Naming the ideological reflexively: Contesting organizational norms and practices

Abstract

In this article I develop a reflexive conception of ideology that can be applied to the study of organizations. By drawing out and making explicit the researcher’s role in naming a social phenomenon as ideological, I argue that a more consistent, reflexive and critically attuned notion of the ideological can be developed. The neglect of the position of the researcher in critical conceptions of ideology stems largely from a problematic division in existing approaches between the researcher, as objective expert, and researched. As an alternative, I build on the idea of research reflexivity in organization studies to develop a notion of ideology in which the partial position of the researcher is rendered explicit. To illustrate this conception of naming the ideological, I characterize the norms and practices of Job Centres as reflecting an ideology of capitalist welfare regulation. The article presents a fresh way of conceptualizing ideology as a reflexive analytical concept which can fruitfully be brought to bear on different aspects of organizations.

Rising unemployment in the UK, reaching 2.67 million in December 2011, 8.4% of the population (Office for National Statistics, 2012a), and the accompanying wave of public sector cut backs, has resulted in increasingly overcrowded Job Centres. Although a large number of the unemployed opt not to receive jobseekers allowance with its accompanying sanctions and requirements, the claimant count for jobseekers allowance was 1.60 million in December 2011 (Office for National Statistics, 2012b). In Job Centres, individuals are directed, often by private security guards with group 4 logos, into different parts of Job Centres on a fortnightly basis. From my own experience of the Job Centre and from discussions with others who have claimed or are claiming jobseekers allowance it was evident that within this large bureaucratic structure, ¹ members of staff can often be unsure of people’s entitlements within the UK’s complex benefits system often resulting in claims that are responded to slowly and in uneven fashion. ² Added to this is a series of successive governments in the UK which have increasingly ratcheted up the language of opposition to sections of the unemployed, citing a refusal to work hard in looking for jobs or sheer laziness as the primary policy problem; ³ rather than underlying social or structural causes.

I will use Job Centres as an example here, drawing primarily on my own experiences of unemployment. As an empirical frame of reference this is both partial and highly selective. Yet through exploring this personal experience I develop a conception of naming the ideological in which the researcher explicitly recognizes their own ideological and social positionality. An initial motivation for this article was my own experiences of the job seeking process and the various enforced requirements that accompanied this; ‘results driven’ private providers had a key role in the process. Private providers have been given an increasingly central role in the operations of Job Centres in recent years (see for example Gentleman, 2012). My own job seeking tasks and requirements were passed on to a private provider after 6 months. These private providers are often desperate to meet government stipulated targets (National Audit Office, 2012) and place additional responsibilities upon ‘job seekers’ such as further interviews and group meetings. When claiming jobseekers allowance I had the pervasive sense that the enforced and routinized ‘job seeker’ responsibilities translated political questions and issues around people’s needs into legal and administrative requirements (Fraser, 1987).

Indeed, when I was subject to this process the sense of compulsion and personal responsibility that was inculcated through Job Centre practices struck me as wholly ideological, spawning a reflexive engagement with the ideological aspects of Job Centres. This initial reflection broadened out into a wider consideration of how ideology might be better understood in relation to organizations that have a central role in shaping and governing our daily lives. As an alternative to existing accounts of ideology in organizational research (see for example, Bridgman, 2008; Burawoy, 1979; Rehn, 2008; Sinclair, 1992) in this article I develop a reflexive conception of ideology. The notion of naming is important here, it refers to the researcher’s characterization of a given social phenomena, it entails an act of gathering (Glynos and Howarth, 2007: 187) in which a set of phenomena are drawn together and named. The idea of naming points to the researcher’s characterization of social realities, the researcher invokes certain meanings or resemblances (Wittgenstein, 1999: 32) by giving a name to a social phenomenon. ⁴

In examining the uses and meanings of ideology in organization studies and presenting an alternative account, I will build on existing critical conceptions of the term. The concept of ideology in organization theory and research has a diverse and divergent set of meanings and appropriations shaped through different theoretical visors. It has been associated with dominant classes (Bendix, 1956; Burawoy 1979; Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980), a measurable set of beliefs (Goll and Zeitz, 1991), business schools (Contrado and Wensley, 2004), management studies research (Alvesson, 1987; Rehn, 2008), different fashionable trends and concepts (Bartell, 1976; Cremin, 2010; Prasad and Prasad, 1994; Sinclair, 1992), social groups (Watson, 1982), a management ethos (Rehn, 2008) and as a key factor facilitating or blocking organizational change (Meyer, 1982; Stace, 1996). While some have argued that in recent years the concept of ideology has become unfashionable in much of organization and management research (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000: 1145; Bridgman, 2008: 637), there is a continuing engagement with the concept in some areas of critical organization studies (see for example Cremin, 2010; De Cock and Bohm, 2007; Fleming and Spicer, 2005; Hodge et al., 2010). As an alternative to these conceptions I draw out the role of the researcher in constructing social phenomena as a unity through naming the ideological. This emphasis on naming begins to render explicit the ideological perspective and social position from which we name. My intention here is not to fix the meaning of ideology but rather to draw out certain family resemblances (Wittgenstein, 1999: 32) of the concept. By which I mean different features that are invoked by the term and which are rendered visible as a unity through the act of naming the ideological.

In previous critical accounts of ideology it has often been situated as a kind of falsity or false consciousness (Rosen, 1996) that stood in ultimate opposition to some conception of truth (Foucault, 1991: 60) or science, which the researcher could somehow grasp from beyond ideology. This is one of the reasons why the deployment of ideology in critical organizational research declined in the 1990s when there was a growth in Foucauldian analysis. Foucault problematized the truth and falsity binary that accompanied the notion of scienticity, arguing that this was a product of social and political forces (Bridgman, 2008: 635). Foucauldian approaches tend to see truth as shaped through power relations rather than as something the researcher can objectively stipulate (see for example Jermier et al., 1994; Knights, 2002; McKinlay and Starkey, 1998; Sewell, 1998; Townley, 1993). However, I argue that this premise of the researcher as a detached and objective recorder of social truths does not need to accompany the use of ideology in social research, provided we draw out and make explicit the role of the researcher in naming the ideological.

