Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

Reputable practice-based research is ethno-methodology (Llewellyn and Hindmarsh,
2010; Nicolini, 2013; Simpson, 2009). This kind of research situates itself in
local practices, taking the everyday and habitual acting of people as real. “Enacted
local practices are not texts which symbolize “meanings” or events. They are
in detail identical with themselves, and not representative of something else.
The witnessably recurrent details of ordinary everyday practices are constituent
of their own reality.” (Garfinkel, 2002: 97). To understand practices, ethno-methodological
researchers try to establish access to the different practices they
research, sometimes by preceding their research by education in law, mathematics
or music, or by obtaining a licence for driving a truck (Rawls, 2002). They
need to become competent members of the researched practice (Coulon, 1995;
Nicolini, 2013), with an assignment “… to show how the participants themselves
orient to these features (of the practice) in and through their conduct.” (Llewellyn
and Hindmarsh, 2010: 31). Basic for ethno-methodology is to study the methods
through which people produce order in their daily life (Coulon, 1995;
Garfinkel, 2002; Rawls, 2002).
Textbox 4: A critical turn
Apparently it is generally accepted that the publication of “Critical Management
Studies” in 1992 (edited by Alvesson and Willmott, 1992) launched Critical Management
Studies (CMS) as a body of thought. CMS became a brand under
which research became synthesized which opposed to the dominating technocratic
management research (Kaulingfreks et al., 2004; Parker, 2005). CMS-research
is dominantly inspired by the philosophical traditions of Critical Theory or
the Frankfurter Schule.
From the perspective of CMS human efforts are no longer aimed at realizing
substance, practical viability and quality. Instead meaningful efforts are said to
have become overruled by a policy of keeping up the appearances as promoted
by processes of branding and certification (Alvesson, 2013). This critical stance
towards our society fits in the tradition of CMS in which scientism, one-dimensionality,
consumerism, technocracy and distorted communication are seen as
tokens for the loss of the standards of the Enlightenment (Alvesson and Willmott,
2012; Scherer, 2009). People’s life world has been colonized by economic
and scientific designs of a good life.
CMS claims guardianship of emancipation on behalf of the wellbeing of employees,
consumers and citizens. Emancipation will be realized if decision-making
processes take direct account of the will and priorities of diverse stakeholders
instead of only the financial and managerial priorities of the elite. Emancipatory
transformation should promote greater autonomy and responsibility through
which human interdependence instead of individualism can be realized (Alvesson
and Willmott, 2012).
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