Kafka’s mythology: Organization,bureaucracy and the limits of sensemaking

Literature and organization theory

There has been a plethora of different approaches to the use of literature within organization studies, among which mythology has been a relatively under-explored genre. Many scholars have argued that literature can provide rich material for organizational analysis; for example, Beyes (2009) has recommended that literature can be used for the purposes of a ‘symptomatology of society’, and Rhodes (2009: 397) observes that literature can give us insight into the ‘realm of exemplary experience’. Land and Sliwa (2009) have argued that it is precisely the ‘unreality’ of literature that gives utopian novels their value as spaces for experimentation and learning within organization theory. Rhodes and Brown’s (2005: 179) review of narrative approaches to organization theory has argued that narrative methods have a key methodological advantage over other methods because they are able to ‘engage reflexively with the lived experience of work’. Common to such arguments is an appreciation that literary fiction can reveal important truths about organizational life without recourse to the representation of factual events. Narrative approaches to management research can serve a variety of roles within the field of organization theory in terms of ‘complementing, illustrating and scrutinizing logico-scientific forms of reporting’ (Czarniawska, 1999: 23). In her book Writing Management, Czarniawska extends this logic to its extreme, arguing that organization theory is more of a literary genre than it is a scientific discipline. This work proposes that ‘polyphonic realism’ can provide a model for narrative approaches to organizational research, where the ideas and scenarios found in literature do not necessarily serve as accurate models of the world but as sources of ‘inspiration’. Czarniawska explains that polyphonic realism allows the multiplicity of voices that characterize the everyday reality of collaborative projects to be heard, where under such circumstances, ‘[t]he simultaneous presence of contradictory narratives creates a permanent state of paradox’ (1999: 61). This approach to organization theory is precisely the condition of organizational life as it is encountered in the novels and stories of Franz Kafka.

De Cock and Land (2005) have summarized three broad ways in which literature has been appropriated within the field of organization studies: i) the use of literary theory to provide new theories and concepts to enrich organizational analysis; ii) the use of literary genres to provide alternative modes for the presentation of research findings; and iii) the use of literary fiction itself as a tool for illustrating organizational theory. These authors also developed a new category of their own, which entails employing literature for ‘a kind of viral contagion’ between the two domains (2005: 518). The stories of Franz Kafka are particularly relevant for this last type of research, given that few authors of fiction have had such a profound affect on our everyday understanding of organizations, to the extent that Kafka’s own name has itself become an adjective for dysfunctional and oppressive situations. De Cock and Land explain the relationship between literature and organization in the following terms: ‘[literature] gives us other worlds and becomings and does so not by being a copy of the actual world but by extending the virtual tendencies of the given world’ (2005: 526). The approaches developed by Czarniawska (1998, 1999) and De Cock and Land (2005) both explore the ‘virtual tendencies’ of literature in the creation of concepts and new ways of framing the world in which we live. These perspectives on the relationship between the domains of organization studies and literature are particularly apposite for the work of Kafka and his stories about the labyrinthine workings of ostensibly rational organizations. The ‘virtual tendencies’ of Kafka’s stories are precisely the most forceful elements of his stories – the labyrinthine buildings and sets of rules, the animal-becomings, and the everyday misunderstandings between the various characters. It is these virtual tendencies that constitute a ‘mythology’ of bureaucracy, which while being generally complementary to Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, bears its own disctinctive characteristics.

For scholars of organization, Kafka stands out among novelists of the 20th century for a number of reasons. Within the field of organization theory, Parker (2005: 160) has observed that Kafka’s works are of central importance to the study of ‘20th Century organizational gothic’, but as yet there has been little sustained analysis of this author within this field. Most importantly, he deals with issues that lie at the heart of the contemporary study of organization: rationality, bureaucracy, power, resistance/escape, domination and, as we argue in this article, sensemaking. Many commentators have noted that Kafka wrote at the dawn of modernity. Writing in 1934, Walter Benjamin called him ‘a prophetic author’ (1994 [1934]: 462). Kafka has been held up as being an exemplary critic of modernity and a harbinger of post-modern thought. Warner (2007: 1020) remarks that Kafka ‘articulated a reaction of deep “cultural pessimism” . . . derived from the onset of “modernization” (involving more specifically, contemporary organizational structures and processes)’. Litowitz (2002: 104) comments: ‘Although Kafka has been dead for more than 75 years, he is widely recognized throughout Western culture as a “representative man” who captured the anxieties of the modem age . . . and heralded the emergence of postmodernism.’ For the present analysis, Kafka’s importance is his originality as a creator of ‘counter-mythologies’ about organizational life. This article will develop the concept of counter-mythologies, not only to explore the notion of organizational mythology, but also the limitations of sensemaking within organizations.

