Disjunctions in the context of management learning: An exemplary publication of narrative fiction

Abstract

Management Learning is a centre of scholarship, and thoughtful scholars strive to achieve exemplary publications – those that make a difference to both theory and practice as well as being frequently cited. Adopting the poststructuralist idea that scientific texts are literary constructions, applying this focus to translation and diffusion effects of a noted exemplar, this methodologically focussed article contributes an empirical method accounting for disjunctions in the context of management learning. We conceptualize disjunctions as differences and disconnections inhering in alternative bodies of knowledge produced about organizations and organizational practices. We do this by proposing a methodological tool embracing history for gaining insight from exemplary publication that allows students and investigators to increase the quality of their research papers. The contribution is explained in terms of two descriptive methodological concepts used to collect and analyse data, namely, style and modality. Using Jermier (1985) as an exemplary publication, we describe its context/origins, the use made of its ideas and the disjunctions that have arisen in the context of management learning. These result from the impact of the paper on the thinking of authors, as shown by subsequent networks of citations. The empirical method demonstrates how certain conceptions of narrative fiction have been used in Management and Organization Studies, in the form of emergent problems in the relationships produced connecting writer, reader and subject.

Keywords

Exemplary publication history of management narrative fiction organizational aesthetics qualitative research method

Introduction

The relevance of exemplary publication (exemplars) for teaching and researching was initially developed by Frost and Stablein (1992) in their collection of accounts of the process of researching, writing, submitting, reviewing, responding and editing papers that contemporaries deemed exemplary. An exemplary publication – either in book or journal – brings together several attributes without being restricted to any single feature; it must be read, cited and regarded as outstanding. These are the conventional hallmarks of a piece being well-executed.

Subsequently, different authors followed Frost and Stablein’s (1992) initiative. From Knafl’s (1994) attempt to breed academic integrity in qualitative research to the special dissertation forum written by Mattingly (2011), through (Cassell et al., 2009) mapping of the processes by which qualitative researchers learn to do qualitative research and Cunliffe’s (2011) revision of Morgan and Smircich’s historic typology to enquiry into Management and Organization Studies’ (MOS) current metatheoretical positioning, diverse research developed the relevance of exemplary publication for qualitative research. Adding to the insights available from these leads, we develop a methodological tool that allows additional insight to be gained from exemplars; further, we contribute an empirical method accounting for disjunctions in the context of management learning. To do so, we use Jermier (1985) as an exemplary publication of narrative fiction enacting disjunction in the context of management learning resulting from its citation. The justification of our choice of text for analysis is based on the way that it broke with dominant hypothetico-deductive models of positivism and the receptivity of the journal’s new editor to such a break. Jermier’s (1985) entanglement of scientific and literary mimesis as a model for organization analysis was an example of distinct theoretical practice. Jermier’s (1985) text challenged the relationship of authority that MOS writers exercise with regard to readers, by positioning the text as open, one in which interpretation was not foreclosed but became a responsibility of the reader; in addition, given the restrictions on access that he faced the subject of his research became an amalgam of fictional mimesis and empirical familiarity (Frost and Stablein, 1992).

For exemplars to produce disjunctions in the field of studies between past, current and future scholarship, the work must be innovative; disjunctions, in terms of differences and disconnections, must be made apparent between alternative bodies of knowledge produced about organizations and organizational practices. In any scholarly field, ‘each generation creates its sense of history, and thus its disjunctions’ (Strathern, 1987: 251). In step with Hibbert et al. (2014: 281), we link up with Jermier (1985) not to review and order the past body of literature of narrative fiction in a search for gaps, contributions or linear theoretical signs of progress, suggesting imminent future developments (cf. Myers, 1991) but to account for ‘the disjunctures and incorporation of interdisciplinary insights that can lead to methodological and theoretical advances’.

We develop and apply our empirical method to examine Jermier (1985) and the literature citing it in three phases. We do so to demonstrate how certain conceptions of narrative fiction have been used in MOS, in the form of emergent problems in the relationships produced connecting writer, reader and subject over time. Notably, we show how Jermier (1985) transforms the relationship between writer, reader and subject and participates in the production of the field of narrative fiction. We also describe how literature citing Jermier (1985) produces new disjunctions by enacting ideas as a community of practice in which writers, readers and subjects are part. As a community constituted through peer review, criticism and appreciation, they judge the research, producing emergent methodological questions, such as how writers represent the aesthetic perspectives of research subjects on organizational life to readers?

Insight gained by methodically working with exemplary publication allows students and investigators to embrace history as part of the (dis)ordering of current work (Ocasio et al., 2016). Institutional studies often refer to the ‘liability of newness’ (Stinchcombe, 1965); in contemporary scholarship, liability seems instead to attach to what, from a current standpoint, often appears as the liability of oldness. That history forgotten is history apt to be repeated may be an observation that, on occasion, is in order. Understanding how scholarly fields are created and how their syntax enacts new relationships among writers (who narrate the research), readers (who read the research) and subjects (whose practices form the subject of that which is researched and written about) is important (see Strathern, 1987). Researching exemplars, entails addressing them as representations of representations (Rabinow, 1986: 250) and of multiple contexts (writers, readers, subjects).

We concur that ‘that there is no accepted “boilerplate” for writing’ (Pratt, 2009: 856). In MOS, this is especially the case in qualitative research where data in the form of text rather than numerical rendering of text impose strictures of word count, representativeness and balance of theory and methods in the standard article length. Embracing exemplary publications in books and articles (see Eisenhardt, 1989; Langley, 1999; Van Maanen, 1988) can afford guidance in ‘publishing qualitative research’ as well as conducting its enquiry (Lerman et al., 2020: 1). Using exemplars as models aids writers in making significant analytical contributions. By trying out different exemplar writing styles (see Pratt, 2009), inscribed in diverse publications, one may find likely (empirical, methodological, theoretical) paths for answering a frequently asked question in MOS: how particular research might convince others of the plausibility/defensibility of its conclusions (see Gioia et al., 2013: 15; Grodal et al., 2020: 1)?

Management learning and research can engage critically with exemplars (Cummings and Bridgman, 2011). Management students can be instructed to use exemplars for tracing disjunctions in the context of management learning (Strathern, 1987). Two descriptive methodological concepts used to collect and analyse data are style and modality. By style, considering the possibilities supported by language (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979), we refer to choices made when creating texts. Modality is understood as ‘any statement about another statement’ (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979; Latour and Woolgar, 1986: 90). We use style and modality to analyse Jermier (1985) and the statements about Jermier (1985), in space and time, for they offer descriptive concepts for collecting and analysing data about such texts’ choices and judgements instead of ‘attributing “progressive coherence” to the literature’ (Hibbert et al., 2014: 281).

