading Nostromo might be, in naive terms, that peace and stability have been achieved in a hitherto disordered country, and that the conditions exist for peaceful progress and economic and social development. Such opinions are voiced within the novel by Captain Mitchell, the only character who does evidence integration between his private and public world and for whom there is no problem in witnessing the effects of the mine upon the society. His belief that all is well is expressed in asides which have the function of making clear that the story of Nostromo is, through all its structural convolutions, a tale told to a visitor who can see with his own eyes the prosperity that exists in the “present” to which the disordered events of the 13

cf Watts, C., 1982, Part 2, “The Art of Conrad”, especially pp. 116–117 for comments on Ian Watt’s argument; and see note 10 above.


narrative turn out to be a prelude. So, on the most simple interpretation of the novel, on the basis of its surface reality, revolution fails and a kind of liberal regime inextricably tied to the capitalist organization of the mine succeeds. However, a less naive reading offers much more, including an indication of why works of literature ought to be taken seriously as contributions to understanding in the social sciences. Nostromo offers both a particular argument and a general example of the value of taking literary texts as source material for the social sciences. The novel has, as I have argued, direct relevance to the themes of this collection. The fusion of form and content as a way of addressing the idea of order has a sociopolitical significance which the literary model also shows to have profound moral implications. Recognition of the contribution of form as well as content should remind the social scientist—and many political literary critics—that literary texts are to be taken seriously in their own right, and as a distinct form of discourse. Nostromo taken as an account of an ‘experimental situation’ shows that capitalism may impose an order on society that is not itself good, or beneficial, for that society. If the novel can be taken as a model in this way, the setting is significant—this is an exaggerated case, a non-European society, subject to political disorder—and hence the supposition made by some critics that it represents a kind of parody of South American politics (and hence also, presumably, the failure of those same critics to see a serious political point to the story). A more sophisticated analysis is possible (deriving from work in politics and sociology) whereby the ‘failure’ depicted in this novel can be read as indicative of the inap—propriateness of Weberian rational-bureaucratic analysis for non-Western social systems. That is, Conrad might have been foreshadowing those contemporary theories which suggest that what is perceived by Weberian analysts as disorder in Latin American states might be more

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accurately understood as a manifestation of normal or appropriate behaviour in the culture of those states. Such an interpretation can be related to the relevant literature—magic realism depicts a certain kind of nonrational order and Conrad’s ‘disordered’ narrative structure might more properly be seen as an appropriate mode for the presentation of the social and political tensions he depicts so accurately. The fact that the ‘experiment’ fails, that Weberian rationalism does not result in the conditions for continuing economic and political development is not, in any case, dismisseable as a failure of the setting, as though the introduction of capitalism would work any better in, say, a European or North American setting14. Conrad may have had a variety of reasons for choosing to place his “tale of the seaboard” in a fictional South American country, but it demeans the author and the text to suppose that this choice is irrelevant or insignificant for a (social science) reading of the novel. It may precisely be important to take this disparity, between setting and system, seriously. The novel taken as a whole provides an extreme or exaggerated case of a general possiblity— that the order being imposed is of itself inadequate for the functions demanded of it. That is largely what I have argued in this chapter. References Baines, J. (1982) Conrad: A critical biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Bantock, G.H. (1958) Conrad and politics. ELH, 25:122–136. Berthoud, J. (1978) Joseph Conrad: The major phase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conrad, J. (1923) Nostromo: A tale of the seaboard. London:J. M. Dent and Sons. Cox, C.B. (1974) Joseph Conrad: The modern imagination, London: Dent.

14

See next chapter for an argument that this may be so.


Fleishman, A. (1967) Conrad’s politics: Community and anarchy in the fiction of Joseph Conrad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Guerard, A. (1958) Conrad the novelist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hawthorn, J. (1979) Joseph Conrad: Language and fictional selfconsciousness. London: Edward Arnold. Hay, E.K. (1963) The political novels of Joseph Conrad. London: Chicago University Press. Hirschman, A.O. (1977) The passions and the interests: Political argument for capitalism before its triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Howe, I. (1961) Politics and the novel. London: Stevens and Sons. Jameson, F. (1981) The political unconscious: Literature as a socially symbolic expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Johnson, B. (1985) Conrad’s Impressionism and Watt’s “Delayed Decoding”. In: Murfin, R.C. (Ed.) Conrad revisited: Essays for the eighties. University of Alabama Press: 51–70. Karl, F.R. (1960) A reader’s guide to Joseph Conrad. London: Thames and Hudson. King, P. (1974) The ideology of order: A comparative analysis of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes. London: Allen and Unwin. King, P. (1976) The concept of order. Paper presented at the International Political Science Association Congress, Edinburgh. Leavis, F.R. (1948) The great tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, London: Chatto and Windus. Raval, S. (1986) The art of failure: Conrad’s fiction. Boston: Allen and Unwin. Said, E. (1985) Beginnings: Intention and method. New York: Columbia University Press. Watts, C. (1982) A preface to Conrad. London: Longmans. Warren, R.P. (1960) On “Nostromo”. In: Stallman, R. W., (Ed.), The art of Joseph Conrad: A critical symposium. Michigan State University Press. Wilding, M. (1966) The politics of Nostromo. Essays and Criticism, 16 October: 441–456. Winner, A. (1988) Culture and irony: Studies in Joseph Conrad’s major novels. Charlotteville: University Press of Virginia.

FROM ESCAPISM TO RESENTED CONFORMITY Market Economies and Modern Organizations in Spanish Literature by José Luis Alvarez & Carmen Merchán Cantos1

Spanish literature and the world of market economies and modern organizations Compared with other literatures, like that of the United States, where narrative on business topics has influenced the popular imagination and ideas on economic activities (MacLeod, 1980), or even other early industrialized European countries, it is remarkable that so few works of fiction in the Spanish language deal directly with the social and moral aspects of modern economies. This is even truer in terms of the world of modern corporations—i.e. those organizations which, at least to a minimal degree, develop the characteristics Weber attributed to bureaucracies and which became the means of ‘getting things done’ in nine teenth century industrial societies. It is equally true of the personal and professional life of their managers and entrepreneurs. An obvious reason could be the lag in economic development in Latin countries, when compared to that of Anglo-Saxon or Northern European nations. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century did not take place in most Latin American countries. Even in Spain, the industrial and bourgeois revolutions are

1 We wish to thank Alan Smith (Boston University) and Bill Bain for their helpful comments.

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considered to have failed in the nineteenth century (Nasal, 1976), and both had to wait until the 1960s to fully succeed. However, the mere absence until very recently of a high economic development does not seem to provide a full explanation for the scarcity of such works. Since the 1960s, Spain has been one of the most industrialized countries in the world: it has become an urban society where current social customs bear little resemblance to those of a society that, decades ago, was officially considered one of the last bastions of moral conservatism. Yet, in spite of becoming a society quite similar to that of the United States and other Western European countries, where economic activities are based on modern corporations and entrepreneurial businesses, literature reflecting (in the broadest sense of the term) modern economic activities and the social and organizational world they generate is still not abundant or usual. The huge success of Latin American literature, which has dominated fiction in the Spanish language for the last two decades, has been mostly based on the socalled magical realism of authors like Carpenter, Grace Marquees, Rule, and others. The very name of “magical realism” suggests its lack of connection with the economic and business world. In the novels of these authors Nature is a major force: immense, invincible, autonomous, overcoming the civil society where economic activities take place. Another typical background in these works is utopia: the adventurous attempt, that always ends in defeat, to establish a place outside time and history—the most anti-business situation we can imagine (Founts, 1969). Although not abundant, there are, of course, novels in the Spanish language that deal directly or indirectly with the realities of a market economy, its business organizations and their social and cultural requirements. This paper refers to three novels set in very different but crucial moments of Spain’s economic

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development. First, Quijote’s geopolitical imperial but economically impoverished country. Second, the early (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempts by the emerging but weak bourgeoisie to industrialize and modernize Spain in the second half of the nineteenth century and which constitute the social environment in which the plot of La Desheredada (“The Disinherited Lady”) unravels.2 These two novels are discussed in the next section, on the beginnings of Spanish modernity and industrialization. The third novel Amado Amo (“My Beloved Master”),3 takes place in the 1980s, when Spain had a golden economic period with a full-fledged market economy and was joining European society and markets. Since Amado Amo is the only one of the three novels that fully focuses on organizational life, it will receive special attention. These three works are not proposed as statistically representative, thematically or stylistically, of Spanish literature. They have been selected because they are illustrative of the way modern economies and corporate life are depicted in Spanish literature, and because they provide us with some hints that approximate an answer to a broader question: the possible ways in which Spanish culture at large has influenced the frameworks through which Spaniards live and experience business activities and work in organizations.

2

Pérez Galdós, Benito (1881, 1970), La Desheredada. Madrid: Aguilar. Compressed English version (“The Disinherited Lady”), Exposition Press (1977). Page references appearing here correspond to the Spanish edition. Translation of all quotations by the authors. 3 Montero, Rosa (1988), Amado Amo (“My Beloved Master”). Madrid: Debate. There is no English translation yet. Translation of all quotations by the authors.


The beginnings of Spanish modernity and industrialization: Don Quijote and La Desheredada Since the argument of Don Quijote is well known, only two of the novel’s dimensions will be briefly mentioned here, in order to connect it to the other two novels discussed in this paper. First is the fact that all novels contain within them, one way or another, Don Quijote’s deep structure and themes. The main reason for this is that Cervantes’ masterpiece inaugurates the novelistic genre, which is the most representative type of narrative fiction in the modern era. And it is important to realize that in Don Quijote’s representation of the transition from the feudal to the modern world, Cervantes presents the topics that will dominate the imaginary lives of those characters in modern literature—as well as in the real lives of their readers—which are in a relationship of ‘anomie’ with their societies and circumstances: reading, madness, imitation, delusion, life as dreaming, and so on. The second dimension that must be considered is that Don Quijote constitutes not only a symptom of Spanish attitudes towards economic activities, but perhaps one of its causes. The two other novels discussed here will follow its path and may be considered as variations on the same Quijotic themes. The main character of La Desheredada, Isidora Rufete, is a young woman from La Mancha (like Don Quijote) who arrives in Madrid with little more than a handful of dubious documents, stubbornly determined to prove with them her noble origins and her right to the marquisate of Aransis. The novel narrates how she had been deceived by her family regarding her inheritance, and the consequences of her disappointment. The novel is divided into two parts, each ending with Isidora’s symbolic death. There is first a suicide, which takes place when she finally discovers the lack of foundation of her claims to aristocracy, and in desperation sexually


surrenders to an arriviste Joaquín de Pez, becoming his mistress. The second symbolic death alludes to her decision to become a prostitute, that is, to put her beauty, previously a sign of nobility and status, up for sale (Gilman, 1981). The novel’s title has a political meaning. “The disinherited classes” was a commonplace synonym for “the poor” in the language of the time. The majority of society felt disinherited because poverty is experienced as an injustice, originated either in the unequal and unfair distribution of wealth through inheritance (as the protagonist believes) or in political favoritism (as many other characters in the novel—like Isidora’s brother Marino Rufete, the prototype of the terrorist, and Joaquín de Pez and all his family, which represent bureaucracy and economic parasitism—sustain). People try to reach a high position in society through birthright (dreamers like Isidora) or from political clientelism (Joaquín de Pez and most of the rest), for individual initiative and hard work are useless. As Joaquín de Pez says: Here? Work here? You are being silly. Merit does not pay in Spain. What a country! Well, I could work, devote myself to something, but what would happen? The writers, the artists, the industrial men and even the shopkeepers are dying of hunger… There is no way of making money here except to get into a business favored by the government. (p. 1109) However, the novel shows how the competition for higher social positions causes important personal strains in many characters. Only people who renounce upward mobility and accept the status quo escape from the spiritual and psychological toll caused by ambition and its paths: social parasitism and personal dependencies and humiliations. As a fellow inmate of


Isidora’s father, who is locked up in a mental health institution, affirms: One of the illness of the soul which brings more individuals to this institution is ambition, the drive for aggrandizement, the envy that the low have for the high, and the will to rise by hitting and overrunning those who are on top, not through the scale of merit and hard work, but through the loose scale of intrigue, or violence, we could say, pushing, pushing…(p. 994) All the inequalities, and the frantic attempts to upward mobility, made the novel’s author—Galdós, the most important Spanish novelist after Cervantes—qualify his society as confused: “The confusion of classes is the false currency of equality”. This is one of Galdos’ most straightforward criticisms of modernity: the modern era, although very vocal in its celebration of the values of freedom, equality and solidarity, has produced not freedom but parasitism and servility, not equality but “confusion of classes”, not solidarity but rivalry, by prompting false hopes of economic improvement. In sum, it has brought about perhaps new and more subtle means of slavery.4 The results of this forced rivalry are resentment, envy and hate: feelings which are absent in the Quijote, emergent in La Desheredada, and dominant in Amado Amo. The intensity of these sentiments, and the destructive effects on both their holders and recipients, increases with the development of modern economies and with the sophistication of their organizations.5 Throughout La Desheredada, the author plays with the two meanings of the word ‘noble’. On the one hand, it refers to a social class (nobility or aristocracy); on the other hand, it refers to a moral quality: a noble person is a morally good person. The irony is that the story’s heroine, Isidora Rufete, who is convinced of her nobility (status) looses almost all her nobility (moral quality)


when she finally accepts that she is not an aristocrat but a commoner. So, the main question of the novel—is Isidora a member of the nobility or not?—becomes a moral question: is she good or not? The novel shows the progressive degradation of her character, pari passu her increased acceptance of reality: she goes from lover to lover then into prostitution. Her descent to hell symbolizes Spain’s own decline in the nineteenth century (Cardona, 1970), when the country, trying to be different, to live up to its historical past, foolishly thinking of itself as a great power, ended up losing its colonial possessions to the hands of emerging empires, like the United States of America, and losing its internal freedoms to authoritarian regimes. César Miranda, the protagonist of Amado Amo, will parallel Isidora Rufete’s fall. Although Isidora Rufete is the victim of a lie invented by her family, and kept alive by other characters like Joaquín Pez, an aristocrat by marriage and her first lover, who remorselessly manipulates her dreams, her own personality, with strong ‘quijotic’ features, contributes much to her disgrace. For most of the novel she uses only fantasy, uncontrolled imagination, and not reason, to confront reality. This provokes in her a constant state of psychological and spiritual turmoil. Another similarity between Don Quijote de la Mancha and the heroine of La Desheredada is that both are voracious readers, books of chivalry in his case, romance in hers. The interesting thing is that for both characters books are not only suppliers of materials for the fabric of their imagination but their peculiar “reality principle”:

4

On the pervasiveness and polymorphism of slavery and social parasitism, and on the dialectic relationship between freedom and oppression, see Patterson (1991). 5 Sociology as a field (Durkheim, Simmel, Tönnies, and others) started with the acknowledgement of the distressing effects of the new industrial societies on social relations and personalities.


Through Isidora’s mind was passing such a splendid vision that she was smiling: “It is not anything new; not a bit of it”, she was saying. “Books are full of similar cases. Why, I have read my own story so many times! And what more beautiful thing is there than when these accounts paint for us a very poor young girl, who is very pretty, like the angels, and absolutely honorable, more so than the angels, weeps a great deal and suffers because a few wretches want to defame her…and the girl suddenly changes her position, and lives in palaces, and marries a young man, who in times of her poverty, wooed her, and she loves him…” (p. 1094) In both cases the uncontrolled imagination fueled by their readings gets the better of both Don Quijote and Isidora Rufete, causing the death of the former after the failure of his adventures, and the symbolic death of the latter: she, who dreamed of being a distinguished member of the upper levels of society because of family heritage became a prostitute, ‘providing service’ to low class clients with whom she sustains market links. In her very person takes place the transition from feudalism (status) to capitalism (markets): she is ‘seller and commodity in one’, becoming, as Walter Benjamin said of prostitutes, the ultimate image of a society of merchants and merchandises (Fernández Cifuentes, 1987). Moreover, in a very feudal style, she shows a great need for luxurious consumption, spending her money foolishly, without calculation—the very opposite of the Calvinist spirit of careful evaluation of the relationship between means and ends that Weber posed as basic for modern economic activities. It is important to remember that Spain was the armed leader of the CounterReformation movement that fought the spread of the Protestant Reformation. Isidora—like Spain itself for Galdós—both in her imagination and her way of life, did not know, did not want to accept the constraining


requirements of cultural and social life in a capitalist society…and when forced by necessity to do so she completely embraced those ‘real’ principles of reality and ended up fully losing her dignity. Examples of this anti-economic and anti-modern spirit —which some prominent Spanish intellectuals, like Unamuno, have proposed as constitutive and essential to the country’s culture—abound in the three novels. In the famous passage in Don Quijote where he fights windmills (an economic artifact) thinking that they were mythological evil giants, the machines defeated him, the representative of a medieval spirit and holder of an old fashioned and cavalier code of honor. The protagonist of La Desheredada reveals sympathies for the ancien regime when she becomes deeply disturbed in realizing the coming of the new social times: From a tavern, where half a dozen men were shouting, amid smoke and alcohol fumes, came a phrase which sounded something like: “We are all equal”, a phrase which struck Isidora’s ear as they were passing. From the ear the phrase passed in to make a deep impression on Isidora’s soul and she took a step backward to peer into the interior of the bar… Isidora dwelled upon the fact that business of all being equal and the King going home indicated an exceptional happening, a cataclysm… she was invaded with such sharp pangs of desperation that she thought that she must not live any longer. (p. 1077) It is the very modern idea of egalite which provokes Isidora’s anguish. The old, stable, highly differentiated, hierarchical and ‘top-bottom’ ordered ancien regime fitted Isidora’s ‘noble’ spirit much better. César Miranda, the protagonist of Amado Amo, in a time of success and celebration of the efficiency of market economies and the wonders of modern


organizations, will further develop some of Isidora’s pathological features. Full-fledged market economies and their organizations: Amado Amo Briefly, the synopsis of Amado Amo is as follows. César Miranda, ideal man and executive of an advertising agency, Golden Line,6 who had had a satisfactory private life, gets himself increasingly immersed in a life crisis. The plot shows the different and successive manifestations of César’s crisis, which reaches its peak when the protagonist fears that he will not receive the invitation to attend the company’s Annual Reunion. This invitation symbolizes that an employee still ‘exists’ for the corporation. The end of Amado Amo, written in a tragical mood, leaves a bitter taste: under pressure from the management, and in order to remain in good standing with his boss, Morton (an American manager), César allows his boss to manipulate him into signing a letter against a former girlfriend and co-worker, Paula, and making it easy for the company to fire her. The two main physical locations in the novel are César’s apartment and his workplace at the Golden Line, a United States multinational with a subsidiary in Spain. The company was founded under the name “Rumbo” during the Francoist dictatorship, prospering in part thanks to being a pioneer in the Spanish advertising sector. At the end of the 1960s things started to change: the totalitarian political regime began its final stages and competition came into the industry. After Franco’s death in 1975, Rumbo’s owner sold the agency to the United States company: “going in this way from the most rank feudalism to the most advanced capitalism, jumping in a second over a bunch of intermediate social systems.” (p. 150).

6

In English in the original.


Although the time setting of the main story is not explicit, it seems obvious that it takes place in the mid-1980s, when Spain’s economic growth, after a very grave crisis during the previous decade, rocketed, with the highest percentages of economic growth in Western countries. In the development of the main story the author intercalates several flash-backs that explain César’s childhood (private realm) and the origins of the Golden Line (professional/—public realm). This way of presenting the main story as a series of episodes which become fully intelligible through flashbacks is especially important in Chapter 4, which is a sort of justification of the novel itself. In it, César, as a result of a brief encounter with his boss in the elevator of the firm’s facilities, thinks of the enormous difficulties he had when he was the company’s art director. He wishes that his new boss knew all the obstacles and difficulties that he had to overcome, most of them caused by the mauvaise foi of his colleagues. However, he thinks to himself: “those things cannot be told” (p. 98). Revealingly enough, in this statement the use of fiction can be found: novels serve to tell what usually cannot be told. And what “cannot be told” is not only what socially or institutionally will be of bad taste or politically inconvenient to relate. Only fiction can show the values behind the facts, the motivations behind the behaviors, the deep experiences behind the acts. This is the reason the novel is useful in showing and investigating human relationships. And the procedure adopted by Rosa Montero in Amado Amo, the interior monologue or free indirect style, is especially useful in showing the evolution of conscience with its fears and hopes, its remembrances and projects, in sum, the past and the future which give meaning to the present. Amado Amo is a novel about power, about the eternal dialectic of master and slave, as experienced in modern and contemporary organizational settings in the relationship boss-subordinate. This central theme, that


gives the novel its title, is expressed in two ways: one of them predominantly conceptual and the other mostly metaphorical. An example of César’s more conceptual arguments may be found around the middle of the novel, when he assesses his boss’ savvy: Morton exercised his tyranny through seduction; and everybody, including Quesada, loved him as well as hated him… Power possesses that secret energy, that uncanning alchemy: the ability to bring together love and suffering. And thus, in all subordinates there seemed to exist a compulsion of personal surrender to their bosses. Like the dog that licks the hand that beats it, or the Bolshevik peasant who weeps after cutting his master’s throat. Beloved master. (p. 142–143) The dualistic division of the human species between masters and slaves is presented as eternal. The dialectic struggle between these two sides reveals the romantic underpinnings of Amado Amo’s protagonist. René Girard, in Mensonge romantique et verité romanesque sustains that the romantic consciousness—on which the modern mentality was based—has a manichean view of the world: good/evil, I/the others, myself as a private person/myself as professional, etc. This dualism is present throughout the novel. From Chapter 1 onward César thinks of himself as distinct, as unique, as the hero. When a colleague of César, Matías, realizes that he has been dispossessed of one of the status symbols (a reserved parking space) awarded by the company, used to send messages to the employees that have started their fall into disgrace, César repeats to himself insistently that his case is different (although he does not have an assigned parking place either). This feeling of being different is sometimes proudly experienced by César, particularly in regard to his successful professional past, and other times as a


stigma. The latter sentiment will win out as the plot develops. Perhaps the chapter that best illustrates the sense of difference as stigma is the third, in which César attends a high society party, where he feels socially and culturally isolated and apart from the wealthy: Why do they get married only to each other? These rich people. The aristocracy. Why, although they always present themselves as the least prejudiced, most modern and democratic, do they get married only to each other? Nobility to nobility, family names to family names, fortunes to fortunes. Or better, family names to fortunes and vice versa. And he, César, who has neither of them, what could he do? (p. 54) Here, César unflinchingly questions the capitalist ideal of the ‘self-made man’. For César, rags to riches stories are, in the best of cases, the exception that proves the rule, and most of the times an ideological trick, since society’s structures are basically invariable, no matter how much social mobility is preached. His acute sense of ‘difference’ typical of all romantic heroes, will lead César to paranoia, a pathology that appears at the very beginning of the novel and it is present throughout. For instance, in Chapter 7, César is having a medical checkup, regularly provided by the firm. The doctor’s appearance seems so understanding that César confesses to him his problems with Golden Line. The doctor has to leave the room and since he does not return quickly, César panics for having confessed his thoughts, suspecting that his interlocutor is really a spy for the firm and that he will soon inform the management of what he has just heard: And what if everything were preordained and programmed? What if it were a trick to medically justify his unfitness for the job? He said that


Golden Line is a house of serfdom, that is what the doctor-spy would inform… Antisocial, lacking in corporate spirit! That is what they would say about him! He is an outsider, they would conclude. How is it that he was so stupid as to give all those opinions to an enemy envoy? (p. 160) César was not the only one who suffered paranoia. All his co-workers had it too, to a greater or lesser extent: … César, who in any case considered Quesada dangerous, thought that his vice-director was becoming paranoid. Like Pepe, like Miguel, like all the others, including himself; because all of them were cooking themselves alive in the thick persecutory sauce imposed by the company. (p. 151–152) The company, through ambiguous messages (messages similar to what Calvinists called the decretum horribile, in which the condemnation or salvation of the believer was proclaimed) promotes that paranoia. As in the episode of Matías’ parking space, the “states of grace or disgrace” were announced suddenly and surrounded by ambiguity: “All of us paranoid, of course, because the firm’s message was always ambiguous and promoted hostility and paranoia.” (p. 89) César’s thoughts are in a very metaphorical vein, and sometimes his language has obvious Kafkaesque resonances: Now he understood everything. Now César captured the design of the conspiracy. That spider’s web whose innumerable strands were, all of them, intertwined: hierarchically, geometrically, united by the intangible substance of Power, the fine fabric of domination. And there were no other options, one can be only one of the two: strand of web or trapped fly. (p. 147)


To César all types of organizations are basically identical: business firms, the army, even heaven, with its carefully ordered ranks of angels, show the same hierarchical structure, as if a vertical order were essential in both divine and human relations (in the end, as an educated Catholic as César knows well, the latter have been created “as image and likeness” of the former). The insistence on using religious metaphors and imagery to describe situations that take place in business organizations points to César’s inability to think of himself and his circumstances in a fully secular way, out of religious frameworks and apocalyptic references. Not fully surprising for a man educated in a society that for centuries considered itself the spiritual reservoir of the Western world. An especially revealing passage in this regard appears in Chapter 4. César is trying to make out the obscure meaning of a salutation that Morton gave him in the elevator. The ambiguity of the greeting makes him panic and ask himself if “the beginning of the end” has started for him yet, as has already happened to Matías and to another colleague, Pepe, who for many years had been “condemned to a purgatory” of silly administrative tasks. In his obsessive search for meaning he discovers the company’s way of operating with its employees: …the company imparts rewards out of the most total secrecy. People never know if things have been done badly or well, only if an employee was in state of grace or disgrace, mortifying or beatific states that the employees could guess only through small revealing signs… Or, on the contrary, through big funerary symptoms… These signs were all but the guesses of what was to come: flashing promotions or little defined condemnations to demeaning secretarial tasks… Something which, falling into instant disgrace, constituted the main fear of the agency’s employees, The Great Menace, the


corporate version of the “it’s all over now, pal”. (pp. 86–88) It is not only the work environment that is thought of as a replica of the religious universe. In the same manner that the believer is encouraged to try to gain merits in order to deserve divine grace, employees have to work restlessly to be in the “company’s grace”. César recognizes the origin of this credo: the United States of America. At least once a year, the Golden Line announces drastic changes in the company: pay rises, demerits, promotions, nominations and firings… These sorts of upheavals, César had read in an American book on management, energize the workers, make the working machine more dynamic and increase productivity; there is nothing worse for a firm, the handbook warned, than the fact that employees feel secure in their jobs. (p. 89) While at the political level, the modern state has developed a capability for overcoming a Hobbesian “state of nature”, at the professional and business level the free-for-all-fight-of-all seems, to César, not only to continue but also to be considered as the normative process of economic activities. In the absence of primitive terrors, modern economic subjects are immersed in a managerial version of the homo homini lupus, a bloodless war—a war befitting not the strong and noble but the mean and astute—but war nonetheless. César Miranda, our contemporary, confronted with the hardships of market economies and business organizations, shows his nostalgia for a lost Arcadia, and also tries to escape into a world of dreams, like Don Quijote and Isidora Rufete, who longed for the hierarchical structure of the ancien regime in which,


they believed, aristocracy and moral nobility would coincide. But now, while he was going over, without actually reading, the pages of Prince Valiant and was drawing in melancholy, César felt irresistible desires to move to a simpler life. To find shelter in rural tranquillity. To abandon advertising and the ferocious competition and devote himself to cultivating potatoes, or beets, or turnips… Because in the country one does not need to be constantly fighting to keep one’s identity; in the country one simply “is”. One is farmer or shepherd or cowboy from birth to death; managers, however, have to conquer their domain and substance everyday. (p. 167) He even starts thinking about another possibility of escape—joining a sect: “Catholic or Buddhist monks, cells of a collective body who have resolved in this manner, depending on others, the terrors of individuality” (p. 168). The expression “the terrors of individuality” is key to understand the behavior of César and co-protagonists, Isidora and Quijote, as it will be discussed in the Conclusion. The novel ends with an example of the sort of actions demanded for survival in this all-out-anythinggoes war: César betrays his co-worker and former lover, Paula. A sense of tragedy builds throughout the last chapter. César has a meeting with Morton. His anxiety is extremely high because he has not received yet the blue envelope with the invitation to the firm’s annual reunion, the sign of his still being among the chosen. There is an “apocalyptic dusk” (p. 192) and the “beginning of the end” (p. 195) is imminent. It is then that César remembers the story that, not long ago, just before she dumped him, his other lover Clara told him:


The most famous “land run” [sic] (César knew it well after hearing the story from Clara so many times) took place on April 22, 1889, in Oklahoma. That day a vast territory taken away from the Indians was parceled and given to the colonists gratis: all you had to do was to reach a field before anybody else. The army drew an imaginary line around the border of the territory, held the farmer candidates behind it and, at high noon, the great race was on… Clara perorated, burning with social justice, that the race was not won either by the most honest men nor the most intelligent, not even the quickest; the winner was the strongest, the cruelest, the least sympathetic and most inhuman… And this apotheosis of the abuse, finally, had not been the only “land run” in the recent history of the United States… That is, drove Clara home, lifting a slanderous and accusing index finger, it was not the result of an error, but of a perverse will, of the desire to build a society on those bases; and the carnage as a natural means of selection seemed to them just fine. (pp. 196–198) In a paragraph very similar to the one quoted from the La Desheredada on the same topic, in which one of the character warns of the illness of ambition, César remembers Clara’s discourse on the land run and thinks of it as the perfect metaphor for competition and social Darwinism: Yes, perhaps she was right. That is the way the world is, César told himself in despair. That is what everybody does, running desperately towards nothing, running over the person in front, hitting the guy next to you, mutilating the fallen, disemboweling colleagues just for being competitors over a market niche. (p. 198)


This tale will be premonitory: César does do “what everybody does”, in order to be able to continue his career. Like Isidora Rufete who became a prostitute, that is, a “public woman” César becomes a “public man”, a person whose actions and loyalty can be bought and traded. The nine chapters of Amado Amo could be seen as the gestation of César’s betrayal, a betrayal which is the tribute that César pays to his beloved master and to the organization. A well-known Galdós scholar sustains that by creating the character of Isidora Rufete as a representation of nineteenth century Spain, the author “seemed to arrive at the conclusion that a nation that has so prostituted itself ought to die, but, unfortunately, cannot. Thus the shameful continuation of Isidora’s life” (Gilman, 1981). Similarly, at the end of Amado Amo we could also imagine the “shameful continuation” of César Miranda’s life. Like Isidora, César ends up acting in accordance with the required patterns of behavior, and in so doing, loses his personal decency. Conclusion The three protagonists of the novels referred to in this paper—Don Quijote, Isidora Rufete, César Miranda— show important problems of adjustment to the reality demands of their respective stages of economic development of Spain. While obvious differences exist between them, a common denominator is their acute nostalgia for the old, aristocratic, pre-industrial values, an intense longing for a Gemeinschaft situation, as Tönnies would say. This nostalgia is their reaction against the dynamics of mercantilization, instrumentalization and, in many respects, social homogenization, brought by market economies. And the more developed the economy, the more service-oriented, and the more sophisticated the organization, the more so.