Mythology in organization theory

Mythology has yet to be fully developed into an analytic concept for the study of organization and management. The crucial importance of myth in understanding social organization has received greater attention in other social sciences such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, history and semiology, in the works of Freud (2002 [1930]), Levi-Strauss (1962), Adorno and Horkheimer (1972 [1944]), Finley (1990), and Barthes (2009 [1957]), to name just a few prominent exemplars. The term ‘myth’ first entered the English language in the 19th century, deriving from the original Greek word, mythos, for fable or story (Williams, 1983). Despite its different usage across a variety of academic disciplines, there is a broad agreement that a myth is a kind of story. In his analysis of the social and epistemological status of ancient Greek myths, Veyne (1988) gave an elementary definition of myth as being information that has been obtained and passed on by somebody else. Other scholars have noted that myths serve a variety of important social and psychological functions, chief among which is that they provide foundation stories that act as guides for action and help us in our search for meaning (Armstrong, 2005; Bowles, 1989; Veyne, 1988). Myths tend to be highly repetitive. The same events may appear in different forms, giving rise to any number of variations (Calasso, 2005; Levi-Strauss, 1978). The existence of different variants of a given myth raises clear problems with respect to the supposed truth value of myths. Levi-Strauss (1955: 436) observed that, ‘[t]here is no one true version of which all the others are but copies or distortions’. Ambiguity is thus a defining feature of myth. Despite this problem, the notion of ‘truth’ remains an important concern for the study of myth. For instance, Levi-Strauss (1978) argued that mythology and history formed a continuum where each is concerned that the future remains faithful to the past. Paul Veyne’s (1988: 15) commentary on ancient Greek myth explains that both history and myth contain their own truths where, ‘truth means many things . . . and can even encompass fictional literature’. Czarniawska (1998) draws upon Veyne’s analysis of mythology in her problematization of the relationship between fact and fiction as a means for better understanding our experience of organizational life. Myths may thus be recognized as having some kind of truth claim, even if they are heavily fictionalized accounts of past events.

Bowles’ (1989) essay on the significance of mythology to organization studies found that where it has been discussed within the literature it has tended to be understood as an entirely negative phenomenon. There is already research within the area of management and organization that has developed the concept of mythology into a positive analytic tool to better understand how organizations work, particularly with respect to the crucial significance of narrative and storytelling within organizations (Gabriel, 2003). In this respect the concept of mythology has been adapted for the analysis of a variety of organizational issues, including the creation of an organizational identity (McWhinney and Batista, 1988), the meaning of modern work (Bowles, 1989), the appeal to an organizational mythology in the management of organizational change (Cummings and Brocklesby, 1997), and the cathartic effects of myths within organizations (Gabriel, 1991). Mythology is closely allied to storytelling as an object of research within management and organization studies (Gabriel, 1991, 2004). As Levi-Srauss has explained, the significance of a myth ‘does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells’ (1955: 430, original emphasis). Gabriel and Griffiths have cautioned that when looked at in terms of mythology, stories from organizational life may appear ‘mundane, lifeless, and unimaginative’ (2004: 123). Kafka’s stories are distinctive in this respect because rather than focusing upon acts of heroism and excellence as did ancient myths, they create an unusual form of mythology out of the mundane events of everyday life both at the workplace and in the family.