Moving beyond the premise of detached objectivity that accompanies the deployment of ideology I draw on some of the recent critical work on reflexivity (see for example Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000; Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008; Cunliffe, 2003; Cunliffe and Easterby-Smith, 2004; Hardy and Clegg, 1997; Hardy et al., 2001; Johnson and Duberley, 2003; Letiche, 2009; Rhodes, 2009; Wray-Bliss, 2003). While reflexivity in social theory has been understood in a variety of different ways, my focus here is specifically on research reflexivity in organization studies. I suggest that in naming the ideological we do not necessarily have to make recourse to some conception of an underlying social truth. By reflexivity here I mean an engagement with our own political perspective and social experience (Probyn, 1993) in relation to particular social groups and organizations that we might be investigating. Reflexivity is partly about being recursive (Ashmore, 1989: 30) in going back on oneself to examine your epistemological and political commitments; at the same time this is not a question of endless autobiographical self-analysis (Weick, 2002) rather it is an attempt to move forward in our research through greater awareness of ourselves and the conditions of our theorizing and writing. Reflexivity here denotes the researcher actively situating their own social, political and ontological position in the course of analysis, by rendering explicit one’s positionality and partiality in naming social realities (this conception is developed from Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008: 1524; Ford et al., 2010: 373; Johnson and Duberley, 2003: 281; Probyn, 1993; Rhodes, 2009: 658).

While the contribution developed in this article has a more general relevance in foregrounding the role of the researcher as an active agent in any characterization of social reality by reflexively drawing out the social and political position from which we characterize, the focus here is on ideology, since the use of ideology in critical organization studies has been particularly marked by an assumption of detached objectivity in which the political status of the researcher’s own views is not rendered explicit. In developing a reflexive conception of ideology the question of one’s own ideology and how it informs the naming of the ideological becomes an important issue. Theoretically, it will become evident that I belong to a community of leftist, post-structuralist, critical researchers. Further, I can be associated with a group of scholars who try to make academic careers out of applying an accompanying range of concepts from a mixture of continental philosophy and reworked versions of Marxism to contemporary social formations and organizations. As we will see, one feature that often characterizes the use of ideology is the attempt to situate something as politically contentious and questionable (see for example Barthes, 2009:170), around which a range of different positions can come together. Reflexivity calls on us to be sensitive to our own position and partiality when making this critique.

The aims of this article are threefold. First, I examine existing critical research on ideology in organization studies focusing on the dominant ideology thesis (DIT) and more recent interventions in Lacanian psychoanalysis. I draw on Lacanian psychoanalytic interventions because this approach has led to a recent resurgence in the use of ideology as a concept in organization studies. A division between researcher and researched is traced out in both these approaches which leads to a lack of theorization or analysis of the position from which the researcher speaks when using the term ideology. Second, the substantive contribution of the article is developed around a reflexive conception of ideology which emphasizes the researcher’s role in naming the ideological. In the latter part of this section I situate Probyn’s (1993) notion of experience as a potentially rich avenue through which to explore how the researcher might engage with their positionality reflexivity. In the third section I draw on this notion of experience and return to the illustrative example of Job Centres to show how this distinctive, reflexive conception of ideology can be brought to bear on Job Centres through naming them as ideological sites. Exploring this reflexive conception of ideology through the Job Centre case is intended to illustrate that when the researcher is explicit in recognizing how their own political commitments and social position frame the naming of social realities, partly through situating with their own experiences (Probyn, 1993) in the course of analysis, a more critically attuned and richer analysis can emerge.

Ideology in critical organization studies

In this section a problem that has bedevilled the employment of ideology in organization studies is traced out, which is the often unstated assumption that the researcher can be some form of objective arbiter who simply observes and records social truths. The notion that the researcher can objectively characterize social reality by naming and characterizing it in disengaged fashion has been widely critiqued from different perspectives (see Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Hindess, 1977; Wray-Bliss, 2002, 2003). From this premise of detached objectivity a dualism is created in social research between researcher and researched (see also Wray-Bliss, 2002, 2003) which I question. The reinforcement of this dualism is problematic because it results in the researcher not explicitly recognizing, and not situating the assumptions behind their own perspective.

I will trace out this dualism and the neglect of the position of the researcher in the Marxist DIT and in more recent Lacanian interventions in organization studies. In Marxist organizational research the position of the researcher is concealed through an underlying premise of scientific, ‘objective’ social research. Similarly Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches, despite providing a rich and deep analysis of subject formation, tend not to address or situate the partial position from which the researcher speaks. Both of these critical approaches to ideology in different ways retain a commitment to the idea of the researcher as an objective observer who records social realities; rather than one who has an active role in constructing them through the process of naming and characterizing social phenomena.

The dominant ideology thesis

The DIT is the principal critical conception of ideology in organizational analysis. Within the approach, ideology is associated with a managerial ruling elite and their ability to control and subordinate the work force. The DIT takes a variety of different forms, it is often associated with key concepts, such as teamwork (Sinclair, 1992) and human relations (Bartell, 1976); it has been connected to dominant trends in management studies (Alvesson, 1987; Rehn, 2008); managerial control (Alvesson, 1991; Anthony, 1977; Burawoy, 1979; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1988; Mumby, 1988; Thompson, 1980) and with the interests of dominant classes (Bendix, 1956; Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980).

The DIT approach consistently holds to a demarcation between ideology and science (for different ways of exploring this distinction see Althusser, 1970, 2008; Apter, 1964; Eagleton, 1991; Hindess, 1977; Laclau, 1996; Larrain, 1979; Sutton et al., 1956). Research in the DIT tradition has kept this premise of objectivity, which operates on the often unstated assumption that researchers are detached, ‘scientific’, observers of social reality (see for example Weiss and Miller, 1987). A key exponent of the DIT was Althusser, and his engagement with ideology led to a resurgence of the concept in Marxist theory. The distinction Althusser (1970) makes between ideology and science reflects certain premises about the scientific as separate from the ideological which are often assumed when the DIT position is taken in organization studies. Within Althusser’s (2008: 38) account ideology refers to an imaginary relation beneath which is an extra-ideological economic base (Althusser, 2008: 9). The question that arises here of course is: on what basis can economic relations be characterized and seen, if not from an ideological perspective? It is here that the problematic distinction between ideology and science comes into play. Much of Althusser’s (1970) contribution in Reading Capital is focused on establishing a scientific Marxism, and a conception of science that can be distinguished from ideology. The notion that phenomena are reduced to a certain theoretical essence and that this essence possesses an internal unity (Althusser, 1970: 84–85) seems to constitute the basis of a science for Althusser. It should be noted that this position is distinct from empirical science since, for Althusser, this involves a conflation of the real object, the empirical object, with the object of knowledge (Hindess, 1977: 196–197). Thus internal systematicity becomes the key feature of science; while ideology refers to the ‘lived relation between men and their world’ it exists when the practico-social pre-dominates over the theoretical, over knowledge (Althusser, 1970: 314).