We begin by justifying Jermier (1985) as an exemplary publication. From there, we address past scholarship on exemplary publication to inform an empirical method. Drawing on the descriptive methodological concepts of style and modality, Jermier’s (1985) context and origins, the use made of the ideas in the text and the disjunctions in management learning that result from its citation are next addressed. The empirical method proposed and the use made of it are then discussed. New possibilities for linking up with context (writer, reader and subject) in qualitative organizational research are considered.

Exemplars of narrative fiction in MOS

One of the seven articles discussed in Frost and Stablein’s (1992) book dealt with the difficulty of collecting, analysing and exposing highly personal and subjective information. The article, written by John M. Jermier (1985) was titled ‘“When the Sleeper Wakes”: A Short Story Extending Themes in Radical Organization Theory’. A short story about the two minds of a skilled operator in the control room of a large phosphate plant, characterized as the story of Dialectical Marxist Theory’s romantic ‘everyman’ and Critical Theory’s ‘anti-hero’. Jermier’s (1985) exposition of Dialectical Marxist Theory and Critical Theory through the use of a short story is a pioneering classic text in the field of narrative fiction it helped to enact.

In Doing Exemplary Research (Frost and Stablein, 1992), Linda Smircich and Joanne Martin analysed Jermier (1985) critically, adding weight to an article originally published by the Journal of Management (JOM), one of the leading MOS journals, in one of the first of its three issues per year edition (Hunt, 1985). Jermier (1985) was published in a special edition of the JOM on organizational symbolism (Volume 11, Issue 2, Summer 1985). For Frost (1985), who guest-edited the special issue, it had become imperative to understand organizations from within, through analysis of understandings, meanings, behaviours. The special issue was dedicated to the performative power of the symbolic universe in organizations in which Jermier (1985) demonstrated the viability of Critical Theory and Dialectical Marxism as practices that could incorporate new accounts of what constituted data.

For Rhodes (2015: 292), Jermier (1985) was a game-changer, uniting once and for all science and fiction in MOS and blending ‘literary writing and scholarly writing’. Similarly, Martin (1992) states that Jermier (1985) broke with the taboo that prohibited the insertion of fictional material in MOS research. Clegg et al. (2006) and Luhman (2006) recognize the seminal and innovative character of Jermier’s (1985) work for MOS. For Taylor and Hansen (2005) and De Cock and Land (2006), Jermier (1985) represents classic research. In the same way, Prasad and Caproni (1997) state that Jermier’s (1985) ground-breaking article reshaped the MOS research agenda. Hence, considering the innovation, the place of publication and the later use of the article as an exemplar, it is not surprising that Jermier (1985) is located at the beginning of the stabilization of narrative fiction as a research practice in MOS.

Theoretically and conceptually, the article built the literary short-story genre as a keystone in the construction of the field of narrative fiction in MOS. What was, perhaps, noteworthy was that ‘the epistemology underwriting the study was not explicitly stated’ (Jermier, 1992: 224). Although Jermier (1985) does not define ‘narrative fiction’ in ‘MOS’ nor is found under such search terms, leading ‘to some confusion’ (Jermier, 1992: 224), his article played a vital role in the construction of a space from which subsequent studies could define and enact the field of study of narrative fiction in MOS (cf. Phillips, 1995).

Next, we address the organization literature on exemplary publication to inform an empirical method for gaining insight from exemplary publication.

Past scholarship on exemplary publication

For Frost and Stablein (1992), demystifying the act of exemplary publication enacts it as a messier, imperfect and personally intriguing, exciting, frustrating, depressing, puzzling and surprising practice. Frost and Stablein (1992: xii) encourage readers to relate to exemplars affording multiple perspectives on achieving quality in research: ‘those who read this book will find insights and ideas that will inform and inspire them in their work’. According to Lerman et al. (2020), exemplars are widely embraced, whose notions afford interesting paths (that have been ‘applied’, ‘adapted’, ‘distorted’ and ‘overlooked’) to the activity of organizational knowledge. In the perception of Kor et al. (2016: 1), an exemplary publication can achieve ‘a participative form of research that obtains the advice and perspective of key stakeholders (e.g. different researchers; and users of the knowledge, such as managers, practitioners)’.

The organization literature often addresses exemplary publication in MOS through three steps (see Anderson, 2006; Anderson and Lemken, 2019; Frost and Stablein, 1992; Humphries and Dyer, 2005; Kor et al., 2016; Lerman et al., 2020; Lounsbury and Carberry, 2005; Weick, 2005). First, the context/origins surrounding the exemplary publication’s production are analysed, so researchers can critically evaluate the exemplar’s content/critical ideas. Second, how the ideas inscribed in the exemplar have been used in action is described. The third step often consists of offering lessons to be learnt from exemplars. Empirically, scholarship in MOS and elsewhere argues that is necessary to map the citations made to exemplary publications, analyse the citation context and examine the impact of the work in specific fields to address ‘how evidence is used to confirm or disconfirm theories, and how the evidence is generated in the first place’ (Small, 2020: 1028). However, a reference made to a work serves also to support the knowledge claims of those making the citation and not only confirms, develops or tests the knowledge claim of the person being cited. The work that makes the citation may use references as one of the author’s resources (e.g. fundings, graphs, inscriptors) to support their knowledge claims (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). The evolution of a particular idea is explained by the strategic use that authors make of it because ideas are social objects that are individualized by agents and their communities (Collins, 1998; Latour, 1987; Petrovich, 2018).

The practice of using exemplary publications, on the whole, has not been addressed by MOS, (although there are rare examples such as Cunliffe, 2011; Weick, 2005), making it difficult to multiply approaches to organizational knowledge (Bansal et al., 2018). We draw on Strathern’s (1987) poststructuralist ideas to develop and apply an empirical method. We do so to aid researchers in learning (Kor et al., 2016) and verifying appropriate uses of the exemplary publication in question (Anderson, 2006; Anderson and Lemken, 2019). In addition, our approach also enables accounting for disjunctions in the context of management learning, in the form of emergent problems in the relationships produced connecting writer, reader and subject.

In the history of ideas, disciplines are transformed temporally. A historical debate was initiated in the social sciences in the 1970s, which departed from exemplars to understand these processes of break in various ways. From the genealogical idea of discursive regimes of truth of Foucault (1970) to the historiography of science approach of Ian Hacking, through Laboratory Life by Latour and Woolgar (1986) and the social anthropology works of Rabinow (1986), debate ranged widely. The focus on transformation and representation in the history of ideas is also evident in work published by Strathern (1987), which showed how British Social Anthropology in the 1920s went from Frazer’s dense literary description (historical and anachronic) to Malinowski’s contextualized/scientific description (holist and synchronic). Malinowski did not invent fieldwork but a new literary technique that organized ethnographic texts, alternatively building a new relationship between writer, readers and subjects. Strathern (1987) argues that this was not an evolution so much as a disjunction produced between the observer and the observed. Such a disjuncture is produced by an emerging perspective that allows the researcher’s context to enter that of the Other of anthropological research. Research entails cultural contexts of different experiences (Rabinow, 1986). For Strathern (1987), a creative text focusses on the knowing of the researcher and their audience. The new writing produced by Malinowski uses fieldwork and description placed the Other in a social context, organizing monograph to compare contexts, making the Others’ experience mythological. Frazer (1825), in the opposite direction, had no theoretical reason to make the exotic something ordinary, since the ordinary and extraordinary are positioned as similar in a text without context, one that unites differences. Frazer (1825: 7) strove to detect the motives that lead to an institution, ‘motives [that] have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike’. Frazer was in this respect the historic grandparent of structural functionalism.

