Reconstruction in Strategy and Organization: For a Pragmatic Stance

Organizational research has been subject to a fairly steady stream of internallyderived criticisms in recent years, motivated in part by the realisation that when faced with a range of crises that have directly implicated organizations and their management, and which have aroused much public concern, the academic field nominally devoted to ‘organization’ has been ill-equipped to respond. Scholars troubled by this state of affairs have variously called for new and better organizational theories, increased practical and public relevance, a greater appreciation for ethics and responsibility, a radical reimagining of the business school and management education, and most recently, a re-examination of the career-focused professional norms that prioritise theory development. The present thesis aligns with an alternative response which has effectively situated this lapse as both a symptom, and as the logical outcome of a field that has progressively lost touch with its core object, formal organization, and which as a result increasingly lacks the means to understand and intervene in concrete organizations.