A difficulty emerges here since one can only read ideology into other texts by drawing on concepts which themselves have practico-social roots and arise from lived relations. The attempt to establish a science on the basis of a set of concepts which are self-referential and systematic, amounts to a strange sort of dogmatism; since those concepts which do not have this status, and are thus ideological, can only be established on the basis of a pre-determined fiat (see Hindess, 1977: 209). The problem is that when one adopts any reasonably comprehensive definition of ideology as a set of ideas or beliefs it becomes exceptionally difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation, in which your own beliefs as a researcher can be cast as objective and non-ideological but other sets of beliefs are seen as essentially ideological since the researcher who claims to occupy some standpoint of extra ideological objectivity, either implicitly or explicitly, is faced with the following difficult question: on what firm basis can it be said that your own views are not ideological too?

As I will demonstrate, even when Althusser is not explicitly drawn on, his desire to establish an objective basis for Marxism as a science still hangs somewhere in the background of critical accounts in organization studies that are influenced by the DIT. There are a number of routes the DIT can take in the attempt to sustain the idea of the researcher as extra-ideological arbiter of social reality. One is to turn to the notion of interests as something that can be objectively stipulated. Weiss and Miller (1987) present a clear instance of this; they critique existing conceptions of ideology for lacking a sense of causality and for neglecting the question of ‘where ideas come from’ (Weiss and Miller, 1987: 107). Weiss and Miller (1987: 108) express a commitment to producing ‘testable hypothesis’, derived from an analysis of material interests. However, this results in the elision of the position from which the researcher speaks in their account.

The process of characterizing and testing managerial attitudes towards alcoholism which Weiss and Miller (1987) carry out is important in highlighting an instrumental orientation that managers display. They find that managers’ interests are best served by placing those that need to be treated on a program which results in improvements in productivity. However, this act of naming and characterizing an ‘ideology of alcoholism’ (Weiss and Miller, 1987: 113) has to be seen as a political and ideological act. It is an attempt to problematize an existing managerial practice from an alternative political perspective; but this is never made explicit. Ultimately, the situating of interests in a particular way arises from an underlying ideological commitment to a Marxist oriented perspective in which underlying class interests shape social relations.

Another option available to the DIT is to posit some alternative basis from which ideology originates, one not based on interests. This is the approach Burawoy (1979) takes in his classic work in organization studies, Manufacturing Consent. His analysis of how ‘conflict and consent are organized on the shop floor’ (Burawoy, 1979: 4) is based on an Althusserian commitment to the notion that there is an extra ideological, economic factor which is determining in the last instance (Burawoy, 1979: 16). Interestingly he argues that Marxism ‘can become an ideology’, when it becomes a political force and a part of political struggle (Burawoy, 1979: 18). However, the questions remain: what is Marxism as a form of analysis if it is not a part of political struggle? And how does it sustain a claim to being somehow extra ideological? Burawoy (1979: 20) abandons the notion of interests, arguing that this is itself an ideological construction of capitalism. But rather than following through with this important recognition that the researcher is speaking from a particular ideological position; he posits a notion of the ‘“radical needs” of the working class’ as an alternative (Burawoy, 1979: 20), which can equally be seen as ideological.

What is missing in Buroway’s rich account is any sense of his own intervention and position in his characterization of class relations of production. He situates the process of making out in which workers on the shop floor use various strategies to increase their productivity levels in order to receive increased pay (Burawoy, 1979: 51). Burawoy’s intervention is intended as a political one. There is a clear sense of a concealed desire for the subjects who are made into individuals by playing the game to be made into a class (Burawoy, 1979: 81). The primacy of class struggle is integral to a Marxist ideological lens, which is not explicitly recognized as ideological since this would result in the collapse of the status of the objective social researcher.

Burawoy (1979) is effectively repeating the pervasive researcher/researched dualism; rather than exploring his own relation to the community he is characterizing. What is valuable in Burawoy (1979) is his attempt to engage closely with the lives and the choices of the subjects on the shop floor; but interesting questions are left unexplored about what the subjects on the shop floor would think of his analysis and whether they would like to see a transformation from the capitalist system or indeed whether they could be convinced that this would be desirable. Such questions are crucial if we are to consider the position from which the researcher speaks when undertaking critical research in organization studies.

Another variant of the DIT in organization studies draws on Gramsci’s conception of hegemony. ⁵ While hegemony is understood in different ways, there has been some interest and engagement with the concept in critical management research (see for example Contu and Willmott, 2006; Humphreys and Brown, 2002; Spicer and Böhm, 2007). Hegemony alludes to the processes through which consensual or at least effective domination is rendered operative. In Gramsci’s analysis the role of the researcher in naming the ideological remains suggestive rather than fully developed. This may have been partly because Gramsci was conscious of Italian prison censors and could not be explicit about the conditions of his own writing. It is also because the classic Marxist commitment to a ‘scientific’ conception of social analysis means that issues around the position of the researcher, in naming and characterizing social realities from a particular ideological perspective, are avoided. Gramsci’s (1971: 366) analysis of hegemony is tied to an underlying class superstructure; a position that is again reliant on some unspecified extra ideological, ‘scientific’ standpoint from which class relations can be seen. However, Gramsci’s notion of the war of position does present a way to begin to theorize the positionality of the social researcher as an actor.