Strathern (1987) argues that Frazer’s writing style of taking the Other out of context, not taking village social organization seriously, could be revisited in the face of a postmodern turn. Strathern (1987: 268) acknowledges that it is the reader’s relationship with the text that affirms/denies/extends the ideas inscribed in it. For her, these two exemplars – Frazer and Malinowski – invite reflection on how to think about different levels of context in anthropological writing, the collection and analysis of data, the emergent contexts of production/dissemination of the work and the multiple uses of the context of the work for later quotations. The ethnographer, she argues, is as much part of the ethnographic text as the subjects, who ‘continue to play an externalizing role in the judgments of others. This is a political fact with which our communications – not least among ourselves – must deal’ (Strathern, 1987: 279). The reader is invited to look at exemplars to understand their ‘content’ and ‘contexts’ (Strathern, 1987: 256) to produce an interpretation from official texts (which have legitimate but different instances of enunciation) of the field of study, pointing out possible disjunctions – ‘these are mediated through relationships internal to the text, in the way the writer arranges his [her] ideas’ – in the writing style of the field analysed, in ways that are highly relevant to management scholars.

Method: accounting for exemplars

To understand Jermier’s (1985) impact on organization theory, we need to understand the relationship between this text and organizational research. In addition, we need to understand the later relationship between Jermier (1985) and the texts that quoted him (as interpreters). As Strathern (1987: 257) writes,

this becomes a question of its [Jermier’s (1985) and the texts that quoted him] own internal composition, of the organization of analysis, the sequence in which the reader is introduced to concepts, the way categories are juxtaposed, or dualisms reversed. To confront the problem is to confront the arrangement of text.

Thus, in step with Strathern (1987), we opted for establishing two poststructuralist methodological principles. The method assumes that exemplars such as Jermier (1985) and those that cite it are literary texts in which it is the reader’s relationship with the text that leads to the affirmation (or not) of the author’s ideas. We examine the statements, tables and modalities found in Jermier (1985) and analyse texts and statements extending this investigation, describing how they assume and refer to the content included in it. The descriptive concepts of style and modality are central in doing so, as is evident below.

Descriptive methodological concepts for practice: the notions of style and modality

According to the Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, style is understood ‘as the choice that every text necessarily makes among certain number of possibilities included in the language’ (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979: 300). Style is a signature, a form of identity, something that fashions a piece of work as something distinctive, something significant, something recognizably itself. Jermier’s (1985) text conforms to this notion of style by recursively utilizing a well-known short-story form that is radically juxtaposed with styles derived from the cannon of Marxists analysis. Jermier’s (1985) text can also be apprehended through the notion of modality:

in the modalizing style, the speaker passes judgment on the truth value of the discourse, that is, on the relationship between the discourse and its reference (or its context). This judgment is manifested by expressions such as ‘perhaps’, ‘doubtless’, ‘it seems to me’ (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979: 303).

For Latour and Woolgar (1986: 90), who used the notion of modality to understand which statements about endocrinology appeared as facts at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, with the greatest frequency, ‘a modality is any statement about another statement’. Statements about Jermier (1985) can thus be tracked in space and time through the idea of modality, which offers a descriptive concept for collecting and analysing data.

The modalities that extended the work of Jermier (1985) can be grouped into the following types (see Ducrot and Todorov, 1979): (1) Negation – rejecting it as a path to the activity of knowledge or positive utterances inscribed in it; (2) Assertion – taking it for granted because they conform to the speaker’s beliefs, desires, guidelines and questionings, confirming the path to knowledge inscribed in as evidence with which to affirm statements or demonstrate other facts; (3) Deontic obligation – the text attributes a positive predicate to itself and offers an appraisal in moral terms, pointing out and taking for itself the ‘need’ to extend this path to the activity of knowledge and (4) Deontic right – the text attributes a positive predicate and offers an appraisal in moral terms, pointing out and taking for itself the ‘possibility’ of producing an emerging path to the activity of knowledge.

As many works cite Jermier (1985), we will discuss the extensions made from this work in three periods: 1985–1995; 1996–2006; 2007–2019. The mode of ordering produced differs with different slices of time. We use the notion of decades as a conventional historical schema. Thus, the data can be analysed through narrative and time bracketing strategies (see Langley, 1999; Phillips, 1995; Pratt, 2009; Warren, 2008) to account for the stylistic differences and spatial/temporal situation of Jermier (1985) and the texts citing it (Ducrot and Todorov, 1979: 302).

Data: the exemplary publication under analysis

The article ‘“When the Sleeper Wakes”: A Short Story Extending Themes in Radical Organization Theory’ has a parallel with Wells (2019 [1899]) futuristic novel. Such parallelism is analogous because Mike Armstrong, just as – Graham – the protagonist from the book When the Sleeper Wakes, awakes from a deep sleep/dream and lands in a nightmare. Jermier’s short story represents the two minds of Mike Armstrong, a worker from a phosphate plant located in Tampa, Florida. The dual states of mind/action that ‘dramatize the existential moments of personal alienation (Laing, 1965) and symbolize the self-contradictory aspects of capitalist systems’ (Jermier, 1985: 73–74) are related to Dialectical Marxist Theory’s everyman and Critical Theory’s anti-hero. These two versions of the ideal type character’s work life are presented through the dream (night) and the nightmare (day).

To demonstrate the relevance of his arguments, Jermier (1985) distanced previous literature based on what he calls traditional organization theory while at the same time backing up his statements with multiple documents and forms that constituted an alternative basis for legitimation (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). Jermier (1985: 79) used Critical Theory and Dialectical Marxism’s alternative approaches to create ‘concepts of humanistic management that are radically different from traditional organization theory’. Frost and Stablein (1992: 207) argue that Jermier (1985) is ‘a mixed-genre [journalistic, anthropological, and literary methods] piece that anticipated devices helpful in representing this decade’s bewildering human organizational realities [nature and meaning of worker’s alienation]’. For the authors (Frost and Stablein, 1992: 207–208), ‘the need for new “devices to represent” our findings in organizational research’ emerge since ‘we are not sure how to proceed empirically [how to do? How to judge?] in a (. . .) post paradigm organizational “science”’. For Jermier (1992: 210), ‘a greater diversity of viewpoints concerning life in contemporary organizations exists now than ever before’. Thus, there is the acceptance of ‘alternative epistemologies that underwrite diverse viewpoints (e.g. positivist, phenomenological, critical (. . .)) and the unique standards each applies in judging contributions’ (Jermier, 1992: 210). For Jermier (1992: 216), after the paradigm wars it is ‘difficult to maintain firm boundaries between artistic representations of organization life and the “science of organizations”’. Jermier (1992: 217) argues that his 1985 ‘experimental representation of a modern work day (. . .) anticipates the potential of the humanities to inform understanding of organizational life’ and ‘invites consideration of similarities and differences between literary texts and texts produced by empirical organizational researchers’. As Jermier (1985) ‘is a work of “science-fiction”’, the text ‘confounds the positivist/realist/naturalist dichotomy between fact and fiction’ (Jermier, 1992: 224). Thus, Jermier (1985) constructs a relationship between his text and its readers and subjects not only by anchoring his ‘knowledge claims in empirical and theoretical evidence’ but also by using ‘imagination, fantasy, dream states, altered consciousness, or any other method to produce humanistic insight’ (Jermier, 1992: 226).