Organizational ‘counter-mythologies’

The mythical aspects of Kafka’s work have been discussed by numerous commentators including Adorno (1997 [1967]), Benjamin (1999 [1968]), Calasso (2005) and Deleuze and Guattari (1986). On the whole, these thinkers point out that while Kafka’s stories appear to take on many of the characteristics of myth, they simultaneously undermine and dispel the bourgeois myths under which we are currently labouring. For example, Adorno described Kafka’s stories as a reaction to the enlightenment and ‘to its reversion to mythology’ (1997 [1967]: 268). Adorno argued that Kafka was a rationalist who had attempted to write a ‘corrective’ to the enlightenment myths, such as man’s mastery over nature and its domination through rationality. In this regard Adorno explained that, ‘[t]he variations of myths which were found in his unpublished writings bears witness to his efforts in search of such a corrective’ (1997 [1967]: 268). For example, in Kafka’s variation of the Poseidon myth, he describes the god as a deskbound bureaucrat, whose time is completely absorbed in going over his accounts and occasionally reporting to his boss, Jupiter. Owing to his work commitments this modernized god rarely finds the time to go ‘cruising through the waves with his trident’ and is deeply irritated by the many rumours he hears to the contrary (1999b: 435). Sitting at his desk Poseidon looks forward to the end of the world when ‘there might be a quiet moment . . . [to] make a quick little tour’. Kafka produced many remarkable variations on the ancient myths such as the Tower of Babel (in The Great Wall of China), The Hunter Gracchus, Prometheus, Poseidon and The Silence of the Sirens and much of his work exhibits a similar mythological structure. In this way, Kafka forged a weapon against modern myths of the Enlightenment by using what Adorno termed the ‘reflected image of myth’ (1997 [1967]: 270).

In his extended essay on Kafka, Calasso (2005) shows how the structure of Kafka’s writing bears many of the characteristics of a mythology. Calasso explains that:

As Kafka found his narrative substance in something that preceded even the division of gods and demons, indeed of the powers in general, so the narration itself seems to have gone back with him to the origin of the variants, to that most mysterious of points where every story begins to branch and proliferate, while still remaining the same story. Such branching is the lifeblood of every mythology. (Calasso, 2005: 39)

The animal-becomings in stories, such as The Transformation, A Report to an Academy and Josephine the Songstress or: The Mouse People, provide lines of escape from the organizing myths of the family and the modern bureaucracy. Both Adorno (1997 [1967]) and Deleuze and Guattari (1986: 26) agree that these are by no means optimistic and they do not herald our salvation – we will ‘no longer be saved by culture or by myth’. It is in this respect that Deleuze and Guattari claim that Kafka was concerned with the problem of lines of flight and escape rather than that of liberty. Benjamin’s (1999 [1968]) essay on Kafka also picked up on this underlying theme of escape and the mythological resources that he employs for precisely this purpose. Benjamin describes Kafka’s stories as being part mythology, part fairy tale in which Kafka, ‘inserted little tricks into them; then he used them as proof “that inadequate, even childish measures may also serve to rescue one”’ (1968: 114). His stories employ various mythological devices such as branching stories, metamorphoses, animal-becomings, flight and escape. By incorporating these mythological devices into his tales, Kafka was able to develop counter-mythologies, a warning of the dangers of the bureaucratic forms and ever more rational systems of organization, operating simultaneously on the level of great literature, as a modern fairy tale and as a significant contribution to the art and science of organization.

A key methodological guideline employed throughout this article is taken from Canetti’s own study of Kafka, which observed that:

There are writers, admittedly only a few, who are so entirely themselves that any utterance one might presume to make about them must seem barbarous. Franz Kafka was such a writer; accordingly one must adhere as closely as possible to his own utterances, with the risk that one might seem slavish. (1974: 30)