The expression “the terrors of individuality”, used by César to explain his continual escapism, is without doubt a key expression in understanding César’s rejection, as well as Quijote’s and Isidora’s, to one of the basic foundations of market economies: individualism. The key point here is that these protagonists’ terror does not really come from the fear of being different, of having strong and distinct individualities. On the contrary, this is what they truly want. Their real fear is, precisely, that under the disguise of discourses promoting individualism—which is supposed to foster competition, the engine of the system—modern societies are quite homogeneous and massified—as the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset in The Rebellion of Masses was one of the first to warn. The terrors of the individuality suffered by these characters are the terrors prompted by a distinctionless or meritless society. They do not seem to believe that market economies have truly opened up the run for social mobility. For them, hard work in economic or business activities is fruitless (that mobility is not really possible) or it is morally worthless (in the end, work is not a noble task but a biblical punishment). And rising in society can only be achieved by parasitism or servility. This demands personal dependency and humiliation, and therefore lack of nobility, in the moral sense. For the three protagonists of these three novels, “the terrors of the individual” are, in sum, the terrors of wanting to be different and noble in the aristocratic and moral sense and the impossibility of achieving it. If they accept the demands of modern economies and their business organizations, they lose their real nobility, as Isidora Rufete and César Miranda did. But if they do not accept those requirements they will be terribly lonely with no one recognizing their cherished difference. Very narcissistic fears. There is, however, one characteristic that very painfully separates César from Quijote and Isidora Rufete: his lucidity. César Miranda is not as lucky as


Don Quijote, who lost his mind, or Isidora Rufete, who ended in delirium. While the excesses of imagination and of romanticism of his predecessors were so extreme that they both ended in complete escapism by entirely living in the solipsist domain of their fantasy, César Miranda’s tragedy is that he is, first, lucidly aware of the ways organizations work, and, second, neurotically conscientious about his basic, almost physiological, incompatibility with them, about his own ‘anomie’. Moreover, he realizes the moral price he is paying in the end: betraying a friend and colleague, and offering his self-esteem and moral worth in sacrifice to his beloved master, all in order to survive in the firm—a survival which, in any case, is never fully guaranteed. In the end, César conforms, and becomes even more resentful. Although exaggerated in his conceptualization of them, and experienced as attacks on the integrity of his self, most of César’s perceptions about the Golden Line show very strong signs of verisimilitude, since they coincide with much of what scholars have said about organizational life, most particularly, about small, professional, service firms, like his (Levinson, 1972). The intentional use of ambiguity in organizations is generalized and it is harmful from the point of view of the personality development of the employee (Argyris, 1990); fringe benefits and perks are used to generate differentials in status (Beer, 1984) and they have a strong impact on workers’ self-esteem (Alter, 1991); the intensity and peculiarities of some organizational cultures can negatively affect the psychological development of their employees (Miller & Kets de Vries, 1986); employees’ compliance with corporate values are sometimes surveyed by management spies (Sathe, 1985); the more entrepreneurial and creative the professional life the more diffi cult it is to strike a balance with the realm of private life (Kanter, 1986); most management decisions are taken not because of their organizational rationality but because of their political expediency (Jackall, 1988); etc.


But César is even sharper regarding power dynamics in organizations—something management scholars started to recognize not very long ago (Pfeffer, 1981). César realizes that the exercise of leadership may obtain energy from unhealthy developments of human personality and that organizations may serve to further and to externalize those pathologies (Zaleznick and Kets de Vries, 1985); that organizational power and influence are an inescapable fact of organizational life (Kotter, 1985); and that an uneven distribution of power in society generates powerlessness and resentment (Scheler, 1961). Moreover, César knows that organizational life both mirrors and transmits, through what Kanter (1977) has called “homosocial reproduction”, the power inequalities existing in society. He is also very aware that these inequalities have always existed, and that the supposed rationalities of economic and business activities do not exempt organizational life from those dynamics. Moreover, César comes from a culture where not only has there always existed widespread skepticism on the virtues of organizing, but also where economic activities have never been fully backed by the predominant religious spirit, where they have traditionally been seen as something foreign, dubious, and too worldly. Amado Amo underlines the ‘foreignness’ of management in regard to Spanish culture. Organizational and business systems are an American development. Their agents of transmission and execution are in the novel, American managers working in the Madrid office of a US multinational company. Even the individualism and competitiveness upon which life in organizations is based, exemplified in the novel by the “land run” story, and of which César, even while submitting, becomes so resentful, is something very external to Spanish culture. The homogenization of society that the three main characters in Don Quijote, La Desheredada, and Amado Amo so much dread, is then not only a


homogenization among individuals and classes, it is also a homogenization among societies and cultures where, in regard to management, the US model has become a dominant influence. While Don Quijote and Isidora Rufete had the representation of the pre-modern world close enough to give force and verisimilitude to their dreams, fueling their escapism, César Miranda is too modern to believe in the feasibility of a return to the past. His escapism is not an option in the era of the iron cage of modern corporations. He is irremediably trapped in it, and his conformity is all but a forced solution; thus the bitterness and resentment in his life. References Alter, J. et al. (1991) Addicted to perks: How America’s elites rationalize their problem. Newsweek, July 8. Argyris, Ch. (1990) Overcoming organizational defensive routines. Boston, MA: Allyn-Bacon. Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P., Mills, Q. and Walton, R. (1984) Managing human assets. New York: The Free Press. Cardona, R. (1970) Nuevos enfoques críticos con referencia a la obra de Galdós. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 1970–1971: 250–252. Fernández Cifuentes, L. (1987) Signs for sale in the city of Galdós. Lecture given at Harvard University, Department of Romance Languages. Fuentes, C. (1969) La nueva novela hispanoamericana. Mexico, D.F.: Joaquín Mortiz. Gilman, S. (1981) Galdós and the art of the European novel: 1867– 1887. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Girard, R. (1961) Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Paris: Bernard Grasset. Jackcall, R. (1988) Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford University Press. Kanter, R.M. (1972) Communities and utopias in sociological perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kanter, R.M. (1977) Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Kanter, R.M. (1986) The new workforce meets the changing workplace: Strains, dilemmas, and contradictions in attempts


to implement participative and entrepreneurial management. Human Resource Management, 25 (4): 515–537. Kotter, J. (1985). Power and influence: Beyond formal authority. New York: Free Press. Levinson, H. (1972) Organizational diagnosis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MacLeod, C. (1980) Horatio Alger, farewell: The end of the American dream. New York: Wideview Books. Miller, D. & Kets de Vries, M. (1986) The neurotic organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Nadal, J. (1976) El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España. Esplugas, Barcelona: Ariel. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1937) La rebelión de las masas. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Patterson, O. (1991) Freedom in the making of western culture. New York: Basic Books. Pfeffer, J. (1981). Power in organizations. Marshfield, MA: Pitman. Sathe, V. (1985) Culture and related corporate realities: Text, cases and readings on organizational entry, establishment, and change. Homewood, IL.: Richard Irwin. Schein, E. (1978) Career dynamics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Scheler, M. (1961) Resentiment. New York: The Free Press. Tonnies, F. (1957) Community & society (Gemeinschaft & Gesellschaft). East Lansing, MI: The Michigan State University Press. Weber, M. (1978) Economy & society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Zaleznick, A. & Kets de Vries, M. (1985) Power and the corporate mind. Chicago: Bonus Books.

POWER, TIME, TALK AND MONEY Organizations in Italian Literature by Franca Olivetti Manoukian

Literary works constitute a privileged source for understanding of organisational phenomena. This statement will be discussed and elaborated in the present article on the basis of an analysis of three Italian novels in which the work organization is the central topic. The analysis of literary texts is an interesting instrument for understanding organizations for at least three reasons. Firstly, the writers exhibit exceptionally direct and vivid imagination in dealing with the problems of human condition. What is more, in the societies in which they live they tend to assume an attitude of observers and privileged interpreters of the novelties emerging in the life of collectivity or in the culture of specific social groups (Vittorini, 1961). Secondly, the most recent developments in organization theory witness frequent recourses to the analysis of tropes, especially in attempts to illuminate and explore the multiform complexity of contemporary organizations (Morgan, 1986), where the other types of analysis are not very helpful. The tropes are semantic figures, a medium of expression and cognition typical for the world of fiction. Their heuristic value lies in that they lead to fantasy and creativity. In other words, fiction writers can propose new metaphors and maybe new ways of thinking about organizations and the most obscured aspects of their functioning.

202 • OLIVETTI MANOUKIAN

Thirdly, the empirical studies of organizations, especially those conducted in Italy in recent years1 have a tendency to formulate their results in aseptic terms, purified from imaginative and emotive aspects, as if this proved the ‘scientificity’ of the work done. In contrast, the fiction writers who describe organisational matters present a ‘living’ organization, with terms filled with compassion, coming up with meaningful visions of diversity and stratification present in the everyday life of organizations. In this way, they are able to reach an exceptionally fine level of interpretation, of which Kafka is perhaps the best example (Kundera, 1986). Organizations in Italian literature of the last century In the novels published in Italy during the last century, work organization is neither a recurring nor a central theme. Until twenty or thirty years ago Italian literature never placed a description of the organised world of labour at the centre of its work except as a plaintive pretext to denounce difficult living conditions (Forti, 1961). In the second half of the nineteenth century the organization theme was taken up and described by Italian writers through the individual stories of emerging professional figures, both in new industries and in the newly constituted public administration.2 In some of the literary works of the last decades, the organization was considered often in its wider expression such as an administrative extension of the

1

For a general review on social research on the enterprise published in Italy in the post-war years see Gallino, 1981 and Butera, 1984. Among the relatively few Italian monographic works on organization, I recall as particularly interesting those of Bonazzi (1975 and 1979). Typical of the slant mentioned above is the recent work of a team of researchers at the Institute of Business Economics at Milan Bocconi University and of the Strategy Area of the Management School at the same University (Invernizzi et al., 1988)

POWER, TIME, TALK AND MONEY • 203

State or in the social organization of a geographical area, of a town or a country community or otherwise in its minor examples such as those of family ties and relations. Intermediate organizations, such as industrial firms, schools, public authorities and public services, hospitals, etc. in most cases form the background of the stories, a carefully described landscape, a setting to throw into relief the characters in the foreground—a technique much used in Italian Renaissance paintings. This social structure that permeates and marks the life of the individuals does not seem to possess, as yet, a literary place of its own, a specific literary right of citizenship, a status of an independent source of inspiration. It is indeed curious, for instance, that the family and family relations and feelings as a whole have been in the past, and still are, an inexhaustible source for literary works and writers who manage to achieve introspection and intuitions of great subtlety, discerning and remarkable interpretations. This type of investigation as far as work organizations are concerned is fairly rare. In the mental picture the Italian authors have of work organizations—especially in the post-war years—there seems to be a sort of condensation, as a result of which work organization appears to coincide tout court with the factory.3 To enter work organization means entering

2 For instance, Le miserie di monsù Travet by V.Bersezio (1863), Demetrio Pianelli by E. De Marchi (1890), Il romanzo di un maestro by De Amicis (1890) or the autobiographical stories by M.Serao. For an examination of these works see the essays by Cassese and Bini published in Storia d’Italia, 1981. In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a renewed interest in the world of organization, especially of industrial organization: L Bianciardi, Il lavoro culturale (1957), L’integrazione (1960), La vita agra (1962); L Bigiaretti, Il Congresso (1963); G.Buzzi, Il Senatore (1963); L.Mastronardi, Il calzolaio di Vigevano (1959), Il maestro di Vigevano (1962); O.Ottieri, Donnarumma all’ assalto (1959), Tempi stretti (1964); P.Volponi, Il memoriale (1962). Calvino’s short stories La speculazione edilizia (1957) and La nuvola di smog (1958) were written in the same period.


a factory, in other words, industrial organization. Even when actually referring to a school or an office or a small enterprise, the narrative point of reference is the large industrial enterprise. It is as if according to an implicit postulate, the big enterprise were the depository of those ‘new things’ that can influence society as a whole, that must be decoded, possessed, and with which writers can measure themselves in order to put forward their interpretation. Here we find the intellectual roots of attitudes that are still fairly common in our society and which originated thirty years back when a large proportion of the working population was indeed actually employed in industry or in all cases wished to be so employed. Such ideas still persist today, even if the sectors of work are increasingly varied and although the number of those employed in big industry is proportionally in constant decline (Enriquez, 1989). The writers tell tales of factories and enterprises “within limits that are from a literary point of view preindustrial”, as if they were overawed by this world and therefore either distanced themselves from it or approached it limiting their interest mainly to the “old natural reality” to which new objects and new gestures must be “merely annexed” (Vittorini, 1961, pp. 15–16). The writers who have the courage to face the theme of work organization, are carried away by their ideology. If one chooses to write a novel on a factory, this appears to be a result of a social and ideal commitment that is shared in a specific political area. And this would seem to be an impossible task because it means that one has to simultaneously identify with two opposite poles: the factory, industry or the inexpressive

3

See the special issue of the review il Menabò devoted to the theme “Industry and Literature” (April 1961). Such an attitude can be found not only in Vittorini’s introduction but also in the articles of Scalia, Pirella, Forti, in the extracts from Ottieri’s Taccuini (“Notebooks”) and in Sereni’s poem entitled precisely Visita in fabbrica (“A visit to a factory”).


place where one works without speaking and the outside world, that is art, expression, thought. Ottieri wrote in his Taccuino (Notebook) in 1954: “The world of the factory is a closed world. One doesn’t enter or exit easily. Who can describe it? Those who are in it, can give us some facts but not their elaboration… How can artists who live outside penetrate a factory?” (1961, p. 21). Literature, or better still the writers, attempt to write a factory-based novel, a significant tale of vicissitudes and emotions: they are expected to attempt “a profound and new reflection on industrial alienation”, in order to open the road to redemption, to “anticipate the development of freedom from industrial alienation”, (Scalia, 1961, p. 108). In my opinion writing on the work organization is for all these writers a form of autobiography and also a fundamental part of a sort of political project for renovating society and the relations between people and between social classes. Some of the novels published between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, seem relatively monotonous and repetitive, with a one-sided and definitive vision of organization, as if they intended to prove something, to denounce and fight; a didactic intention that can choke and fetter the richness and freedom of expression of the story—that is still, however, created by the writer.4 Three novels In order to analyse the point I have made in greater detail I have chosen three works published in three different periods, all three referring to the work organization of companies located in towns of Northern

4 I am referring, for instance, to Bianciardi, La vita agra (“The Sour Life”) or Mastronardi in Il maestro di Vigevano, also to Volponi in Il memoriale. This interpretation can, however, be a product of a more detached sensitivity which we possess today.


Italy and all based in autobiographical experiences: Una vita (“A Life”) by Italo Svevo (1892), Tempi stretti (“Fast Pace”) by Ottiero Ottieri (1964) and Le mosche del capitale (“The Flies of the Capital”) by Paolo Volponi (1989).5 All three authors worked for many years in a company. Ettore Schmitz, born in Trieste in 1861 (who had chosen the pen name of Italo Svevo) worked for about fifteen years in a bank in Trieste and subsequently in a paint company in the same town, first as an employee and then as an executive, until his death (Svevo Fonda Savio and Maier, 1981; Anzellotti, 1985). Ottiero Ottieri, born in Rome in 1924 (four years before the premature death of Svevo) worked for more than twenty years with Olivetti (in various positions) in Ivrea, Milan and in the South. Paolo Volponi, who was born in Urbino the same year as Ottieri, was also an Olivetti executive in the personnel and the social service sector; in latter years he also worked as an executive with FIAT. The three novels tell stories of three men, whose life and fate are greatly influenced by their work, by their position in their company’s organization and by the ties they have with the latter. Alfonso Nitti—the hero of Svevo’s novel—is a young employee of the Maller Bank, who has left his native village and his widowed mother to live in town; his employment in the bank is considered not just a job but is invested with economic expectations, expectations of social promotion, of an improvement in his human condition. A letter from Alfonso to his mother, placed right at the beginning of the novel, is a sort of premise, an immediate and brutal statement of bitterness— because the town and the bank do not offer the imagined prospects, because the organization does not

5

The quotations from the novels are taken from the following editions: Una vita, Mondadori, Milano, 1985; Tempi stretti, Einaudi, Torino, 1964; Le mosche del capitale, Einaudi, Torino, 1989.


understand or encourage the abilities, interests and aspirations of the single individual. Instead, it places him in a narrow space (“a goose coop”) and at the same time exposes him to relationships with fellow clerks and bosses that are strained and painful. The pay is a mere pittance. One feels that one belongs to and is, so to speak, at the mercy of a system that dictates the rules of life and does not allow one to have an independent control over one’s salary, which disappears without the employee really understanding where and how. Everything is a source of anxiety: one can only leave, escape.6 This is the theme that is only suggested with a note or two as in an overture and then developed in the book by analysing the relations Alfonso has with his work, other employees and with his superiors, especially with his boss, the proprietor of the bank that allows him to visit his house and be on friendly terms with his daughter. Alfonso becomes the daughter’s lover but the fulfilment of this desire does not satisfy him—it creates new problems and new complex decisions that must be taken. The death of his mother, followed by selling his parents’ house which means leaving his native village for good, leaves him even more prey to his existential confusion and to the productive-sentimental mechanisms which dominate the bank. When he is told that he will be moved to the book-keeping department —“he Siberia of the bank”—he cannot bear to take it lying down; he attempts to renew informal relations, but when he is rejected—and precisely by the proprietor’s son—he sees no solution except total escape from social organization, suicide. And one is left in doubt as to whether in such manner he ends up by being a victim, defeated, a loser or instead in some way a winner,

6

This theme of industrial organization seen as the town organization that drives one away from rural life, and from an idyllic countryside is also at the centre of Calvino’s short story La nuvola di smog (“The Cloud of Smog”).


master of his fate, having made a choice of his own. The organization, in all cases, survives without being shaken by the loss of one if its members and in its irresistible production work, entrenched in its procedure, language and ritual relations, proclaims “the reasons that drove our employee Mr. Alfonso Nitti to commit suicide are completely unknown”. Tempi stretti is a sociological novel (romanzo d’ambiente), describing a particular environment hosting many personal histories and in which several work organizations become in themselves, far more so than in Svevo’s novel, characters among characters. In Una vita the bank is the work organization, the only existing one and the only imaginable one, and appears to be always the same into the regularity of its hierarchy, in the distribution of roles and tasks. In Ottieri’s book, besides the Alessandri printing works, where Giovanni Marini, the main character, is employed, there is the Zanini company and Smai; a network of various organization nuclei, various firms, each with its own particular production, but also with its specific strategies and orientation, its specific divisions in its management, with features that can also be discussed and changed in certain circumstances. These organizations have to face various external and internal upsets, a number of economic and production problems; they are often in a turmoil, in critical situations that require decisions, interventions and changes. Marini is a technician who has emigrated to the big city in the North from the Tuscan countryside; he is divided between political and union commitment, solidarity with his blue collar comrades and his career, the possibility of emancipating himself and of entering the bourgeois world. His interest is also divided between two women: on the one hand, Teresa, the lady, wife of an engineer, who attracts him with allusions and innuendoes, and with the lure of futile, ephemeral things and of affluence; on the other there is Emma, the


factory worker from Umbria, who works all day at the presses, bowed down by the tempo of piecework and the number of parts that pass each day under her machine, in love with him, jealous, ready to follow him anywhere. Marini does not choose. He remains in the printing works, does not accept the post of technical manager which the engineer-owner offers him but in a certain sense acquires a special position because he exerts a power of his own, uses his technical and political influence to get a job in the firm for a friend who has been dismissed from another business. He does not side with the owner but maintains a particular type of relation with him: he belongs to the shop stewards’ committee but does not mingle with the blue collar workers and is still sensitive to the “waving of the career flag”. At a certain point in the book it seems as if his liaison with Emma is about to become more intense and exclusive, but in the end matters do not turn out this way. At the end of the book Giovanni Marini likes seeing Emma, visiting her, and feeling affectionately accepted, but he takes no initiative. And it is as if his sentimental life and his work life were both dominated by interesting and satisfactory possibilities for future developments, albeit uncertain possibilities: he does not know how long he will still be able to enjoy “the small amount of freedom he has achieved, miraculously”, freedom in his relations with women and with his employer, freedom that appears to be ensured precisely by putting up with uncertainty, indecision or by accepting to choose day by day without the protection of definitive choices (or certainties). Le mosche del capitale is a poignant, dramatic, allegorical composition on the life of two big Italian industrial corporations and in particular of their top management, which seems to be entirely devoted to planning elaborate projects and strategies, endorsed by scholarly cultural elaborations, for the development of their organization, to complicated manoeuvres of appointments and resignations, influenced by subtle


complicated and varying assessments on the subject of competence, reliability, orientation and attitudes— all this taking place in imposing offices, elegant mansions and exclusive restaurants. A flood of conversations, quotations, meetings and comments, a torrent, an excess of words (the book seems weighed down by words) piled up, one after another, which end with just one or two substantives, the ones that are the basis, the gist of all talk in the organization and concerning the organization, ‘power’ and ‘money’: two everyday and prosaic words of ancient origin, over-used, but from which one cannot escape. The book tells the story of Bruto Saraccini, “almost rich, almost in love”, still young, the first in his exemplary town and even in the Region; the most intelligent, well-balanced and capable manager of his glorious Corporation. He works in the general management of the Personnel Department of the MFM, in close contact with the president. He is very professional and attempts to introduce enlightened and rational criteria for the management and development of human resources, by means of studies and research targeted to a unitary and many-centred skills and collective integrated management. The President offers him the post of Managing Director: Saraccini argues, refuses at first, because this does not fit in with his vision of organisational reform, but then is flattered and accepts. At the same time he is offered a post of Personnel Manager of a big canned meat corporation, that has its headquarters at Bovino and plays a dominant role in the Region and in the country as a whole. Suddenly, the President dismisses his candidacy for the post of Managing Director of the firm in which he has spent his life. His position becomes shaky and he decides to hand in his resignation and accept the offer of the Bovino corporation. But his plans for technocratic and rational management, his industrial policy strategies do not find even there the field of action he hoped for. He does not become Personnel Manager after all and only manages


to obtain from the President of his old firm a modest consultancy contract as a mark of gratitude for not having chosen a career elsewhere. The story of Professor Saraccini is quite a simple tale but the novel also narrates a story of organizations, thence its interest and forcefulness. It is a story about firms, people and groups that live in and for them: the bosses, the executives, the various assistants, the secretaries, the offices, the factory, Tecraso the factory worker, other employees, the cleaners. Everything in the corporation is animate and can reveal secrets and home truths about everyone, everything tells a story: chairs bags, plants, the dog and the parrot of doctor Astolfo. But every story is about oneself for oneself; these are in all cases handled ‘elsewhere’; it is a manner of expressing oneself, of showing off at times; an explanation directed to those outside, to the reader. Similarities and differences in the three novels The three novels are set respectively at the time of early industrialisation at the end of the last century, at the time of industrial development in the second post-war years (in the years of the “economic miracle”) and at the beginning of the post-industrial phase. From a geographic point of view the books cross Northern Italy from East (Trieste) to the centre of the Pianura Padana (Milan) to the West (Ivrea and Turin). The stories involve two small or medium-sized companies (the Maller Bank and the Alessandri printing works) and two large national or multinational corporations (which no longer carry the names of their owners: the families of the owners are still there, but are less involved in the corporation’s operation). The firms belong to different productive sectors (finance, printing, big production of consumer goods) and are involved in processes of market organization, development, the creation of new


productive schemes, liaisons and mergers with other concerns or the problems of their internal structure. The three main characters, who are aged between thirty and forty, are employees. Alfonso Nitti is a clerk, one of the latest arrivals in the bank and on the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder; Giovanni Marini is the technical vice-manager of the printing works; he has, so to speak, “risen from the ranks” but sits in the heart of the firm, at an intermediate level, fairly close to the management; Bruto Saraccini “is a second-grade executive in charge of personnel, social relations and of the corporation’s image and its services, of advertising”; this means he has a senior position in the firm’s hierarchy, is in the top grade of employees and is in contact with the President and the Board of Directors. These three characters possess common traits: they have been transplanted, they are people who have left their place of origin (which they recall with varying degrees of nostalgia or homesickness) in order to enter the firm’s organization; people that come from other cultures and that have more or less equipped themselves to find, maintain, acquire a place in the firm and a recognised position in society. They are also people who suffer. They have a measure of success, see the results of their work, but above all they have physical and psychic problems, are plagued by malaise, uneasiness, fears. Uneasiness and disquietude are indicated and described several times in the novels. Let us take, for instance, the following passage from Una vita: Since he had been employed his robust organism, that had no longer the outlet of country labour for arms, and legs and that did not find sufficient compensation in the inconsiderable intellectual exertions of his work as an employee, contented itself with getting his brain to create entire worlds. (p. 15)