The war of position is about the battle for ideas and personnel; this is seen as the necessary prior stage to the war of movement in the West, which is a form of military conflict between classes. The war of position/manoeuvre clearly refers to class based social conflict (Gramsci, 1971: 232). However, if we widen the terrain of hegemony and see it instead as any political formation or group that seeks to dominate social space (see Contu, 2002; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 139; Spicer and Böhm, 2007: 1671); on this basis, one might refer to wars of position in which we recognize that there are a variety of political conflicts and contestations within a complex social terrain, rather than a class based one that automatically assumes primacy. We could then consider alternative social struggles such as those around gender, race and sexuality as different forms of war of position and hegemonic struggle.

A broader conception of positionality can be developed from the war of position, once the idea that it is rooted in pre-given class struggle is abandoned. From the starting point that there are wars of position we can consider the researcher’s positionality in naming and characterizing social realities. A sensitivity to one’s own position is central since it brings up questions that tend to be avoided such as: why is it that I, as a researcher, observe and write about social reality in a particular way and choose to characterize it as such? Why might the subjects I am studying characterize it differently? This wider focus on the position from which we speak as researchers also brings the political assumptions behind our own writing into view.

Lacanian psychoanalysis

Turning to more recent interventions in organization studies that use the concept of ideology, the term has had some resurrection through Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan himself rarely, if ever, mentions the concept of ideology in his work; but in Žižekian inspired re-appropriations of Lacan ideology often assumes quite a prominent role. ⁶ The employment of ideology in critical Lacanian approaches gives it renewed importance in organization studies, after the relative neglect of ideology within Foucauldian poststructuralism (Bridgman, 2008: 637). Different Lacanian inspired psychoanalytic approaches often mention ideology (see for example Cremin, 2010: 132; De Cock and Böhm, 2007: 825; Fleming and Spicer, 2003: 160; Hoedemaekers, 2010: 391; Jones and Spicer, 2005: 223–224). However, more often than not in Lacanian organization studies when ideology is used, the researcher effectively assumes the role of an expert who reads symptoms into social reality from a position of detachment.

In Lacanian organization theory while ideology is often mentioned there is little detailed theorization of the concept or clarification of its status and meaning in existing accounts. One exception to this is Cederström and Hoedemaekers’ (2010) recent edited collection on Lacan and organization, which does explore the relation between ideology and the position of subjects. In one piece, Cederström and Grassman (2010: 103) situate what they describe as an ‘ideology of happiness’. Drawing out a brief history of happiness they then resituate the concept as a symptom of late capitalist ideology and its obsession with satisfaction, self-help and the individual. For Cederström and Grassman (2010: 113–114) the ideology of happiness involves the subject projecting itself, in an illusory fashion, onto a particular stable self-image. A rich analysis of subject formation is presented here but there is no analysis of the researcher as subject. Cederström and Grassman (2010: 123) make some insightful social prescriptions regarding how ‘the ideology of happiness’ produces anxious subjectivities. Yet the positionality of the researcher is never directly engaged with, there is no open recognition that this questioning of happiness is a political questioning; it is an attempt to problematize the wider framework of self-help and self-responsibility that accompanies late capitalism. While this is not explicitly acknowledged in their account, the commitment to Lacanian ontology and to critiquing aspects of contemporary capitalism ideologically frames and shapes their characterization of social realities.

In a similar fashion, Fleming (2010) explores how contemporary workplaces conceal the ideologies at work in organizational practices. Fleming (2010: 171) situates a new managerial trend which involves embracing tempered radicalism and dissent amongst employees. In a sense this is the idea that subjects are free to express themselves unconventionally but ultimately do what work requires them to. While Fleming (2010: 171) refers to what he calls ‘an ideology of disidentification’, the question arises of whether the researcher is disidentifying by projecting and reading an ideology into the practices of others but not actually recognizing his own. In a sense Fleming (2010: 171) is speaking from an unspoken positionality, in which there is an absence of the researcher in the detached diagnosis of social symptoms.

Introducing reflexivity into the consideration of politically informed research practice would mean being more explicit about our own ideology and our partial and often uneasy position in relation to research subjects; uneasy in the sense that our political position may not always be consistent with theirs. The researcher names and speaks from a particular position when characterizing social realities, reflexivity calls us to engage with the location from which we speak—and analyse organizational realities. Seeing the I fully may be impossible but this does not take away the need to be sensitive to its partiality. When the researchers situate themselves as subjects they are inevitably postulating some form of I but it is an I which is at the same time always a construction. As the researcher explores their positionality reflexively they are temporarily fixing something multiple and constantly unfolding (Pullen, 2006: 278), there are multiple Is just as there are multiple social roles. A reflexive engagement with the researcher’s positionality involves constructing a narrative around the I, but it is a narrative in which the partiality and incompleteness that is explored leads potentially both to a greater modesty and a greater richness in the researcher’s analysis. Furthermore, I am not calling here for any pure self-understanding of the researcher’s own identity, which would only ever be partial and incomplete anyway; rather we should recognize the partiality of our own perspective as researchers and that our political commitments frame the naming of social realities.

The conception of ideology developed here is also arguably more consistent with some of the assumptions in the Lacanian approach. Lacanian psychoanalysis presents the subject as lacking in a given organizational identification, which begins to point to the gaps in an ideological formation. Subjects seek identification to conceal lack, which characterizes the subject in Lacanian analysis who is eternally incomplete; the subject exists in excess of a given organizational identification. There is already considerable work in organization studies exploring the lack that marks the subject’s identity in given organizational formations (see Driver, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Hoedemaekers, 2010; Jones and Spicer, 2005; Stavrakakis, 2008). While these accounts have presented some interesting insights regarding identity within organizations, they have not really posed the question of the researcher’s own relation to a given ideology or explored how the researcher’s own construction of social reality can be seen as lacking or incomplete. It is here that reflexivity comes into play.

If a subject is never entirely complete in a given identification, it follows that they are essentially a kind of empty vessel that is compelled to project itself into particular identities. Thus the subject’s interpellation through ideology is a form of misrecognition (Lacan, 2006), which provides a kind of temporary, imaginary closure (see Laclau, 1990; Stavrakakis, 1997). The role of reflexivity is important in bringing out the grip of ideology and allowing us to assume a certain distance from a given identification. Reflexivity would entail the researcher explicitly situating their ideological positionality and the contingency of their own particular ontological framework, in this case Lacanian psychoanalysis. In recognizing that the researcher is lacking as a subject it would also follow that there is no absolute position of true recognition from which we can speak from an extra ideological level. The subject, indeed the subject as researcher, will always misrecognize when they name social realities in a particular way.