Following Canetti’s insight we aim to respect the distinction between organization theory and literature, thus preserving some of the quality of Kafka’s unique voice. ¹ De Cock and Land (2005) have also argued that in order to preserve the insights of the original works, literature must not be subordinated to the demands of ‘organizational theory’, particularly in its more managerialist forms. They are concerned that we are in danger of doing a disservice to the original texts by subordinating literature to the ends of organization theory, which leads them to propose the relationship be investigated in terms of what the two domains might do to each other through a process of mutual contamination (2005: 518). As such, they stress the need to preserve the distinction between the two domains. In the terminology of Deleuze and Guattari (1986) a ‘line of flight’ can be said to pass between literature and organization theory, which in the case of Kafka is characterized by a concern for the victims of prevailing power structures of organizations. ² While recognizing that both literature and organization theory deal with common problems, literature does not have to surrender to the strictures of the social sciences in order for us to learn from it. A second related methodological guideline for this article concerns the difficulties of interpreting his stories. To some extent we agree that Kafka’s biographical context is important, as has been aptly demonstrated by Warner’s (2007) comparison between the lives and works of Kafka and Weber. An early interpreter of Kafka, Walter Benjamin, observed that, ‘his parables are never exhausted by what is explainable; on the contrary, he took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings’ (1999 [1968]: 120). As such, it is hardly surprising that Kafka has spawned so many diverse interpretations (Kundera, 1996). We can draw on Benjamin’s insight in our approach to this work where Kafka himself makes clear that the process of interpretation or sensemaking is itself highly problematic, even in mundane everyday encounters.

The present study will explore the concept of ‘counter mythologies’ as a way of intepreting the mythological aspects of everyday life. In Canetti’s account of Kafka’s Other Trial, a number of common themes are highlighted that appear in both Kafka’s life and literature, without stipulating any simple relationship in either direction. For Kafka, life and literature are not neatly distinguishable realms, and in his letters he explains this relationship in the following way: ‘I don’t have literary interests, I’m made of literature, I’m nothing else and can be nothing else besides’ (Kafka quoted in Calasso, 2005: 117). It is in the intersection and imbrication of life and literature that leads Canetti to describe Kafka as engaged in creating ‘counter-mythologies’. Several other commentators upon Kafka’s work have also remarked upon its ‘counter’ mythological elements, particularly Adorno (1997 [1967]), Benjamin (1999 [1968]) and Calasso (2005). This approach echoes Barthes’ (2009 [1957]: 135) conception of mythologies where he explains that: ‘Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth’. Barthes employed the term ‘counter myth’ to describe literary works that satirized and undermined the prevalent bourgeois myths of their age. Barthes’ analysis revealed the existence of contemporary myths in fragments of everyday discourse, in magazine advertisements, in national stereotypes, in wrestling matches where the roles of good and evil heroes are acted out before the audience, and even in the circulation of scientific ideas in popular culture. He argued that modern myths are a form of depoliticized speech, where colonial history and political struggles are glossed over in what he described as ‘a privation of history’ (Barthes, 2009 [1957]: 178). What is thus historical and culturally contingent appears in mythical form as if it were universal and natural, where ‘the very principle of myth . . . [is that] it transforms history into nature’ (Barthes, 2009 [1957]: 154). Thus, Barthes proposed the use of ‘counter-mythology’ as an effective antidote to these myths and the creation of alternative artificial myths to attack and undermine the dominant mythology. These methodological guidelines may be seen to be an extension of Gabriel’s (2004: 872) pioneering study of organizational mythology, which recommended that, ‘like all myths, [organizational myths] must be approached with suspicion’. Counter-mythologies are something that only literature can produce, where Kafka can be seen as an exemplary exponent of such an approach. ³ This form of literature openly confronts the issue of polyphony, creating a parody of dominant social myths and giving voice to the marginalized. We will now show that Kafka is a master of suspicion and explain his own distinctive organizational ‘counter-mythologies’ that he created to better understand our experience of the modern world.