Jermier’s (1985) paper, as a mixed-genre piece, ‘arose from a strong desire to share difficult insights with a broad audience’ (Jermier, 1992: 219), transforming the relationship constructed between writer and reader, freeing its readers to interpret a literary text in ways inadmissible within traditional organization theory, whose validity results from the separation of the context of writer, reader and subject. This statement is evident if we consider that Jermier (1992) argued that Jermier’s (1985) readers interpreted the work in at least in three ways: each of his descriptions is merely one among others; each description is nothing more than armchair theorizing; literature, art and science are identical. Even though Jermier (1992) vehemently refuses the first two interpretations made, he reconciles himself with the third, adding something to the idea of resemblance inscribed in it: the difference regards method! For him, science deals with data and evidence, while fiction explores these and other possibilities. However, the relationship that is constructed between writer and subject in MOS still depends on the notion of context; Jermier (1985) separates ‘us’ as research authors and our cultural systems and ‘them’ as subjects working at a phosphate plant, by using their cultural referents. Jermier (1992) describes, for instance, that he learned about the cultural practices of the workers’ lives, which included television, sports, rock, technologies, drugs. Finally, the relationship that Jermier (1985) creates between subject and reader is paradoxical. Jermier (1985) contrasts his social world with the worker’s social world, producing the Other of organizational research. In these terms, the author’s idea is opposed to the research subjects’ ideas, separating writer, reader and observed.

Using the fiction genre as an alternative method ‘conveys self-conscious playfulness’ (Strathern, 1987: 265). Therefore, even if the text per se is not co-produced by writer and subject, its interpretation is, if only because that is what all interpretation entails. The use of short stories filled Jermier’s (1985) work with multiple voices and texts that prevented the text from relying on the logic of transparency (see Webster, 1982), reflecting the writer’s social experience as a modern being, providing much grist for the mill of interpretation. As a result, Jermier (1985) claims no privilege as an author; for some readers, for whom the (postmodern) notions implicit in his text are evident, fieldwork is being treated as superficial (Strathern, 1987). The reader can choose between the two characters’ positions and contexts (ideal types) representing critical theory and Marxist theory. The reader can then interact with the writer and the subject, renewing (both integrating and separating) the relationship between writer, reader and subject in MOS.

Jermier (1985) produced a relationship between writer, reader and subject in MOS that differed greatly from that of the traditional organization theory of the 1980s. The theory of that time, especially in North America, broadly suggested that organizations were analogous to machines, systems or computers, best understood through statistical analysis of large-scale data. Jermier (1985) established a counterpoint to the organizational theory of that time by connecting with undercurrents of Critical Theory and Dialectical Marxism that were more evident in Europe than the United States (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980). At the end of the article, a final deontic operation is included: for Jermier (1985), the realism of the radical humanist viewpoints – presented by journalistic, anthropological and literary methods – meaning that alienation in the workplace must be clarified by further investigations. To wit, as an exemplar publication, not only should we position Jermier’s (1985) undertaking vis-à-vis the traditional organization theory of the 1980s; we should also appreciate it in the light of the texts that cited it, as explained below.

Findings: citations and the exemplary publication

That Jermier’s (1985) work has become a part of other operations related to the field of MOS is evident if we consider that 120 other articles referenced this article, according to a survey done in Google Scholar on 3 June 2019. While not an outstanding number of quotes, our use of the article is not based on the number of citations to Jermier (1985).¹ It is apparent that statements about Jermier (1985), in referring to narrative fiction in MOS, transformed the sense of the original article in a process undergoing constant change, introducing a break. From the 120 citations made to Jermier (1985), 79 texts could be analysed as other than citations that merely mentioned the reference in passing; as doubled citations or citations appearing in the references and not in the narrative and citing articles with different dates but similar knowledge contents. The modalities that extended the work of Jermier (1985) could be grouped using the types identified: (1) negation; (2) assertion; (3) deontic obligation/need and (4) deontic right/possibility. Although all articles substantively citing Jermier (1985) are addressed, the analytical focus is on the texts from narrative fiction, as these articles are used to account for disjunctions in the context of management learning.

1985–1995

For this period, Google Scholar provides 17 results, of which 16 were analysed.² There are no texts that disagree with Jermier (1985). The majority of the texts – 14 out of 16 – cite Jermier (1985) to affirm their statements, constructed from different scholarly fields: narrative fiction, organizational culture, Critical Management Studies (CMS), paradigms (fashionable at the time), organizational communication, leadership and philosophy. MOS scholars at that time had largely struggled to go beyond using organizational culture as other than a (dependent/independent) variable (see Smircich and Calds, 1987). Reflection on Jermier (1985) allowed CMS to consolidate the idea of emancipation, rethink alienation and develop critical theory in MOS, such that the conjuncture of narrative fiction and MOS became more prevalent. Four texts shared an interest in narrative fiction. For Wendt (1995), Jermier’s text can be understood as narrative and storytelling. Packwood (1994) affirms the ideas inscribed in Jermier (1985) to justify her research findings through narrative fiction. Gabriel (1995) and Phillips (1995), both published by Organization Studies, affirmed Jermier’s (1985) statements but with different purposes. Table 1 focusses on the articles from narrative fiction, citing Jermier (1985).

Table 1.

The analytical elements of essays from narrative fiction that cited Jermier (1985) from 1985 to 1995.