This notion of misrecognition opens the way to critical self-reflection ⁷ but to move towards reflexivity we need to be explicit in recognizing our own position as researchers. When the researcher characterizes and names social phenomena they are invariably doing it from a particular ideological position. Indeed, when we examine the Lacanian research community in critical management and its accompanying concepts and practices, such as conferences and workshops, it follows that it can also be situated as ideological. Lacanian psychoanalytic researchers in organization studies might be seen as an ideological community attempting to spread the legitimacy of a certain kind of critique and a particular set of research practices within management and business schools. Researchers have a set of theoretical commitments that are not beyond the ideological but belong to a given ideological and political community. Naming and recognizing something as ideological does not as of necessity mean tarring it with some kind of negative brush or black listing it since I have argued that we cannot establish a theoretical position in social theory that can hold itself as inherently beyond ideology. As scholars we are engaged in political communities of practice, which can be considered ideological in that they are based on norms and sets of practices that we seek to spread. This is an issue that a reflexive conception of the ideological brings to the fore and, as I show, adds another dimension to critical research into organizations.

A reflexive approach to the ideological

The reflexive account of ideology developed here foregrounds the researcher’s own positionality when naming the ideological. It would be misleading to assume that reflexivity offers a way of finally overcoming the problematic division that tends to exist in critical management and organization research between the researcher as purveyor of objective expertise and the researched as subjects who are passive recipients of these narrations (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008; Stanley and Wise, 1993: 7; Wray-Bliss, 2002). However, reflexivity offers some important ways to articulate and engage with the problem. Exploring ideology reflexively is of particular value because it enables us to take a more political perspective on the position of the researcher (Hardy et al., 2001: 553).

We have found that questions around reflexivity tend to be absent in existing critical research that uses ideology. However, from this research we can extract certain family resemblances (Wittgenstein, 1999: 32) of ideology that tend to be associated with the term. Pointing out these descriptive features is not an attempt to establish in any definitive sense what ideology really is; it is rather a way of situating ideology as a reflexive, analytical concept that can fruitfully be brought to bear on different aspects of organizations. The different analytical dimensions of ideology that are evident in existing work can be roughly demarcated into beliefs, norms, practices and their naturalization. Thus the researcher examines a social phenomenon across one or more of these levels and names it as ideological.

Positivist researchers, such as Abercrombie et al. (1980), Bendix (1956) and Weiss and Miller (1987), tend to confine ideology to openly expressed opinions or beliefs. Another level of ideology would be framing ideas or norms that are central to an organization (for examples of this kind of conception see Bartell, 1976; Cremin, 2010; Prasad and Prasad, 1994; Sinclair, 1992). This level of ideology is a more structural one, or at least it is organizationally sedimented and routinized. Many researchers have also situated ideology as rooted in everyday practices often underpinned by a certain compulsion or coercion, which may not be immediately visible (this focus on practices can be found in Althusser, 2008; Bourdieu, 1984; Burawoy, 1979; Mumby, 1988; Žižek, 1989, 2009, amongst others).

Accompanying this focus on practices is the notion of naturalization, which is seen as a key mark of ideological success. Naturalization here refers to the sedimentation of an ideology so that it becomes a seemingly natural part of everyday social existence (this aspect of ideology is emphasized by Althusser, 2008; Barthes, 2009; Bourdieu, 1984: 61; Žižek, 1989, 2009). The difficult task in naming the ideological becomes one of attempting to denaturalize (Fournier and Grey, 2000: 18), to establish a critical distance from existing social norms and practices and help render visible their ‘political trace’ (Barthes, 2009: 170). The researcher in naming the ideological is often engaged in a kind of war of position in trying to denaturalize and politicize existing social realities and understandings. Reflexivity foregrounds the positionality and partiality of this intervention in naming the ideological, partly by rendering explicit the alternative political perspective that invariably accompanies this naming.

This gives rise to a certain tension about the nature of political contestation, one might as a critical researcher want to situate and point to a given set of practices and norms as contentious by naming them as ideological. However, subjects engaged in a practice may not necessarily see them as either ideological or politically contentious. It is here the political dimension of naming comes into play; the researcher is aiming to articulate the position of those social actors who do see a given set of norms and practices as politically contentious. It would follow that if the researcher remains a lonely figure shouting about how a given organization is ideological, then their attempt to render something politically contentious and contestable has not been successful. Even though the researcher’s perspective is only ever partial, attempting to convince others about how and why a given organizational norm or practice is contentious often becomes a key task around naming the ideological. ⁸

The conception of reflexivity developed here refers to the researcher explicitly situating their own social, ideological and ontological position when characterizing and naming social realities. It should be noted that this is not simply understood in an epistemological sense. The epistemological dimension of reflexivity involves reflecting on the basis from which we write by exploring our methodological assumptions about how we acquire knowledge. An ontological level necessarily accompanies this, since in exploring the basis of our own knowledge we are engaged in questions about our being, our relation to the world and to others (see Johnson and Duberley, 2003: 1281–1282). Reflexivity points to how the epistemological is intimately connected to the ontological, in that our perception of knowledge is bound up with our assumptions about the nature of our being in the world. As Letiche (2009: 291) notes, the social sciences have been based around two contrasting epistemologies, which are: ‘(1) the object being studied somehow makes or causes the representation; (2) the social practices of representation somehow make or cause the object’. The first option presents a kind of ontological dualism in which we can objectively and neutrally observe and record the social world (Hindess, 1977). Researchers have tended to take the first position when using the term ideology. If one takes the latter position as increasingly social researchers and organization scholars tend to do (see for example Berger and Luckmann, 1991; Boje, 2009; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1998, 1999; Glynos and Howarth, 2007) issues around authorial reflexivity (Letiche, 2009: 292) emerge. Ideology meanwhile foregrounds the political stakes of this reflexive engagement by raising questions about how our own political assumptions as researchers have framed the naming of the ideological.