Sensemaking and ‘disruptive ambiguity’

Kafka’s conception of the process of sensemaking is extraordinary. This appears both in his stories and in his letters. He often complained of his difficulties in communicating with others, which one might think remarkable given his mastery of the written word. The situations in which he finds himself appear to be ambiguous or impossible to grasp owing to their continual metamorphosis; he writes that, ‘The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always “something,” and if for once I am “something, I pay for it by “being nothing” for months on end’ (Kafka quoted in Canetti, 1974: 33). His efforts to make sense of his relations with other people appeared futile to him, where in one letter he despaired that, ‘I really do believe I am lost to all social intercourse’ (Kafka quoted in Canetti, 1974: 32). This continual struggle and inability to make sense of one’s circumstances is a motif that runs throughout his letters and his stories. Misunderstandings proliferate within Kafka’s stories, especially in his novels. He portrays a world in which miscommunication is the norm, a world in which one misunderstanding leads to yet another, without resolution excepting for eventual death. ‘Perhaps you misunderstand me’, says K. to the police Inspector in The Trial (1999a [1925]: 17). And shortly thereafter the Inspector responds to K. with the counter-accusation that, ‘You are labouring under a great delusion’ (1999a [1925]: 18). Later, the Inspector again tells K., ‘You have misunderstood me’ (1999a [1925]: 21), also accusing him of being ‘a quibbler over words’ (1999a [1925]: 22). The dialogue between the various characters is written with exceptional clarity, and the misunderstandings do not arise from ‘noise’ in the communication channel, but are inherent in the communication itself. This novel and provocative conception of communication could have significant implications for organization studies given the absolutely crucial role that communication is held to play in the act of sensemaking within organizations (Weick et al., 2005). The characters of Kafka’s stories are continually misinterpreting each other, taking a casual remark too seriously, missing the intention of a flirtatious comment, being candid when they should be tactful, and on and on. The will to make sense out of this babble, this ‘undifferentiated flux’, is not an innocent tool of rational inquiry, but is essential to the whole mechanism of The Trial, The Castle or whichever system within which one is embroiled. The process of sensemaking and the promise of an answer is precisely what draws the protagonist ever onwards, deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine mechanisms of the social and mythological order.

The categorical nature of this miscommunication in Kafka’s work is perhaps best expressed in a conversation in The Trial between Frau Grubach and K., where he explains to her that, ‘I didn’t mean what I said so terribly seriously either. We misunderstood each other. That can happen occasionally even between old friends’ (1999a [1925]: 87). This admission that misunderstandings can happen ‘even between old friends’ stands out precisely because it is happening more or less continuously, not incidentally. Deleuze and Guattari call this the ‘informational myth’ of language, i.e. that it exists purely to transmit information. To undermine this myth they explain that Kafka worked to become a ‘stranger within his own language’ (1986: 26), which he saw as the language ‘of the masters’. Adorno also picked up on the peculiar role of language as a communicational tool in Kafka’s work in his analysis of the prominent role of bodily gestures within these stories. Owing to what Adorno describes as the ‘second Babylonian confusion’ of language, the gesture takes on a pre-eminent role in communication between the characters, whether it was a laugh, a glance, an embrace, a tussle or a crawl. Spoken language takes on an ambiguous role because ‘language, the configuration of which should be truth, is, as a broken one, untruth’ (Adorno, 1997 [1967]: 249). According to Adorno, Kafka revealed the deeply flawed and, in his words, ‘broken’ qualities of language. Communication thus entails misunderstanding, not exceptionally, but essentially.

One of the few uses of Kafka’s work within the field of organization studies has focused on the pitfalls of communication by drawing upon his reworking of the myth of the Tower of Babel (Kornberger et al., 2006) but has taken quite a different approach from the one that we have outlined here. The interpretation offered by Kornberger et al. highlights the Babylonian confusion, which they suggest provides a rich fictional characterization of the modern world. However, they offer a far more optimistic way out of this problem than does Kafka, recommending that ‘translation’ can be used to overcome the polyphony of voices inherent in interpersonal communication. We would argue that while this is a fruitful exploration of Kafka’s work for organization studies, it mistakes Kafka’s formulation of the problem for its solution. Czarniawska (1999) has also explored the issue of polyphony in the myth of the Tower of Babel, but without reference to Kafka’s own variant story. Her approach identifies exactly the kind of problems of translation highlighted here, but she does not propose translation as a solution, presenting it in more ambivalent terms as an ‘uneasy task’ that organization scholars must address. Following Adorno’s interpretation of the story, we suggest that the interpretation offered by Kornberger et al. relies for its efficacy upon the existence of an ‘unbroken’ language that can be employed for the purposes of a successful ‘translation’. Otherwise, what would be the point of translating from one language into another, where misunderstandings persist and proliferate with each attempted ‘translation’. If we were to attempt such a thing, we would be living in precisely the same world that is portrayed by Kafka, where polyphony is essential rather than incidental and where misinterpretation is inevitable.