Author(s)	Year	Title	Subject covered by narrative fiction	Publication outlet	Clusters of journals	Modality type
Packwood	1994	Voice and Narrative: Realities, Reasoning and Research Through Metaphor	Narrative, Storytelling and Metaphor	Warwick Thesis	Organization Studies (OS)	Assertion
Wendt	1995	Women in positions of service: The politicized body	Ethnography and feminism	Communication Studies		Assertion
Phillips	1995	Telling organizational tales: On the role of narrative fiction in the study of organizations	Narrative fiction	OS		Deontic obligation
Gabriel	1995	The unmanaged organization: Stories, fantasies and subjectivity	Critical Management Studies (CMS) and Organizational Culture	OS		Deontic right

For Gabriel (1995), CMS and Organizational Culture assume a managerial perspective on organizations, where the focus was almost always on the dichotomy of resistance or submission to control. Gabriel (1995) developed his study of an organizational terrain he called ‘the unmanaged organization’, focussing on fantasy as neither conformity nor rebellion but material and semiotic acceptance and reimagining of events and organizational stories assumed as official. Gabriel (1995) talks about Jermier (1985) to address the use of dreams; dreams can and should become stories as public and material social practices that have the power to be used by other statements. New statements, in turn, try to add new modalities to the stories, which only then can be seen as possibilities, objectivities or lies. In this way, Gabriel (1995) turned to Jermier (1985) and others to conceptualize and discuss the importance of fantasy as unfulfilled wishes – through the transformation of an event into stories – to evade the practice of organizational control and reconstitute subjectivity.

Phillips (1995) also departs from a dichotomy that is part of MOS: fact and fiction. For this author, fiction does not objectify research phenomena, allowing for the discussion of humour, anger, aesthetics as aspects of organizations. The article seeks to create a space called narrative fiction as a teaching tool, as a data source, as a method in MOS, in which are included researchers who did not fit into any paradigmatic quadrant. Jermier (1985) is referred to as an excellent example of fictional narrative technique as a method in organizational analysis, allowing Phillips (1995) to legitimate his text and extend narrative fiction in MOS as a path to knowledge.

1996–2006

For this period, Google Scholar provides 38 results, of which 31 texts were analysed.³ The fields of philosophy and organizational communication had little interest in Jermier (1985) from 1996 to 2006, while the fields of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), power, chaos theory, institutional theory, organization democracy and business ethics gained interest. The interest in organizational culture and paradigmatic studies diminished. Unlike the first period examined, four texts denied the theoretical path proposed by Jermier (1985), coming from chaos theory (Gabriel, 1998), business ethics (Feldman, 2000) and institutional theory (Lawrence et al., 2001; Seo and Creed, 2002). Lawrence et al. (2001) deny the agency attributed to Jermier’s (1985) fictional character. Seo and Creed (2002) considered that Jermier’s approach is not appropriate as it leaves open the problem of agency-structure dualism. For Gabriel (1998: 6), control is an inner concept for Jermier (1985) and for most management discourse that disregards the fact that ‘social reality entails a vital unpredictability which seriously undermines the possibility of planning and control’. Feldman (2002: 631) realizes, with regret, that Jermier (1985) and other ‘critical organization theorists are distrustful and suspicious of the past. In contrast, their attitude toward the future is one of hope for freedom and progress’.

The majority of the 19 articles cite Jermier (1985) to affirm their statements, most of which had CMS and leadership as topics of interest. As in the previous period analysed (1985–1995), the essays – 8 out of 31 – that produced deontic enunciations on Jermier (1985) had narrative fiction as topics of interest, dialoguing with aesthetics, theatre and theorizing in management and literature (see Table 2).

Table 2.

The analytical elements of essays from narrative fiction that cited Jermier (1985) from 1996 to 2006.

Author(s)	Year	Title	Subject covered by narrative fiction	Publication outlet	Clusters of journals	Modality type
Taylor	2000	Aesthetic knowledge in academia: Capitalist pigs at the academy of management	Organizational aesthetics	Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI)	Journal of Management Studies (JMS) (2), JMI (2), Journal of Management Education (JME), Human Relations (HR), Organization Studies (OS), Organization (Org)	Deontic right
Taylor	2002	Overcoming aesthetic muteness: Researching organizational members’ aesthetic experience	Organizational aesthetics	HR		Deontic right
Ng and Cock	2002	Battle in the boardroom: A discursive perspective	Narrative and Storytelling	JMS		Deontic obligation
Whiteman	2004	Why are we talking inside? Reflecting on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and management research	TEK	Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI)		Deontic obligation
Taylor and Hansen	2005	Finding Form: Looking at the Field of Organizational Aesthetics	Organizational aesthetics	JMS		Deontic right
Humphries and Dyer	2005	Introducing critical theory to the management classroom: An exercise building on Jermier’s ‘Life of Mike’.	Critical Management Studies (CMS)	JME		Deontic obligation
Rhodes and Brown	2005	Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies	Narrative fiction	Org		Deontic right
De Cock and Land	2006	Organization/literature: Exploring the seam	Literary theory	OS		Deontic obligation

Eight essays, published by the Journal of Management Studies (JMS) (Ng and Cock, 2002; Taylor and Hansen, 2005), Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI) (Taylor, 2000; Whiteman, 2004), Journal of Management Education (JME) (Humphries and Dyer, 2005), Organization Studies (OS) (De Cock and Land, 2006), Organization (O) (Rhodes and Brown, 2005) and Human Relations (HR) (Taylor, 2002), characterize this periodization. Of the eight essays, four focussed exclusively on the need to ‘develop’ the notion of narrative fiction. Whiteman (2004) recognizes that organizational researchers’ use of narrative fiction is still timid but can be seen as being in a consolidation phase. She developed a script for a play to introduce traditional ecological knowledge as a path to organizational knowledge. Similarly, Humphries and Dyer (2005) depart from Jermier (1985) and others to develop an exercise applied in the management classroom. Ng and Cock (2002) uses statements about Jermier’s (1985) statements to recognize the growing existence of essays in which a story occupies the centre of the narrative. Through ‘corporate storytellers’, Ng and Cock (2002) analyse the seminal role of discourse in organizational and management production’s outcomes. A few years later, De Cock and Land (2006) identified different forms of MOS’ engagement with literature. The work of Jermier (1985) is, according to the authors, a relevant ‘literary mode of representation and organization theory’. Although relevant, De Cock and Land (2006) affirm it is essential not to subordinate ‘literary’ writing to an academic logic of ‘representation’.

There are also essays departing from Jermier (1985) to produce new directions – four out of eight essays. Among these texts, Steven Taylor, in 2000, begins to develop empirically the understanding that narrative fiction in MOS is a broader ‘possibility’ than Jermier (1985) and the whole field presumed to that point. At first, Taylor (2000) produces statements about Jermier’s (1985) statements to justify fiction’s use as theory. However, he states and acknowledges the need ‘to move a step beyond that to present pure fiction in the form of a play as an attempt at aesthetic theorizing’ (Taylor, 2000: 304). To fulfil this mission, he wrote Capitalist Pigs, which mimics and, at the same time, differs from Jermier (1985: 308): ‘Jermier’s piece shows the power and usefulness of representing theory aesthetically, which I think is not the same as theorizing aesthetically’. Two years later, Taylor (2002) focussed his writing on the practical and theoretical understanding of the difficulty of speaking of organizational aesthetics. For the author, ‘aesthetic muteness’ is caused by the idea that an organization should avoid controversies and focus on efficiency, limiting the understanding of aesthetic experience. From Jermier (1985) and others, Taylor (2002: 838) points out the following ‘possibility’: ‘Overcoming aesthetic muteness will make it legitimate to have conversations about how it feels to be in an organization’. Sometime later, Taylor and Hansen (2005) argue that MOS had recently begun to set aside managerial (e.g. efficiency/effectiveness) issues to emphasize moral/ethical issues, with Jermier (1985) as an exemplar. Considering ‘method’ and ‘content’, the authors’ map ‘possible’ areas of concentration for organizational aesthetics: intellectual analysis of instrumental issues; the artistic form used to look at instrumental issues; intellectual analysis of aesthetic issues, as well as the artistic form used to look at aesthetic issues. Another ‘possibility’ is also considered by Rhodes and Brown (2005). With Jermier, the authors challenge scientific notions of neutrality and validity, suggesting that reflexivity, ethics and pragmatism are responses to recognition of the fictional (not factual) character of writing: ‘a possible legacy of narrative fiction in organization studies is one that researchers might draw on in order to consider issues of “responsibility” in terms of their methodology and writing’ (Rhodes and Brown, 2005: 485).