“My pain is in no small measure increased by the haughtiness of my colleagues and superiors. Perhaps they look down on me because I am not so well dressed as they are. They are all dandies that spend half the day before the looking-glass. Silly creatures! If it were a Latin classic I could comment on the whole of it, whereas they do not even know its name. Such are my troubles…” (p. 4) A similar passage from Le mosche del capitale: That night Saraccini could not get to sleep. At three o’clock he was tossing and turning, gripped also by the fear of losing energy for the days to come. He turned to two Valium pills with the absent-minded and weary air of a head of State, of a great creator who feels his sovereignty is forced to make compromises, even with himself, to make a different, increased use of the organs of his body, as if drawing on his nervous and mental resources. (p. 16) He is afraid. Afraid of comrades disciples priests of hidden prophets. Afraid of the cutting simplifications of the production engineers. Afraid of the common sense and the jokes of the salesmen. Afraid that the physicists and mathematicians of the computers might come to ask him for indispensable input and, while awaiting his answer, should stop, blocking all information, Afraid of having to dismiss, change piecework calculations completely and all other parameters for salaries, rearrange categories, plan promotions, return an answer to the union…(p. 15) And from Tempi stretti: Marini and Paolo hurried silently towards their usual trattoria on the corner; it was late. The place was full of factory workers at the end of their meal;


inside, cigarette smoke and noise. Paolo was suffering behind his contrite thin face and his glasses. As soon as they were seated at a table covered in oilcloth, Giovanni asked him: “[Surely], if Alessandri did not shout, the firm would go to pot?” They were brought cold and greasy stuff; each time Giovanni remembered the food in Tuscany, where he had come from many years before. (p. 21) “We will have bosses as good as we are, as reasonable as we are, is it not so, Paolo?” Then he added, on the doorstep of the works, “these continual batteries require too many deaths.” (p. 24) As the means of more detailed analysis, I decided to examine the first chapter of the three novels. This choice was dictated not by pragmatic necessities only. It is based on an observation made by several students of social perception, that the first images, the first words encountered in a new situation have a crucial importance for the following act of cognition (Secord and Backman, 1964). Not only do they create a basis which defines the level and the quality of the following exchanges, but oftentimes they present, in a condensed form, the aspects and elements which will be developed and elaborated in what follows (Olivetti Manoukian, 1983). The strong presence of ‘the boss’ In these three books the reader is made acquainted immediately with the situation, plunged directly in the midst of things in the work place office, factory, industrial town and informed of the relations existing between the people who were there. And together with the descriptions of the furnishings, the conversations, the people and the roles, there is a figure that stands out clearly and puts all the rest in the shade, a character that dominates the picture. It is ‘the boss’, to use the


most hackneyed and banal word; engineer Alessandri, Mr. Maller, President Nasàpeti, to call them by their name; in organisational language, the person who possesses the greatest authority and power. We are given a real and proper portrait of each of these characters as seen in their place of work. They even seem to resemble one another. Alessandri has “a big head”, “big eyes, big glasses”, “iron grey hair”, “a big mouth”, “a wide face”. Mr. Maller “was a strong man of a robust build, fat but tall…he was nearly completely bald, his full beard was thick, not long, fair bordering on red… he wore gold-rimmed glasses. His head had a vulgar look on account of the deep red of his scalp”. President Nasàpeti appears “with various flushes”, “increasingly flushed”, “a deepening flush spreading”, “his flush subsiding as he sucked a big cigar”, “he appeared less flushed, his nose lying between the opposite almonds of his face, similar to the observable heavy dimensions of his intentions”; “his face, reflected in the transparent circle of the liquor, took on a golden hue, eyes and nose included”. This last character is seen against the background of an expensive restaurant, a special place for confidential meetings and negotiations, well-suited to a person who not only possesses and rules a productive organization with clearly marked boundaries and space, bit directs and controls financial operations, political choices, social processes in a much larger area, which is also potentially in expansion: “I shall put you…together with engineer Sommerso Cocchi.” “But I …” objected Saraccini… “You will do so,” repeated Nasàpeti,” you will help me, you will do it and do it well… You know our currents and our coastline and will be able to chart your course.” “But this does not only involve sailing along,” countered Saraccini gravely, “not only sailing but directing currents, reconstructing ports, enlarging the harbor, by degrees but with decision, towards the open seas, to establish relations also with the


oceans, their arsenals, markets, silos all over the world”. (Le mosche del capitale, p. 12) The owner-managers of earlier decades possessed an office, inhospitable, with drab furniture but with carpets; it was the only room in the concern that had the floor covered by a carpet. Possible differences in the accommodation reserved for the ‘bosses’ do not modify the way they interact with their employees, which, in the three novels—although these were written at a distance of several decades one from the other follows the very same lines. The boss summons and speaks benevolently to the youngest of his collaborators, allows him to enter his private life, the privacy of his home, of his thoughts and plans, approaches him with open and amiable familiarity: “I wanted to have a little talk with you,” said the engineer smiling… “I want also young Marini, who comes so to speak from the ranks—but this is to his credit—to get to know me and our problems better, to get into the heart of things”. And Alessandri’s confidential talk immediately excited the two members of the technical management, because they had been admitted to the rare intimacy of their employer; “I also have a right to be tired,” he continued, “but not to look tired. Tired of having a hundred eyes—I wish I could trust everyone, I would like to decentralize. My life would not be only here…if I had not been compelled to give up all personal possibilities”. (Tempi stretti, p. 12–13) “You will be doing me a favor if you come tomorrow evening to tea” … “Why torment your mother by writing that you are dissatisfied with me and I with you? Don’t be surprised! I have it from a letter your mother wrote to miss… The good lady complains about me…” (Una vita, p. 16)


He smiled, in order to give the impression of great confidence and also to indicate how light the facts looming ahead and the tasks to be faced, would prove as a result of reciprocal trust and understanding. Nasàpeti on his side was less carried away, he was pleased with himself for having managed to say and propose everything without having to overcome the difficulties and the effort of the necessary formalities, and in addition in a manner that appeared confiding and generous…satisfied with himself for having also managed to convince and excite that young man who was, indeed, valiant and good-looking but also uncooperative and reserved, not to say unsociable… (Le mosche del capitale, p. 12–13) The employees consider this “a rare privilege” and their hearts overflow with affection, they feel a bond of positive feelings, they feel attracted: “Indeed?” thought Giovanni. In all cases his employer was a man: he had laid bare the works that made him tick on… He [Giovanni] used, involuntarily, the tone of an understanding and gruff friend. The engineer appreciated this immensely and revealed an even deeper layer of himself… While he waited he gave them a wide smile, a silent sign of friendship, to dismiss them. Marini then felt a surge of affection for him mingled with annoyance and fear. (Tempi stretti, pp. 13–15) He had to admit that Mr. Maller looked kind and, being of an impressionable nature, his position in the bank seemed to have improved; finally someone was taking notice of him! (Una vita, pp. 16–17) In his turn Saraccini withdrew himself into the warm web that the impetuous love for the professor had blown up around him, around his head. A total, infinite love, as he himself defined it, like one possessed, like a leader for his cause, the same as


for his town and for his own big concern (Le mosche del capitale, p. 12) The ambiguity of the situation remains: almost immediately, the young employees seek a retreat: The sudden interruption led them, while they took refuge in their narrow office on the lower floor… dazed and with a feeling of floating on air: the engineer’s confidential talk had acted as a sweet poison that had to be got out of their system. (Tempi stretti, p. 16) He regretted, however, that he had not behaved with greater frankness and greater sincerity; why had he denied the truths he had confessed to his mother? He ought to have repaid his principal’s kindness by a frank explanation of his wishes and would have had the satisfaction of seeing some of them satisfied, with the advantage of starting a friendly relationship with his principal, because there is nothing wrong in asking for protection. (Una vita, p. 17) Saraccini was silent for the rest of the evening. The investiture him down and made him feel unsteady. In the last part of his meeting with the President he was polite and formal and took pleasure in seeming surprised and almost overwhelmed. (Le mosche del capitale, p. 15) Seen from the bosses’ point of view, this meeting with a collaborator seems an important episode and not strictly connected with production issues; indeed it appears to be instrumental for exploring, re-establishing, keeping up relations of active, faithful dependency, for creating ties, making the whole weight of one’s benevolent power felt and communicating with intensity and warmth one’s own values, one’s own concept of the organization and of the behavior that was rewarded in it. Mr. Maller, when he assures Nitti “that in the office they are fond of


him”, placing him in a position that is completely symmetrical to his own (“we are all men”) tells him somewhat shortly and in no uncertain terms that complaints are not tolerated in the firm, that all the degrees of the hierarchy must be respected and that he must work better. The engineer reminds the boy Marini who is intelligent but pays too much attention to the conditions of blue collar workers that he himself “as a boy had only time for work”, “to work in order to study in the evening” and that in his heart of hearts he would always see relations between people differently, “more poetic, more human”, but “everyone must pursue his responsibilities to the end, because no imperative is greater than this”. President Nasàpeti does not even camouflage his strategy for making use of his young executive, “a popular agreeable collaborator”; he wants to test him, to verify if he understands that “to command is better than…”, “that to be powerful is rewarding everywhere”, “that money is the best thing in the world”. Only in such a manner can he be co-opted among real managers. These inscriptions provide interesting indications as to how subordinates relate with their superiors. I wish to stress just a few elements that are self-evident and fairly suggestive. Consider, for instance, the bodily representation of these characters: they all posses a certain impressiveness, some ‘imposing’ trait—big, fat, tall. As if the people who occupy important positions in the social hierarchy should of necessity prove their superiority by their looks. It has also been noticed by researchers in the field of social psychology that the position, the role of a leader is commonly perceived as associated with a strong and attractive physique. Physical attributes appear to be an important factor contributing to their legitimation and inspiring respect, even if they have little to do with ability and competence intrinsically required for the role.7 In the three novels it is the head of our bosses that is described, the higher part of the body that symbolises the outward signs of


their high office, but also to stress a grossness, a lack of refinement; they remind one of those descriptions of the parvenu industrialists, of the nouveaux riches, the profiteers who in first and second post-war years appeared on the social scene in Italy, looked down on by the aristocracy and by the intellectual bourgeoisie, hated by the working class from whose ranks they had risen.8 The relations between boss and employee are very affectionate; it is not, however, the love that, according to Freud, binds the individuals belonging to the large organised masses (the Church and the Army) to their leaders, a love which is imbued with idealisation and based on the illusion that the supreme commander loves all the individual components of the mass with equal love (Freud, 1922). In the organisational situations described in the three novels, the boss is near his subordinates. There is a constant relation between them, certain aspects of which are captured in face to face encounters. The boss does not excite an unconditional admiration, nor does he demand total dedication. He is not a superman, he is a man, but not only a man because the relationship one has with him is distinctly asymmetrical: he is a “man-father”. It is not mere chance that family references become explicit when this character enters the scene. “Why make your mother unhappy by writing that you are dissatisfied with me and I with you?” (Una vita, p. 16), Mr. Maller asks Alfonso Nitti, as if he were about to scold his adolescent son for confiding to his mother matters that should be dealt with only between men. And President Nasàpeti finds himself compared to the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Leopold Mozart: “promoter,

7 In a study of how business administration students in various countries perceive organisational power, a group of German students described the power-holders in the companies they knew as equipped with similar physical attributes (CzarniawskaJoerges, 1990).


organizer, persecutor, consoler” of his son, “fatherenterprise”, “ruthless, ambitious, blinded by success” but also a father who helps and keeps an eye on one, who protects one “in order to organize and guide work in a scientific and social sense” (Le mosche del capitale, pp. 8–9). The Ottieri’s novel describes in its first pages the celebration of a 25th anniversary of the family-firm, its “silver wedding” in which Alessandri, “father and founder” explains how he faced and faces day by day all the problems connected with the continuation of work because “our firm is a big family. I am only its guide, and therefore, if you will allow me, I am to certain extent your father. A father will naturally always take care not to abandon his children” (Tempi stretti, p. 10). And on the employee’s side affection seems to make it possible to face fear, which one experiences inevitably as one has in all cases to reckon with an interlocutor who—precisely on account of his position—is a stranger and elusive, a source of uncontrollable and menacing demands.9 The most immediate feelings when summoned by the principal appear to be apprehension and anxiety; in spite of this one must assume a proper attitude, not reveal one’s difficulties but instead come forward with a free-and-easy demeanour, while remaining carefully alert in order to notice every sign that helps one to decode the other person’s position. One is greatly relieved when one finds with incredulity that indeed the other is a person (“he had to admit that Mr. Maller looked like a kind person”, “in all cases his employer was a man; he revealed the mechanisms that made him tick”), who has ideas with which one can agree, who wants to give one a special task (“surprised, slow to feel the happiness of being able to show and enjoy the surprise”).

8

Such descriptions remind one of the typical caricatures of capitalism or, to be more exact, of capital, that is personified by a large thickset man, with a big head, big hands full of rings and a big cigar in his mouth.


In the organization described in the three novels, enterprise organizations, the relations between the superior and the subordinate are at first considered hard and menacing, as Volponi says, a reality that is “organised above and ruthless below”: they can be softened by placing them in a family context where by definition feelings must in all cases be directed to a good purpose, a context that can prove, in some measure, protective both for who is on top and for who is at the bottom, precisely because one is not in a real family where in the name of familiarity everything is permitted. These relations can be tempered by extending them through multiple and diversified interactions, not predetermined only by the position superioritysubordination. The invisible boss: Time Another factor exerts a great influence on the life of the organization: time. It qualifies the tasks carried out in working activities, in the sense that, generally speaking, one has to produce within specific time limits so as not to exceed specific costs, and also—as in the case of the Maller bank—because the success of certain services depends on their timeliness; a day delay in sending off a letter with a subscription offer means losing customers and subscribers. The length of the time the various individuals take to carry out their tasks is a measure of their diligence but above all of their ability, manual or otherwise. Sanneo, who is a master of efficiency in the correspondence sector of the bank, who is always on his feet and effects every operation with prodigious rapidity, 9

Ottieri remarks in 1954 in his Taccuino industriale “Fear plays a big role in hierarchical relations, some employees feel it very strongly; maybe it has distant origins: one is afraid of exciting displeasure for a mere nothing, Factory workers have an economic fear, and we have a psychological fear. We are more frightened than is necessary, and we write in prey of this deforming feeling” (1961, p. 42).


is the reverse of the proof-reader in the Alessandri printing works, who accumulates delay and in his haste lets printing errors escape him. The time that individual workers are prepared to devote to work, without a pause and without unnecessary distractions, with evening overtime, is the gauge of their devotion, their interest in the smooth running of production and in the whole setup of the firm. It is the “fast pace” of piece work that guarantees the profitability of the concern. Time is a factor that more directly refers back to the very corner stone of every firm’s organization, its very foundation and the final end for which every firm’s organization exists: money, brass “the best thing in the world”, “the more there is of it the better the world is”; “money that is the world, the real world, the only possible one inhabited by man, the centre of the universe” (Le mosche del capitale, p. 14). And even in the large multinational concern, where capital returns do not depend only on production and sales but also and above all on intelligent financial allocations and initiatives, time, invisible and inexorable, marks success or failure. If time, as a result of technological progress and automation, no longer controls work and the worker, it in all cases controls capital. Every five minutes interest is calculated, every ten the rate of inflation, every half hour…the price index of raw materials. every three hours the exchange rate of the dollar, the Swiss franc. (Le mosche del capitale, p. 14) Time is the basis of organisational order. The time-table of working hours is part of the rules regulating the workplace, but it has a meaning that greatly transcends mere practical requirements: it is a sort of unwritten law to which everyone is subject, witnessing the existence of a pact that cannot really be discussed between the individual and the organization; it is an order that individuals cannot consider established for their use


and consumption but that is in force because it is contained in the very existence of work organization. “I am not interested in your private affairs, if you work better under artificial light or in sunlight. What interests me is the fact that you repeatedly did not keep to your working hours, that you, and you alone, want to make your own timetable, while everyone, myself in the first place, has for twentyfive years obeyed an internal law of work, a necessity, a necessity of order.” Alessandri shouts these words at his unpunctual employee and specifies angrily: “Who are you to take the liberty of coming and going whenever you like? You consider yourself a genius with laws of your own. We are all equal! You are nothing more than a primary school teacher!” (Tempi stretti, p, 19). Working hours are the most tangible and visible element in the rules to which the individual is subject; respecting them means respect for the organization; not respecting them leads to a refusal of the individual by the organization. “You are only a primary school teacher!”, this sentence pronounced in a disparaging tone by engineer Alessandri, concludes the harsh rebuke directed at the proof reader and seems to drive him back vehemently to a minor role in the social scale (where one works with children, but is not up to measuring oneself with adults) and at the same time proclaims publicly that he is inadequate, unworthy of belonging to a concern. These comments inspire further reflections of a more general nature on the subject of the difficulties that have arisen in many firms with the adoption of flexible working hours and especially with the introduction of part-time work. In particular it allows one to understand the hostility of public employees (especially those who have a defined professional position) towards clocking in. Submitting to time regulations means submitting to the “law of organization”.


Production of what? What is being produced in organizations described by Svevo, Ottieri and Volponi? In the Maller bank production takes place with a varying input transformed by means of a division of work that tends to break down the operations which individual clerks have to carry out in sequence. It is a matter of writing and sending off letters; the original letter is written by the head clerk, the clerks have to copy a certain number of letters changing the addresses and the number of shares offered. The first clerk who finishes copying a letter passes it on to his colleague who uses it as an original to copy. The completed letters have to be passed on to the head to be signed and then they are posted. For greater speed long letters—four-page-letters—are divided between several employees and the accountants are added to the clerks assigned to correspondence. As the task is standardised it is possible to insert operators that are not specifically qualified for the job. There is a strong, rigid timeinterdependence in the execution of the work (known as segmental independence, Thompson, 1967) within the subsystem of the correspondence department and the correspondence and mailing subsystems. An employee can only start working if a colleague passes him the letter to copy and the mailing can only begin when the letters that have been written reach the mailing sector. These points of contact are also points of conflict both between colleagues and between the head and his employees. In the Alessandri printing works the production is dominated by the machines which must work without interruption; every time they stop means an intolerable expense and all the work process seems to hang on the necessity of feeding the machines without stopping. The flow of orders varies a good deal and provokes serious problems in the planning of production. The technical management, placed very near the workshop, in an office separated only by a glass partition, has to


reduce “a torrent to a river”. The production in small series has to face an input that varies considerably and is unpredictable (Woodward, 1965). The most visible form of division of labour is between type—setting and printing that are linked together by the foreman who, all by himself “ran about all day”. The worker behind the machines stands straight up and does not move, as if he were not doing anything, for hours on end. The production consists of printed sheets in thousands of copies. In both situations those who are directly involved in the production process do not seem to be much involved and interested in the specific results of their work. Nitti, who has to copy the letters, reads them without making any comment, exactly like someone who has to take note of the words to be able to transcribe them. The factory worker Consonni, whom Giovanni Marini observes, standing in front of the machine with a black overall, does not even know what is written on the sheets that are printed; also for Marini this is an unimportant detail. To produce means keeping up with orders than either accumulate or stagnate. What is important is for the sheets to pile up regularly in their thousands. In both cases, although work does not require either muscular or intellectual effort, it is tiring; it creates a great lassitude; one is terribly sleepy and bored, but one must not let one’s mind wander, even if one is dazed and moves slowly, numb and inert. One comes to life again, at the idea of doing something different, being given another job or even just going out to have a meal. What is the result of organisational actions? What is produced by the individuals and the organization as a whole? In the eyes of the writers, the concrete objects such as letters, printed pages, etc. are not important outcomes of organisational work. We are observing small companies where the employees are not numbers or function codes, but are known by their names and surnames. Nevertheless, there is a message that


organizations produce, rather than goods and services, constraints, stressful operating procedures and limiting structures. Not even the people in the top positions know very well what the organization is supposed to deliver and why. The parabola of an industrial company is mysterious. We create it but it has a fate like a live person. What fate await ours? Perhaps to pass from father to son. But my sons have other interests… Let’s leave it at that. (Tempi stretti, p. 14) The company production is kept in some measure under control by its top ranks, but they also seem to be a long way away from the specific quality of what is produced. What is printed in his firm does not seem to Alessandri to be in itself so important; it does not seem be the object of particular interest, of particular feeling, but it is a means for promoting the expansion of the concern and, consequently, his own social success. In the Volponi’s novel, the factory worker is “registered and incorporated in the big meat canning factory. He is a metalworker rather than a butcher or a cook”. What is emphasised is this paradoxical observation that the technical competence is completely irrelevant to the organization’s output. In the factory there is a bit of everything: from “a lively escapade with one of the cleaners or some other woman in the canteen or in the offices” to drugs, the shop stewards’ committee, dismissal. A series of relationships is produced, made possible by sharing of same conditions. On the other hand, products appear to be indifferent also to the top brass who know them essentially for their value added… The people we see at work in this case are the president and high-grade executives; they must write letters, memos—each one different from the other—addressed to the shareholders, the press and the management, saying that the budget closed with a four billion deficit and there will be no dividends. It escapes them all that


the results of their works is not to publish their budget but to legitimate their attempt to remove two members of the Board, a task that has little to do with production but a lot to do with power. The works under scrutiny reveal a representation of organizations where the structures of coercion and the social and relational dimensions are especially visible. The ‘tasks’ of the organization are given little attention— this is, clearly, not a factor of great importance for organisational functioning. This thesis which seems to be proposed by the writers contrasts greatly with the researchers assuming the task analysis as the main perspective (Woodward, 1970; Butera, 1983). The understanding of organizations requires, instead, the recognition of the way it is construed, and especially of the internal connections, which appear to be crucial for finding one’s place and orientation in an organization. One could hypothesise that it is the organisational structures, as present for those working there, are the most irnmediate arena of interest for understanding an organization. This could be the result of a widespread internalisation of knowledge transmitted by means of various social and training processes. But could it be due to the fact that attention paid by individuals to “organisational forms” corresponds to the need to find one’s place in the system of relationships before considering the production processes and the results of one’s own and other people’s work? Such queries are not just marginal. They restate a problem that is still unsolved concerning the nature of the bond between the individual and the organization. Such a bond takes form of a degree of “belonging”; it is sought after (or refused) in order to “be part of’, it is kept up (or severed) according, for instance, to the place it ensures in internal relations, and consequently in social relations; it is developed by acquiring and promoting everything that strengthens organisational unity, that is to say obedience to established authority, consensus for traditional values, support for orthodoxy. The hero of


Bigiaretti’s novel (Il Congresso, 1963) goes to the point of asserting: “For me, perhaps, at this stage of my life, apparently neither Christ nor Marx appear to matter; the meaning they have for such a big proportion of humanity, the different hopes they engender no longer have any effect on me. A much greater influence on my destiny is extorted by Cavaliere del Lavoro Giorgio Usai [the hero’s boss], risen from the ranks, as he says, solid, compact, without even the smallest hole in the block of his certainties. He is, unknowingly, the ideologue who has slowly warped my mind and adjusted it to its function. (pp. 196–197) At the same time, the bond with the organization signifies also “taking part”, “having a part in”, i.e. knowing and working to create objects and projects, occupying a position, having at one’s disposal methods and means, using forms and procedures for making, building, providing something that is appreciated and recognised both for one-self and for the organization. While “belonging” is easy to recognise and to communicate, “taking part” is more uncertain, because it is relatively more undefined, negotiable, conflictive. It is no mere chance that the dimension of the relation is stressed more often by those who have other ties, belong to other types of group (in addition to the work organization), for instance a professional order, a social group or a scientific community. According also to the theories developed by Freud in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, it would seem that the individual has with the organization a bond in which what is done in the organization is marginal. The highly organised masses, artificial masses, who are under a head, such as the Church or the Army, are integrated by means of identification processes, that is to say by means of intense relations between individuals: it is a


collection of individuals who have assumed as an ideal if the Ego the same object and that therefore have identified themselves with one another one their Ego (Freud, 1922). Here the term object is used with a particular psychoanalytical meaning, in the sense of another person with whom the individual is in touch; and this other person, in the present case, is the head who is shared by all the members of the organization. What acquires special significance in the eyes of the novelists is exactly that what is considered improper or irrelevant by the classical theories of organizations, even if of recent there are attempts to rehabilitate these topics (Ashford and Fried, 1988; Kets de Vries and Miller, 1987; Schneider and Shrivastava, 1988; Zan, 1988). Companies do not pro duce so much goods and services as stratified procedures, styles of action and interaction, processes of positive and negative identification and, above all discourses, denominations, linguistic products which allow to consolidate and maintain the organisational order (Czarniawska-Joerges and Joerges, 1990). In the novel by Volponi, which is the most recent and therefore reflecting the spirit of a contemporary business organization, these phenomena are especially evident. The life and the vitality of the companies appear to be concentrated not on technologies or any other aspect of the concrete process of production, but on conversations, talks, interviews, alliances, missions, resignations, nominations. Production, if production there is, appears to be only a production of words: And thus how could he burrow under the words of the concern, still colder and more distant, mechanical and automatic, and even more distant from the ones pronounced a moment before by doctor Astolfo and find under them a deposit of any sort of truth that was socially acceptable or even exchangeable? He really had the impression of


walking, living and working only on words, on the terms of reports, statements, principles, orders and organization charts. (Le mosche del capitale, p. 216) The allegorical manner of telling the story emphasises this image. We can also surmise either that this was done on purpose or that the author’s perception is warped and therefore, as a result of his ideas, he tends to illustrate only this side of organisational reality. We can, however, also suppose that in every organization (including industrial corporations and not only in National Health Centres or in regional agencies, Olivetti Manoukian, 1988), individuals have a subjective and organisational difficulty in understanding the productive dimension and the overall task of the organization: for those on the lower and medium levels there is alienation-estrangement resulting from the subdivision and the complexity of operations; in the higher grades interest is directed elsewhere (Turani, 1989). In this perspective, the production of discourses, of slogans, of passwords, fulfils an important maintenance function because it provides the organization and the organisational actions with meaning. A non-idyllic organization The analysis of organization made by these privileged witnesses-the fiction writers—not only contradicts but also refers to the concepts known from classical theories of organization. Let me point out some of these. Environment is considered crucial in all the novels: it qualifies the choices and the running of the concern, it influences the behavioural and management models of individuals. All that exists, however, beyond the limits of organization can be read and interpreted in different ways by various actors and the reactions to the stimuli of the environment need not necessarily be the same. Organizations are materialised in their structures. In


Volponi’s novel this process of reification and acquiring of a life of their own invests a series of inanimate objects that are to be found in the workplace, and such objects prove as present and influential as people, if not more: the plants, the president’s personal briefcase, donna Fulgenzia’s chair, the desk, the computer terminal, the door, the dog and the parrot are a sort of trait d’union that emphasises the lack of difference between human beings and objects: people become objects and objects persons. They are organisms with a life of their own, a destiny of their own, are dominated by a strong and univocal rationality, even if this does not always prove to be completely coherent with the ends they explicitly pursue. Their objectives, indeed, are several: the leaders of an organization try to simplify them and reduce them to a small number of elements, but the very same leaders find it difficult to distin guish and follow directions and to substantiate wishes. There is one point emphasised in all these analyses: the great attention is dedicated to the importance of the presence and actions of individuals, on the relations that exist between them and in particular on the nonsymmetrical relations, intensely impregnated with power. This word, which is absent (expelled?) from a large section of “scientific” works on organization— slanted mainly to find functional models, that can be prescribed for the solution of operational problems— bursts into the scene, with liveliness and violence, in the descriptions of novel writers. Organisational integration is obtained by coercion, there are no converging interests between individuals and groups and if they exist they are instrumental and dangerous: the consensus, the participation required from those who work in the concern may allow one more room for action but the risk of being manipulated hangs heavily over all this. Therefore a power has been identified, the power of capital, or the power of the top echelon of society, power that overflows from organisational roles, goes beyond the limits of the exercise of hierarchical or


functional authority, the authority required to govern the processes of work rationally. And this power can be observed coming into play especially in interpersonal relations, in the micro relations that are the substance of daily work. The importance which this point of view assumes for the authors is inevitably connected with the need to rework their own experience. This indicates that in order to develop an understanding of organization, individuals cannot be reduced to dependent variables, they are actors representing interests and also creators of the meaning of their own and other people’s actions (Zey-Ferrell, 1981). It also highlights the fact that being placed in an organization is for an individual a difficult and problematical experience. In a wider perspective this suggests an image which is disenchanted and bitter, a hard, non-idyllic image of organizations. It is an image that emphasises the drama of individual: a resigned adaptation to the logic behavior in orga nizations, that legitimises only the extreme choices, which became the fate of the protagonists and the authors alike. These choices consist, on the one hand, of a resigned adaptation to the logic of organization with its protective rules and its depressing impersonality; on the other, of taking a plunge into informality, with its variety and richness but also its risk of disappointment in personal contacts. Marini, in Ottieri’s book, is driven by his personal history, by his friends, by reasons of solidarity to side with the workers, to be with them, to defend job and salary with them; at the same time he is interested in getting a position with greater technical and organisational responsibility and even perhaps in rising in the social scale; Saraccini, i.e. Volponi, wishes to introduce innovation, professionality, promotion, consensus and harmonious participation, but when he finds himself facing indifference or authoritarian brutality he is respectful towards the latter, admires it, is almost fascinated by it.