In certain respects Weick et al. (2005: 413) have defined the role of sensemaking in very Kafkaesque terms, highlighting its ‘genesis in disruptive ambiguity’. Many of Weick’s stories contain incidents where sensemaking begins as a result of a breakdown of normal routines, after which misunderstandings begin to proliferate, for instance, in the use of the ambiguous phrase ‘we are now at takeoff’ by the pilot at a crucial point in the Tenerife air disaster (Weick, 1990), or in the misperception of the course of the fire in the Mann Gulch disaster (Weick, 1993). The limitations of sensemaking are further reinforced by the fact that, ‘[p]eople may get better stories, but they will never get the story’ (Weick et al., 2005: 415). Thus, Weick suggests that the best that people can strive for in the stories they tell is ‘plausibility’ rather than any ‘accuracy’. We would agree with Weick’s cautious evaluation of the limitations of sensemaking but with the additional proviso that sensemaking is understood primarily as a problematic rather than necessarily moving towards a solution. Weick has himself been criticized for his ambiguous usage of the term sensemaking, where sensemaking plays ‘seemingly contradictory roles’ in the evolution of organizational crises (Maitlis and Sonenschein, 2010: 565). Weick has analysed numerous cases where the processes of sensemaking reinforced the poor decision making of people confronted with exceptional events (Weick, 1990, 1993; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003). In the Mann Gulch case he argues that, ‘[w]hen meaning becomes problematic and decreases, this is a signal for those people to pay more attention to their formal and informal social ties and to reaffirm and/or reconstruct them’ (1993: 646). Weick takes the view that a sudden loss of structure can lead to a loss of meaning and should thus prompt a re-evaluation of the situation and an affirmation of the need for more (perhaps different) structure. While this is an insightful observation regarding the psychology of problem solving, Kafka takes a rather different view. For him, structure is not necessarily the solution to a situation and, in contrast to Weick’s stories, his tales show how the search for structure can itself lead to an ever increasing sense of meaninglessness. Kafka’s stories contain a polyphony of voices, in which the loss of meaning appears to be intimately linked to the proliferation of meanings as these stories progress. ⁵ For Kafka, the desire for meaning and structure is not a solution to such problems, but is a part of their very constitution.

Sensemaking with the wrong map

Let us pick up once again the theme of failed attempts at sensemaking, and the proliferation of misunderstandings that characterize so many of Kafka’s stories. Through the seminal works of Weick, scholars of organization have learnt that success does not depend solely on the accuracy of their sensemaking, a point that Weick illustrates on many occasions by drawing an analogy between managing and map-making (Weick, 1983, 1987, 1990). In particular, he draws upon the story of a small group of Hungarian soldiers who had become lost in the Alps on military manoeuvres during the Second World War (Weick takes this story from a poem by Miroslav Holub titled Brief Thoughts on Maps). After a few days the group of soldiers began to despair of ever finding their way back to their rendez-vous point. By luck one of its members found a map in his pocket, which was then used to find the way back to their detachment. Later, however, they discovered that the map that they had used was not a map of the alpine mountain range in which they had been lost, but a map of the Pyrenees. Weick concludes from this story that the map was important for the group because it served to get them moving rather than because it was accurate in any respect (Weick, 1983). Questioning the primacy of planning over acting he asserts that we often lack the means of communication to make sense of unexpected events, which is a major obstacle in the prevention of failure. However, he proposes that we can make sense of our environment as we interact within it, constantly adjusting our mental interpretations and thereby learning to be mindful and thus prevent mistakes (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007). The story of the wrong map holds particular prominence in Weick’s explanation of sensemaking and he draws on it on no less than six occasions in the explanation of his theories (Basbøll and Graham, 2006). In this example we can see certain similarities between Kafka’s work and that of Weick, not just in the use of narrative to explore the process of sensemaking but in the problematization of the function of cognitive maps within organizational life.