2007–2019

For this period, Google Scholar provides 45 results, of which 32 texts were analysed.⁴ Philosophy and organizational communications scholarship continued their lack of interest in Jermier (1985) from 2007 to 2019. Over the same period, power theorists also lost interest in Jermier (1985), as did work on organizational democracy, ANT, chaos theory, paradigms and business ethics. Management research, information system research, sociology of organizations, organizational behaviour, strategy, organizational change and bureaucracy became interested in Jermier (1985). Two texts were negative towards Jermier’s (1985) text. Adler (2012: 249) finds the interpretation offered by Jermier (1985) to be forced, as ‘it does not do justice to the workers’ voices. A priori, it decrees as deluded any positive assessment of bureaucracy by workers’. Lawrence (2008: 193) cites Jermier (1985) to refer to the idea of ‘false consciousness’, circumventing such discussions to focus on ‘forms of power that support institutional control through systems that restrict the range of options available to actors’ (Lawrence et al., 2001).

Twelve essays extended Jermier’s (1985) approach (see Table 3). From 2007 to 2019, beyond OS, JMS, JME, JMI and Organization, deontic enunciations on Jermier’s (1985) texts have been published in Management Learning (ML) (Gabriel and Connell, 2010; Rhodes, 2019), Culture and Organization (CO) (Rhodes, 2015), Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management (QROM) (Donnelly et al., 2013), Leadership (L) (Sinclair, 2013), Praxis (P) (Aguirre, 2012) and the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) (Kaarst-Brown, 2017). These citations are evidence of a growing interest in narrative fiction from different journals and areas in MOS.

Table 3.

The analytical elements of essays from narrative fiction that cited Jermier (1985) from 2007 to 2019.

Author	Year	Title	Subject covered by narrative fiction	Publication outlet	Clusters of Journals	Modality type
Hansen et al.	2007	Truth or consequences	Narrative	Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI)	Management Learning (ML) (2), JMI (2), Organization Studies (OS), Culture and Organization (CO), Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management (QROM), Leadership (L), Praxis (P) and European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS)	Deontic right
Whiteman and Phillips	2008	The role of narrative fiction and semi-fiction in organizational studies	Narrative (semi)fiction	Sage		Deontic obligation
Gabriel and Connell	2010	Co-creating stories: Collaborative experiments in storytelling	Narrative, storytelling and fiction as pedagogy	ML		Deontic right
Elm and Taylor	2010	Representing wholeness: Learning via theatrical productions	Organizational learning and theatrical presentations	JMI		Deontic right
Aguirre	2012	Management Flexible y Toxicidad Organizacional	Management and Organization Studies	P		Deontic obligation
Donnelly et al.	2013	It’s hard to tell how research feels	Narrative fiction	QROM		Deontic obligation
Sinclair	2013	A material dean	Leadership	L		Deontic right
Phillips et al.	2014	Writing organization as gendered practice	Gender	OS		Deontic right
Pitsis	2014	The Poetic Organization	Literary genre	Macmillan		Deontic obligation
Rhodes	2015	Writing organization/romancing fictocriticism	Experimental writing	CO		Deontic right
Kaarst-Brown	2017	Once upon a time	Literary genre	EJIS		Deontic obligation
Rhodes	2019	Senseational organization theory!	Feminist writing	ML		Deontic right

Of the 12 essays, five focus exclusively on the need to ‘develop’ the notion of narrative fiction. Whiteman and Phillips (2008) recognize that it is still difficult to find academic texts integrating (semi)fiction and MOS, presenting Jermier (1985), Whiteman (2004), Taylor (2000) as exceptions. They claim that fiction and MOS need to be combined with greater force to explore new data sources and alternative ways of representing theories. Donnelly et al. (2013), from the statements written in Jermier (1985), suggests that fiction is good for dealing with ‘emotions’ and has already been used to report work experiences. Aguirre (2012) relies on Jermier (1985) to confirm and extend MOS stories’ relevance. Pitsis (2014) starts with Jermier (1985) to affirm that academic writing needs to take an experimental format, as ‘poetics’, which she proposes, in which the organization is understood as a series of texts. Finally, Kaarst-Brown (2017) extends the path of knowledge inscribed in Jermier (1985) to the field of MOS and Information Systems.

There exist also enunciations on Jermier’s (1985) work that seek to produce new directions. Phillips et al. (2014), when talking about how to perform multigender research as a path to organizational knowledge, refer to Jermier (1985) to affirm that such investigations can be produced through narrative fiction in MOS; the notion of gender as an object of study is replaced by the idea of the gendered nature of researching and writing, challenging masculine orthodoxy in representing findings in MOS. A year later, Rhodes (2015) discussed the beginning of narrative fiction in MOS, teasing management scholarship with the possibility of escaping scientific discourse to embrace multiple possibilities of representation in organization theory. For him, Jermier (1985) allowed the presences of new studies from emerging literary genres about organizations. Based on the idea of ‘fictocriticism’, Rhodes (2015) analyses ‘possible’ narratives and expressions ‘for writing about organizations’ that engage different genres to connect research and researcher. Sometime later, in the same direction, Rhodes (2019) presents ‘scriptology’ as writing and knowledge proffering emancipatory political writing about organizations, a ‘new textual aesthetic’ framed as a democratic/egalitarian practice. He uses Jermier (1985) and others to show how the field was creatively breaking the rules regarding academic writing to represent reliable findings neutrally. Sinclair (2013) uses Jermier (1985) to confirm an approach related to ‘creative narrative’, which is the notion used to create a new path to organizational knowledge that equally engages different modes of writing; a narrative fiction about the day a new principle gave her ‘inaugural speech’, a text that is deconstructed. Based on this research strategy, Sinclair (2013) highlighted the materiality of organizational writing and practice. Hansen et al., (2007), developing from examples set by Jermier (1985) and others, produced a pioneering form of knowledge construction, where improvisation was analysed through a spontaneous narrative that was developed in a group. Three years later, Gabriel and Connell (2010) use Jermier (1985) and other authors to claim that narrative fiction in MOS is not actually new, suggesting the collaborative creation of stories, akin to Japanese Renga, appears as a ‘possible’ path to organizational intellectual and aesthetic knowledge. Elm and Taylor (2010) depart from Jermier (1985) to recognize efforts that integrate intellectual and aesthetic knowledge. They point out that theatre, which integrates intellectual and aesthetic knowledge, makes organizational and reflective learning imaginable.