The situations in which such complexity (both internal and external) is actually expressed vary in the three novels but all of them stress the pressure of time, the rapid succession of events, of organisational rhythms, of the unwritten rules of behaviour. It is impossible or very difficult to reflect. One finds oneself in a condition of emotional confusion, uncertainty. It is hard and painful to decipher the ambitions, frustrations, feelings of hate, admiration, solidarity that trouble one’s interior world; and it is also difficult to interpret the ambiguous events that happen around. People act in organizations as if it was impossible to use one’s faculties of thought, and consequently to meditate, examine, form an idea, make room in one’s mind for the various events. It is not clear whether it is a subjective incapacity or a subtle prohibition, impediment or discouragement that permeates all the organisational context. References Anzellotti, F. (1985) Il segreto di Svevo. Pordenone: Edizioni Studio Tesi. Ashforth, B.E. and Fried, Y. (1988) The mindlessness of organisational behaviours. Human Relations, 41(4): 305–329. Bigaretti, L. (1963) Il Congresso. Milano: Bompiani. Bini, G. (1981) Romanzi e realtà di maestri e maestre. In: Storia d’Italia, 4. Torino: Einaudi. Bonazzi, G. (1975) In una fabbrica di motori. Milano: Feltrinelli. Butera, F. (1979) Lavoro umano e prodotto tecnico. Torino: Einaudi. Butera, F. (1984) Il “compito” e il “controllo” come struttura ossea e sistema nervoso delle organizzazioni. In: Woodward, J. (Ed.) Comportamento e controllo nell’organizazzione industriale. Torino: Rosenberg e Sellier. Butera, F. (1984) L’orologio e l’organismo. Milano: Angel. Calvino, I. (1958) I racconti. Torino: Einaudi. Cassese, S. (1981) Giolittismo e burocrazia nella “cultura delle riviste”. In: Storia d’Italia, 4. Torino: Einaudi. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1990) In the eyes of the innocent. Students on organisational power. Stockholm: The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden.


Czarniawska-Joerges, B. and Joerges, B. (1990) Linguistic artifacts at service of organisational control. In: Gagliardi, P. (Ed.) Symbols and artifacts: Views of the corporate landscape. Berlin: de Gruyter. Enriquez, E. (1989) L’individu pris au piège de la structure strategique. Connexions, 54:145–161. Forti, M. (1961) Temi industriali della narrativa italiana. Il Menabò, 4. Freud, S. (1922) Group psychology and the analysis of the Ego. London: Hogarth. Gallino, L. (1981) Il ricercatore sociale e l’impresa. In: Storia d’Italia, 4. Torino: Einaudi. Gallino, L. (1978) Dizionario di sociologia. Torino: UTET. Jaques, E. (1970) Work creativity and social justice. London: Heinemann. Invernizzi, G., Molteni, M., and Sinatra, A. (1988) Imprenditorialità interna. Lo sviluppo di nuove attività nelle imprese. Milano: Etas Libri. Kets de Vries, M. and Miller, D. (1987) Interpreting organisational texts. Journal of Management Studies, 24(3): 233–247. Kundera, M. (1986) L’art du roman. Paris: Gallimard. Manacorda, G. (1987) Letteratura italiana d’oggi. Roma: Editori Riuniti. Morgan, G. (1986) Images of organization, London: Sage. Olivetti Manoukian, F. (1983) Morte e vita familiare in quattro romanzi di fine Ottocento. In: Manoukian, A. (Ed.) I vincoli familiari in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino: 355–371. Olivetti Manoukian, F. (1988) Stato dei servizi. Bologna: il Mulino. Ottieri, O. (1961) Taccuino industriale. il Menabò, 4. Scalia, G. (1961) Dalla natura all’industria. il Menabò, 4. Schneider, S. and Shrivastava, P. (1988) Basic assumptions. themes in organizations. Human Relations, 41(7): 493–515. Svevo Fonda Savio, L., and Maier, B. (Eds.) (1981) Iconografia sveviana. Pordenone: Edizioni Studio Tesi. Thompson, J.D. (1967) Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turani, G. (1989) Gli immortali di Torino. Uomini e Business, May, Vittorini, E. (1961) Industria e letteratura. il Menabò, 4. Woodward, J. (1970) Industrial organization, behaviour and control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zan, S. (ed.) (1988) Logiche d’azione organizzativa. Bologna: il Mulino. Zey-Ferrell, M. (1981) Criticism of the dominant perspective on organizations. The Sociological Quarterly, 22:181–205.

236

THE MAN WITH ALL THE QUALITIES: Can Business, Science and the Arts Go Hand in Hand? by Barbara Czarniawska and Bernward Joerges

Introduction: Estranged worlds and the Arnheim pattern Biographies and autobiographies of business leaders and entrepreneurs point out their aversion towards knowledge codified in disciplinary canons: intuition, hunches, and above all accumulated experience and Fingerspitzengefühl play the important roles in their lives and successes (Johannisson, 1992). In contrast, academic intellectuals and professors of economics often busy themselves demonstrating the superiority of purely intellectual learning. Viewed from the seat-in-life occupied by practising business men and women, intellectual preoccupations may belong to some elevated, or at least faraway, impractical culture. But within that culture, another divide opens, as famously presented in C.P.Snow’s Two Cultures (1959). It has traditionally been marked by opposites such as science and literature, faction and fiction, objective and subjective and so on. Note that in Snow’s scheme, both practical busi ness and management science would be lumped together under the (inferior) culture of ‘science’. For the purposes of our discussion here, we suggest a “three culture”-notion: the cultures of business, of science, and of literature,1 recognizing both the divide between practical and intellectual and between factual

238 • THE MAN WITH ALL THE QUALITIES

and fictional. It is important for our argument here, that we see management sciences as sitting, rightfully if uneasily, on the hedges separating the three cultures from each other. In this view, the “science of management” partakes in varying shares in practical business, analytic science and, in its narrative aspects, literature. Some may attribute this state of affairs to the comparative youth of a discipline which has not yet undergone the conceptual purifications typical of older fields, like its parent disciplines economics and sociology. In our view it has much to do with the subject matter of management sciences—the organising of modern business and administration—and its methodological consequences. If management as an intellectual genre cannot but partake in “business, science and the arts”, the issue of their unity becomes a crucial one for the discipline. In order to demonstrate this argument, one must define a vantage point somewhat outside the three cultures themselves. In search of this point we came across Robert Musil’s novel The Man Without Qualities, where Musil describes, above all through his main protagonist Ulrich (the man without qualities) the projects of one Dr. Paul Arnheim (the man with all the qualities) who in turn is modelled after Walther Rathenau, the German businessman, politician and writer. The purpose of this presentation is “the Arnheim pattern”, as Ulrich puts it, a “combination of mind, business, good living and wellreadness…”. The Arnheim pattern is one version of the “unity of business, science and the arts”, the integration of the three cultures, and is strongly problematised in the novel.

1 Wolf Lepenies has another “third culture”, exemplified by sociology and other social sciences. In his scheme, management science would also fall broadly into this third culture (Lepenies, 1988). We would stress the uncertain epistemic and practical status of disciplines such as business and public administration, but also the engineering disciplines (Joerges, 1979).

CZARNIAWSKA AND JOERGES • 239

Before we look through Musil’s text at the Arnheim pattern, we should like to add a few remarks about our rationale in choosing this particular novel and in juxtaposing it with certain other, seemingly less fictional texts. Musil the semiotic writer The story of Arnheim/Rathenau is a subplot within the spiritual odyssey of Musil/Ulrich across the modern era. It can be read as the story of the possibilities and pitfalls of merging Money, Mind and Soul, as Musil often call the three cultures. Analysing only a part of Musil’s novel creates certain difficulties. Authors of fiction create worlds—realist, symbolic, hyperrealist, surrealist and so on. A semantic, that is, a naive reader, enjoys them as they come and lives in them, as it were. A semiotic or a critical reader, analyses how the worlds were made, in order to increase, not to diminish, the joys of the reading.2 In this essay, we take Musil to be a ‘semiotic writer’, an author who not only has lived the world which was contemporary to him, but also took interest in its makings by reading and listening to certain key texts. We join him in his readings, treating his work as a kind of ethnographic account of the shaping of modernity. We will take interest in his descriptions of the perplexing attempts and failures in this shaping, as exemplified in the Arnheim pattern—descriptions which have a peculiarly de constructive impact, compelling us to comment on how Musil the author and Musil the narrator set about their task. In our reading, Musil cruelly (and misogynously) lays bare not only the takenfor-granted realities of his time, but also the making of its master-narratives.

2

The distinction is borrowed from Eco, 1989.


Among his varied cast, we will refer to four basic characters: Musil, Ulrich, Arnheim, Rathenau. Two of them are ‘historical’ and two ‘fictive’.3 But they can be separated only at peril, because they are two pairs of Siamese twins, or of doppelgangers: Ulrich is Musil’s alter ego, and Arnheim an alter sui of Rathenau. Musil created Ulrich, presumably, as an open and unfinished dream version of himself. He created Dr. Paul Arnheim in the image of Walter Rathenau (1867–1922), and as a negative version of Ulrich (and by implication himself). Arnheim fits our bill because his central project— reconciling Money, Mind and Soul—is of interest to management science. A caveat is in order before we continue our journey: at no stage are we interested in personalities, whether ‘real’ or ‘literary’. Musil chose to analyse the ways his world was made by using a polyphonic narrative. The characters psychologise and psychoanalyse a lot in his text, but this was symptomatic for the times in which Musil set his stories, and it is not relevant for the present analysis, focused as it is on matters of interorganisational and interprofessional discourse. We will therefore treat Musil’s protagonists not as personalities but as Characters—spokespersons for the Author. A consequence of this stance is that we will be compelled to quote Musil at great length. It is he who does the analysis for us, and although we often step out and comment and resort to what we know about Musil and Rathenau/Arnheim from other sources, it would be

3 The difference is not so important since for us both Musil and Rathenau are fictive characters—our information about them is based on texts: their own writings and those of their biographers. For Musil we rely mainly on Corino (1988) and on The Man Without Qualities; for Rathenau mainly on Buddensieg et al. (1990) as well as the Walter-Rathenau-Gesamtausgabe (Rathenau, 1977) (hereafter WRGA) and Nachgelassene Schriften (hereafter NS; Rathenau, 1928).


unsatisfactory to try and replace his elegant, sarcastic prose with our own words. Given the historical figures of Rathenau and Musil, and the fictional pair Arnheim/Ulrich, we will add a subtext to our interpretation of the Arnheim episode in the novel. We do not claim to provide ‘historical context’ but rather add to the book’s narrative about Arnheim/ Ulrich bits and pieces of a narrative about Musil/ Rathenau. This subtext—quotes, biographical material, reflections on historical circumstance—is presented in italics as in the following: Walther Rathenau, son of Emil Rathenau, the founder of the German electrical concern AllgemeineElektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), was a multi-talent. He studied philosophy, physics, chemistry and engineering. After having held a number of executive positions in German industry, he organised the war economy from August 1914 to the spring of 1915 and German economic recovery after the war. In 1922 he became Germany’s foreign minister. He was assassinated on the way to his office on June 24, 1922. Rathenau was particularly well suited for Musil’s purposes because he was a writer himself, struggling with similar material, scientific, moralpolitical, and spiritual-religious issues as Musil himself. When Rathenau was murdered, Musil wrote to Efraim Frisch, editor of the Neuer Merkur: “Do you plan any protest because of Rathenau? Would come too late. Should it happen in spite of this, please count me in, even though I belonged to his literary enemies.” (Corino, 1938, p. 85) Let us then take a look at Dr. Paul Arnheim, “the German nabob, a rich Jew, an eccentric who wrote poems, dictated the price of gold and was the personal friend of the German Emperor”, in other words a man talking many languages and speaking for many, as


Musil created him. The other story, that of Walter Rathenau, will serve both as a complement and a contrast. This may help us to gain an insight into the world which created them all: Arnheim, Musil, Rathenau and Ulrich. The triple font of power “Arnheim was a man on a grand scale” (48:224).4 His fame sprang from three sources: his writings and art, his knowledge and scientific expertise, his money and business acumen. Accordingly, he is named “Superman of Letters”, “Scientific Intellect” and “Prince of Commerce”. To Musil and to us this triad symbolises fundamental divisions of labour and discourse characteristic of the Modern Project. Yet as always, symbols veil as much as they reveal. Arnheim does not just stand for the triad of skill, intellect and inspiration, he also stands for will. He is undoubtedly a power-broker, a politician—both in the meaning of a diplomat clever at negotiations, and of a statesman, in that he considers the affairs of the State, indeed of states his business. His ambition is to turn his assets, literature, science and money, into sources of political power. But this only strengthens the analogy between Musil’s world and the world we experience, where the most fundamental requirement for keeping the division of labour intact is to ignore impurities of specialisation. Thus we shall follow Arnheim in his three main roles— as superman of letters, as scientific intellect, and as “prince of commerce”—and subsequently try to approach his particular “mystery of the whole.” First his writing: Once or twice a year he retired to his country estate and there wrote down the experiences of his intellectual life. These books and dissertations, of which he had now composed quite an imposing


number, were much sought after, went into large editions, and were translated into many languages. (48:224) Rathenau’s best known works are: Zur Kritik der Zeit (A Critique of the Time, 1912), Zur Mechanik des Geistes (The Mechanics of the Mind, 1913), Von kommenden Dingen (The Shape of Things to Come, 1917), Die neue Wirtschaft (The New Economy, 1918) and Die neue Gesellschaft (The New Society, 1919). But he also wrote essays on about everything, satire, utopian stories, letters, and poetry. Beauty, for Arnheim, lay in ideas, and ideas came from a realm deeper than intellect itself. Though he possessed a great intellect, his paramount ambition transcended the intellectual sphere. Success in business and politics is grounded in love for beauty, virtue and the unintelligible. With intellect alone one cannot either be moral or conduct the business of politics. The intellect does not suffice. The things that are decisive take their course above and beyond its reach. Men who have achieved great things have always loved music, poetry, form, discipline, religion, and the knightly virtues. Indeed, I should even go so far as to say that only men who do so turn out to be fortunate! For these are so-called imponderables, which go to make up the leader, the true man, and there is even an undertone of it, an uncomprehended

4

Quotes are taken from the Picador Classics edition of The Man Without Qualities, London, 1988. In order to facilitate identification of quotations, page numbers are preceded by section numbers.


residue of it, in the common people’s admiration for the actor. (76:23) Further descriptions of the “superman of letters” reveal him as an embodiment of the nation’s best qualities rather than a mere writer: Hence the least that is expected of a superman of letters is that he should own a motor-car. He must travel extensively, be received by cabinet ministers, and give lectures; he must make on the leaders of public opinion the impression that he represents a force of con science to be reckoned with. He is charge d’affaires to the spirit of the nation whenever evidence of a humanitarian outlook needs to be shown abroad. When he is at home he receives visits from notabilities, and all the time he has to think also of his business, which he has to perform with the nimbleness of a circus artiste, whose exertions must not be apparent. (95:154) This is neither the first nor for the last time Musil/ Ulrich spitefully reveal Arnheim/Rathenau as the businessmen behind the splendid facade and ridicule them in their other roles in “putting culture, politics and society into the service of business” (112:295). But Arnheim’s power had a second font: his scientific mind. Arnheim as a Scientific Intellect was again unusual in the sense of combining what was usually kept separate. …although it may certainly fill a man’s life entirely if he devotes himself to research into the physiology of the kidneys, yet even then there are moments, what one might call humanist moments, when he feels obliged to utter a reminder of the connection between the kidneys and the nation as a whole… But if an academic personage wishes to make it particularly evident that he possesses not only


learning but also a mind that is alive and joyfully aware of the possibilities the future holds, he will best prove his claim by referring to writings acquaintance with which not only reflects honour at the moment but also promises more honour, like bonds that are going up in value; and in such cases quotations from Paul Arnheim enjoyed increasing popularity. (48:225) Arnheim, much like the young Rathenau (Joerges, 1994) thought himself as a scientist, who is also able to perceive the world beyond science. I myself never play billiards,…but I know that one can play the ball high or low, from the right or from the left. One can strike the second ball head on or merely graze it. One can hit hard or lightly. One may choose to make the cannon stronger or weaker. And I am sure there are many more such possibilities. Now, I can imagine each of these elements being graduated in all directions, so that there are therefore an almost infinite number of possible combinations. If I wished to state them theoretically, I should have to make use not only of the laws of mathematics and of the mechanics of rigid bodies, but also the law of elasticity. I should have to know the coefficients of the material and what influence the temperature had. I should need the most delicate methods of measuring the coordination and graduation of my motor impulses. My estimation of distances would have to be as exact as a nonius. My faculty of combination would have to be more rapid and more dependable than a slide-rule. To say nothing of allowing for a margin of error, a field of dispersal, and the circumstance that the aim, which is the correct coincidence of the two balls, is itself not clearly definable, but merely a collection of only just adequately surveyable facts grouped round as average value. (114:331–332)


The point of this speech is that the billiard player reveals all this complex knowledge in split second, intuitively and a-theoretically, a typical Arnheimian conclusion. But it was not this reverence for the intuitive and experiential as opposed to formal knowledge that made his status as a scientist somewhat dubitable: The expeditions that he undertook into the territory of the sciences in order to support his general ideas did not, frankly, always satisfy the strictest demands. They did doubtless show an easy command of great reading; but the specialist unfailingly found in them those little errors and misunderstandings that enable one to recognise a dilettante’s work… However, it must by no means be thought that this prevented the specialists from admiring Arnheim. (48:225) All these sarcasms, together with the “kidney-andbilliard” metaphors, could well have been aimed at Rathenau’s Zur Mechanik der Geistes (1913), where he easily moved back and forth between the realms of mechanised industry, larger society and the inner life. Musil/Ulrich acknowledge however the difference between the familiar nineteenth century dilettante, moving from one intellectual field to another, and Arnheim, who “moved between them at the same time, thus propagating the sciences outside their realm and bringing the other realms closer to those of the scientists who wanted to know how the kidneys relate to the rest of the nation.” And the true specialists were grateful and called him brilliant and genial, “or quite simply a man with an allround mind, which among specialists amounts to much the same as when men among themselves say of a woman that women think her good-looking” (48:225).


“The third source of Arnheim’s fame lay in commerce” (48:225). The continuation of this quotation reads like a passage from a Rathenau biography: “He did not do too badly with those old salts, the seasoned captains of industry; when he had a big deal to bring off, he did down even the most alert of them. As a matter of fact, they did not much think of him as a business man and called him ‘the Crown Prince’ to distinguish him from his father, whose short thick tongue was not mobile enough to talk with ease but made up for that by picking up the subtlest taste of anything like business for miles around. Him they feared and revered. But when they heard of the philosophic demands that the Crown Prince made on business men as such, and even wove into the most matter-of-fact discussions, they could not help smiling. He was notorious for quoting his poets at board-meetings and for insisting that commerce was something that could not be kept apart from all other human activities, that ought, indeed, to be considered only in the larger context of all the problems of national life, including the life of the mind and of the spirit itself. And yet, even though they smiled at these things, they could not entirely fail to see that it was precisely the fact that Arnheim junior adorned business with these trimmings that made him of steadily increasing interest to public opinion”. In fact, Walter Rathenau was pushed by his father first into engineering and then into business, and seems not to have thought of his business achievements as an important part of his life’s work. His main historical ambition and significance was most certainly political. But back to Dr. Arnheim. Before we look more closely at Arnheim’s business antics, we take a glance at his origins. Arnheim was the


prince because his father was the king of commerce. To avoid Musil’s ironies, we allow Arnheim to speak as he relates his family history to enchanted Diotima: Foolish people imagine it is a pleasure to possess money. In fact it is an uncanny responsibility. I don’t want to talk about countless individual lives that are dependent on me, so that for them I almost occupy the place of destiny. Let me only speak of the fact that my grandfather started as a rag-and-bone dealer in a middle-sized town in the Rhineland… In this refuse-refining process…my grandfather laid the foundations of the Arnheim’s influence in the world. But even my father was still what one would call a self-made man, for one must bear in mind that inside forty years he expanded the firm to the dimensions of a world-wide concern. He had no more than two years at a commercial college, but he can see through the most involved world situation at a glance, and knows everything he needs to know sooner than anyone else does. I myself studied economics and every conceivable branch of science, but they are quite outside his ken and there is no way of explaining how he does it, yet nothing he touches goes wrong…. When a business has reached a point of expansion like the very few of which I am here speaking, there is scarcely anything in life that it does not become involved with. It is a little cosmos in itself. You would be amazed if you knew what seemingly quite uncommercial problems—artistic, moral and political— I sometimes have to bring up in conference with the senior chief of the firm. But the firm is no longer shooting up at the same speed as in its early days—what I should like to call its heroic days. No matter how prosperous a business firm may be, there is a mysterious limit to its growth, as there is with everything organic…. You


will find the same mystery in the history of art and in the strange relationships in the life of peoples, cultures and epochs. (69:320–321) Here we have it: business as a poetic mystery, full of beauty and yet following the laws of nature! Arnheim anticipates the heydays of the “organization as organism” metaphor (Morgan, 1986). In contrast to the metaphor of the machine, the image of the organism expresses the desire for a more satisfyingly efficient unity of business by scientific as well as intuitive management. Although he was insistent on the merger of science and commerce, Arnheim was more reluctant, felt greater tension, and acute incongruence with regard to a possible merger between commerce and the arts. He coped with it by dealing with the two separately in succession: Sitting in one of his directorial offices and checking sales figures, he would have been ashamed to think otherwise than commercially and technically; but as soon as it was no longer the firm’s money that was at stake, he would have been ashamed not to think the other way around and insist that mankind must be made capable of evolving upwards on some other way that the erroneous path of regularity, rules and regulations, norms, and the like, the results of which are so utterly lacking in inner meaning and are in the last resort inessential. (106:254) Like Rathenau, who believed that “national economy is the fate”, but that nationalism “not in a hundred years has produced a single work of art or poem of great value”, Arnheim the Prince of Commerce celebrated the moral superiority and strength of the arts.


