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Towards a Political Philosophy of Management: Performativity & Visibility in Management Practices

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Abstract

Phenomenological, process-based and post-Marxist approaches have stressed the immanent nature of the ontogenesis of our world. The concept of performativity epitomizes these temporal, spatial and material views. Reality is always in movement itself: it is constantly materially and socially ‘performed’. Other views lead to a pre-defined world that would be mostly revealed through sensations (i.e. ‘representational perspectives’). These transcendental stances assume that a subject, although pre-existing experience, is the absolute condition of possibility of it. In this paper, we develop another view of performativity (either complementary or interrelated to an immanent stance), one that re-introduces transcendence in the analysis but sees in it something dialogical to the process itself. We draw from the notions of visibility-invisibility and continuity-discontinuity (Merleau-Ponty 1945/2013, 1964) in order to show how everyday activity both performs and makes visible the world. From that perspective, modes of visibility appear as conditions of possibility of performativity itself. We draw some implications for the conceptualization of management practices.

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Notes

  1. Furthermore, it is not a way to put aside instruments, techniques and the materiality of our world. Instruments and materiality are part of the experience and of our pre-reflexivity. Merleau-Ponty sees them as relevant mainly if they are part of the broader process of visibility-invisibility, continuity-discontinuity and passivity-activity that is at the heart of the emergent conditions of possibilities of collective activity. He also believes in the ontology and materiality of our world, but suggests that we temporally live in a present that is often ahead of ‘real’ matter and the ‘real’ world (we are inhabited by past mediations). We re-cognize and re-activate perceptions more than we sense the world. We come close to matter ‘as it is’ in a pure experience, mainly when something wrong happens. What’s going on? Instruments and objects at hands then take their shape, colors and matters in the field of our experience.

  2. See van Diest and Dankbaar (2008) and Nielsen (2016) on the relation between Arendt’s work and MOS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DRM, PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75016, Paris, France

    François-Xavier de Vaujany

  2. Alliance Manchester Business School, Booth Street West, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK

    Jeremy Aroles

  3. IAE de Poitiers, 20 Rue Guillaume VII Le Troubadour, TSA 61116, 86073, Poitiers Cedex 9, France

    Pierre Laniray

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  1. François-Xavier de Vaujany
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Correspondence to François-Xavier de Vaujany.

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de Vaujany, FX., Aroles, J. & Laniray, P. Towards a Political Philosophy of Management: Performativity & Visibility in Management Practices. Philosophy of Management 18, 117–129 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-018-0091-4

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