Bergson and organization studies

Stephen Linstead, "Organization as Reply: Bergson and Casual Organization Theory", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 95-111.

Anthony O'Shea, "The (R)evolution of New Product Innovation", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 113-125.

Roland Calori, "Organizational Development and the Ontology of Creative Dialectical Evolution", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 127-150.

Martin Wood, "Mind the Gap? A Processual Reconsideration of Organizational", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 151-171.

"Je ne vois qu'un moyen de savoir jusqu'où l'on peut aller : c'est de se mettre en route et de marcher." (Henri Bergson, L'énergie spirituelle)

While pursuing my research on the administration of world's fairs I came across many evidences accounting for the actual disarray of the operations which, while following clear organizational principles, had to deal with all sorts of conflicts, negociations, concessions and so on. The construction of that geometrical utopian place was, if not a mess, at least not so straightforward as it might seem and certainly not like the archetypal utopian gesture of an immediate projection of ideals in the material world. So, the production of order, cleanliness and fixed identities isn't that clean, orderly and fixed in time and space. Now on second thought, I realize that such a statement sounds a bit like a commonsensical "post-foucaldian" platitude. Nowadays, deconstructing management ideology is business as usual if anything, so what crucial insights would Bergson's philosophy provide to organization studies?

A 2002 issue of Organization published three contributions from management specialists who explore the relevance of Bergson for organization studies. The articles are introduced by Stephen Linstead, Professor of Management at Essex and well-versed in postmodern philosophy. Martin Wood uses Bergson's war on frozen states to question and undermine the ontological separation between production and uses of organizational knowledge; Andrew O'Shea draws on Bergson's theories of duration and creative evolution to undermine the implicit linear grand narrative of innovation in management and to underline the multiplicity of processes and temporalities in the emergence of innovations; and Roland Calori provides a sound attempt at outlining dialectics at work in creative evolution.

Now I have to confess my personal astonishment at the use of thinkers such as Bergson or Deleuze as food for thought for management theory, but once past the surprise I'm left with mixed impressions on these contributions. All contributors do avoid with care the methodological trap of "applying" theoretical insights from Bergson to empirical cases as with an interpretation grid, which would lead to your anti-Bergsonian fixation of life and reality. However, with perhaps the notable exception of Calori's dialectical ventures into the concepts "becoming" and "relations" , I'm stuck with the feeling that, although these endeavors do shed some light on what oraganization throries might actually be about nowadays (something I'm absolutely not familiar with), they don't seem to get us much farther than my personal spontaneous reflections evoked above and most of the recent Deleuzian-pragmatic ruminations.