What did the true entrepreneur, Arnheim’s father in the novel, think about his son’s scientific and poetic mind? It seemed to please the old Arnheim, too, that the younger Arnheim knew so much and was so accomplished. But when there was an important question to be decided, and it has been discussed and analysed for days on end and from the point of view of technique of production and finance, of economics and of its bearing on civilisation, the old man would…not infrequently give orders for the opposite of what had been proposed…but sooner or later it would always turn out that the old man had been right, in one way or another. (112:295–296) In a view that Musil/Ulrich and Arnheim share, old Arnheim was always right, and he was often wrong. Ulrich resolves the contradiction by a bit of interpretive philosophising: “it is not exclusively the exactness of the forecast that matters, because after all things always turn out differently from the way one expects anyway, and the main thing is to be cunning and tough in adjusting oneself to their waywardness.” Arnheim tends to mystify it and thereby probably tries to come to grips with his own feelings of inferiority and non-identity. Money turned into a supra-personal, mythical power, for which only the most original and genuine people were wholly a match, and he set his ancestor among the gods. (112:301) Having achieved this, he could place himself at a decent, if not so elevated level. He says to Ulrich: We business men,…on’t make calculations, as you may perhaps believe. But we—I am speaking, of course, of the leading men—the little ones, admittedly, may spend all their time doing


calculations—we learn to regard our really successful inspirations as something that defies all calculation, just as the personal success of the politician does, and the artist’s as well. (66:325) Not bothering to take the detour through Ulrich, Musil here injects his sarcasm straight into Arnheim’s direct speech. If we believed this utterance, we might be led into believing that Arnheim was neither a writer, nor a scientist, nor even a business man. In response, Arnheim/Rathenau, but even Musil/Ulrich might have pointed out that their specialty and greatness lay in none of these fields but in their talent to combine them all: “What all others are separately Arnheim is in one person” (47:221). How was it done? The novel provides three versions of a possible answer. One is the Narrator’s (Musil narrating through Ulrich), the Character’s (Arnheim’s), and the Author’s (Musil interpreting). The mystery of the whole: Interpretations and interpreters The Narrator so describes how Arnheim reached this extraordinary unity: It was understandable that he could talk to big industrialists about industry and to bankers about finance; but he was capable of chatting just as freely about molecular physics, mysticism or pigeon-shooting. He was an extraordinary talker; once he had begun he did not stop, any more than a book can be finished before everything has been said that has to be said in it. But he had a quietly dignified, fluent manner of speaking, a manner that was almost melancholy about itself, like a stream overhung by dark bushes, and this gave his loquacity a touch of necessity. His reading and his memory were in fact of unusual extent, he could


give experts the subtlest cues in their own field of knowledge, but he was just as well acquainted with every important personage of the English, French or Japanese nobility and was at home on racecourses and golf-links not only in Europe but also in Australia and America. So even the chamoishunters, hard riders and those who kept their box at the Imperial theatres, who had come to see a crazy rich Jew…left Diotima’s house wagging their heads respectfully. (47:221–222) An extraordinary talker! Arnheim himself saw it more mystically: In some mysterious way the whole counts for more in life than the details do. So although small people may be made up of their virtues and faults, the great man is he who himself endows his qualities with their rank. And if it is the secret of his success that it cannot quite be explained by any of his merits or any of his qualities, the fact is that die presence of a force greater than any single one of its manifestations is the mystery on which all the greatness in life finally rests. (48:228) Musil the author comments under that: “This was the way in which Arnheim described it in one of his books; and when he wrote this down, he almost believed he had caught the supernatural by the hem of its cloak, and let as much to be apparent in the text”. He himself has an altogether better explanation and quite a simple one: People liked listening to him because it was so nice that a man who had so many ideas also had money. (50:236) Musil, much as Ulrich, detested Arnheim’s brand of mysticism: forever short of material resources, he


steadfastly refused to translate his poetic mastery into political and moral presumptuousness, maintained a fundamentally unromantic Weltanschauung as expressed in the “utopia of the inductive attitude”. His ideal as a novelist was to learn from Mach and Einstein, not from literature and poetry. He went at the mystery via contemporary mathematical speculation, positivistic science and a fascination with Nietschean philosophy. Which explanation of the “mystery of the whole” is correct? Organization studies has taught us that, rather than trying to answer this kind of question, it is important to draw attention to the multiplicity of interpretations necessarily present in every organisational context. How is Arnheim seen by others? Let us listen some more to two of the novel’s characters, Diotima and Ulrich. They represent very different categories of spectators. Diotima is naive, very much a replica of fashionable opinion and highly enchanted by Arnheim and his visions; Ulrich is sceptical, thoroughly and arrogantly disenchanted. As a woman, Diotima represents the naive spectator in its most dramatic version.5 Here is her rendition of

5 Women

are given a lot of space in The Man Without Qualities and are presented in several variations on the same theme. With the exception of Agatha, Ulrich’s sister, they are all dealt with in a fashion, best summarised by Ulrich watching Diotima: She…struck him as being like a tall, plump heifer of good stock, sure-footed and with deep gaze regarding the dry grasses on which she was grazing. In other words, even then he did not look at her without the malice and irony that took revenge on her spiritual nobility by using similes drawn from the animal kingdom and which originated in a profound annoyance directed less at this foolish model child than at the school in which its performances enjoyed success. “How pleasant would she be,” he thought, “if she were uneducated and easy-going and as goodnatured as a big warm female body always is when it hasn’t any particular idea in its head!” (67:328)


Arnheim talking: Arnheim sometimes talked, in a breath-takingly interesting way, about the ramifications of international capital, about overseas trade, and about the political background… One needed only to have heard him speak once about, say, FrancoGerman antagonism…: in his exposition it became a Gallo-Celto-Alpino-thyreological problem interlinked with that of the Lorraine coal-mines and further with that of the Mexican oil-fields and the antagonism between Anglo-Saxon and Latin America. (78:229) What irritated Ulrich most was precisely that no matter how ridiculous Arnheim was, he was right in the centre of developments and, in the eyes of many, not only Diotima, correct in what he did. So Ulrich dissects Arnheim, beginning with his looks: It was not any details of his physiognomy to which [Ulrich’s] distaste attached itself, but simply the whole of it. Although these details—the Phoenician hardness of the master-merchant’s skull, the sharp face that was yet flat, as though formed out of too little material, the English-tailored repose of the figure, and, at that second place where man peers out of his clothes, the somewhat too short-fingered hands—were sufficiently remarkable, it was the good proportions between all these elements that irritated Ulich. It was this sureness that Arnheim’s looks also had: the world was all right as soon as Arnheim had regarded it… Ulrich suddenly felt a guttersnipe desire to throw stones or mud at this man who had grown up in wealth and perfection (44:209). It would be hard to emulate these sentiments looking, for example, at the well-known full-length


portrait of Rathenau painted by Edward Munch (one of whose pictures he had acquired as early as 1893, being the first in Germany). Elsewhere Musil states that Arnheim “did not look Jewish” presumably he was being ironic about the popular attitude of the circles he describes, where open anti-semitism was in bad taste whereas “not looking Jewish” was considered one of the best attributes a Jew could possess. For an interpretation of Rathenau’s assimilationist attempts to resolve this particular issue see Kaplan (1992). But the aversion goes much deeper: Ulrich could not endure Arnheim, could not endure him in principle, simply as a form of existence, the Arnheim pattern. This combination of mind, business, good living and well-readness was something he found in the highest degree intolerable. (43:207) Is it the perfection of Arnheim that so infuriates Ulrich? One would think envy is the source of aversion, perhaps understandable in the light of the fact that Diotima was wholly taken with Arnheim and treated Ulrich as just a young man. Ulrich tried to unmask his rival and put him down. There was a confidence-trick involved in this union between the soul and the price of coal, a union that was at the same time a useful dividing-line between what Arnheim did with his eyes wide open and what he said and wrote when he was under the twilight spell of his intuitions. (67:334) So Ulrich stages ambitious rhetorical duels. But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot wound the man: “When Arnheim the man of the mind seemed to be lying vanquished on the ground, then, like a winged being,


Arnheim the man of reality rose up with an indulgent smile and hastened away from the idle toyings of such conversations towards action in Baghdad or Madrid” (67:335). The confrontation between the man with no qualities and the man who had them all is illuminating. Arnheim speaks for pre-modern man and leads his peers into modernity. Ulrich is born in modernity, has no past, no conversion in his biography. Arnheim is a historical man, Ulrich an a-temporal being. His lack of qualities resembles an affliction of a later epoch, the “unbearable lightness of being” (Kundera, 1988). And when Ulrich was not too irritated by Arnheim, he recognised him for what he was—the epitome of modern times, even if this image, too, borders on sheer caricature: “…in the mirror of this Epicurean connoisseurship Ulrich saw the affectedly simpering grimace that was the face of the times minus the few really strong lines of passion and thought in it…” (67:335). The encompassing judgement comes in a little scene with Count Leinsdorf, from the last generation of Kakanian aristocracy: “Incidentally”, Ulrich said referring to the object of [Count Leinsdorf’s] gaping, “that is something one can no longer call a mind. It is a phenomenon like a rain-bow that one can seize hold of at each end and really feel under one’s hand. He talks about love and economics, about chemistry and canoeing trips, he is a learned man, a landowner and a stockjobber. In that, what we all separately he is in one person. And this is what amazes us”. (47:223) Ulrich, in fact much like Diotima, feels that “this was the new type of man whose vocation it was to take over the helm of destiny from the old powers” (78:230). And he fears what she desires. But in order to put him in the perspective of the times to come we have once more to shift away from


Arnheim’s and look at ‘context’—the period as Musil the Narrator presents it. The texture of the times Almost all and every concern of Arnheim/Ulrich remains on today’s agendas. The twentieth century has been a long replay of them. The Arnheim pattern— talking commerce, science and the arts together—is in fact set within the novel in a context of ‘things to come’. Reading this context against historical hindsight can be intriguing. In a long series of musings on the triple relationship— Money, Mind and Soul—Musil leaves open who exactly is talking, providing a mirror of his time and opinions on these matters which read like tongue-in-cheek commentaries on both Arnheim’s and Ulrich’s pontifications. On commerce and business: And it must not be thought that the presidents, chairmen of boards of directors, governors, directors, or managers of banks, concerns, mines and shipping companies were at heart the bad men that they are often represented as being. Apart from their very highly developed family sense, the inner reason of their life is money; and it is a kind of reason with very strong teeth and a hearty digestion. They were all convinced that the world would be much better if it were simply left to the free play of supply and demand, instead of being run with the help of men-o’-war, bayonets, potentates and financial ignoramuses of diplomats. But the world being as it is, and there being an old prejudice to the effect that a life that primarily promotes one’s own and only secondarily and indirectly the public advantage is less estimable than chivalry and loyalty to the state, and public commissions ranking, as they do, morally higher than private ones, they were the last people not to


reckon with all this; and it is well known that they made thoroughly sound use of the advantages to the public welfare offered by customs negotiations backed up by armed force or by using the military against strikers. But it is along this road that business leads to philosophy (for it is only criminals who presume to damage other people nowadays without the aid of philosophy). (48:226– 227) Ironic and cruel; do the sciences and arts fare better? For members of the inteligentsia curiously enough often have no money, but only projects and talent, yet they feel themselves not in the slightest diminished in value as a result, and nothing seems to them more obvious than to ask a rich friend, to whom money does not matter, to support them, for some good purpose or other, out of his superfluity. They will not realise that the rich man would like to support them with his ideas, with his ability, and with his personal attractiveness. By demanding money from him they put him, furthermore, into a position antagonistic to the nature of money; for the will of this nature is set on increase, just as animal nature is set on procreation. (92:142–143) If it is unclear who is ridiculed in this passage, irony here is directed specifically at the closest of kin—writers. Is Musil speaking about Thomas Mann, as some have claimed, or about himself? Musil’s situation after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany with respect to the most obvious issue of the relationship between literature and money, the material base of writing is described by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser, his translators: “What enabled him to survive and carry on with his work was the foundation, after 1933, of what is known as


the Musil-Gesellschaft. This was a small number of people—professional and business men—who banded together to give Musil financial support. He accepted this arrangement as his due, for he was a believer in patronage as an obligation owed to the artist, either by the State or by anyone else…It is recounted that he liked to keep check on the contributors to the Musil-Gesellschaft and would, if it seemed necessary, ask why So-and-So had not yet paid up for the quarter”. (Vol. 1, xxix-xxx). For the fact is, that most men of letters would gladly be supermen of letters, if they only could… the only really indispensable qualification for becoming a superman of letters remains this: one must write books or plays that will do equally well for high and low. One must be effective in the world before one can be effective in the cause of good; this principle is the basis of every super-literary life. (95:155) The real difficulty in the existence of a superman of letters arises mainly from the fact that, although it is customary to take a commercial attitude in intellectual life, long tradition still makes it necessary to talk like an idealist. (96:158) While the worlds of business and science are rendered as caught in the struggles between tradition and a new age, the spirit of the times is given its most distinct expression in the dreams of the young artists visiting Diotima’s salon. Talk was about The reconstruction of man on the basis of an Americanised world-labour plan, by means of mechanised energy… Lyricism combined with the intensest dramaticism of life… Technicism—a spirit worthy of the age of the machine…


Blériot…was at that moment soaring over the English Channel at a speed of thirty-five miles an hour! This thirty-miles-an-hour poem was what one ought to write, and chuck the whole rotten rest of literature on the dung-heap! Accelerism was what they demanded, which meant the maximal increase of the speed of experience on the basis of the bio-mechanics of sport and circus-acrobatic precision… Photogenic rejuvenation through the cinema… And then all of them said that man was a mysterious inner space, for which reason he should be brought into relation with the cosmos by means of cones, spheres, cylinders and cubes (89:119– 120). And where was Arnheim in this breath-taking futurist picture? Actually very much at home: “After all, he had long been well up in the problems that concerned them. He knew about the cube and its relationships. He had built garden-suburbs for his employees. The machine, with its rationality and its speed, was something he knew well” (89:121). “A modern force was on its way” (26:124), and Arnheim stands as protagonist of the new epoch and transformer of the old. He performs new variations of old functions: tutor to kings, universal Renaissance Man. But he also represents new aspects solely appearing in modernity, exemplified by revolutionary changes in patterns of communication and transportation: Arnheim as media-man and networkcreator. Arnheim was a darling of the journalists. They took to him immediately and under any circumstances. Here is how Musil explains it: The world of those who write and those who have to write is full of big words and ideas that have lost the objects to which they refer. The epithets applied


to great men and great enthusiasms outlive the causes to which they were originally ascribed, and as a result a great many epithets are left over. They were coined at some time or other by some distinguished man to be applied to some other distinguished man; but these men are long dead and gone, and the surviving concepts must be put to use. That is why there is a constant search for the man to fit the epithets… But it must be someone whose importance is already an established fact, so that the words can intelligibly be pinned on him, though it does not in the least matter where. And such a man was Arnheim. (76: 26) As he himself put it to Diotima: “A great deal of a man’s real importance…lies in his capacity to make himself intelligible to his contemporaries” (76:27). And so Arnheim is depicted as an early-modern mediaproduced guru. News of him appeared now in the financial, now in the political, now in the literary and artistic columns of the leading newspapers of all nations: a review of a book that he had written, a report of a noteworthy speech that he had made somewhere, news of his having been received by some ruler or some art association. And in the circle of great industrial magnates, who for the most part operate in silence behind double-locked doors, there was soon no man of whom there was so much talk outside as there was of him. (48:226) If scientists admired the guru for establishing a link between the world of science and other worlds, business people similarly become accustomed to regarding [him] as a kind of a papal legate in their affairs. For all the irony with


which they regarded his tastes, it was agreeable to them to possess, in him, a man who was capable of presenting their case just as well to a conclave of bishops as to a sociologists’ congress…(48:226–227) He served as a link because he himself was symbol and proof that such a link was possible: The fundamental pattern of his success was everywhere the same. Surrounded by the magical halo of his wealth and the legend of his importance, he always had to associate with people who towered over him in their own field, but who took a fancy to him as an outsider with a surprising knowledge of their special subject and were intimidated by the fact that in his person he represented connections between their world and other worlds of which they had no idea at all. (48: 227–228) If Arnheim was a media-darling, Musil is a favourite of post-modernist intellectuals. Indeed, The Man Without Qualities offers surprising glimpses of postmodern views. Although the prescience has frequently been reclaimed for novelists (Kundera, 1988), it continues to amaze one that all the fundamentals of the postmodern writing already existed in this novel. On the discussion of signifiers and signifieds (see above) or, for another instance, about the importance of ‘the surface’ and the role of fashion in changing ideas: as a pre-modern proceeding on his brilliant transition into modernity but tending to lose his breath in the face its pull, Arnheim ponders over his glimpse of the after-process, not quite grasping it: In the cinema, at the theatre, on the dance-floor, and at concerts, in motor-car and aeroplane, in water and in sunshine, in tailoring workshops and commercial offices, there is constantly coming into


existence a tremendous surface consisting of impressions and expressions, gestures, attitudes, and experiences…. What is important to bear in mind is what great and probably vain exertions would have been necessary in order to bring about such revolutions in style of living along the road of intellectual development, so rich in responsibility, by way of philosophers, painters, and poets, instead of by way of tailors, fashions and chance; for from this one can guess how much creative energy is generated from the surface of things, and by contrast how barren is the wilfulness of the brain. (90:127–128) Historical man that he was, and somewhat perturbed by his glimpses of postmodernity, Arnheim was sometimes caught by nostalgia: This is the dethronement of the ideocracy, of the brain, the shifting of the mind to the periphery; and this, as it seemed to Arnheim, was the ultimate problem. Admittedly, life has always gone this way. Life has always been reconstructing man from outside inwards. (90:120) His antidote for postmodern heresies was the comforting modern belief that order was possible, and that it was business order ennobled by higher values that would win the day: [He] knew that sooner or later empires would have to be governed in the same way that factories are run… Capitalism, as the organisation of egoism based on a hierarchy that develops from the capacity to get hold of money, is positively the greatest and at the same time also the most humane form of order. (106:252–253)


One consequence of all this is that advertising, marketing and generally image-making becomes a powerful force in shaping society: “So now whatever counts as great is great; only this means that in the last resort whatever is clam orously advertised as great also becomes great” (96:158). If we read nostalgia even in this statement, it is surely Musil’s and not Arnheim’s, who pictured the brain of the age replaced by the mechanism of supply and demand, and the painstaking thinker replaced by the business man as a regulating factor, and he could not help enjoying the moving spectacle of a vast production of experiences that would freely combine and dissolve again, a sort of nervous blancmanger quivering all over at the slightest jolt, a gigantic tom-tom booming with enormous resonance at even the lightest tap. (90:128–129) So here we are, a century later.6 The age of modernity is said to have moved from its inception to its ‘high’, ‘late’ onto its ‘post’ and ‘post-post’ stages. What has happened to the Arnheim-project of unification on the way? Rhetorical feuds and alliances—then and now Arnheim’s secret was hidden in his talent to bewitch his audiences, whether in the salon or on the global stage.7 His was a rhetoric of union and mutual enrichment: of synergy, as we would call it today. He brought to business talk the fine arts and the authority of science. When he is into business and politics, he makes people believe that business is dependent on its affiliation with arts and pure science. When he is into writing and visions, he never forgets that the true luxuries of the mind and soul need a capital base.


In contrast, Ulrich (and by implication Musil) con struct the three domains—Money, Mind and Soul—as incompatible. Theirs is a discourse of incommensurability and aporia. The dealings between the three spheres, especially between the world of money and the worlds of mind and soul, are seen as zero-sum games. Immersion in the world of business and practical politics means betrayal and threatens the loss of mind and/or soul. Yet both desire or at least consider a state of affairs where the tensions, contradictions and dilemmas are overcome: a solution for the “mystery of the whole”, a union between business, science and literature. Ulrich’s solution is mystical and escapist—presented in the form of a novelised Machian inductive philosophy. Arnheim’s is innerwordly and rationalist—presented in a cloak of soulful mystification. Musil’s final message (though the critics cannot agree on it) seems to be that the Soul has lost out for good, beaten to death by the atrocities of two world wars and suspected of sharing responsibility for them. Has the triumphant mind, that is science, forged an iron alliance with money which became the only legitimate one in the Western world for a long time? Have literature and the arts, while certainly securing some access to wealth, ceased on the whole to be on speaking terms? Of recent, in any case, the soul— whether we call it the irrational, morality, arts or culture —seems to experience encounters with business and science via many different routes. There is the plea for re-introduction of moral principles both in science (as in the opposition against laboratory experiments on animals) and in business (provoked mostly by the growing concern about the state of the environment). 6

Assuming that the nineteenth ended belatedly around the time of the Collateral Campaign and that the twenty-first is already on its way… 7 And so was Rathenau’s (see Joerges, 1994).


Culture itself is increasingly discovered to be a promising business field. Art sells at higher prices and more commonly than ever before; entertainment and show business is one of the most lucrative of businesses; in management sciences a new field of ‘culture management’ is emerging (Björkegren, 1992); Gary S.Becker received the 1992 Nobel prize for extending the neo-classical economics to just about everything between birth and burial. Yet money and high culture do not speak the same language, and characters like Arnheim, however genial, cannot alone change this state of affairs. The first concern would then be a transformation of perspectives on money (business) offered by the arts to students and practitioners of business. Ulrich/Musil offer an elitist, ironic, and at times contemptuous picture, but the character of Arnheim announces certain transformations that have characterised capitalist economies since World War II: numerous versions of alliances between state an private capital, the emergence of various types of welfare state, the idea that business is not only about making and selling products, but about the fabrication of corporate identities, consumer lifestyles and such. Arnheim can be read to have foreseen and advocated many such transformations. In Die neue Wirtschaft (“The New Economy”, 1918), Rathenau prophesied the industrial self-government combined with employee participation and state control as the inevitable form capitalism would have to take. Through his writings and public communication skills he became highly influential in projecting new forms of mixed economy concepts and a kind of proto-welfare state or corporatist notions of the respective roles of private capital, state and even supra-national cooperation in a postimperial Europe.


And he was in command of all the repertoires. He managed to enlist the most unlikely and distant interests into his grand schemes, his main talents being rhetorical and narrative. He was attractive because he had money but, above all, he succeeded in making money attractive. But even if Ulrich/Musil have, on the whole, ridiculed the Arnheim/Rathenau solution to the problem, the counter-solution—glorifying arts—is ridiculed too. The world of business may be prepared to choose someone like Arnheim/Rathenau as its Patron Saint and seek new alliances with those standing for Mind and Soul. But, as seen from the fence, that is the uneasy intellectual and moral position of management science, it may still be too much to expect Money to enter into a dialogue with those who in return offer scorn and ridicule. The next step would be an attitudinal change on the part of the arts toward business. Cedric Watts in his book Literature and Money (1991) points out that, considering the role money has played in the development of societies and cultures, one would expect literature to give it a positive or at least neutral treatment. Instead, his study reveals that money is consistently demonised and presented as a negative albeit mystical force. Postscript for a semiotic reader As Musil shows through Arnheim, the deeply entrenched divisions between intellectual, expressive and profit-seeking labour are part of the ‘modern project’ (and like the epoch are still doing quite well). Beyond romantic criticism of each of the three forms, a vision persists—of joining practical, utilitarian skill, truth-seeking science and literary imagination. The dream of compensating for the poverties of each or of synthesising the strengths of all these ways of knowing is still alive. Management science, more than other


social science branches, par force remains vulnerable and open to the dream. In a sense, Musil’s work is too sophisticated to learn directly from it. He analysed possible ways of ‘world making’ in a situation where traditional orders are crumbling, described how the Modern World was made out of the accessible social worlds and life-forms. This is why at the outset we called him a “semiotic author”: he read the contemporary world and consciousness in a critical way, made notes on the notes his protagonists made of their realities, which we then get to read. In other words, a meta-meta-work. Reading parts of Musil’s narrative as teaching us something about the organization of the modern project, we had to undertake the task of critically reading Musil criti cally reading authors of the modern world such as Walter Rathenau. Both Musil and Rathenau exemplify the openness of the social text in particularly striking fashion. Both have repeatedly deconstructed their identities as authors, and both died before their works were somehow brought to an end. Musil died with the unfinished-unfinishable novel at his hands in 1942 and a literary controversy is still raging over the posthumous manuscripts of The Man Without Qualities. There are many grounds for interpreting the novel as leading to Ulrich’s failure in his quest to embrace “the mystery of the whole”: the literary controversy over these matters may be resolved, in the sense that Musil didn’t know himself (Berger, 1978, pp. 365–67). But this only means that the problem has been passed on that part of the story which in this essay is printed in italics. Much like many later, so-called postmodern novels, The Man Without Qualities early on drives home the very point made by present-day social theorists: the meaning of our private lives as well as of our organisational


identities is not given or imprinted on us authoritatively. It is to be created, negotiated, traded and supplemented. And it is irreducibly paradoxical, necessitating constant deparadoxification in order for practical/collective action to continue (Luhmann, 1991). Business people and business organizations are not exempt; much of their organising activities can be understood as coping with the paradoxes produced by the peculiarly modern division of labour which Arnheim, and indeed the Rathenau mercilessly ridiculed in him, aspired to overcome. Management science, in so far as it is meant to contribute to a theory of organising and organizations, must not unduly join in the deparadoxification that goes on in the organizations under study. Rather, it could make organisational action intelligible by presenting it as a process of conferring meaning by means of narration. And much as the narrative paradigm can considerably add to the method ical basis of organization studies, extending it to a conversation with novelistic narratives about worlds of business and organization may contribute a useful perspective in managerial training. May Musil’s and Rathenau’s, Ulrich’s and Arnheim’s texts (and similar ones) prove an instructive medium for students of business and teachers of business schools. References Berger, P. (1970/1978) The problem of multiple realities: Alfred Schütz and Robert Musil. In: Luckmann, T. (Ed.) Phenomenology and sociology. London: Penguin, 343- 374. Björkegren, D. (1992) Kultur och ekonomi. Stockholm: Carlssons. Buddensieg, T., Hughes T.P. and Kocka J. (1990) (Eds.), Ein Mann vieler Eigenschaften: Walther Rathenau und die Kultur der Moderne. Berlin: Wagenbach. Corino, K. (1988) Robert Musil: Leben und Werk in Bildern und Texten. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Eco, U. (1989) The limits of interpretation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.


Joerges, B. (1979) Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse: Überlegungen zu einer Soziologie der Sachverhältnisse. Leviathan, 7 (1): 125– 37. Joerges, B. (1988) Berger, Musil und der Dichter Feuermaul. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 17 (5): 401–402. Joerges, B. (1994) Ein Zeitalter der Energie, WZB Jahrbuch, I. Berlin: Edition Sigma. Johannisson, B. (1992) (Ed.) Entreprenörskap på svenska. Affärer & förnyelse. Malmö: Almqvist & Wiksell. Kaplan, L. (1992) Walther Rathenau’s media technological turn as mediated through W. Hartenau’s “Die Ressurection Co.”: An essay at resurrection. Working Paper in Research Group Large Technical Systems, FS II 92–502. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. Kundera, M. (1988) The art of the novel. London: faber and faber. Lepenies, W. (1988) Between literature and science: The rise of sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luhmann, N. (1991) Sthenographie und Euryalistik. In: Gumbrecht, H.U. and Pfeiffer, K-L. (Eds.) Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche. Situationen offener Epistemologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 58–82. Musil, R. (1930–42/1988) The man without qualities. London: Picador. Rathenau, W. (1977) Walter Rathenau-Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Hellige, H.D. and Schulin, E.München. Rathenau, W. (1928) Nachgelassene Schriften Berlin. Schneider, Rolf (1988) Die späteren Eigenschaften. In: Härtling, P. (Ed.), Leporello fällt aus der Rolle: Zeitgenössische Autoren erzählen das Leben von Figuren der Weltliteratur weiter. Frankfurt: Fischer, 198–215. Snow, C.P. (1959) Two cultures and the scientific revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Watts, C. (1990) Literature and money: Financial myth and literary truth. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

THE GIOCONDA SMILE OF AUTHORITIES An Essay on Fictional Pictures of Public Administration and Citizens by Torben Beck Jørgensen In his classic essay on control from 1922, Max Weber distinguished between two original forms: control exercised through a market, by virtue of own interests and economic capacity, and control exercised by virtue of authority, i.e. authority to command and the corresponding duty to obey (Weber, 1971a). Weber ascribed public administration imperative control by virtue of authority. It is crucial to understand this second form of control as it is inherently related to one of the important trends in European history: the construction of the modern nation-state and its ‘apparatus’. In general, public authorities face two quite different user groups: business organizations and citizens. Business organizations can often be regarded as a powerful user group. Their power base includes organisational and financial resources as well as political resources. Typically they are organised in national associations and have the option of using the corporate channel of influence. Some might even be able to escape public authorities by moving production and capital from one country to another. They might, using Hirschman’s (1970) concepts, influence public authorities by voice and exit. In the present article I will deal with the comparatively weaker user group: the citizens as the direct users of concrete goods and services.1 Citizens as clients, patients, etc. are in many cases supplicants. A

272 • BECK JØRGENSON

supplicant is a person, who humbly asks for something. Passport, day nursery, building license, study loan, postponement of the filling in of one’s tax return, health services, social security, place of study, etc. In other cases we try to avoid the public authority. Then ‘it’ finds us. ‘It’ is the police, customs and excise, control- and custodian authorities, etc. Whether ‘it’ issues permissions, helps or punishes, ‘it’ is an authority. Language gives us a hint on what public authorities fundamentally are. It is hardly a coincidence that public organizations are named directorates, inspectorates, administrations, and in general referred to as authorities. These words are surrounded by an atmosphere of authority and paternity, which is further stressed by the fact that public authorities have the monopoly of legitimate use of physical violence— society’s right to punish. When people comply with a public authority, it is not only because it is a formal duty to do so. It is also owing to the fact that authority is perceived of as legitimate. In this context, Max Weber especially points at the growth of legal authority, i.e. the authority resting on rules and regulations. Because of the public sector’s still increasing and differentiated usage of expert knowledge, it seems reasonable to add an expert authority, i.e. an authority based on a specific professional knowledge, as for example scientific, medical, psychological, social or pedagogical knowledge. When investigating the relationship between the citizen and the administration, it is important to understand the conflicts implied, and the norms used to regulate conflicts. 1 Three levels of interaction between citizens and public authorities can be distinguished: a) the constitutional level (citizens as voters), b) the policy level (cirizens as participants in e.g. collective decision making concerning specific programmes), and c) the street level of administrative reality (citizens as the direct users of concrete goods and services); Wirth, 1986. We are dealing with third level.

