Abstract
Academic Crimes
In their recent editorial, Meyer and Quattrone (2021) muse over the prospect that academics might be considered as ‘accomplices’ in the popularization of the concept of post-truth in the media and wider society. If true, there is a profound irony to this charge: while we strive to research with impact, to show that our research matters in the ‘real world’, perhaps the most influential of academic contributions in recent times has been to undercut and destabilize the firm ground of scientific expertise upon which academics stake their claims to new knowledge. Continuing the criminal investigation, here I want to explore the extent to which academics might be considered as accomplices in another scholarly crime. My concern lies with the degree to which an academic obsession with the escalation of complexity acts to insulate and distance our research from making worthwhile contributions to tackling the most pressing and urgent issues of our times. Spurred on by institutionalized norms of what it means to be an academic and a publication system in which obscurity is an effective strategy to publish papers, we have developed an extreme allergy to simplicity.
The Complexity Arms Race
Our aversion to simplicity is symptomatic of a complexity arms race at work in organizational scholarship, where increasingly elaborate and eclectic theoretical frameworks are used to narrate and categorize the workings of organizations and their linkages with wider society. We are often told that we live in an increasingly complex world. In the face of this complexity, theoretical order is discouraged, messiness is celebrated. Complexity is to be cultivated and embraced. More complex understandings are to be worked towards. Simplicity is formally discouraged. Reflecting on the state of theory development in organizational scholarship, Tsoukas (2017) urges us to resist calls to simplify our theories; he implores, ‘Don’t simplify, complexify’, asserting that greater ‘theoretical complexity is needed to account for organizational complexity’.
Tsoukas’ (2017) explicit imperative to ‘complexify’ is reinforced by more subtle, culturally embedded tendencies and dispositions among academics. In academic circles, complexity is a good in-and-of itself, it is a currency, a form of capital, and one that serves to reproduce a hierarchical order of value that seeps out in both our language and our practices. In academia, complexity is good, it is clever, it is sophisticated, it is nuanced, it is academic. Simplicity is unrefined, it is obvious, it is journalistic, it is crude, it is vulgar. Complexity is sexy – it sells. Simplicity does not. Nowhere is this more clearly borne out than in the titles of contributions to Organization Studies itself: since the journal’s creation in 1980, 49 articles feature the words ‘complex’, ‘complexity’ or ‘complexify’ in their title; the same search for the terms ‘simple’, ‘simplicity’ or ‘simplify’ returns not a single result.
This culturally reinforced celebration of complexity in academia is further reproduced by a publication system that incites its escalation. In offering more and more interpretive avenues to be pursued, complexification sustains the health of an academic industry that thrives on the churning out of convoluted ‘contributions’. It is clear that maintaining this economy of micro-contributions and ultra-petite refinements of existing works is in our immediate interests as academics (publications mean prizes!) as well as those of publishers (as a senior academic colleague has reminded me on more than one occasion, ‘Don’t forget – journals need papers!’). What is far less clear, however, is how the institutionalized complexification of academic work is in the interests of producing research that yields greater knowledge and understanding about the workings of organizations.
Of course, simplicity should not be seen as a good in-and-of itself either. Indeed, in response to blatant over-simplification, the invocation of complexity (‘I think it’s a little bit more complex than that!’) can be an important way of opening up an issue for deeper enquiry. What this points towards is that there are varying degrees of simplicity and complexity, and that too much or too little of either can be damaging. For instance, overly simple models of human activity like the neoclassical economic idea of humans as ‘rational utility maximizers’ conceal many of the nuances and tensions of human life. Over-simplification is also present in humanity’s most malevolent tendencies. Racism is perhaps the example par excellence of over-simplification; deep-rooted social antagonisms are distilled, reduced and projected into hatred of a particular group. Yet, simplicity is also a characteristic of humanity at its most brilliant. Simplicity in works of art, literature, or music can be incredibly beautiful and has the capacity to enlighten and inspire. We might say, then, that we have crude simplicity (over-simplification designed to conceal difficult or messy issues) and elegant simplicity (simplification that brings clarity and aesthetic harmony or leads to a neat solution, as in a mathematical proof). Distinguishing between elegance and crudeness is an unavoidably subjective activity, but a useful heuristic to assist in this task is to question the ends to which simplification is put. We should ask: Has this matter been simplified to guide us (as in a map) or to erase a more complex and messy reality (as in political campaign slogans, like ‘Take back control’)?