In invoking reflexivity, in which we situate our partiality and positionality in the course of social research, there is what might be seen as a problem of infinite regress. That is, our own positing of ourselves, as an I, must itself always be a partial and incomplete construction and that construction can then be critiqued for its partiality, and so on. This is a reality of reflexivity in social research, which some may see as problematic. However, this can also be seen as an advantage of reflexivity in that it encourages us to productively recognize and engage with this tension, leading us potentially both to a greater modesty and a greater sensitivity to the ways in which we characterize social realities and ourselves from an always partial perspective.

Furthermore, in the political intervention of naming the ideological, and situating our own political perspective through this, we are in a sense becoming (Harding, 2007). What I mean by this is that we constitute ourselves and social realities through naming them in an active and always incomplete process of becoming. What this alludes to is that we are never completely fixed as subjects, the subject is posited and constructed at a particular point in time when we write reflexively but in reality this self is constantly unfolding or becoming. Reflexivity does not claim to overcome this issue of infinite regress it rather encourages us to explicitly recognize and engage with it.

Another potential counter argument to the position taken here could be that researchers deliberately do not situate themselves in the context of their own analysis to avoid the charge of political bias. That is, the objection might be that if a researcher makes their ideological position and partiality explicit they run the danger of being more easily dismissed as biased. I would respond to this concern in two ways: first, if one tries to insert ontological or political commitments through the back door so to speak, the work will just as easily be rejected on the same grounds. For example, if class relations are taken to be the fundamental basis of social reality as in the DIT approach, then if you are not a Marxist or not in any way sympathetic to Marxism you will reject this proposition out of hand regardless of whether it is openly recognized by the researcher as ideological or not. Second, this concealment of the position from which the researcher speaks tends to foster a research environment in which academics simply talk past one another and often do not critically explore or situate their own political assumptions. By being explicit in recognizing our own respective ideologies, the position from which we characterize social realities and the assumptions that frame this would become explicit; this in turn would potentially provide a deeper and richer analysis. This form of reflexive social analysis is already evident in the work of a number of radical feminist authors who have explored issues of partiality and positionality in terms of authorship (see for example hooks, 1989; Probyn, 1993; Stanley and Wise, 1993) but it is an insight still far less evident in other approaches to social research.

Probyn (1993: 27) emphasizes the importance of an analysis of experience in relation to reflexivity. Experience is a tricky concept here which refers not to an autobiographical panacea from which to escape the ills of criticism (Probyn, 1993: 13) or some site of authenticity (Probyn, 1993: 30); rather it involves the critics’ acceptance of the experience of others and the partial position from which we try to interpret and give voice to experiences. As Probyn (1993: 23) notes, in acknowledging the experiential as part of the critical enterprise ‘it attests to a clear point of departure, even as it is partial, in the sense of being partial to (and part of) a political agenda’. Probyn’s focus on experience helps us to develop a conception of ideology which is critical and reflexive. It asks us to recognize the conditions of our own writing and how our experiences have shaped our position when writing, adding ideology to this foregrounds the political aspects of this reflexive engagement. This notion of experience is useful as a bridging concept between ideology and reflexivity to get us to think through the conditions of our own research and writing in organization studies. I aim to show how it might be used in the following section by discussing my own experiences of UK Job Centres.

Revisiting Job Centres

By drawing on my experiences (Probyn, 1993) of UK Job Centres in this closing section, I explore one potentially rich way of bringing reflexivity to ideology. Job Centres have been subject to numerous rebrandings and policy announcements in recent years. In the 1970s in the UK the procedure for claiming unemployment benefit was a relatively simple one, individuals signed on, on a fortnightly basis with few questions asked. However, toward the end of the 1970s sanctions were introduced for non-compliance with a set of requirements. From the mid- to late-1980s a set of private providers have emerged, with various names and different types of schemes. This century private providers have become an increasingly pervasive aspect of the job seeking process. ⁹ When I was unemployed during 2009–2010 during the latter stages of the previous Labour government, I was subject to the ‘Flexible New Deal’ in which as well as visiting the Job Centre on a fortnightly basis, after 6 months you were contracted out to a particular private provider.

Job seeking is an important experience to draw on partly because it is a condition that many, even most of us, may be subject to at some stage of our working lives. This is the case particularly in the present context of academia where departmental cut backs and closures, short-term contracts and precarious employment, are ever more prevalent. Furthermore, because less than 50% of academics are presently on full-time, permanent contracts (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2011); particularly for early career academics, unemployment and Job Centres are increasingly likely to be something that has either been directly experienced at some point or, at least, a threat that accompanies working life.

There are two types of jobseekers allowance in the UK: income based and contribution based. Contribution based jobseekers allowance, which those who have a working tax return for the previous year take, is only available for 6 months. Income based jobseekers allowance is continuous, although like contribution based jobseekers allowance, it is subject to compulsory activities including fortnightly checks in which you show that you have performed a minimum of 6 activities to find work. In addition to this after several months you are transferred to a private provider and are then subject to a series of additional requirements that they place on you. These requirements vary but often consist of unpaid mandatory work for several weeks and further more extensive monitoring to evaluate your efforts to look for work. At present, the allowances are £53.45 a week for those under 25 and £67.50 for those over 25. You cannot claim jobseekers allowance in the UK if you are living with a partner who is working; if you and your partner are unemployed your combined allowance reaches £105.95 (Directgov, 2012).

The policy context of the treatment of the unemployed is frequently changing and the current government has introduced a scheme known as the Work Programme. ‘Personalized conditionality’ and sanctions for non-compliance (Department of Work and Pensions, 2010: 27) are now orchestrated by a set of private providers, such as G4S and A4e in the North of England (Gentleman, 2012). These private agencies are paid on the basis of results in relation to a set of ambitious government targets. These stipulated results have been seen as potentially too optimistic in the present context of an economic downturn (National Audit Office, 2012). This is likely to result in further pressure on the unemployed to accept any form of work and their subjection to increasingly intensive monitoring procedures, as the results driven private providers become ever more desperate to meet their targets.

There is a greater emphasis on compulsion and coercion in current government policy, such as through the enforced reassessments to incapacity benefit and the Mandatory Work Activity Scheme. Subjects must abide by increasingly draconian regulations such as forced ‘voluntary’ labour under the Mandatory Work Activity Scheme in order to retain enough money to barely cover basic subsistence needs. This new scheme requires those claiming jobseekers allowance to work 30 hours a week for a certain length of time in order to retain benefit (Citizens Advice Bureau, 2011).