The stories of both Weick and Kafka tend to focus on tales of failed sensemaking. However, in contrast to Weick, Kafka denies the very possibility of unambiguous communication, and instead his characters often cause and amplify misconceptions. Whereas Weick et al. (2005) appeal to the ‘plausibility’ of a story as a possible way through any given problem, Kafka sees such ‘plausibility’ as a means of drawing us ever deeper into the labyrinthine folds of an indecipherable social order. Kafka’s novels are often punctuated by moments where, after encountering a disorientating situation, the protagonists set out in search of a plausible explanation for their circumstances. As the main character of Amerika reflects, ‘It’s just a matter of knowing how it’s done’ (Kafka, 2007 [1996]: 80). Here we are witness to a typical scene where the novel’s protagonist expresses their commitment to understanding and following the prevailing social order. However, as the story unfolds we come to appreciate the impossibility of discovering this underlying order. One merely moves from one misunderstanding to another. The idea of an underlying mythological order to the world is itself turned on its head. The social world as such is constituted by a web of misunderstandings. This is very much at the heart of Kafka’s counter-mythologies. In Weick’s terminology, we might say that the search for plausibility is revealed to be groundless. Kafka’s work thus emphasizes a very different aspect of the process of sensemaking than does Weick’s, being far more ambivalent about the possible functions of maps and leaving the reader uncertain as to existence of a clear path to safety.

Kafka and Weick both problematize the function of cognitive maps within organizational life, but in slightly different ways. In Weick’s story of the map, the actors appreciated their good fortune when it becomes possible for them to realize they had not been using an accurate map of their situation, but had been relying on the wrong map. In contrast to this, in Kafka’s stories there is no point at which the actors see themselves from a god’s eye position, realizing the folly of their blinkered views. Each of them continues to be trapped within the labyrinthine folds of their own stories, each with their own peculiar map.

Sensemaking, myth and counter-myth

Thus far we have highlighted the fact that Weick and Kafka share a number of similarities in their approach to constructing narratives about organizational sensemaking, especially with respect to the primacy of storytelling in ordering the world and the absolutely crucial role that ‘disruptive ambiguity’ plays in triggering sensemaking. However, Weick attributes sensemaking with a much greater problem-solving potential than does Kafka, for whom death or metamorphosis are the only lines of escape from the organizations and institutions that tyrannize over us. At this point in the argument we shall build on the concepts that we have developed in the preceding sections to evaluate sensemaking in terms of the concept of ‘counter-mythology’. In order to sketch out such a critique the key question that we wish to pursue is, to what extent can Weick be understood as being either a mythologist or a counter-mythologist?

Weick has been praised as being a superlative storyteller and foremost among the practitioners of the narrative approach to organization studies (Czarniaswska, 1999, 2005; Van Maanen, 1995). Within the confines of our own field of study, it would be hard to dispute the claim that Weick has proved a formidable creator of stories, passing on variants of existing stories that contain important lessons, which it is believed will provide useful guides for action. ⁶ Weick himself tends to use the term ‘myth’ in its pejorative sense, for instance, in a cautionary note about the use of plausible stories by managers he warns that, ‘[m]yth can sneak through reality checks as well as imagined realities’ (Weick, 1989: 528). He gives a nod in the direction of mythology in his characterization of so-called ‘cosmology episodes’ in which the presumed cosmic order is seen to break down during an unfolding disaster (Weick, 1993: 633). In fact, a number of similarities can be identified between mythology and Weick’s approach to organization studies: i) storytelling is a means of expression; ii) stories are used as a guide for action; iii) there is a focus on stories that raise questions about the identity of the characters involved; iv) the stories often concern a search for meaning in ambiguous situations; v) plausibility is given primacy over accuracy; and vi) there is a proliferation of variant stories in Weick’s work as well as in mythology. Some have seen the proliferation of variant stories as a cause for concern about the scholarship of this research (Basbøll, 2010; Basbøll and Graham, 2006), although it is not necessary to agree with this particular line of critique in order to recognize the mythological elements of Weick’s narrative approach. ⁷