Just as with simplicity, so too there are varieties and degrees of complexity. We can have enlightening complexity, where a matter once thought to be simple is shown to be more complex than first meets the eye. This brand of complexity is socially and academically useful and can be used to further understandings and overturn flawed assumptions or lazy reductionisms. Many organizational scholars undoubtedly work in this mode, but a great many more are now deep in a mode of mystifying complexity. Contrary to enlightening complexity, mystifying complexification is an academic currency in which researchers strive to make both simple and complex phenomena appear more complex than they really are. Tourish (2020, p. 105) suggests that academia trains us to work like this, encouraging us to deliberately complexify simple ideas ‘in an attempt to be taken seriously’. This mystification typically proceeds right from the beginning of articles, in which a lengthy, theoretically laden, and often infuriatingly unambitious research question is posed as if it were casting light on an urgent and pressing issue. Again, here the ends of complexification must be questioned to distinguish between mystifying and enlightening complexity: Is this complexity necessary for us to grasp an issue, or is it deployed merely to tease out a publication (or, even better. . . publications!) from a trivial matter?
What is perhaps most damaging about mystifying complexification is the way that it directly contravenes what academic research and intellectual endeavour should be about: rather than enabling the generation and dissemination of knowledge and understanding, mystifying complexification creates what Guy Debord would call a mere spectacle of scholarship (see Flyverbom & Reinecke, 2017), a cryptic pseudo-world of research that has less and less connection with real and important social and organizational phenomena. In this context, it is wholly unsurprising that so many bemoan the isolation and detachment of academia from the ‘real world’. While this charge is often overblown out of a reactionary suspicion towards and dislike of intellectuals, to a great extent it is a valid critique of the esotericism and detachment of self-referential academic work (see Alvesson, Einola, & Schaefer, 2022, on rethinking our role in society as academics). This detachment feels increasingly untenable in the face of the myriad allocative, distributive, social and ecological crises and struggles of our times. For those concerned by this, the question is: What can be done to disrupt this damaging tendency in our work? In closing, I propose two simple, practical changes that we can make to our work. Together, these act as an important counterweight to the harmful effects of mystifying complexification.
Lenin’s Simple Question
As someone who has an affinity for what is nowadays sneered at as ‘grand theory’ (Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, etc.), I find the regular recurrence of Lenin in academic and political circles – of both left- and right-wing persuasion – to be amusing, but absolutely unsurprising. Certainly, Lenin is not a universally popular figure, far from it; his legacy is divisive and controversial and any attempt to apologise for or ignore this would be deeply misguided. Thus, we find Lenin popping up in academic and political discourse not because his ideas are popular or his works widely accepted, but because he formulated one of the most enduring questions in political theory: What Is To Be Done? (Lenin, 1929). This famous question endures and recurs because of its disarming rhetorical simplicity. Lenin might have entitled his essay ‘Reflections on competing currents of Marxist thought and their diverse and divergent implications for revolutionary political strategy in 20th century Russia’; I have no doubt that it would be assigned to absolute historical obscurity had he done so. In contrast, the durability of the question ‘What Is To Be Done?’ exemplifies the force of simplicity of thought at its best. The arguments set out within What Is To Be Done? are far from simple, but as an animating force, this simple question is exceptionally powerful. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the subtitle to Lenin’s essay is Burning Questions Of Our Movement. In his writing, Lenin addresses what he perceived to be the most urgent and pressing issues for his cause, a clarity of purpose that we could certainly learn from today when many are invested in the production of ever more tedious micro-contributions.
This, then, is my practical suggestion for how we address the complexity escalation in organization studies: we should all try to be a bit more Leninist, ‘not to return to Lenin, but to (. . .) retrieve the same impulse in today’s constellation’ (Žižek, 2002, p. 11, emphasis added). How? First, we should state our research questions in the simplest terms we can. This means that research questions should be shortened and translated out of dense theoretical ciphers into easily understandable language. Research questions should not require a mammoth effort to discern what it is that is being asked. I am tired of having to read, read again and re-read research questions and hypotheses to comprehend exactly what it is that the authors are trying to find out. By this point, I have lost both interest and the will to read on. Second, we should focus our research energies on the ‘burning questions’ of our times – the climate emergency and its consequences, the casualty of truth in democracies, the return of war to Europe, refugee crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine and beyond, and so on. Instead of investing considerable energy into solving so-called ‘theoretical puzzles’ at the micro-organizational level, we should wrestle with these existential issues. I have no doubt that research which embraces these two simple requirements – a direct, simply stated research question that addresses a subject matter of ‘burning’ importance – will be of great interest and use to the traditional readership of Organization Studies and, more importantly, perhaps to many more beyond.