1985–2019

From the 79 texts analysed, about 7.6 percent of the total tried to deny the theoretical path proposed by Jermier (1985). Jermier’s (1985) work has had a significant weight and impact in multiple organizational fields, except for institutional theory (3), business ethics (1), chaos theory (1) and bureaucracy (1). The majority of later articles using Jermier (1985) affirm its statements and relate to them to confirm or produce alternative paths to knowledge.

Discussion

The use made of the method

Using the empirical method developed, we accounted for disjunctions in alternative bodies of management learning knowledge produced about narrative fiction in MOS. On one hand, the empirical method allows to group and analyse longitudinal and descriptive data about disjunctions, in terms of the clustering of publication outlets investigating narrative fiction in MOS, the most consistent authors and the subjects covered by narrative fiction articles citing Jermier (1985) (see Tables 1 to 3). On the other hand, using the empirical method developed, the present study adds to earlier efforts by offering a particular version of narrative fiction’s historical and current meanings in MOS. From 1985 to 1995, within the symbolic turn (Frost, 1985; Hunt, 1985), an understanding of the uses of narrative fiction in MOS was developed and extended. The relationship between writer and reader was transformed as emergent forms of representation were offered allowing non-traditional management academics to write about the subjects’ imagination, which is added to the text for the reader to read alternatively. Thus, the reader can learn how to inscribe the subjective experiences of organizational life (fantasy, humour, anger, aesthetics) in the academic text by reading Gabriel (1995) and Phillips (1995). The relationship between writer and reader was also transformed to interpret the text being read as a literary work. However, the texts inscribed within this period show that the relationship constructed between writer and subject still depends on the social context of particular and similar organizations so that the research findings can be compared; both authors state that stories and narratives cannot disregard context, meanings or quality descriptions. Finally, the relationship that is produced between reader and subject was broadened, since the writer can now offer enigmatic, contradictory and complex situations of workers in organizational contexts as experiments for the reader, who can choose between modes of subjectivity (subject as a hero, heroic survivor, victim or object of love) that are inscribed and can be observed (Gabriel, 1995), either through a fictional narrative aimed at teaching and learning management, as well as offering aesthetic resources, data or method (Phillips, 1995).

From 1996 to 2006, the relationship that is constructed between writer and reader is still open to dialogue and inspiration; the reader has the freedom to judge the writer and their text, being inspired to build upon the literary form inscribed in it. Whiteman (2004) argues that the relationship built between the writer of narrative fiction and its readers is based on empathy and curiosity; scientific authority does not guarantee readers’ persuasive impact. Rhodes and Brown (2005) reinforce this idea by stating that different writings and different readings made from these emergent writings enact multiple consequences of practical value for MOS. In this case, Rhodes and Brown (2005), Whiteman (2004) and Taylor (2000) recognize that the ambiguity of fictional narrative is of practical, pragmatic value for MOS because it facilitates learning of theories by managers and researchers which, in turn, can increase the utility and employability of such intellectual constructions. The writers embrace practice as enacting multiple realities. Rhodes and Brown (2005) assume that writing is both a method and a tool for producing realities, involving the reader in a description that presupposes the impossibility of representing the research subject; the responsibility of the writer to the reader and the subject is in regard only to their writing and research practices. Hindmost, the relationship between writer and subject was modified since defending the validity of the fictitious research character becomes necessary with narrative fiction’s turn to language.

A simple but necessary question was being asked: can writer/s (researcher/s) and subject/s communicate about their aesthetics judgements, feelings, experiences (Taylor, 2002)? Rhodes and Brown (2005) postulated that it is possible to do so by employing the idea of reflexivity in narrative fiction in MOS; for these authors, it is necessary to recognize the author’s presence in the text. The situated value of research findings makes it necessary to consider the writer’s ethical position concerning the research subject – who is no longer the Other of the research – when making their statements. Rhodes and Brown (2005) suggest that it is by including narrative fiction in MOS that the crisis of representation that academics in the social sciences and applied social sciences face may be addressed. They state that if narrative fiction employs pragmatism, reflexivity and ethics, one must consider issues of the writer’s methodological and authorial responsibility to the researched subject. Here, Ng and Cock (2002) produce an interesting counterpoint by stating that in the relationship that reflexivity produces between writer and subject, the reader should also be associated as an integral part of the text so that the naive idea that we build ‘true’ texts in MOS becomes impossible. Accordingly, the relationship built between subject and reader becomes less paradoxical since this disjunction produces the effect that narrative fiction does not necessarily need to account for a social context as the basis for research acquiring valid status. The major revision requirement imposed on Jermier (1985) from JOM’s reviewers was the invention of such a context in dealing with symbolism in MOS. Consequently, disjunction is evident throughout the text written by Taylor (2000), including a play at the end of the article. It allows the reader to navigate between the positions and natures of ‘capitalist pigs’ and ‘farmers’, as well as between different methods used to circumvent worker and organizational problems, due to organizational change from ‘communism’ to ‘capitalism’ in a fictitious world, one in which humans and animals have their voices. In this period, the relationship produced between writer, reader and subject was transforming due to aesthetic theorizing, challenging and responding to limits imposed on scientific representations by being reflexive, pragmatic and ethical, using research findings as guidelines for dealing with issues of responsibility in writing about organizations.

From 2007 to 2019, collaborative and hybrid writing styles emerged as possibilities, linking up more intensely with ideas current in symmetrical anthropology, stressing that organizations are sociomaterial-semiotic constructions. Writing is enacted as an emancipatory and democratic practice either through theatre or the construction of new concepts; new literary genres, notions and ideas are proposed for thinking about organizational research and theory from a postmodern perspective. Accordingly, the ordering and disciplining function of writing is highlighted and representations about organizations and organizational workers are made without distinction between fiction and fact. The writer context is still part of the subject context, allowing readers to enquire into the modes of writing narrative fiction in MOS. However, more strongly, the subjects’ power to judge others (see Strathern, 1987) became part of writing narrative fiction in MOS. How writers can represent to readers the aesthetic perspectives of research subjects on organizational life – ‘the corporeality of feeling through senses’ and ‘the ensuing judgment’ – became a prominent methodological issue (see Warren, 2008: 561). The new methods include the research subjects’ experience and judgement while addressing the research practice, allowing one to ‘evoke and represent others’ aesthetic perspectives on organizational life’ (Warren, 2008: 564). As writer, reader and subject become part of the research, each can judge the research (and its researchers) (Strathern, 1987; Warren, 2008). Alternatives were elaborated to apprehend how it feels to work in different organizations, using photography, for example (see Warren, 2008). MOS has ceased to be as monolithic as it once might have been thought to be by tendencies striving to create monoliths. MOS no longer excluded narrative fiction, nor was the latter merely a crack in the empirical domain, letting in light (Cohen, 1992). If narrative fiction was built in opposition to scientific discourse, that science is now transformed by other academic realities, revealing different individual lives, enacting multiple organizational realities.

