Organisation Theory
eory
| |Modernism |Postmodernism |Symbolic Interpretive |Critical Theory |
|Focus of Organisation |Finding universal laws, methods and techniques |Deconstructing organisational texts; |Describing how people give meaning and order to|Developing the intellectual ‘tools’ to ‘unmask’|
|Theory |of organisation and control, favours rational |destabilising managerial ideologies and |their experience within specific contexts, |the truth |
| |structures, rules, standardised procedures and |modernist modes of organising and theorising; |through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms | |
| |routine practices |revealing marginalised and oppressed |and processes | |
| | |viewpoints; encouraging reflexive and inclusive| | |
| | |forms of theorising and organising | | |
|Ontology (Assumptions |Objectivism – belief in an objective, external |Postmodernism – belief that the world appears |Subjectivism – belief that we cannot know an |Objectivism – belief in an objective, external |
|of reality, what is |reality whose existence is independent of our |through language and is situated in discourse; |external or objective existence apart from our |reality whose existence is independent of our |
|‘real’?)
| |Modernism |Postmodernism |Symbolic Interpretive |Critical Theory |
|Focus of Organisation |Finding universal laws, methods and techniques |Deconstructing organisational texts; |Describing how people give meaning and order to|Developing the intellectual ‘tools’ to ‘unmask’|
|Theory |of organisation and control, favours rational |destabilising managerial ideologies and |their experience within specific contexts, |the truth |
| |structures, rules, standardised procedures and |modernist modes of organising and theorising; |through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms | |
| |routine practices |revealing marginalised and oppressed |and processes | |
| | |viewpoints; encouraging reflexive and inclusive| | |
| | |forms of theorising and organising | | |
|Ontology (Assumptions |Objectivism – belief in an objective, external |Postmodernism – belief that the world appears |Subjectivism – belief that we cannot know an |Objectivism – belief in an objective, external |
|of reality, what is |reality whose existence is independent of our |through language and is situated in discourse; |external or objective existence apart from our |reality whose existence is independent of our |
|‘real’?)