THE GIOCONDA SMILE OF AUTHORITIES • 273

In the following, this discussion is carried out on the basis of fictional descriptions of authorities and citizens. Several circumstances make this method relevant. First of all, fiction accentuates the informal aspects of the relationship between authority and citizen, which is important to evaluate in connection with formal changes in practice. Secondly, through fiction we may reach an understanding of the actor’s perception of the relationship between authorities and the citizen which form the basis for action. Thirdly, the sources are numerous and representing different cultures and historical periods. It is thus possible to evaluate, whether stable traits of the relationship between authority and citizen can be established in spite of actual differences in time and place; traits, which because of their constancy, may be called typical for all kinds of administration. And, on the other hand, it is possible to detect crucial differences, due to diverse local conditions and distribution in time. It is natural to ask, to what extent fiction reflects reality.2 It can hardly be said to give empirical and historical correct descriptions of certain conditions or events. It does not represent a reliable and testable documentation according to traditional scientific standards. It is safe to say that it gives a distorted picture of reality, compared with the picture obtained by carrying out an empirical investigation, studying legislation, government reports, etc. But this is not synonymous with a wrong picture of reality. The difference can be illustrated by comparing a photograph with the drawn object pictures, earlier used in schools. A photograph of, for example, a street scene gives a true picture of street-life, but only at the time it was taken, while the object picture shows a typical street scene with the things typical of a street, but 2

A thorough discussion on the reflection of reality in fiction is outside the frame of this article (see Beck Jørgensen, 1986 and McCurdy, 1973).


which are naturally never present at the same time. The object picture is not incorrect. It is distorted, but at the same time it seems genuine because it isolates some characteristic traits (Tiedeman, 1986). In this sense the relationship between fiction and reality may resemble the usage of ideal types within social science research. The ideal type is a theoretical construction that “one-sidedly emphasizes one or several points of view and summarizes a large number of dispersed single-phenomena with undefined limits— more of less substantial and sometimes not at all— individual phenomena which comply with the emphasized one-sided points of view and develop into a total mental image” (Weber 1971c, pp. 199–200). Thus, literary statements should not be considered as being purely empirical. Such an assumption entails a risk of the reduction of literature to doubtful and trivial ‘truths’ like for instance “public employees are sour and contentious” or “public offices are typically dull with faded curtains, light-green walls and dark-green filing cabinets, with the exception of the foreign office cabinets being royal blue”. My point of departure is therefore not to consider literary statements as pure empirical: ‘so it is’ but rather as theoretical statements: ‘so it could be interpreted’, or ‘so it could be constructed’. The authorities as a mirror In fiction one can find descriptions of a long range of concrete functions which public organizations perform towards the citizens. You will easily find descriptions of public organizations transferring money, setting a broken leg, teach, controlling traffic, issuing passports, fighting sea battles, refusing applications, etc. Rarely, however, the focus is on these concrete activities as such. On the contrary fiction lit erature typically concentrates on reflections on the objectives, the implications of the concrete activities and the political, moral and organisational context. What is the


significance of the activity and the way it is organised to the public organization, to the civil servant and to the citizen? Erich Maria Remarque depicts in Night in Lisbon public authorities issuing passports. The aim of Remarque is obviously not to present us a technical (and empirically correct) description of how you apply for passports and how they are issued. He is concerned about something quite different, i.e. what significance the ‘political shortage’ of identity forms during the second world war bears on the homeless, the political refugee, the immigrant. This significance is depicted in social, political, moral and psychological dimensions— not technical. The right form is not a question about technicalities but identity and freedom. Therefore, the dearly desired result—the official form and the stamp— become the regalia of the authority. The Danish author Jens Baggesen wrote in 1792–93 a satire on exactly the same problem. He was about to travel around Europe when he discovered—on a Sunday —that he had no passport. His ‘travelling’ in Copenhagen that Sunday morning to different (sleepy and seedy) civil servants is a brilliant analysis of what it takes of strategies on behalf of the supplicant. Remarque and Baggesen touch here on an important common theme in fiction literature: the salience of public administration is the capability to mark the citizen in moral, mental and intellectual terms. Metaphorically speaking, the authorities hold up a mirror to the citizens, enabling—or forcing—them to realise their own worth. But this mirror does not just reflect. It reflects purposefully. It shows the worth of the citizen as the authority sees it. Based on the function of the mirror the administrations depicted in fiction may roughly be divided into two main categories. There are mirrors which reflect parabolically. They concentrate and focus. Authorities reflecting parabolically we shall denote the Old Testament type. And there are mirrors which reflect


hyperbolically. They disperse and locate the object in a context. Authorities reflecting hyperbolically we shall denote the New Testament type. Authorities of the Old Testament type primarily emphasise to the citizens that they have a capacity to fail and thus are responsible for themselves. In Dostojevskij’s novel Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov discovers that he cannot ignore the law. Although he, intellectually, is able to convince himself that the world is better off after he has murdered the cancerous tumour of a greedy pawnbroker, he cannot convince himself morally. In the eyes of the law and authorities he is a criminal. He is mirrored by the authorities, and he seeks their mirror. He is a criminal looking for judgement and punishment in order to expiate his guilt. When he gives himself up, he accepts the limits set by the authorities and the course of development indicated for his future. The same point we find in the Icelandic writer Laxness’ historical trilogy Islands klokke (“The Bell of Iceland”). Because of intrigues in Copenhagen, the legal authorities in Iceland are replaced by new authorities. When this happens, three criminals, convicted by the old authorities, are awaiting their sentence. But the new authorities retract the judgement. And one of the criminal’s reaction is: They deprived me of my sentence. I am no longer an honest criminal. Who am I now? What can I believe in? The Old Testament type of authorities mirror the citizen parabolically, penetrating the core of the soul. They are the mirror which flatters not but exposes guilt and responsibility. They set the limits to which the citizen must obey. And they show a way: expiation. Especially within the classic functions of the state, we find authorities like: police, law-courts, the judicial system, etc., the watchmen of the State whose watchword is “help yourselves”. Their belief and prerequisite is the honest criminals; the criminals, who deep down inside accept the social order they have


broken, and which they want to be re-integrated into, the guilt-conscious criminals. The New Testament type of authorities are, histori cally seen, a more recent phenomenon. They are especially described in fiction dealing with the modern social administration and the modern instruments of treatment. The authorities—typically represented by social workers, psychologists or social pedagogues—are not censorious, but understanding. They are not formal and bureaucratic, but on the contrary warm and close to the client. Both in Henning Mortensen’s Frk. Frandsens efterår (“The Autumn of Miss Frandsen”) and in Herdis Møllehave’s Lene, the social worker is devoted, using herself as a person and subverting the boundary between authority and citizen. The citizen is regarded as a fellow person who by no fault of his or her own is in need of help. This picture of the citizen appears in both minor and major events. Alice—the social worker in “The Autumn of Miss Frandsen”—is sitting home on Saturday listening to the radio: Suddenly the phone rings, she turns out the radio and answers it. —Alice Frandsen. —Alice, you must come—I have the jitters! —It is Saturday, Åse. —You must come! —What about me? Am I never off from work? —I was almost emptying a glass last night, Alice, —are you coming? —Åse, you are a damned fool! —I know. —Yes, I’m coming. —Now? —Yes, now. —You’re a darling.


The New Testament type of authorities mirror human beings hyperbolically as a product, ambiguously generating his or her own situation. While the citizen under the supervision of the Old Testament authorities is latently sinful, the New Testament authorities rather feel sorry for the citizen. And they are the ones feeling guilty, if they have not rendered the help necessary. While the first acts authoritatively, the latter acts with consideration. They are the servants of the welfare state. The two types of authority are outlined in the figure below: Old Testament Type

New Testamet Type

The citizen as sinful and guilty The society and circumstances as guilty The authorities mark and The authorities help Guilt can be expiated through The authorities feel guilty punishment when help is not adeuate The authorities are boundary- The authorities act without setting boundaries The authorities reflect The authorities reflect parabolically hyperbolically

No matter how different the two types of authorities are, behind the opposite expressions and relations to the citizen they do have one thing in common: they normalise. Only the methods differ. As a matter of fact, it may be said that if the administration is to have a unifying mission, then it is to normalise the deviant citizens. There are citizens that have not (as yet) learned normal behavior, they are to be normalised (socialised) through day nursery, kindergarten, youth centre, schools etc. And there are the regrettable types, who later on in life show a deviant behavior. They too are normalised. There are many ways of being deviant. Physically, socially, economically, mentally and legally. The public authorities normalise throughout the whole spectre. Broken legs are set, crooked teeth are straightened,


social relief offers the minimum of ‘normal’ living conditions, people with a deviant mentality are stabilised and re-integrated, criminals are admonished and re-socialised. Especially deviant persons, demanding extra treatment, are placed in institutions, which are specialised in normalisation production. Some neither can nor will submit to normalisation. They often remain in an institution in order to protect society and the deviant from each other. This normalisation process is an underlying theme in fiction, which is especially visible in literature describing therapeutic institutions in a broader sense. This applies to, for example, Knuth Becker’s description of a Christian Borstal institution in Verden venter (“The World is Waiting”), Knut Hamsun’s description in På gjengrodde stier (“Overgrown Paths”) of the psychiatric ward he stayed in for some time, and P.C.Jersild’s description of the modern large hospital in Babels hus (“The House of Babel”). In Peter Seeberg’s short story Patienten (“The Patient”) this normalisation is tried to the limit. The patient is subjected to transplantation of several malfunctioning organs. Finally his head is replaced as well. Although the normalisation process is the common function it is worth noting the significant differences in control devices. In the Christian Borstal institution at the turn of the century, control and behavior modification are based on religion and moral. Principal Monrad prays to God—and thereby seeks divine legitimation—prior to carrying out the necessary punishment of the inmates. Knut Hamsun is, when imprisoned just after the end of World War II, subjected to para-scientific psychiatric control with Jesuitical overtones. The control in the House of Babel of modern times is rooted in science and technology. It may sound as if all public authorities freeze society and its more or less innocent citizens in a static average normality. This is due to a misinterpretation of normality. The public authorities’ perception of


normality, may perhaps be what is presently the average, but normality is usually to be understood as what ought to be normal. This reflection contains several positive sides. The Old Testament authorities make demands and give the citizen something to respond to; the New Testament authorities give security. As a whole they may be regarded as a means of stabilising and developing society, This takes us to a further important point: the double side of authorities, which complicates the discussion. Sennett writes: The need for authority is basic. Children need authorities to guide and reassure them. Adults fulfill an essential part of themselves in being authorities; it is one way of expressing care for others. There is a persistent fear that we will be deprived of this experience… Today there is another fear about authority as well, a fear of authority when it exists… The very need for authority redoubles this modern fear. (Sennett, 1980, p. 15) The task of authorities can also be interpreted as the duty not to let citizens alone. Why? The key to this interpretation can be picked up in Thomas Mann’s novel The Death in Venice, when he—admittedly in quite another context—writes: Solitude develops originality, boldness and the marvellous beautiful, the poem. But solitude also develops the odd, the disproportionate, the absurd and the inadmissible. The task of the authorities is obviously to guarantee that the latter consequences of solitude will not come true. Very often it might be at the cost of missing the former. This points to the fact that the authorities’ task —to mirror the citizen—is not without costs, neither to


the citizen nor to the authority. And this is where fiction often digs deep and mercilessly. The problem of the citizen The problem of the citizen differs from one type of authority to the other. As to the Old Testament authorities, the limit may be too fixed, the mirror too stigmatised. This is exactly the point in Scherfig’s Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (“The Head Clerk Who Disappeared”). Small-holder Jens Jensen—in whose household the disappeared head clerk has rented a room —is chairman of the social welfare committee in a small rural parish. He patronises people applying to him for National Assistance: –Do you really intend to go on the parish? I wouldn’t have believed that about you. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? –But there is nothing dishonorable about receiving social benefits. It is not comparable to poor relief. –Well, help is help, no matter how you look upon it. And you are really not ashamed of going on the parish? It is as well that your parents don’t live to experience that. They would have been overwhelmed with shame. Jens Jensen is capable of convincing many people to waive their dishonorable attempts. Thus, he frames them in a guilt-complex, makes them accept that misery and poverty are eaused by themselves, and that they alone bear the responsibility. He does not do this just for their sake, but also for his own in order to win the respect of the powerful ones in the parish, the farmers. We also find this phenomenon in Anders Ehnmark and Per Olov Enquist’s Dr. Mabuses nye testamente (“The New Testament of Doctor Mabuse”). A


society, where all actions are prohibited until they explicitly are permitted, is described through a policeman’s dream; a society in which human beings are only of importance to the authorities in their capacity of potential law-breakers. When the Old Testament authorities go to extremes, they may thus run the risk of creating a society consisting of totally adapted or rebellious citizens. Deprivation of control over oneself and guiltconsciousness as a problem are pushed to the extremes in The Trial by Kafka. This is a cultivated description of the oppression carried out by an ambiguous system, ambiguity in itself being the main instrument of control. Already in the first scene, Josef K. is deprived of control over himself, as he is arrested without being told why: “… You can’t go out, you are arrested.” “So it seems,” said K. “But what for?” he added. “We are not authorized to tell you that. Go to your room and wait there. Proceedings have been instituted against you, and you will be informed of everything in due course. I am exceeding my instructions in speaking freely to you like this.” The deprivation is completed in the end, when K. is expected to carry out his own execution without knowing why. He is unable to kill himself. The authorities take over, and till the very last minute they hold their mirror up in front of K.: But the hands of one of the partners were already at K.’s throat, while the other thrust the knife deep into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing eyes K. could still see the two of them immediately before him, cheek leaning against cheek, watching the final act. “Like a dog!” he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him.


This is presumably the utmost tapering of the Old Testament authorities. The citizens have to accept an undefined and general guilt. Almost just because they exist. Every notion of rule of law or Rechtstaat is left behind. The New Testament authorities have their problem, too. In Frk. Frandsens efterår (“The Autumn of Miss Frandsen”) as well as in Lene, the clients are deprived of self-control by the excessive helpfulness of the administration. The authorities almost take the blame and assume responsibility, and the clients show an infantile development through the interplay of strategic exploitation and servile adaptation. This is demonstrated quite clearly in the following dialogue between the social worker (Alice) and her client (Åse): Åse looked aggressive—like a child, but suddenly she crouched and buried her face in her hands. Then she rose her head a little but without looking at Alice. “There is a bottle of sherry in the fridge,” she snivelled. “In the fridge? What a peculiar place to put a bottle of sherry.” “Won’t you get it, please?” “No, Åse…” “Let’s have a glass. Just one.” Alice shook her head in despair. She was getting angry. Probably just as much at herself as at Åse. Then she went to fetch the bottle. “You’re all right,” Åse said when Alice returned. Glasses?” “Let’s just use those two,” Åse said pointing at two beer glasses patterned with dried-up froth. “Do you mean to tell me that I’m also to wash up the glasses?” “Would you, please?” “Damn it, no!” “I’m feeling terribly ill…” For a moment Alice remained hesitant, then she took the glasses and went out into the kitchen where she rinsed the glasses under hot water. There was no dishtowel so she returned to the sitting room with two wet glasses. She poured two glasses of sherry and slammed one of the half-filled glasses on the table in front of Åse. “You like it yourself,” Åse said looking at Alice with a


strange shining face. Her voice sounded lecherous and brutal behind the servile surface. Alice felt that she had to be careful. The situation was filled with traps. This problem accelerates and almost becomes transgressional in Henrik Stangerup’s novel Manden der ville vœre skyldig (“Thc Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty”). The main character, Torben, kills his wife in a fit of rage. The future society’s street level bureaucrats—the helpers —react fast. Torben is picked up and sent to hospital for mental observation. But the subsequent development is incomprehensible to Torben: He could not understand all the kindness. The nurses were kind to him, they were kind to him in the canteen, the guards were kind and the psychiatrists—most of all the psychiatrist, who attended to him and once a week had a talk with him, which usually lasted most of the afternoon. The psychiatrist was short and flabby cheeked with small curious eyes behind intelligent glasses, and every time he visited him (in his private villa on the outskirts of the hospital area) a bottle of sherry was waiting. After a short stay at the mental hospital, the psychiatrist tells Torben that he is free to leave. Torben reacts like the criminal in Islands klokke (“The Bell of Iceland”): “Yes, but you cannot just release me,” he said hearing how pitiful he sounded. “I am guilty! I have committed murder! I have killed my wife!” The psychiatrist’s answer is central: “Guilt,” he said with a slight contempt. “But you know that society is about to abolish the guilt concept once and for afl!…” “Yes, but I killed her,”


he heard himself repeating. “I killed her!” “Or you were driven to do it. There is a difference.” “If you kill, you kill!” Now the psychiatrist lost his temper: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Is that what you want?” “No, God forbid! But I am still guilty of murder!” “Take it as you wish,” the psychiatrist said in despair, turned around and disappeared into the administration building. As the story develops, Torben tries to maintain his guilt and responsibility. Torben does not want to be a patient. He wants to be a criminal. To be convicted. To be punished. And not just any punishment, but a good old fashioned imprisonment for a specified period of time, when he can atone his crime. Maybe he read Dostojevskij? But the authorities deprive him of the mirror that he searches for. They think that he “brought about” his wife’s “demise”. He was driven by “circumstances”. Later on the authorities change their opinion and say it was “an accident”. This leads Torben to think that he may get his child back, who has been forcefully taken from home. But the authorities answer: “You are considered unbalanced”. The language and words used by the authorities are interesting. They say something important about the rule of law—or rather the lack of it. Just like the citizen is freed of responsibility, it seems that this also applies to the authorities.3 This becomes especially clear when Torben protests against the “helpers” ransacking his home during his absence, in order to remove his deceased wife’s belongings, ostensibly to eliminate “unconstructive memories”. Torben asks who authorised this order and gets the answer: “By what authority? Let us say that we did it for your sake.” It is interesting to note that although Stangerup’s authorities do not employ judges but psychiatrists and social workers and do not sentence and punish but help


they do have one thing in common with the Kafkaesque authorities: they are absolutely non-bureaucratic in the Weberian sense and their behavior is thus unpredictable. One does not know where, when or how to find them. In both cases the result is the same: individual’s deprivation of control. The problem of the authorities Within fiction, power is almost exclusively conferred on the public authorities—not the citizen. Even in the more ambiguous descriptions of power relations in for example Lene, the client answers her social worker dryly —and rightly: “But you hold the winning cards”. It is a power that admits the holder to mirror the citizen, and thus influences the citizen’s identity. Here we find a very characteristic difference between those authorities which interact directly with the citizen and those which act in a more unobtrusive manner. The outpost of authorities These parts of public administration are the directly performing organizations: hospitals, social service departments, correctional institutions, police. There we find the streetlevel-bureaucrats and the professional cadres, which make decisions with direct impact on the citizens. Consequently, we find there a direct exercise of power. In Foucault’s terms, we find ourselves in the capillaries of society, and fiction gives us outstanding studies in the micro physic of power. People exercising direct power over citizens may be divided into two main categories. One consists of those who are worn out by the burden of having to make

3 There is an interesting cultural difference between Stangerup’s Danish story and Ehnmark and Enquist’s Swedish story. While the former might be seen as an absurd blow-up of a permissive society, the latter is a satire on a totalitarian society.


decisions concerning other people. The two social workers Lene and Alice in respectively Lene and Frk. Frandsens efterår are pressed, misused and misled by their clients. Their willingness to help and belief that it is the right thing to do, are also their weak sides. They strain themselves physically and mentally as well as in their private lives. Especially the social worker Lene, who is subjected to self-reproach, when in the end she is forced to dissociate herself from her client. And this is not done without problems. Lene is visiting her client Birgit: “Thirdly,” Lene ran her fingers through her long hair, rubbed her scalp a bit, she was about to get a headache. “You’ll have to go to the estate-agent’s office yourself. You have plenty of time until you find a job.” “What a damned sharp tone you have taken up,” Birgit stated, “and fourthly?” “You will have to change your tone when you phone. You issue orders. It seems rather conspicuous. Rumors are spreading that you are receiving more than others.” “Who has started that talk,” Birgit wanted to know. “Different people in my department.” “It can only be your boring secretary.” “From today I have a new secretary, in the future you are to talk to Hanne,” Lene said. “So you couldn’t stand her either?” “No, that’s not why, but Birgit, you must…” “There is perhaps a fifth problem?” “Yes, you must change your tone. And in the future you will turn up at the office. I cannot justify spending my time on coming to your place. You have plenty of time.” “Damn it, what’s the idea of this new style?” District judge Erik Sørensen in Prœsten i Vejlby (“The Vicar of Vejlby”) belongs to the same category. Blicher describes his torturing remorse, when he out of loyalty to his office is forced to sentence his future wife’s father


to death. In Grisejagten (“The Pig Hunt”) by P.C.Jersild we find the description of a head clerk who, while carrying out an absurd task in the field, slowly dissolves as a human being. The other category consists of those who seize power, use it and are brutalised by it. This consequence is described by Dostojevskij in The House of Dead Souls: Anybody, who has experienced power, the unlimited possibility of humiliating another human being…automatically loses control of his own senses. Tyranny is a habit with its own organic life, which finally develops into a disease. The habit may kill or brutalize even the best of human beings and reduce him to a wild animal. Blood and power are intoxicating. The tyrant loses his human sense and ceases to be a citizen. To recapture human dignity, remorse, and recreation almost becomes impossible. Traits of this process can be found in principal Monrad, in Verden venter (“The World is Waiting”), and in smallholder Jens Jensen in Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (“The Head Clerk Who Disappeared”). In Stangerup’s Manden der ville vœre skyldig (“The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty”), we find a description of a petty official, who filled with elevated self-righteousness enjoys her power as “gate-keeper” to the authorities. “Do you continue?” asked the lady behind the counter. She was around sixty and looked the type, who could have been employed in any office, one of the authorities’ obedient servants, powdered and plastered with jewels, who dispassionately would attend to all cases passing through her, whether they concerned applications for patents for the extraction of solar energy or confinement of minority groups in prison camps. Presently the cases concerned children. There were people, who


were allowed to have children, and there were people, who were not. It was as simple and natural as that, and she would do her best to see that no human feelings disturbed the desired balance of account. The back-stage of the authorities: The inner world of administration The exercise of power and its consequences exist not only in connection with the direct interaction between the out-post of the authorities and the citizen. Although this is where we find the most obvious consequences, we should not jump to the conclusion that exercise of power is absent from the inner world of administration. It exists, but under other conditions, in another way and with other consequences. C.S.Lewis excellently expressed the difference in The Screwtape Letters: I prefer bats to bureaucrats. I live in the age of organization, in the world of administrative machinery. The highest degree of wickedness is no longer exercised in dirty “dens of crime” as depicted by Dickens, yet not even in concentration and work camps. There, we only see the final result. It is conceived, carried out, broached, supported, implemented, and recorded in clean, carpeted, well heated and lit offices by calm men with white collars and well trimmed nails and close-shaven, who do not need to raise their voices. But when we move inside bureaucracy we find with the help of fiction literature a most ambiguous world. The mirror of power dissolves in paradoxes. Apparently, the power centre looks like a strange imaginary world which is cut off from any relation with the outer social reality. It looks like living its own life on its own terms. From outside we may see a picture of an imperturbable power organization, although sometimes with indefinable


properties. Kafka captured this indefinable power in the very first lines of The Castle: It was late evening when K. arrived. The village was buried in snow. The mountain of the castle was hardly to be seen, wrapped in fog and darkness as it was, and not the slightest gleam revealed the great castle. K. stood a long time on the bridge which led from the main road to the village and stared up at the apparent emptiness. Looking from inside the administration is described as marked by powerlessness, lack of capacity and conservatism. It is a stationary world which does react on stimuli from the outer world but does it in an incalculable manner. Both exertion of power and especially its consequences to those exercising it are of a more subtle character within the administration than outside at the front. The infallibility of the authorities Parallel to the idea of the authorities’ significance is the idea of the same authorities’ infallibility. This idea is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, it may be said that organizations, making decisions, which seriously influence people’s living conditions, must not commit mistakes. The more important a decision is, the more its validity must be checked. This is an ethical argument. The administrative manifestation is the rule of law. Secondly, it may be said that organizations ascribed the special importance of possessing the legal right to punish need the idea of infallibility. Naturally they can fail, but the consequent detriment of the mirror’s legitimacy is irreparable. In this context the idea of infallibility is a political-psychological necessity. Thus, it is hardly a coincidence that much literature is occupied with the fear of mistake. Seen from the authorities’ point of view, it is the fear of exposing themselves; seen


from the citizen’s point of view, it is the fear of getting into a jam. The universe which Kafka describes in The Castle contains exactly these two spheres. One sphere is the authorities and their way of functioning, and the other one the outside world, symbolised by surveyor K. The authorities—the Count’s administration offices at the Castle—are described as the perfect bureaucracy, so perfect and limply structured that nobody thinks it possible for mistakes to occur. Naturally problems arise, because nothing is ever perfect. However, since the basic principle of the authorities is infallibility, it is not possible to relate to mistakes which may occur. It is true that there are many (or only) controlling authorities, but as no gross mistakes occur, it is not their job to look for them. And who knows, what may look like a mistake, may not be in the end? As the organization is perfect, it is not possible to inquire about irregularities in other departments. Anyhow, they would not answer if they notice that the inquiry concerned a mistake! This is the explanation surveyor K. receives from the local authorities. Alleged mistakes may also be difficult to rectified. The principal infallibility of bureaucracy makes mistakes irreparable. And then, as the case is continuing, it is only natural that a little mistake occurs, one that in itself is inferior. The administration offices react like a machine running wild—without alarm signals or standard procedures for discovery of mistakes. It is the stagnated mind that cannot react to contingencies, that cannot repair itself and that goes on administering without thinking about the people depending on the decisions. The suggestive conclusion is that only a hair’s breadth separates the two polarities: the perfect machine and the Kafkaesque nightmare. One simple human mistake transforms the limpid bureaucracy into an enigmatic bureaucracy. In this sense Kafka’s bureaucracy is an illustration of the dark side of bureaucracy which Weber feared (1971b).


Many other writings also fasten upon the mistake or the idea of infallibility as an important key to the understanding of the administration. In Samarakis’ novel The Mistake, an error in the authorities’ plan becomes fatal for the system itself, as it loses credibility in the eyes of its members. In Horst Petersen’s Husets tjeneste (“At the Service of the House”) the theme of the possibility and oc currence of mistakes is repeated again and again; a telephone rings—maybe by mistake, a head clerk is definitely promoted by mistake, the manager of the House is seen lying on top of one of the secretaries, which is serious, unless he is lying there by mistake etc. In Ålbæk Jensen’s novel Sagen (“The Case”) the managing clerk Sten has to place the responsibility somewhere for a regional development blunder, His problem arises, when in the end he has to blame his own administration: the Directorate for Regional Development. In Sven Clausen’s play Bureauslaven (“The Office Slave”) the idea of infallibility is transfixed in the following short dialogue. A local rebellion has been crushed by the gendarmerie, and the leader of the action (a colonel) and the guardian of legality (a judge) are discussing the next step: The colonel: “In my opinion the most appropriate thing to do, would be to let the civilian and military authorities cooperate on issuing a kind of proclamation—calling on peace, proclaiming that the culprits have been apprehended and will be severely punished and finally state the point on which you have changed your attitude”. The judge: “We must not under any circumstances admit that we have changed our opinion. That would be the same as admitting that our previous opinion was erroneous.” The colonel: “Well, yes—” The judge: “A public authority cannot be wrong.” The colonel: “To err is human.”


