Sociology, Equality and Education
In: Sociology: the journal of the British Sociological Association, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 391-392
ISSN: 1469-8684
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In: Sociology: the journal of the British Sociological Association, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 391-392
ISSN: 1469-8684
In: Journal of educational administration & history, Band 46, Heft 3, S. 244-269
ISSN: 1478-7431
In: Public administration: an international journal, Band 90, Heft 4, S. 974-999
ISSN: 1467-9299
The potential of an ironic perspective for understanding public service change is portrayed through a re‐analysis of data on a merger between two English primary sector schools, an extreme change involving organizational termination alongside phoenix‐like emergence. The ironic perspective focuses on synchronic dissonance and diachronic divergence in meaning underlying verbal and situational forms of irony respectively, endemic sources of organizational ambiguity, its exacerbation by change which creates conditions favouring irony, and the dynamics of their relationship. The case illustrates how ironic consequences flowed iteratively from diverse sources of ambiguity for those managing the merger, often recursively generating further irony. It is suggested that an ironic perspective can deepen theoretical understanding of the relative unmanageability of public service change, within structural parameters delimiting its scope. This perspective also offers a generic heuristic for organizational analysis with potential to inform efforts to cope with ambiguity and consequent irony in the change process.
In: Public administration: an international quarterly, Band 90, Heft 4, S. 974-999
ISSN: 0033-3298
In: Organization studies: an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to the study of organizations, organizing, and the organized in and between societies, Band 29, Heft 11, S. 1427-1447
ISSN: 1741-3044
This paper puts forward a perspective on organizational irony framed in terms of two reciprocal faces, as a contribution to the developing interest in irony as a tool for organizational analysis. Endemic irony explores theoretical approaches implying that irony is a characteristic of all organizations, extended by contingent manifestations in contemporary organizations. Pragmatic irony conceptualizes how organization members engage in ironic strategies and deploy verbal irony as modes of coping — with both endemic discrepancies between intention and outcome, and contingent contradictions generated through major change efforts. This perspective is offered as a heuristic for exploring organizations whose members are inherently confronted by irony. First, those philosophical, literary and organization theory approaches to irony are reviewed which relate most closely to organizational irony. Second, the endemic nature of organizational irony is elaborated. Third, distinctive manifestations of irony in contemporary organizations that extend endemic irony are discussed. Fourth, instances of pragmatic irony in contemporary organizations, conceived as the reciprocal of endemic irony, are explored. Finally, the value of an ironic perspective as a means of understanding organizations is asserted and suggestions offered for future theory-building and research.