I distinctly recall my own experience of the Job Centre bureaucracy when I was unemployed after completing my doctorate and regularly waited in overcrowded Job Centres for over an hour. Eventually my record of job seeking activities would be perused and evaluated each fortnight usually by a different member of staff at each visit. Often members of staff would make a remark about not having had an interview recently or they would look with incomprehension when I tried to explain that I needed to increase my number of publications before I could get an academic job. This was a discomforting and rather demoralizing routinized experience but there was a pervasive sense that this was something that must be expected and accepted. What struck me was that a large proportion of unemployed people at the Job Centre were emotionally drained and deeply worried about their futures. Many of them were unemployed due to an absence of adequate opportunities or were laid off, as many thousands have been, because of public sector cuts and business downsizing.

The coercive aspects of the job seeking process cut deep; if you were to object to this treatment and not cooperate your benefit would simply not be paid into your account. Thus inserted into this process I began to consider the absence of a political voice for unemployed claimants subject to the Job Centre bureaucracy, they of course lack a union. When these people are identified and named in the media it tends to be either in the tabloids as abusers of the system (see for example Barrow, 2011) or alternatively as a worrying statistical figure. Increasingly, the invasive procedures of Job Centres and their coercive dimensions are stressed by government ministers, as there is an attempt to situate the societal problem of unemployment as principally a personal problem. It is from this experiential basis that I began to consider the position of the unemployed and the lack of unitary political identity amongst the unemployed collectively.

The job seeking process serves to internalize a sense of personal responsibility for one’s failure to be employed. Furthermore, with this personalization of responsibility comes a depersonalization of support, since most ‘job seekers’ will see a different member of staff to have their attempts to look for work monitored and judged each time they visit. This creates a barrier to personal relations of support developing between ‘job seekers’ and staff and serves to depersonalize the judgements that are made of the efforts of ‘job seekers’. Indeed, the structural and social causes of unemployment are rendered as naturalized givens, as a ‘spontaneously accepted background’ (Žižek, 2009), since through Job Centre practices job seeking becomes a solely private issue (Sharone, 2007: 415). Job Centres then are a key ideological component of a welfare system that translates political issues concerning people’s needs into legal and administrative requirements (Fraser, 1987).

Job seeking and self-responsibility are framing norms underpinning the operations of Job Centres. The unemployed are immediately defined by the label ‘job seeker’ and a set of accompanying norms. The ‘job seeker’ is expected to remedy any perceived educational or experience related deficiencies as best they can, to lower their expectations to what type of job they might be expected to get and to adapt themselves to the modern employment market accordingly. Compulsory practices of fortnightly checks on progress and the deferral to a private agency paid on the basis of results are defining features. When I was unemployed this occurred after 6 months, private contractors are likely to have an increasingly central role in the future under the government’s Work Programme. This reflects a private sector oriented model of capitalist welfare regulation (see Fraser, 1987). In terms of naturalization, the requirements and procedures are part of the fabric of unemployed life. The monitoring and evaluation is routinized so that it becomes a defining aspect of daily existence. Opportunities to openly question these norms and contest them are pretty much non-existent within the Job Centre itself, lest the ‘job seeker’ be seen as a difficult client and a barrier to the functioning of the service.

In current UK job centres we see an ideologically driven, bureaucratically administered, capitalist regulation of welfare (see Fraser, 1987). From my own ideological positionality as a leftist academic influenced by some combination of Marxism and poststructuralism, I would name a corrosive ideology of capitalist welfare regulation as characteristic of Job Centres. This ideology is pervasive because Job Centres place a series of required identifications upon the unemployed. The subject’s position in relation to this ideology is framed through a combination of compulsion and consent. On the one hand, it suits the functioning of Job Centres if ‘job seekers’ are purely passive and compliant; although from my own experiences of being unemployed it was notable that ‘job seekers’ frequently expressed dissent to staff about how they were subject to continuous monitoring. One finds that those who are unemployed have no option but to identify with the label ‘job seeker’.

As a condition of receiving benefit, the subject is continuously expected to seek and to believe, the label ‘job seeker’ also entails a set of mandatory responsibilities around what it is to seek. As Southwood (2011: 46) observes, the term ‘job seeker’ recalls a kind of childish game of hide and seek. The label suggests that the failure to find work is a result not of any failure in the social situation but simply because of the individual’s failure to sufficiently believe. The term posits the subject as immediately lacking, as lacking work, which makes it all the more powerful in a psychoanalytic sense. Thus there is a projection in which the ‘job seeker’ needs to find work to be rendered complete as a subject. The label almost seems to entail a command: you must seek to complete yourself as a subject by becoming a working subject. The extent to which any work you may find at the end of your search might be exploitative, under paid, transitory and precarious (Standing, 2011) is entirely neglected.

Discussion and conclusions

Drawing on my own experience of Job Centres in this closing example enables me as an academic author, with recent experience of unemployment, job seeking and its associated affects, to provide a situated, reflexive analysis. I have demonstrated how my own experiences of unemployment have caused me to reflect in a particular way on the condition of the unemployed and the coercive bureaucracy they are faced with. It should be noted that the call for reflexivity in organization studies research that employs the concept of ideology does not claim authenticity. In focusing on my own experiences of Job Centres, my argument is not that my own experience of unemployment makes me intrinsically more entitled to comment than someone who has not been subjected to the Job Centre process. Rather it is an attempt to draw out the problematic of ideology with sensitivity to the position from which we write and the conditions of our writing; a subject that tends to be neglected in existing organizational research that uses the concept of ideology, even though the writing subject has been the focus of much attention in organization studies (see for example, Letiche, 2009; Pullen, 2006; Rhodes, 2009; Thomas et al., 2008; Wray Bliss, 2002, 2003).