The judge: “A public authority is not human—is not a human being. It is something more.” The colonel: “Nevertheless, I do not doubt that you will succeed in uniting a changed opinion with the one you held earlier.” The judge: “I indulge in the fact of being a rather clever jurist. What is called for is a change of reality combined with the maintenance of formality.” (Encouraged by this cheerful prospect). “I will immediately make a draft.” The inscrutability of authorities Mistakes are committed, inasmuch as the administrative offices are staffed with human beings.4 But what is more interesting is that remnants of inscrutability as to the authorities’ decisions always will remain, a core of irrationality, which makes the concept of mistakes more ambiguous. Why is that so? This is not mysterious. Public authorities’ decisions concerning citizens must rest on legislation. But no legislation or rule can be as detailed, precise and actual that it can cover all possible situations. Legislation must, to a certain extent, be of a general character. Therefore, it has to be interpreted. The public servants are thus ascribed the role of a high priest. Just as the signs and auguries of a god has to be interpreted and the text expounded, the law also has to be interpreted. Naturally, this always implies a judgement, which becomes more important concurrently with the increased usage of discretionary acts and experts exerting discretionary power. What does such a judgement express? Mistakes? It may, of course, be a more or less responsible judgement. But it would probably be more correct, generally to characterise the judgement as an expression of discretion (arbitrariness), i.e. something outside the realm of rational arguments, but nevertheless possibly extra-ordinary right.5 This is


exactly what the chairman of the parish council in The Castle thinks, when he says that sometimes there is a higher controlling authority—you do not always know what or why—that cuts through with a groundless decision, which is, however, usually self-evident. The truth in this connection resembles that of revelation or intuition—not that of a deductive character. Not everything, then, can be deduced from legislation. Something must be said to be neither here nor there. And this implies a practical contradiction. A contradiction between discretion and the infallible authority. How is the contradiction administrated in practice? Well, to a certain extent it may be said that Sven Clausen’s judge tries to revoke this contradiction, when he claims that an authority is not human—it is something more than a human being. This must imply that it is not subjected to demands for rationality, created by human beings. This was earlier expressed through the King, who by the Grace of God could grant favourable positions to lucky citizens out of an “odd grace”, i.e. decide something that lacked reason, but did not either need justification, We still find this phenomenon today—albeit in a degenerated form—when the civil servant to a colleague indicates that one or other decision is a “purely political decision”. This implies that there are no (objective) reasons, but also that it would be nice, if there were.6 The contradiction between discretion and infallibility is also—very elegantly—administered through the classic complaints system. In spite of the idea of infallibility, public authorities are furnished with either

4

The good judge would probably have committed a mistake, if he had just claimed that administrative practice cannot be changed. As it is, he is referring to the fact that a change of practice could be interpreted as a proof that the previous practice had been erroneous, which is something quite different. It is precisely an issue of political-psychological necessity of infallibility.


an actual complaints system or the possibility of filing a complaint at a higher level of the hierarchical administration. This means that another administrative authority will have to judge whether a mistake has been committed. Naturally, one would say. That is an excellent and reasonable principle of law and order. Thus, an ethical justification is retrieved. But, it also means that although mistakes may be acknowledged, it is possible to avoided blaming the administration in question. It has not committed a mistake. Other authorities have the right to undo a decision. If the administration in question was to correct a decision, it would be forced to admit a mistake. It is relieved of this charge by others. The political-psychological necessity of maintaining the idea of infallibility is thus satisfied. Finally, discretion is protected against improper external insight. The administration is, for example, not very willing to offer detailed arguments for its decisions. The discretion is protected by expressions like “the nature of the matter”, “the merits of the case”, etc. The administration rather prefers: “Referring to the details in connection with…we hereby inform you that…” in stead of writing: “We are not sure, but nevertheless we have decided that…” Preferably the administration just refers to the sections of an Act which authorise them to make a decision. The obscure decisions of the administration is a point which fiction almost instinctively picks upon. Finn Søborg’s short letter from the Ministry of Reconstruction 5

Arbitrariness is often understood negatively, e.g. as coincidence, or doing as one pleases. However, arbitrariness can also be understood positively, e.g. as an opening for flexibility and individual decisions. A discretionary act or decision can then be interpreted as an act implying reflection in contrast to an involuntary act. In the present chapter the word is used neutrally. 6 It may be appropriate to mention that Max Weber would have preferred an element of atbitrariness implanted in the bureaucracy as a counterpart of its superior technical rationality.


(Sådan er der så meget) is an excellent sharp description of such letters that sometimes resemble theological writings: In your letter dated…you have applied to the ministry for permission to produce a special kind of burner for apparatus to be used in connection with the frying and cooking of food by the use of gas (socalled gas rings). Referring to the above, the ministry with reference to order no. 387 of 17. July 19.. paragraph 6 and 7 on production of apparatus and other equipment to be used for private households, according to paragraph 13 in order no. 434 of 19. September 19.. on the regulation of and control with industrial companies not comprehended by law no. 529 of 23. August 19…is to inform you that the application for permission to produce the mentioned items must be written, according to the rules of order no. 278 of 23. March 19… Further we draw your attention to the forms mentioned in the above order under paragraph 12, which can be obtained by personal application at the ministry all week days between 12–5 p.m. On behalf of the Ministry E.B. and an illegible signature They might as well have referred to half a dozen Bible passages. The mere reference to the authorities’ sacred text not only protects the administration (and citizen) against the contradiction between discretion and infallibility, but it also endows the decision with an aura of something divinely evident. The same protecting function exists when expert opinion only are stated and corrected by experts, as is the case with for example medical judgements. That way, the expert knowledge is protected against vulgar foolish criticism of the layman. But at the same time, the aspect of significance is maintained, capping the


discretion against supervision. Because what goes on in the higher spheres of the administration is not always of a divine character. In Mika Waltari’s novel Sinuhe, The Egyptian, Sinuhe is trained to be an Amon priest. In Egypt at that time it meant that he would not only become a religious authority, but also to a certain extent a temporal one. As a part of his training, he has to spend the last night in the very centre of the temple with the Amon statue. Here the god will reveal itself to him and give him the definitive authority and legitimacy. But nothing happens. The statue is silent. Sinuhe is, therefore—like all the other priests—forced to pretend the existence of a god to administer. He now belongs to the initiates, and the core of the initiation is the burden of knowing that there is nothing to know, and at the same time maintain the illusion that there is.7 Administrative decisions and acts have always a core of irrationality and inscrutability. Something that is not deducible, but must be decided on, and therefore, in the end reflects discretion. The citizen can live with this arbitrariness because it is hidden. It is exactly the burden and responsibility of the administration that it must produce illusions. And certainly the illusion of a clear and logic connection between what the administration does (the internal world) and the problems of the citizens (the outside world). It is a general trait of much fiction that no such connection exists. As a matter of fact, many writers portray the authorities in a way bringing about associations with one armed bandits. They may react upon external stimuli, but in an unpredictable and inexplicable way. The problem of the public servant But public servants? How do they manage their daily life being conscious of this contradiction? And how do they learn to live with it? The problem is that the young public servant expects, like the citizen, that the higher


up in the system you get, the closer you get to the core of rationality. But in practice it is the other way around: the higher up in the system you advance, the closer you get to discretion and therefore arbitrariness. Thus, when the frames are set out for the work of new employees and orders and instructions given, it is not just because they are ignorant of what the work involves. It is also, and especially, because they need a defined area within which decisions can be made without using discretion. Later they slowly grow accustomed to the discretion. Nevertheless, they may be shocked the first time they participate in a meeting at top level or are present at a minister’s report and suddenly realise that nothing divinely is going on. But that does not matter, as long as they keep it to themselves like Sinuhe. Therefore, socialisation up through the system is characterised by subtlety. The official, who—as the child in H.C.Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes—has a tendency to say “But he is naked” is not mature enough to be confronted with arbitrariness. But at this time, most of them have probably learned that if they do not have anything positive to say, then they “feel that…”; not to say anything straight, but “to indicate”—preferably “discreetly”.8 This results in a characteristic culture, which is described in Ulrich Horst Petersen’s book Husets Tjeneste (“At the Service of the House”). The contact between the servants of the House, in the many closed rooms, is of an explicit indicative character. Nothing is said directly. As a matter of fact, according to the logic of the House, nothing is said directly as it would be synonymous with indicating some kind of a mistake, a defect, something that could be done differently, and this is inconceivable in the House. When something is indicated, it is done so discreetly, so probingly, that if 7

See also the discussion on authority and illusion in Sennett (1980).


any opposition exists, nothing has been indicated and certainly not as to what caused the aversion. If the hints, indiscretions, aphorisms, the casual remarks are raised to a higher collective level, an organization emerges groping, searching and speculating to find a reality which disappears exactly because of the nature of the attempts. How do the officials feel then? They do not feel too content. The reason is that the system does not offer any precise opposition from, or cooperation with other people. The administrative authorities mirror the citizens. But they do not mirror each other, because then they would reveal the arbitrariness, they would raise something to the level of collective consciousness and thus name what must be unspoken. The public servant has to pay for this lack of reflection. Within fiction we find several examples of it. Scherfig’s Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (“The Head Clerk Who Disappeared”), Pontoppidan’s Naar Vildgœssene trœkker forbi (“When the Wild Geese Migrate”), and Viggo F.Møller’s Ordet, som ikke blev udtalt (“The Unspoken Word”) all portray the private life of a public servant, which is emotionally amputated and imbued with habits from the official life of the administration. The private life of Horst Petersen’s “House Manager”, Birch, has gradually become rudimentary, to the extent that he wants to stay overnight in the House. Personnel manager Bing suffers especially from the inability to act. As a matter of fact, very little action is going on in the House. The persons are too occupied considering what to do. Any action may thus cause a shock, which may severely try the person incidentally involved—as is the case when Bing suddenly becomes aware of loud and abnormal sounds from the office next to his. The manager of the House, Birch, is apparently raping

8 It is probably no coincidence that the words “discreet” and “discretionary” have the same root.


Bing’s secretary. And now Bing is faced with the demands for action: Bing was in agony, he would have preferred a longer period of peace and quiet, time to devote himself to the case, to contemplate the pros et cons, and finally to act serenely and authoritatively on behalf of his superiors, and then this episode occurred, suddenly, without warning, altogether unpleasant. We find the same description in Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. Anna’s husband is a public servant and Tolstoy’s description of his reaction when he learns of his wife’s infidelity is almost archetypal. He regards the problem as a case, which has to be settled. In the beginning, he finds it difficult to view the problem that way, which bothers him very much, until he finds a principle to base his decision upon. In his mind he sorts out the arguments logically, and beyond questioning. But when the wife returns later in the evening, he is unable to utter a word. The most extreme consequence may be the development of schizophrenic traits. In its most pure form this consequence is described in Dostojevskij’s The Double The main character, councillor Goljádkin, is employed in a department in St. Petersburg. Various analyses of The Double have suggested that Goljádkin already is oppressed or becomes so through wickedness, humiliation or unjust treatment. Most likely the explanation is to be found in the fact that Goljádkin, as a human being, is left in the lurch by the department. We are all accomplices, if we do not mirror each other and offer counter actions or cooperation. Goljádkin gets neither. His superiors are mysterious and implicit, his colleagues are smooth and scheming, while he is actually an open and honest person, but of the clumsy type. He always loses, when he tries to get on in the department. He does not comprehend the administration’s norms of being imprecise in a precise


way. It is as if he has to violate the system all the time to be able to express himself. He is a human being, searching for certainty but finding inscrutability. He looks for limits but his superiors refuse. And, in the majority of cases, you understand them, because Goljádkin’s ‘method’ is almost provoking disaster. In his hazy surroundings, he travels to and fro between a superiority and a inferiority complex, constantly exaggerating and out of balance, either humble or sickeningly complacent. The Double may be interpreted in several ways. In the end Goljádkin accepts the notion that he is insane. Does he, by doing so, preserve remnants of honesty within himself? Does insanity become his way of expressing himself? Or, does he finally adapt to the surrounding’s perception of him? However, if we accept these interpretations, we cut out the importance of Goljádkin’s double. This double is totally different from Goljádkin. He is sly, smooth, quick at sensing, adaptable—and he has a fling with the administrative intrigues. When Goljádkin is taken away, the double runs after him a part of the way “looking extremely satisfied and merry”—as if to make sure that the honest and unpleasant part of the soul is gone for ever. If we imagine that the double after some years has matured, it is not impossible that he will end up resembling the head clerk Lehn in Huset (“The House”), whose way of walking is described as having a touch of …legitimacy, it was not just any casual way of walking, but a more superior walk, an institutional walk, which, ensured of its own justification in a higher legal sphere, carried the whole of Lehn, whose importance to the world was indisputably expressed at the same time. This result is caused by the fact that the authority has to establish its own inner order and identity. It is an


identity, which must contain several elements. It has to unite the idea of infallibility with inscrutability, and the ambiguous connections between the internal and external with the importance of relations to the citizen. Ideal typically it becomes a fictitious world with internal as well as external facades. The external facade is a protection against the citizen (reality), the internal one a protection against itself (unreality). Within fiction, we find several fragments of this world; some of the classic descriptions of the administration deal especially with the apparent lack of any relevant activity within the administration, such as Hans Egede Schack in Phantasterne (“The Dreamers”), Strindberg in Röda rummet (“The Red Room”) and Scherfig in Den forsvundne fuld mægtig (“The Head Clerk Who Disappeared”). But not only these earlier descriptions fit into the picture. We find unmistakable traits of unreality in Göran Hägg’s Lejontecknet (“The Sign of the Lion”) in his description of the modern management oriented Swedish Ministry of Environment. The construction of administrative, organisational, and political reality What might we thus have learned about public administration? Indeed, we have not learned very much about the technicalities of administration. Rather, fiction offers some good ideas on how the phenomenon of public administration can be interpreted and put in perspective. What is emphasised in fiction is the significance of public administration for the citizen and—although indirectly—its societal role. Whatever the administration might be seen as a controlling or helping agent (in its old or new testament manifestation), public administration is perceived of as a normative structure, the significance of which being the normalisation of the citizen in moral, psychological and political terms.


Normalisation always implies behavior modification and this is rarely accepted in total. The boundarycrossing behavior between authority and citizen is marked by that: struggle, subordination, strategies and anti-strategies. The ‘ego’ of authorities reminds us thus of the parental ego in transaction analysis (the critical/ authoritarian parent in the old testament type; the caring parent in the New Testament type), whereas the citizen fits well in the role of the adapted or the aggressive child. The basic pattern of subordination remains unchanged. From this interaction a political order emerges—or is called in question. On the micro level we might observe change, chaos, friction, turbulent processes, a looking for authorities, an escape from authorities, a confrontation with authorities, an attempt to penetrate authorities. Those are the processes with which fiction literature are concerned. The interpretation of micro level processes in some way presupposes the maintenance and reproduction of basic structures. At least we often observe in fiction the world as unaltered at the macro level of a political order despite the interactional disturbances on the micro level. To some extent this model fits also parent/child relations in the direct sense. Through crises and revolts the child grows up, matures and becomes parent itself. The process on micro level is quite noisy. On the macro level we observe pattern maintenance, using Parsons’ (1951) concept. The difference being however that the citizen does not grow up and become authority. Thus, like the domesticated cat, some childish behavior remains. In sum, this perspective in fiction literature comes quite close to that of political institutionalism with regard to its interest in processes of learning, socialisation and symbol construction. The potential of fiction literature might therefore be its analysis of how a political order is maintained or defeated, the costs


associated and the peculiar weakness of the basis of an order. It might also be worthwhile to take a closer look at how behavior is conceptualised in fiction literature. A rather basic distinction in organization theory is between organizations understood as rational vs. natural systems (Scott, 1981). The conception in fiction is at the same time precise and ambiguous. The public administration is often described as rational or at least intended rational in its self-conception, the point being that organizations are much better understood as natural systems, i.e. systems of social interactions emerging from the actors subjective situational interpretation. Here, fiction comes close to the “verstehen-approach” of Weber. For example, the organization in Joseph Heller: Something Happened is outlined as a set of delicately balanced relations of fear. Hans Kirk describes in Borgmesteren går af (“The Mayor Resigns”) the administration of the City of Copenhagen as processes of gossip and intrigue-making. Both The Castle and The Trial contain descriptions of organizations which ostensibly are endless manifestations of formality and rationality but at a closer look might be everything else. Fiction literature is in fact very close to contemporary organization theory, e.g. studies of organisational culture and the conceptualisation of organizations as loosely coupled systems. This idea we also find in the conceptualisation of the inner and the outer world of authorities. Behind the facades of rationality, infallibility and importance we may find quite a different world. The administration might at the boundary display an image which signals the adoption of societal values as rationality. It might offer symbols and interpretations of life and construct meanings in an absurd world. But activities and attitudes in the inner world might only be loosely coupled to the environment, thanks to the buffer capacity of the facades.


K. attempts in The Castle to penetrate the court authorities. He does not succeed. He searches a meaning in an absurd landscape of offices. He does not find the key to the interpretation of the authorities, maybe because a meaning cannot be discovered, only constructed. Smiling, the castle accepts the challenge. It can do that safely. Behind the facade—the Gioconda smile of Authorities—only illusions can be found. To me the famous smile has always resembled the smile of a woman who had just had her husband for supper. Lawrence Durrell: Justine References Baggesen. J. (1792–93/1910) Labyrinten. København: Kunstforlaget, Beck Jørgensen, T. (1986) Magtens spejl: myndighed og borger i skønlitteraturen. København: Nyt fra Samfundsvidenskaberne. Becker, K. (1934/1983) Verden venter I. København: Stig Vendelkærs Forlag. Blicher, S.S. (1829/1969) Præsten i Vejlby. In: Hosekrœmmeren og andre noveller. København: Fremad. Clausen, S. (1922) Bureauslaven. København: Klintes Forlag. Dostojevskij, F. (1846/1966) Dobbeltgœngeren. København: Stig Vendelkærs Forlag. Dostojevskij, F. (1861/1964) Det døde hus. København: Stig Vendelkærs Forlag. Dostojevskij, F. (1866/1984) Raskolnikov: forbrydelse og straf. København: Samleren. Durrell, L. (1957). Justine. London: Faber and Faber. Ehnmark, A. and Enquist, P.O. (1982) Dr. Mabuses nye testamente. København: Samleren. Hamsun, K. (1949/1978) Paa gjengrodde stier. Oslo: Norsk Gyldendal. Heller, J. (1975) Something happened. New York: Ballantine Books.. Hirschman, A.O. (1970) Exit, voice and loyalty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Horst Petersen, U. (1983) I Husets tjeneste. København: Gyldendal.


Hägg, G. (1977) Lejontecknet. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Jersild, P.C. (1978) Babels hus. København: Samlerens Forlag. Jersild, P.C. (1968) Grisejagten. København: Samlerens Forlag. Kafka, F. (1925/1980) Processen. København, Gyldendal. Kafka, F. (1926/1980) Slottet. København, Gyldendal. Kirk, H. (1941/1971) Borgmesteren går af. København: Gyldendal. Laxness, H. (1943/1959) Islands klokke. København: Gyldendal. Lewis, C.S. (1942/1983) Fra helvedes blækhus. København: Samleren. McCurdy, H.E. (1973) Fiction, phenomenology, and public administration. Public Administration Review, January/ February, 52–60. Mortensen, H. (1980) Frk. Frandsens efterår. Århus: Modtryk. Møllehave, H. (1980) Lene. København: Lindhardt og Ringhof. Møller V.F. (1953) Ordet som ikke blev udtalt. In: Knudsen, M. and Lundbo, O. (Eds.), Humor fra Danmark. København: Carit Andersens Forlag. Parsons, T. (1951) The social system. New York: The Free Press. Pontoppidan, H. (1953) Når vildgæssene trækker forbi In: Knudsen, M. and Lundbo, O. (Eds.) Humor fra Danmark. København: Carit Andersens Forlag. Remarque, E.M. (1962) Die Nacht von Lissabon. Köln and Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Samarakis, A. (1965/1968) Fejltagelsen. København: Selskabet Bogvennerne. Schack, H.E. (1857/1964) Phantasterne. København: Gyldendal. Scherfig, H. (1938/1962) Den forsvundne fuldmægtig. København: Gyldendal. Scott, W.R. (1981) Organizations: rational, natural and open systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Seeberg, P. (1962) Patienten. In: Eftersøgningen og andre noveller. København: Arena. Sennett, R. (1980) Authority. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Stangerup, H. (1973) Manden der ville vœre skyldig. København: Gyldendal. Strindberg, A. (1879/1923) Det røde vœrelse. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordiska Forlag. Søeborg, F. (1950/1979) Sådan er der så meget. København: Naver. Tiedemann, E. (1986) Lille spejl på væggen der. Danmarks Amtsråd, 17.


Tolstoy, L. (1873–76/1979) Anna Karenina. København: Gyldendal. Waltari, M. (1945/1959) Sinuhe Ægypteren. København. Hasselbalch. Weber, M. (1922/1971a) Herredømme. In: Makt og byråkrati. Oslo: Norsk Gyldendal. Weber, M. (1922/1971b) Byråkrati. In: Makt og byråkrati. Oslo: Norsk Gyldendal. Weber, M. (1904/1971 c) Samfunnsvitenskapenes objektivitet. In: Makt og byråkrati. Oslo: Norsk Gyldendal. Wirth, W. (1985) Public administration and publics: Control of bureaucratic performance by affected citizens. In: Kaufman, F.X., Majone, G. and Ostrom, V. (Eds.) Guidance, control and evaluation in the public sector. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ålbæk Jensen, E. (1971) Sagen. København, Gyldendal.

EPILOGUE Realism in the Novel, Social Sciences and Organization Theory by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges

It would be wrong to conclude that the present collection of essays is unique in its attempt to bring closer literature and science. If we adopt a historical perspective, we can see that the modern novel and the social sciences emerged as separate genres at about the same time in the nineteenth century. Thus the legitimating efforts were directed not only at establishing each of them as genres, but also at distinguishing between what at the beginning looked very much alike, especially as both used the realist style. The following historical excursion may help us understand better which expectations from the reading public are the same for fiction and for social sciences and which are different; which of them are conventions that can be easily discarded and which are crucial for a genre’s survival; and what can organization studies learn from a genre which is older, more developed and better established—the novel. The novel and science: a first encounter When Auguste Comte was developing his positive science of sociology, few of his admirers were so ardent as Emile Zola, who considered his work the embodiment of the new scientific ideal. Little did he know that, in times to come, he would be judged as unscientific by the scientists and as non-literary by the literati. This

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judgement, however, was issued much later, when Positivism separated itself from the ‘humanities’ in the pursuit of true science. The beginnings were different. The Age of Realism was the age of railways and of wireless telegraphy and of countless other mechanical inventions that collectively revolutionized the nature of society and the quality of human life within a short span of time. It was the age during which what used to be called ‘natural philosophy’ was rechristened ‘science’, having finally ridded itself of the few shreds of speculative idealism that still adhered to it. It was the age of the expansion of Europe into Asia and Africa, after which the legendary ‘terra incognita’ disappeared from the atlases. It was the age of nationalism and rampant commercialism, but also the age when international revolutionary movements began to threaten the security of the wealthy governing classes. (Hemmings, 1978a, p. 9) Hemmings traces the earliest recorded use of the word ‘realism’ to Le Mercure français which, in 1826, wrote about “a literary doctrine…which would lead to the imitation not of artistic masterpieces but of the originals that nature offers us…the literature of truth” (pp. 9–10). In April of the same year, Comte begun a series of lectures on a “system of positive philosophy”. Both doctrines aimed at a representation corresponding to the world as it was—undistorted by any subjective or partial vision. Within the world of literature, this Promethean task was not seen as particularly formidable: the fear was that dulness and boredom would be the result. Writers, used to the ‘running commentary’ technique a la Richardson, could not see the point of an unemotional relation of the facts of life ‘as they were’. However, when put into practice, the principle itself proved untenable:

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All through the ‘age of realism’ novelists will be faced with the same dilemma: social institutions, human relationships, the separate courses of individual lives, all these cannot be presented in a work of art without a certain measure of trimming and tailoring… However firm his allegiance to realism, a novelist has to impose his own peculiar vision on what he sees, partly because this vision is inseparable from his artistic consciousness, and partly because without it his work would lack shape and point and would finally prove unreadable. (Hemmings, 1978a, p. 33) This dilemma attracted the attention of social scientists much later: unused to reflecting upon their research and writing, they only recently have begun to ponder over the paradoxes of ‘objectivity’ and ‘correspondence theory of truth’. But the novelists were not only ahead of the social scientists in their self-reflectivity, they were also ahead in reaching the wider public, Comte (1798– 1857) formulated the Positivist program; it was not until Durkheim (1858–1917) that this program was applied to societal problems. Throughout the nineteenth century it was still the novelists and historians who were describing the formation of mature capitalism. The economists, like Smith and Malthus, were laying the fundation of a normative science, under the aegis of moral philosophy or causal laws. The science (art?) of business and public administration, with its peculiar mixture of eco nomic and sociological methods and interests not yet existed; the realist novel was its close approximation. This statement must be qualified in relation to specific contexts. Literary realism and its radical version, Naturalism, were born in France and adopted in countries under direct French literary influence, like Poland and Portugal. Other countries, with more competitive literary cultures, reacted in more complex


ways. In Russia, realism was never far removed from symbolism, as illustrated by the debate on Dostojevskij’s Dead Souls, focusing “…the necessary paradoxical character of all realism in literature, how it presumes to reflect a reality that needs be apprehended subjectively by a writer who has nothing more adequate than language with which to objectify his own version of the real” (Freeborn, 1978, p. 90). This multilayered realism aimed at reflection of societal developments which still contained only early and primitive forms of the use of capital. Financial and industrial organizations usually belonged to foreigners and, when serving as topic for novelists, were used to show how they clashed with the host culture. In Germany, on the other hand, the realists kept to a ‘village tale’, as a kind of opposition to industrialisation which they disliked and distrusted. This reaction was embedded in the intellectual life of Germany of the turn of the nineteenth century. The realist novel, condemned as a typical expression of the nascent bourgeois society, was not popular among German writers. In Germany writing and reading were traditionally solitary acts, and literature which concerned itself with matters of society had always been counted superficial and ‘non-German’. In contrast, poetry was given a special place in German culture (Lepenies, 1988). In Spain, the main trend was that of naturalismo, considered by some to be a synonym of realism, by others a crude variation of realism, but by most as “…a conscious attempt to apply to literature the discoveries and methods of nineteenth-century science, particularly the biological sciences” (Rutherford and Hemmings, 1978, p. 284). Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921) analysed this trend, and found Zola wanting, especially in his allegiance to Darwinism, which was difficult for a Catholic audience to accept. Pardo Bazán postulated the supremacy of an all-inclusive, objective realism based on testable laws, and not untestable speculations (like those concerning evolution). This postulate reflects the

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progress of the Positivist program, which more and more clearly saw itself as free from ‘fiction’ of any kind. As Hemmings put it, they had “no interest in weakening the force of their findings by wrapping them up in the distracting packaging of art” (Hemmings, 1978b, p. 302). In Italy, Angelo Camillo De Mais (1817–1891), Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Bologna, expressed his opinion on realism as follows: The novel of science, the extraordinary story of reason: can there be a more absurd combination? Of course not. (Carsaniga, 1978, p. 344–345) And although there were Italian realists describing the emerging world of organizations (see Manoukian in this volume), De Mais’s opinion became general by the 1890s. The novel returned to Romanticism, science moved toward Positivism. The following epitaph, although written in 1978, gives a good summary of the feelings prevailing at the turn of the previous century: Long before Zola proclaimed the novelist to be a social scientist, his predecessors had been dignifying their activities by using scientific terminology to describe them: they claimed to be writing studies rather than works of imaginative fiction; they analyzed social problems; they collected data by diligent enquiry and research… [I] n all this they were doing no more than duplicating in an amateurish sort of way those who were… laying the foundations of twentieth-century academic sociology, (Hemmings, 1978b, p. 362) It is either historical justice or a historical irony that the next turn of the century again sees scientists (not only social) dignifying their activities by an amateurish (that is, loving) duplication of the rhetoric of literary criticism. By joining this effort, we hope to avenge Zola. It might


be appropriate to quote George Bernard Shaw who commented on Zola’s work in a letter to Augustin Hamon in 1910: Zola was vulgar; Zola had no humour, Zola had no style. Yet he was head and shoulders above contemporaries of his who had refinement, wit and style to a quite exquisite degree. The truth is that what determines a writer’s greatness is neither his accomplishments nor the number of things he knows by observation; but solely his power of perceiving the relative importance of things. (Shaw, 1910/1971, p. 914) Romanticism and positivism: two rhetorics of modernity From the point of view of literary history Romanticism could be seen as a literary phenomenon of the early eighteenth century, preceding Realism which was followed by Symbolism. In the following discussion, however, I wish to present Romanticism as a habit of mind1, or a rhetoric, which can be contrasted with Positivism (Richard H.Brown, 1980, 1987, 1989). Together, they constitute the two main rhetorics of modernity. Representing opposite stances produces a tension which guarantees dramatic results for the audience, but a closer look reveals that that the two rhetorics not only contradict but also complement each other. In the positivist version of scientific realism for example, society and individual became separated from one another. The individual became part of a cybernetic system, ruled by laws uninfluenced by will or personal

1 The concept “…refers to those societal or epochal structures of consciousness that provide the ordering principles for accounts in everyday life” (Brown, 1989, p. 9). See also Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu, 1977),

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history. Reality and knowledge became the sole domain of positive science, which offered guidance in all matters relevant to society. “Science has emerged as a kind of religion, an ultimate frame of reference for determining what is real and true” (R.H.Brown, 1980, p. 548). Experts appropriated the public voice, leaving lay persons an illusory choice between exit (into individual privacy) or loyalty, to borrow Hirschman’s phrase (Hirschman, 1977). “Public” as a term was slowly changing its meaning from denoting the informed citizenry collectively making its decisions, to mean that experts’ opinions are publicly known, rather than reserved for the powerful only. Judgements of good and evil were replaced by estimations of profit or political expediency, moral evaluation of people and the results of their actions by calculating their utility (as in the human resources tradition or in social accounting). Additionally, while officially rejecting rhetoric, Positivism developed a new vocabulary: that of scientific rationality, particularly systems theory. The two mastertropes of this rhetoric were the Baconian ‘objectivity’ and the Cartesian ‘causality’. This reified—and reifying—picture of reality, where moral agency had no part to play, met with violent opposition from Romanticism. Unlike the protagonists of the early realist novel, where society was a vehicle for an individual, the romantic heroes and heroines fulfilled what they saw as their moral duty against the law of society, and often at the cost of their lives. Those who still tried to achieve harmony between the public and the private, were condemned to absurdity, as in Kafka. One kind of romantic protest regarded peak experiences as rebellion against the institutionalization of the self, a way out which was propagated in high culture by poets like Rimbaud and Byron much as in today’s New Age low culture. Another kind of protest is represented in Kundera’s The Art of the Novel (1988): it re-establishes the romantic quest for the European spirit—“an


imaginative realm of tolerance”—within “the wisdom of the novel”. A way of thinking trying to reach beyond the agonistic dualism of romanticism and positivism adopts a diacritical rather than a dialectical point of view. From such a vantage point, the two antithetical perspectives do not contribute to a higher level synthesis, but simply acquire meaning through the difference between them (R.H.Brown, 1989). Romantics needed the bourgeoisie in order to shock them by repudiating their ideals. Rebels need a well-defined social order to rebel against. Similarly, a system which produces and thrives on positivist reality and knowledge, creates both the need and the possibility of emotional safety valves in the form of organisational rituals, vicarious peak experiences in massmedia and so on. What is more, the two antagonists find themselves immobilised in the deadlock of a language of extremes. While some authors on both sides never tire of fencing with the old clichés, their audiences become more and more disenchanted—be it on aesthetic or moral grounds. Brown sees a forced choice—between bureaucratised social life and alienating private withdrawal—as denying the possibility of both individual moral action and collective public discourse. In this, the two alleged enemies surreptitiously join forces to form a duopoly of modern discourse. Rorty calls it “a cultural hegemony” (1989). The disenchantment led, among other things, to challenging the barriers between science and ‘the arts’, including science and the novel. Science ought to be dealing with “an outer world of things”, and the arts with “an inner world of choice” (Brown, 1987, p. 162) but neither positivist science nor the romantic novel were able to delineate the frontier between the two. This becomes more understandable in the light of a growing recognition that both ‘worlds’ belong to the same socially constructed system of symbols.