The divide between Weick’s approach and that of Kafka’s counter-mythology is most clearly apparent in their conception of ‘plausibility’. For Weick, plausibility is a key characteristic of sensemaking where, ‘[i]f accuracy is nice but not necessary in sensemaking, then what is necessary? The answer is something that preserves plausibility and coherence’ (Weick, 1995: 60). Here the emphasis of the narrative approach of Weick’s stories may be seen to diverge from that of Kafka’s in an important respect. Whereas Weick’s stories may be characterized in terms of the search for plausibility, Kafka’s can be characterized as ‘breaking through the plausibility barrier’ in a fusion of dream and reality (Kundera, 1996: 52–53).

As an organization theorist Weick chooses to focus on the search for plausible stories to make his point, in contrast to Kafka the novelist, who focused on the significance of the implausible to underline the ambivalent features of modern institutional life. We can see this contrast most clearly in Weick’s (1989) essay on ‘disciplined imagination’ in which he suggests that plausibility is, or should be, a substitute for theoretical validity. He explains that plausibility plays a crucial part in theory generation where an anecdote can be used to generate ‘a plausible theory, and a theory judged to be more plausible and of higher quality if it is interesting rather than obvious irrelevant or absurd . . . or correspondent with presumed realities’ (Weick, 1989: 517). We might think of this as expressing a ‘bias’ towards plausibility because it tends to favour the status quo within the academic community to the extent that this community constitutes and frames prevailing ideas of what might be considered ‘plausible’ theory. Weick himself raises this issue noting that there is a ‘thin line’ between what is plausible and what people want to hear. While he is aware of this limitation, his proposal to develop ‘plausible theory’ clearly distances his approach from counter-mythologies such as Kafka’s, which force us to re-evaluate our situation precisely because of their implausibility. This issue is not simply a matter of literary technique. The role of implausibility in the history of science is a key feature of Paul Feyerarbend’s (1993) critique of the idea of ‘scientific method’. In this critique he demands that, ‘We must invent a new conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with, the most carefully established observational results, confounds the most plausible theoretical principles, and introduces perceptions that cannot form part of the existing perceptual world’ (1993: 22–23, emphasis not in original). Thus, he argues that implausibility and what he terms ‘counterinduction’ are necessary elements in the development of major scientific advances and can be seen in the work of scientists from Galileo to Einstein. ⁸ With regard to our own field of study, Kafka’s stories might be seen as a literary form of such counterinduction.

Drawing on Kafka’s rich description of the process of sensemaking, it can thus be understood more in terms of the formulation of a problem than in terms of establishing a solution. Kafka’s work provides us with important insights into the limits of sensemaking, in which the interruption of sense that is experienced by his characters leads us on a journey that causes us to confront the very limits of sensible experience (Panagia, 2009). This can be seen in at least three respects: i) in terms of how sensemaking leads us from one misinterpretation to another, where their ‘disruptive ambiguity’ highlights a polyphony of voices rather than reconciling or ‘translating’ them; ii) in terms of the limitations of sensemaking with the wrong map; and iii) in terms of the ‘bias’ towards plausibility in the creation of stories and myths in sensemaking that may unnecessarily restrict the analysis of cases using this approach. Brown et al. (2008) have remarked on the limitations of the existing literature on sensemaking stating that, ‘most interpretive case-based research still culminates in a single, homogenized account. By attending to individual differences in sensemaking we may ultimately be better able to explain how organized activities emerge from dissensus, ambiguity and disagreement’ (p. 1057). This characterization of the limitations of the literature on sensemaking and the role of dissensus and ambiguity is very much in the spirit of Kafka’s own world view. In keeping with this sentiment, we have drawn on Kafka’s literature to outline the limitations of the processes of sensemaking and while we have not developed ‘improvements’ to the sensemaking process, we have shown how Kafka’s parables give us valuable insights into the dangers that appear to be inherent to sensemaking and organizing.