In contrast to existing approaches in organization studies, I have explored the positionality of the researcher in naming ideology by bringing reflexivity to bear on the concept. The notion of experience (Probyn, 1993) has been employed to frame my analysis because it provides a useful entry point for the researcher to explore issues of positionality and partiality. Positionality becomes important in the sense of rendering explicit the position from which we speak, as does partiality, in that one recognizes that one speaks from a particular social and political perspective. Addressing both of these concepts, positionality and partiality, in some form is integral to a meaningful reflexive analysis. In terms of positionality, the job seeking process was only a temporary one for me, of almost 12 months, but during it I felt gripped by an intense sense of personal failure. The extent to which a subjective sense of failure is heightened by Job Centre procedures in which your efforts to find work are periodically evaluated and judged was revealed to me through experiencing the process. Also striking was the extent to which coercion has a key role in shaping the requirements in being a ‘job seeker’, this is instilled through a process in which one does not have a choice since compliance is a necessary condition to sustain this meagre benefit being paid into your account. Thus a reflexive approach enabled me to be more sensitive to how a subject might be affected by the ‘job seeker’ label and by Job Centre procedures. It also made me more aware of how, as Gramsci (1971) might have noted, the process of being a ‘job seeker’ is underpinned by compulsion (see Anderson, 1976).

The partiality here is evident both in my social position and political ideology. In terms of social position, as somebody from a left leaning middle class background, a child of privilege in some sense, there is no doubt that I was able to separate myself from the term ‘job seeker’ to a greater extent than others would be. Such a label would have been more powerfully instilled if I was absolutely financially dependent on jobseekers allowance. For example, from initially making my claim on the phone it took 6 weeks before jobseekers allowance started to be paid into my account. I can only imagine how I would have survived if I did not have some access to financial support from my parents during this period, a scenario which must apply to a large portion of ‘job seekers’. For other subjects I spoke to who were claiming there was a definite sense that the feeling of anger and hopelessness often cuts deep. The ideology I have named as capitalist welfare regulation underpinned by coercion; remains a name that many claiming jobseekers allowance would not necessarily identify with. It is an act of naming that is shaped by a combination of my own experience and ideological position. Politically speaking, my own ideological perspective is that of an academic leftist poststructuralism that has substantial Marxist currents; it should be noted that this position is largely restricted to a university setting and is undoubtedly rather confined in terms of its potential to reach a wider public. At the same time the negativity towards the Job Centre, the sense of becoming demoralized and the feeling that you are often not being listened to when your efforts to look for work are evaluated, is rather pervasive. I say this on the basis of my own observations at the Job Centre and from conversations with others who are claiming, or have claimed job seekers allowance. The challenge is to re-articulate this feeling of negativity into an ideological critique, which as I have noted is a task of political persuasion.

The reflexive analysis of the Job Centre then has enabled a richer and deeper analysis of the factors shaping the unemployed subject. In terms of how this distinctive conception of ideology advances from existing deployments of ideology in organizational research; in Weiss and Miller’s (1987) Marxist analysis of material interests shaping ideology there is no real analysis of how subjects’ interests are shaped. Interests seem to be a pre-given product of material factors with no real recognition of the complex process of their acquisition or any allowance for how they may differ within a particular social group. However, in the more reflexive approach to ideology developed here the partiality of the researcher’s perspective is recognized and with it the complex process through which the ‘job seeker’ label is instilled. In the Lacanian approach to ideology I have critiqued the tendency towards detached diagnosis, in which the researcher as expert assumes the position of social analyst. A reflexive conception of ideology has drawn out to a much greater extent the issue of where we speak from as researchers and arguably it has been more sensitive to the position of the subjects immersed in the organizational process than in some Lacanian accounts. For example, when Fleming (2012) discusses an ideology of pervasive disidentification he does not give due attention to the coercive aspects of ideology and the extent to which certain practices and labels are forcibly instilled. In relation to the Job Centre, I have drawn this out in the reflexive analysis by discussing the coercive and enforced routinized procedures of job seeking.

In terms of the contribution to research employing reflexivity, while there has been some reflexive analysis of the position of the academic researcher (Harding, 2007; Hardy et al., 2001; Letiche, 2009; Thomas et al., 2008); the concept of ideology brings the political dimensions of the researcher’s position into focus in a spirit of modesty. Modest in the sense that the researcher recognizes that the position from which they speak politically is often not the same as, or may be at odds with, the research subjects who they speak for. Reflexivity then alludes to the partial position from which we name ideology. Narrating one’s own experience (Probyn, 1993) is one useful way of exploring our political position reflexively.

Although some proponents of this move toward theorizing the researcher reflexively as subject have pointed to the political agenda that accompanies this (see for example Hardy et al., 2001: 553; Probyn, 1993: 23), this is often not made explicit. In drawing out issues around the researcher’s positionality and by problematizing the separation between researcher and researched more recent studies (see for example Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008; Cunliffe, 2003; Johnson and Duberley, 2003; Letiche, 2009) have pointed to the need for greater research reflexivity. Yet adding ideology to this emphasis upon reflexivity foregrounds the political aspects of this process, in inviting us to make the political position of the researcher explicit.

While my focus in this article has been on the concept of ideology, the importance of reflexivity and the act of naming has a more general relevance for research in organization studies. The focus on the researcher’s naming and characterization of social realities and the argument that the researcher’s positionality and partiality should be explicitly engaged with relates to any claim social researchers might make. While we have seen that this assumption of detached and ‘objective’ social research is pervasive when ideology is invoked, these issues of partiality and positionality might be reflexively explored and interrogated in relation to a range of other concepts that are important in organization studies, such as identification or resistance, to name but two.

Furthermore, the dualism that tends to exist in critical organizational research, between researcher as expert and researched as passive subjects (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008; Letiche, 2009; Wray Bliss, 2003), exists in large part because of an assumed claim to objectivity in which the researcher from some often unspecified standpoint simply observes social realities. However, from a critical perspective naming the ideological is an active process, which tends to involve grouping together organizational phenomena and situating them as politically contentious. What reflexivity draws out here is the partiality of the researcher’s perspective and how our own ideological commitments frame and shape the naming of social realities. This greater attention to the position from which we speak when employing the concept of ideology would provide a richer conception of the ideological and it would potentially offer a more critically sensitive approach to social research. It is for this reason that I have suggested that a reflexive conception of ideology can reinvigorate the concept and open paths to a more attuned and engaged critical analysis of organizations.