Dear Learners,
I have this snippet(s) below and I have no idea who Bowles is...can anyone
please tell me about this man?
Taking A Critical Perspective
Corporate culture represents the most recent in a series of efforts
designed to conceal the attempt to manipulate the interests of employees
in the service of management'.
Organizatioral story is used to develop and to sustain corporate culture.
The basic tension that exists between the need for control and the need
for participation lays underneath each attempt by management to
demonstrate how individual interests can be served by aligning with
management's. Due to the 'inevitable clash of interests in organizations,
derived from class locations, Bowles is skeptical of managerial strategies
which purport to 'serve the interests of aIl (Bowles, 1989: 417).
Based on the unraveling of traditional mythologies and the ascension of
work organizations as a possible locus of meaning, Bowles advocated for a
'creative mythology that allows an individual to recentre himself/herself
on a set of meanings that the individual creates and enacts both
individually and collectively (Campbell, 1976b, May, 1975).
This new mythology would 'enable the individual to commit him/herself to a
pattern of activities, through both work and life in general, where self
potentials, both cognitive and affective, can be exercised and where the
action of operating on the environment, as opposed to being merely subject
to it, allows at some level, a sense of purpose and wellbeing. Bowles
observed that ' a clear majority of people are severely hampered in
achieving any form of individual creative response, due to.the controls to
which they are subject'
A creative mythology (poetic living history narrative) of organization
requires a democratization of work so that management of work is
incorporated into the work process and not separated from it.
Further, a creative mythology would necessitate 'decentralized structures,
flexible (work) roles and self control' (1989: 417). Bowles recognized
that for management to divest itself of the control power/process
challenges the claim for expertise upon which management has historically
depended.
Confronted with descriptions of what makes work meaningful for individuals
(Argyris & Schon, 1974, 1978; Maslow, 1954, 197 1), the refusal to
democratize work is stripped of its (patronising) paternal and
professional cloak and the power and control-based foundation is exposed.
Bowles argued that creating a new mythology of work and organization will
only be achieved by fundamentally changing the relationship that people
have to work and to each other in the workplace.
Bowles' critique of organizational myth and meaning draws attention to the
ways in which myth and story are utilized to promote and to reinforce
dominant ideologies.
An intellectual and ethical challenge to those working with organizational
story flows logically from Bowles' critique.
The use of myth and story is not 'value neutral'. Story researchers,
managers, and practitioners can use story and storytelling in
organizations to describe and sustain the current power structure or to
nurture and fuel creativity and liberation and to develop new meaning of
work and personhood by both individuals and groups. (leaming individual
and learning organizations alike)
end snippet.
Andrew Campbell
Oxford
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