Considering the method

The overall goal has been to develop an empirical method for analysing exemplary publication tracing disjunctions in the context of management learning, exploring the terrain through Jermier (1985) as an exemplar whose break with conventions sparked transformations in MOS’ history of ideas. In consonance with past scholarship, the present empirical method teaches the importance of describing: (1) context/origins surrounding the production of an exemplary publication, so researchers can critically evaluate its content/key ideas; (2) the use made of the ideas inscribed in the exemplar and (3), lessons to be learnt from exemplars. Moreover, we contribute to a specialized literature. The empirical method is systematized so that researchers can learn (Kor et al., 2016) and verify appropriate uses of exemplary publication in question (Anderson, 2006; Anderson and Lemken, 2019) and account for disjunctions in the context of the management learning that they envision.

The research method opens up possibilities for future analysis of other texts and contexts of scientific knowledge production in MOS, either for teaching management students or supporting researchers’ practice. In terms of implications, readers of our work from narrative fiction, critical theory, Marxism, critical realist framings, postmodern and interpretivist approaches could relate our empirical method – alongside Jermier (1985) and those exemplary publications extending it – to their frames of reference. Beyond topical areas, researchers from emergent philosophical and methodological frameworks increasingly recognize writers, readers and subjects not only as part of the research but as also having a right to be critically engaged with it. The interest in writing responsibly to allow readers and subjects to enquire into methods of scientific representation can, to some extent, also relate and use our empirical method in their specific contexts. Moreover, there are apparent methodological implications for future management scholars. The method can be used to understand the historical transformation of ideas in different subfields in MOS by using exemplary publication. Instead of producing a systematic/integrative literature review to offer ‘a historical narrative of serializing contributions, in order to show stages in the development of ideas within the field’ (Locke and Golden-Biddle, 1997) (Hibbert et al., 2014: 281), researchers can be guided by the search for disjunctions to chart decisive turning points in subsequent developments of a field.

Nevertheless, the present investigation selected a particular text and was limited to the objective conditions imposed by this choice. The present article discusses the importance of exemplary publication for scholarship, teaching and learning, through theoretical and empirical investigation. If an exemplary publication was analysed from another field of enquiry, such as reengineering, using Hammer (1990), for example, the application of the method would show disjunction in the context of a field of studies in which peaks of citations would be mapped, the authors rectifying, denying or extending the ideas inscribed in Hammer (1990) would be described, management tools dialoguing with or seeking to replace the reengineering work would be addressed. Students could be assigned works posited as exemplary breaks by the instructor and asked to chart the nature of the disruption and its subsequent developments and implications for practice.

In the context of our article, use of the method would contribute to students’ critical thinking and reflection on management ideas and concepts historically. Accordingly, the empirical method inscribed in the present article can and should be used in the teaching/learning of students to be necessarily interested not only in learning which management techniques work instrumentally (Robbins, 1997, apud Cummings and Bridgman, 2011) but also in appreciating the complexity and diversity of management education. As Cummings and Bridgman (2011: 89) state, if

we believe that what we see as ‘the best way’ changes over time; or if we believe that it is not the latest theories that run organizations but managers making judgments about the relative merits of different ideas and how these might be interpreted, then a critical appreciation of history should be of interest and will be of great use to students.

Conclusion

Researching exemplary publication is a task that requires exhaustiveness and direction provided by an analytic backbone, the use of narrative and methods which we have charted in this article. For MOS, the significance of this article is in offering methodological ideas to account for exemplary publication. The method offers practical direction for teaching management research students and researchers how to identify and use exemplary MOS publications; while we have used Jermier (1985), others may use the method to analyse work creating disjunctions in other fields.

We began by mapping exemplars, publication outlets, authors and topics of interest for narrative fiction in MOS that strove to offer guidelines for doing, writing and publishing qualitative articles. Second, we provided evidence that the negations, assertions and extensions – deontic obligation/need and deontic right/possibility – of Jermier’s statements afford new insights for future research. Adopting the poststructuralist idea that theory can challenge internal contexts/conventions of scholarship and transform the social context/life of investigators (see Strathern, 1987), the ideas inscribed in this article lead to theory development that will occur if further investigations develop and transform the method elaborated and in so doing, pluralizing management learning and MOS’s official texts. We produced an empirical method for conducting a theorized literature review, one that does not take the literature as simply something that reflectively corresponds to an external reality, so much as being an evolving constitution of what realities are taken to be. Third, we showed that exemplary publications that afford breaks with dominant trends can enable greater MOS diversity and quality to emerge in qualitative research over time, independently of initial reception. Fourth, the article demonstrated a research method for tracing disjunctions in the context of narrative fiction in MOS; the field emerged from a paradigmatic precursor to explode into multiple approaches to writing, reading, doing, judging qualitative research, transforming the relationships produced between writer, reader and subject. The context of not only the organization and the researcher but also the reader who classifies a text as persuasive or not is recognized in the text. The research subjects, those judged as others and whose co-authoring is essential for any reflective and ethical organizational investigation, have their stories to tell as well. That was the kernel of Jermier’s (1985) dream and nightmare, a device that articulated voices from the field.

Postscript

The research written up as a nightmare by Jermier (1985) (and lived managerially as a dream) was of a Tampa Bay phosphate plant in Florida, close by where he lived and worked at the University of South Florida in the Tampa Bay area. On 3 April 2021, the nightmare of fictional alienation of being human in an inhumane plant was rendered all the more nightmarish when a significant leak occurred at a large pond at the Piney Point phosphate mine, which contained water polluted with radioactive materials from phosphorus and nitrogen from the old phosphate plant. The pond sits inside a stack of phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer that is radioactive, containing small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium as well as large concentrations of radon gas. Perhaps the critical theory was insufficiently critical in the light of events 36 years later? (Story sourced from Associated Press in Florida and carried in The Guardian, 3 April 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/03/florida-emergency-piney-point-phosphate-plant-pond-leak-radioactive-flood-ron-desantis, accessed 4 April 21).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Gabrielle Durepos for her editorial guidance. Moreover, they would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and efforts in improving this article. Finally, they are also very thankful for the helpful observations received on earlier drafts from John Jermier.

Authors’ Note

We write this article in appreciation of the gift that Peter Frost and Ralph Stablein bequeathed as a legacy for a world that, sadly, is no longer graced by their scholarship and presence.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Bruno Luiz Américo

Stewart Clegg

Notes

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