Fear of the formal

ABSTRACT

Over recent decades, ‘formal’ organisations have come in for severe criticism. Not only is formal organisation represented as ill suited to the realities of the contemporary organisational world, but as a key source from which organisational dysfunctions themselves emerge. For that reason informal and spontaneous modes of organising have emerged, or better re-emerged, as preferable substitutes, because they, in contrast to the formal, allegedly allow for creativity, inventiveness, flexibility, speed, and freedom. Thus, the province of the formal is significantly devalued. In this paper, we explore what we term this ‘fear of the formal’, outlining key elements of its genealogy and exploring its contemporary manifestation in relation to recent and ongoing reforms of organisational life in a range of contexts. At the same time, we seek to indicate the continuing constitutive significance of formality and formalisation for both the securing of organisational purposes and individual freedom.

KEYWORDS:

• Organisational theory
• formal organisation
• informality
• critique
• formality
• freedom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Barnard, in contrast to later critics, as we will come to see, was careful to distinguish between individual motive and common purpose. Although these could overlap, ‘under modern conditions it rarely ( … ) appears to be the case’ (Barnard, 1968, p. 89). In keeping with the importance of formality, that is, in emphasizing distinct spheres of competence, lines of responsibility, organisation roles, and so on, Barnard stressed that ‘every participant in an organisation may be regarded as having a dual personality – an organisation personality and an individual personality. Strictly speaking, an organisation purpose has directly no meaning for the individual’ (Barnard, 1968, p. 88).

2. The manner in which 1960's and 1970's ‘cultures of critique’ conflated authority with authoritarianism in the field of management and organisation as elsewhere is charted in Boltanski and Chiapello (2005).

3. Due to these commonalities, Perrow's remarks, targeted at Argyris and other exponents of the second wave of human relations theory, could also be directed towards Silverman: ‘One cannot explain organisations by explaining the attitudes and behavior of individuals or even small groups within them. We learn a great deal about psychology and social psychology but little about organisations per se in this fashion’ (Perrow, 1986, p. 114; see also Strauss, 1969, p. 267).

4. Burrell and Morgan's sociological paradigms were, respectively, called (I) functionalist sociology, (II) interpretative sociology, (III) radical humanism, and (IV) radical structuralism. The modes of organisational theorizing attached to these were (i) functionalist organisation theory, (ii) the interpretative paradigm and the study of organisations, (iii) anti-organisation theory, and (iv) radical organisation theory.

5. Brown (1965b, p. 307) defined an ‘Executive System’ as comprising

the network of positions to which the company's work is assigned. It is made up of positions which shall be called ‘Executive Roles’. The executive system includes all members of the operating organisations, a member being in his (sic) role while he is carrying out his job responsibility.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Velux Foundation in Denmark [‘What Makes Organisation?’].