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The two domains—science and the novel—reacted to this questioning of old dualisms separately but in parallel. A new kind of criticism emerged in the literary realm, a criticism that rejected both the objectivist determinism of Positivism and the subjectivist humanism of Romanticism. Science underwent a similar process of self reflection which, at least in the social sciences, was as much influenced by developments in literary criticism as it was (and still is) by developments in natural sciences. A truly postpositivist and post-romantic discourse has yet to develop, concludes R.H.Brown, who himself, following Bakhtin’s lead, proposed A Poetics for Sociology in 1977. In searching for such a discourse, social sciences and the novel meet again. Let us trace some of the forms which this encounter takes, and the implication it has for the scientific paradigm and the literary style both known as realism. Although literary realism was conventionally associated with positivism rather than with romanticism, if we assume that the romantic and positivist rhetorics evolved in close relation to each other, realism must be also seen as connected to both of them and their common fate. Indeed, one could claim that the realist novel never properly learned to differentiate between the two. From its beginnings, it celebrated holism as the only proper perspective on both society and the individual. It celebrated individualism but in a framework of society which was the proper field for personal praxis. This tradition survived in the USnovels about self-made heroes and heroines, a kind of narrative that came to be considered naive within both positivist and romanticist traditions. This kind of narrative presupposed, as a scene on which public action by moral agents could unfold, a stable social order, a clear-cut political economy and a collective psychology in which personal character and public conduct were assumed to be inseparable. When such assumptions became untenable, some proclaimed ‘the


end of the novel’. Others, like Tom Wolfe and Malcolm Bradbury, announce a revival of the realist novel. Indeed, although the meaning of ‘realist’ might change, there are no indications that the form is anything but thriving. If this is so, it should open opportunities for renewed encounters between the novel and this other realist genre: the social sciences. Naturalism and critical realism in the social sciences The notion of a paradigm shift (from positivism to, let us say, post-positivism) has attracted so much attention in the last two decades or so that it would be superfluous to repeat it here. I have chosen here to sample two versions of an emerging paradigm—naturalism and critical realism—because both are relevant for organization studies, and because they appreciate the value of realist reporting while avoiding naive assumptions about iconic correspondence between words and non-words, between knowledge and the world. Of the two, naturalism, true to tradition, is the more radical. Although the name pays its historical debt, it is clear that this time we have to do with a ‘social nature’ and the kind of realism espoused is all but naive (the paradigm is also called a “naturalistic hermeneutics”, Manicas and Rosenberg, 1988). Guba (1985) attempted to formulate the basic tenets of this approach for the use of organization studies. To begin with, there are many constructions of reality (thus many realities) which will always lead to divergent inquiry results. Therefore, the outcomes of a scientific inquiry can contribute much to an increased understanding, not to prediction and control. This is much like belles lettres. Also, there is no obvious border between a ‘subject’ and an ‘object’ of research, the objects being human and therefore subjects themselves. Inquiry is an interaction. Knowledge is idiographic in

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character—attempts at nomothetic descriptions of the human world are in vain. Social phenomena are overdetermined (a Freudian notion applied to organization theory by Weick, 1979) and fruitless efforts at establishing simple causality should be abandoned in favour of detecting patterns of actions, events, processes. There is never a single answer to the question why an organization changed as it did but they are illuminating and instructive ways of describing how it changed when it did. Finally, all inquiry is inextricably value-laden (a sobering acknowledgement on the part of the scientists, not the least because this was supposedly the decisive difference between science and non-science). Lincoln, elaborating the consequences of the programme sketched by Guba, points out that the “case study reporting mode”, that is, the one closest to a traditional novelistic narrative, serves the emergent paradigm best (Lincoln, 1985). Interestingly enough, the ‘new naturalists’ seem to share a tendency to exaggerate with their literary predecessors. In particular, their ways of achieving trustworthiness lead both to painstaking research audits (Skrtic, 1985), where “human instruments” are checked and controlled, and to a difficulty of political reflection in the light of the fact that the “member check” is made the final authority (i.e. the actors in the field have to accept a report for it to be trustworthy). Critical realism2 in contrast to Positivism but in company with other contemporary trends in philosophy

2 I adopt the term used by Isaac, 1990, whose insightful discussion I am going to relate at some length. Critical realism is also a term used to describe fiction, where Turgenev and Conrad are the most quoted examples. The authors to whom this perspective is attributed include Bhaskar (e.g. Bhaskar, 1989), Harré (who calls his variety of realism a “referential realism”, Harré, 1986), Manicas (who uses terms like “conventional” or “single-barrelled” realism, see e.g. Manicas and Rosenberg, 1988).


(see the next section), explicitly acknowledges its proximity to belles lettres and often trespasses on its grounds, not the least in the conscious use of hermeneutic methods. It avoids the pitfalls of naturalism but encounters some other problems. Critical realists assume that social life emerged from nature, and therefore both nature and society are constituted and constrained although not reducible to the laws of causal determination. Having made this claim, they maintain traditional realism’s ambition of discovering and describing these causal laws, and they reject idealistic influences by indicating that “all social existence has an irremediably ‘material’ dimension, located in space and time, and expressed through material engagements with a world” (Isaac, 1990, p. 5). Organisations may be conceived as symbolic systems, but they were conceived as tools for changing the material reality. Unlike traditional realists, critical realists see knowledge as a social and historical product, and social life as symbolic. They hasten, however, to add—in order to protect themselves from a dangerous proximity to social constructivism—that social life is not reducible to the concepts and meanings of the actors, who draw on pre-existing configurations (“social structures”).3 They make concessions to social constructivism by admitting that these structures are constantly reinterpreted and renegotiated, and are subject to historical transformation. Nevertheless, “the task of generalizing, explanatory social theory is to analyze the properties of such structures, as media and outcomes of human practice” (Isaac, 1990, p. 6) and not, as social

3The

evils of social constructivism vary from one critic to another. While a typical attack accuses social constructivists of propagating a conservative, apologetic stance (if we are the constructors of reality, we must like it), the critical realists accuse them of luring people into believing that the change is all too easy—see Giddens (1990, 1991).

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constructivists would have it, the very process of production and reproduction of these structures. The assumptions of ‘critical realism’ can attract many people—writers, social scientists, and management theorists alike (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). The attractive part is its softened epistemological assumption (knowledge is contained in stories), but its attempt to expurgate the spectre of relativism by firmly sticking to a causally structured reality leads to problems. Fay (1990), introducing the metaphor of cartography shows why this strategy of keeping the cake and eating it, filled by an unavoidable tension, is not really necessary. In cartography there is a terrain mapmakers want to map, and they devise various modes of projection by which to represent the various aspects of this terrain. (Indeed, there are no contours of the terrain as such, independently of any mode of representing them. The terrain is an entity in part constituted by some form of representation or other). Of course, what aspects of the terrain they will map will in part be the result of where and how they look at it— at what level, so to speak, they perceive it (maps of the earth drawn from the perspective of the moon will look quite different from ones drawn from the perspective of the earth itself). Also, which mode of representation is employed will be a result of what is that they want to represent, and for what purposes. There is no ‘One Best Map’ of a particular terrain. For any terrain there will be an indefinite number of useful maps, a function of the indefinite levels and kinds of description of the terrain itself, as well as the indefinite number of modes of representations and uses to which they can be put. (Fay, 1990, p. 37) Observe that the notion of ‘terrain’ does not exclude the ‘objective’ existence of earth—on the contrary, it


assumes it. What is refuses is the ‘correspondence’— even as a “rough ideal of adequacy” (Isaac quoting Manicas, 1990, p. 5). Borges in his Historia universal de la infamia mockingly recounts the story of a map which was identical with the country it represented—leading to the end of the discipline of cartography in the country (“Del rigor en la ciencia”). A scientific description which equals what it describes is an absurdity. ‘Realism’ must mean something else, and both naturalism and critical realism try to construct it. What are the possible uses—or misuses—of naturalism and critical realism in organization studies? The methodological antics of naturalism do not contribute to an understanding of contemporary organizations, but its main aim—to study people in their ‘natural’ setting rather than in the sterile environment of thought-up models—is important. Critical realism, on the other hand, scrutinises the philosophical issues which can provide material for crucial kind of reflection: what do we study? what do we present as a study report? Both schools of thought recommend realism as the reporting mode for scientific studies. The advice can be taken directly into studies of organizations. Consequently, we need to take literature more seriously in order to perfect our own genre. Conversing while worlds are made While realist philosophy is still largely occupied with counting (epistemological) angels on the top of an (ontological) pin, literature takes greater liberties. Kundera claims that this was always the case: “The novel dealt with the unconscious before Freud, the class struggle before Marx, it practised phenomenology… efore the phenomenologists” (Kundera, 1988, p. 32). Bakhtin explains this ‘prescience of the novelists’ by the artists’ “keen sense for ideological problems in the process of birth and generation”,which is often keener than that of “the more cautious ‘man of science’, the

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philosopher, or the technician” (Bakhtin/Medvedev,4 1928/1985, p. 17). Instead of dropping realism in the face of growing critique, the realist novel incorporated the critique itself. Thus it can be said that the novel accepted and understood the paradoxicality of social life before the postmodern thinkers did. Gabriel Garcia Marquez trained his readers to accept the intricacies of magic realism, where it became even more clear that old dualisms of materialism-idealism and involvementdetachment can no longer be sustained. When Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie described the present and the past, our own and exotic cultures, it becomes possible to accept the lack of clear boundaries. Writers of my generation— Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, Patrick Süskind and Jeanette Winterson—seem to reach beyond modernism and postmodernism, both modernist inventions—to the country of last things which does not yet have a name, but which maintains realistic appearances. Their kind of realism accepts the fact that, not only works of art, but all re-presentations add to reality rather than repeat it. Only the easily scared are still shaking their heads over Goodman’s “irrealist” claim that we are all world-makers (1984). Examples of social science perspectives that parallel the literary developments are Brown’s “poetic for sociology” (1977) and Richard Rorty’s pragmatism (Rorty, 1980; 1982, 1989). Rorty’s position is interesting insofar it avoids the self-imposed problems of critical realism and it seems directly applicable to the studies of organizations. First, the realist ontology is moved into the realm of belief. It is sensible and convenient to believe in the world of causes ‘over there’; after all, the organisational actors base all their professional existence on such an 4 The precise authorship of this work (and some others by Bakhtin) is uncertain.


assumption. To organise, to manage, to undertake—all this requires a faith that there is a world of causes and that people can be agents in the world. This does not mean, however, that there are ways of describing this world which correspond to it ‘as it really is’. We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states, To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations. (Rorty, 1989, pp. 4–5) Secondly, and consequently, the superior notion of episteme (knowledge) becomes identical with doxa (opinion), until now held by science in disregard (Rorty, 1991). We have opinions on all kinds of matters (indeed, the ‘self can be seen as a constantly reweaving web of beliefs) and we test them in action. Most organisational actors would easily agree that what works matters more that what is ‘true’ (for whom? for how long?). Pragmatism is a philosophy meant for people of action; it is a kind of theory which explores practices rather than explains principles. Science, in this formulation, is a conversation of the humankind, and its logic of inquiry is rhetorical. McCloskey (1986, 1990) showed it most convincingly for economics. Social science is a kind of writing, and its various disciplines can be best compared to literary genres. Thus it should be only natural that organization theory, as a genre, engages in a conversation with other genres. The present book was intended as an illustration and an attempt to persuade readers that such a conversation is possible and desirable.

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In this perspective, novels are not sources of information, but sources of meaning. They are texts to be taken into account while other texts are produced; models—not for imitation, but for inspiration. They are versions of the world, and insofar as these are relevant and valid, it is not by virtue of correspondence with ‘the world’, but by the virtue of containing right (“entrenched”) categories and of being acceptable (Goodman, 1984). Such versions of worlds gain acceptability, not in spite of, but because of their aesthetic features. It is the power of creative insight and not documentary precision that makes novels both a potential competitor and a dialogue partner for organization theory. Were such a conversation to start, would organization theory not remain in the role of pupil rather than teacher? Kundera claims the novel’s “extraordinary power of incorporation: whereas neither poetry nor philosophy can incorporate the novel, the novel can incorporate both poetry and philosophy without losing thereby anything of its identity, which is characterized… precisely by its tendency to embrace other genres, to absorb philosophical and scientific knowledge” (Kundera, 1988, p. 64). Indeed, a dialogue between a teacher and a pupil. Is there a danger that with such a teacher all organization researchers become novelists? Hardly. After all, the analogy between novelists and organization researchers is only an analogy, and as such has its limits. Novelist and organization researchers have one thing in common: the topic of organizational life. I am also suggesting that they should have another thing in commmon: a conscientious and reflective manufacturing of the works in their respective genres, At this point, however, I should indicate the limits of this comparison. An organization researcher is in many respects more a literary critic than a novelist. The organizations which the researchers describe are only in a certain sense products of their mind (in the sense that they are


responsible for their own texts); the organizations are originally written by organizational actors. They, like the literary authors, have quite a lot to say about the critics’ opinions of their production. Organization researchers work on an uncertain footing, insofar they undertake mediation between the ‘organizational authors’ and the academic theorists. The latter, however, meet again on a similar level with their colleagues pursuing the theory of literature, and the experiences between theory-makers can be exchanged on a more equal footing. In defense of reflective realism If the analogy between novelists and organization researchers can be accepted inspite all its limitations, a question still remains whether, with so many genres in existence, Realism is a good teacher to learn from. There seems to exist a contradiction between pragmatism’s refutation of the “mirror of the mind” metaphor of science (Rorty, 1980) and literary realism’s eager espousal of it. But these are two different mirrors. When Stendhal said that “a novel is a mirror riding along a highway” (Levin, 1973, p. 66) he could not have had in mind “the notion of knowledge as inner representation” (Rorty, 1980, p. 46). Mirrors are also versions of worlds. One could say, with the critics of the literary realism, that novelists simply got the precepts of Science wrong. Alternatively, one can join the critics of scientism in claiming that it is literature that offers a better insight into the social character of human cognition. The difference is located elsewhere: “[t]he world of one single Truth and the relative, ambiguous world of the novel are molded of entirely different substances” (Kundera, 1988, p. 22). A good novel makes the readers believe in its worlds by the force of persuasion (just like good science), not by the force of external authority. Realism is one way of worldmaking which in the present volume was selected for inspection for two

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reasons: because it was a dominating discourse in the period which was of interest to us, and because it employs the rhetoric closest to that of our own discipline. As Latour (1988) points out, one common device used to build up an impression of ‘reality representation’ is by alluding to the fact that the authors posses ‘proofs’ supporting what they say. Scientific realism is characterised by the fact that the authors mobilise the documents within the text (tables, graphs, references). Additionally, the reader is promised a possibility of checking on these documents (by, say, a visit to a laboratory, author’s office or library). Indeed, the journalists who interview researchers at their office tend to believe that their computers ‘contain the data’. The novelists understood this technique long ago and used it for their own purposes, as for instance in Jean d’Ormesson’s The Glory of the Empire, complete with footnotes, page references and all5). Although the debates on realism—in science and in literature—continue, there is a growing consensus on understanding the concept in the way indicated above: not as a “way of writing corresponding to reality” but a “way of writing corresponding to the contemporary criteria of realist writing” (Levine, 1993). The main issue is then an institutionalised preference for a given style of writing over another. Accordingly, realism is but one literary style which offers insights into social reality. For organization theorists, however, it may be the most attractive style in which to present their knowledge, because it is both legitimate and expected. The question is then not ‘Whether realism’ but ‘What kind of realism’? The main message of the present book concerned read ing novels as a source of organisational knowledge. A complementary message concerns novels as inspiration

5

La Gloire de l’Empire, Paris, Gallimard 1971.


for writing—as a model for a conscientious and reflective formation of style. References Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (1992) (Eds.) Critical management studies. London: SAGE. Bakhtin, M.M./Medvedev, P.N. (1928/1985). The formal method in literary scholarship. A critical introduction to sociological poetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bhaskar, R. (1989) Reclaiming reality: A critical introduction to contemporary philosophy. London: Verso. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, R.H. (1977) A poetic for sociology: Toward a logic of discovery for the human sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brown, R.H. (1980) The position of narrative in contemporary society. New Literary History, 11(3): 545–550. Brown, R.H. (1987) Society as text. Essays on rhetoric, reason and reality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Brown, R.H. (1989) Social science as civic discourse. Essays on the invention, legitimation and uses of social theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Carsaniga, G.M. (1978) Realism in Italy. In: Hemmings, F.WJ. (Ed.) The age of realism. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Fay, B. (1990) Critical Realism? Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20 (1): 33–41. Freeborn, R.H. (1978) Realism in Russia, to the death of Dostoyevsky. In: Hemmings, F.W.J. (Ed.) The age of realism. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Giddens, A. (1990) The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goodman, N. (1984) Of mind and other matters. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Guba, E.G. (1985) The context of emergent paradigm research. In Lincoln, Y.S. (Ed.) Organizational theory and inquiry: The paradigm revolution. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. Harré, R. (1986) Varieties of realism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Hemmings, F.W.J. (1978a) Realism and the novel: The eighteenthcentury beginnings. In: Hemmings, F.W.J. (Ed.) The age of realism. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Hemmings, F.W.J. (1978b) The decline of realism. In: Hemmings, F.WJ. (Ed.) The age of realism. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Hirschman, A.O. (1977) Exit, voice, loyalty. Cambridge, MA: Harverd University Press. Isaac, J.C. (1990) Realism and reality: Some realistic considerations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20 (1): 1–31. Kundera, M. (1988). The art of the novel. London: faber and faber. Latour, B. (1988) A relativistic account of Einstein’s relativity. Social Studies of Science, 18:3–44. Lepenies, W. (1988) Between literature and science: The rise of sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levin, H. (1973) Literature as an institution. In Burns, E. and T. (Eds.) Sociology of literature and drama. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Levine, G. (1993) (Ed.) Realism and representation. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Lincoln, Y.S. (1985) The substance of the emergent paradigm: Implications for researchers. In: Lincoln, Y.S. (Ed.) Organizational theory and inquiry: The paradigm revolution. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. Manicas, P.T. and Rosenberg, A. (1988) Can we ever get it right? Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 18(1): 51–76. McCloskey, D.N. (1986) The rhetorics of economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. McCloskey. D.N. (1990) If you are so smart: The narrative of economics enterprise. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Rorty, R. (1980) Philosophy and the minor of nature, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rorty, R. (1982) Consequences of pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, solidarity and irony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R, (1991) Objectivity, relativism and truth. Philosophical papers Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rutherford, J.D. and Hemmings, F.W.J.H. (1978) Realism in Spain and Portugal. In: Hemmings, F.W.J. (Ed.) The age of realism. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Shaw, B. (1971) Collected letters 1898–1910 (ed. by Dan H. Laurence). New York: Viking.


Skrtic, T.M. (1985) Doing naturalistic research into educational organizations. In: Lincoln, Y.S. (Ed.) Organizational theory and inquiry: The paradigm revolution. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. Weick, K. (1979) The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

José Luis Alvarez is Head of the Organizational Behavior Department at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa (IESE), in Barcelona, Spain. He holds a Ph. D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University and his current research interests focus on the sociology of knowledge as applied to business ideas and management education. Torben Beck Jørgensen is Professor of Public Administration at University of Copenhagen. His empirical and theoretical research focuses on public organization theory, theories of governance and control, and cut-back management. Among recent publications is “Modes of governance and administrative change” in Jan Kooiman (Ed.) Modern governance (SAGE, 1993). Richard J.Boland, Jr. is Professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. His research over the last 15 years has emphasized interpretive studies of how individuals experience the process of designing, implementing and using information systems in organizations. Carmen Mérchan Cantos holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona. She spent two years as Associate in Education at the Philosophy of Education Research Center of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Currently she is working on the relationship between literature and philosophy.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS • 331

Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges holds a Chair in Management Science at Lund University, Sweden. Her field research focuses on control processes in complex organizations in different cultural contexts. She is interested in the narrative approach to organization studies, the use of anthropological methods in field studies and the origins and status of managerial knowledge. She has published in the area of business economics and public administration in Polish, her native language, Swedish, English, and of recent even in Italian. In her own opinion, her most important publications (until this book) are Exploring Complex Organizations, SAGE, 1992; Styrningens paradoxer (The Paradoxes of Control), Norstedts, 1992 and The threedimensional organization, Chatwell-Bratt, 1993. Robert Grafton Small is a member of St. Andrews University, Scotland, and reputedly Britain’s first formal appointment in Organisational Symbolism. Also a lecturer in Marketing, his interests include the anthropology of consumption, problems of text and narrative and the built environment. Despite his effective lack of French, he is a flâneur in word and deed, as evidenced by his long-running series of articles for Note Work, the network journal of SCOS, the Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism. Not surprisingly, given his culture and his upbringing, he is precluded from attaching any great importance to whatever he has written, but only after it is published. Pierre Guillet de Monthoux holds a Chair in Management Science at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is currently working on a project on Art as an economic resource for enterprises. He has published works on the philosophy of management such as Action and Existence—Art and Anarchism for Business Administration, Wiley, 1983; and The Moral Philosophy of Management from Quesnay to Keynes, Sharpe, 1993. He runs the European Center for Arts and Management (ECAM), which organizes useful as well as bizarre events in places as different as the Venice of the North, called

332 • ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Stockholm, and the village of Gattières on the French Riviera. Pierre was born after World War II as a Frenchman in exile. He nevertheless intends to stay European and have fun as long as possible. If you see him, you would never believe that one of his favourite topics is actually aesthetics. Geert Hofstede is Professor of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at the Department of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Limburg at Maastricht, the Netherlands (Emeritus as of October, 1993). He is a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation (IRIC). His career has alternated between practice in various roles in different business organizations, and research-plus-teaching in different countries. His contributions to organization theory cover the areas of power and control, the impact of jobs on people, and differences due to national and organizational cultures. His best known publications are The Game of Budget Control (Van Gorcum/ Tavistock, 1967/68), Culture’s Consequences (SAGE, 1980) and Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (McGraw Hill, 1991). Bengt Jacobsson is Professor of Public Management at Lund University, from where he networks extensively, most recently in the direction of “Public Sector in Common Europe”, a newly emerged group of organization researchers interested in public administration studies. His research focuses on interorganizational control and decision-making, regulation of societal sectors and national consequences of European integration. He has published in Swedish books on governmental control (Hur styrs förvaltningen? Studentlitteratur, 1984), on interorganizational decision-making (Kraftsamlingen, DOXA, 1987) and on industrial policies (Konsten att reagera, Carlssons, 1989). As to his writing in foreign languages, nothing really worth reading—as yet!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS • 333

Bernward Joerges is Professor of Sociology at the Technical University Berlin and a director of a research group at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. His research focuses on science studies, large technical sys tems, technology in everyday life and urban studies. Not being in command of Polish, he has published widely on these topics in German, of recent Technik ohne Grenzen (with Ingo Braun, Sührkamp, 1994), His most recent publication in English is “Expertise lost: An early case of technology assessment”, Social Studies of Science, 1994, 24 and in French Les technologies de la vie quotidienne (with Alain Gras and Victor Scardigli, Harmattan, 1992). Franca Olivetti Manoukian is senior consultant at the APS Institute (Studio di Analisi Psico-Sociologica) in Milan, Italy. She has been practicing for more than twenty years consulting and research on the problems of human resources management in organizations and she has been studying and making interventions in the functioning of public agencies producing social services, at local as well as national level. Basing her activities on theoretical premises developed within the sociology of organizations and the psychoanalisis of collective phenomena, she developed an effective practice to confront the multiple and manifold realities of social services. At the same time, in her writings she struggled to conceptualize her concrete experiences and to produce methodological tools to cope with those. Her writings include papers and projects on organizing services in public administration. Among her books she relates most to Lo Stato dei Servizi (“The State of Services”, il Mulino, 1988). Her most recent article is “From intervention to intervene”. Maureen Whitebrook is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Politics, the University of Sheffield, England, having previously been Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on the connections between politics and literature, particularly the representation of

334 • ABOUT THE AUTHORS

political ideas in works of fiction; she has also worked on the place of literature in political education, and has carried out research in the USA on politics and literature teaching in higher education. Her most recent publications is Reading political stories: Representations of politics in novels and pictures (Rowman and Littlefield, 1992) to which she contributed the Editor’s Introduction and “Depicting liberalism: Lionel Trilling’s The Middle of the Journey”.

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